Much of the time we think of LEAVING a legacy; Gloria Burgess, a woman close to 50, challenges us to discover and LIVE our legacy NOW. Gloria’s challenge came to mind again last week as I attended two environmentally related events.
One of my passions over the years has been caring for all of creation, and Gloria reminded me to act on my vision associated with that passion and do my part to live my legacy. Gloria herself is doing a magnificent job of following her own advice as she leads workshops and speaks all over the United States and abroad sharing her book, “Daring to Wear Your Soul on the Outside –Live Your Legacy NOW.”
Another women close to fifty who LIVES HER LEGACY is a colleague, Cynthia Clay.* Cynthia and her husband, Leo Brodie, co-led a book discussion on “The Transition Town Handbook” by Rob Hopkins at Barnes & Nobel in University Village last week.
“Transition Town Handbook” illustrates how all of us can generate communities/towns that actively live the kind of lifestyles that are proactively adapting to two of the major environmental challenges of our times, global warming and arriving at peak oil. The acts Rob Hopkins suggests are straightforward: work as close to home as possible, scale down to reduce stress and consumption, use the most fuel efficient transportation possible, eat food that is grown with a few hundred miles or in your own garden, etc. The power of those acts and the impact they have on the carbon emissions accelerates as neighbors join neighbors and businesses to make more energy efficient choices.
Cynthia, her husband, and two young children began to seriously scale down their carbon emissions a couple of years ago when they sold their large home and moved into a smaller one closer to their offices near the University Village so that they could walk to work. Her husband took the “Transition Town” training and Cynthia joined him when she realized they could begin to get the word out that ordinary citizens can make critical changes faster and easier than Congress.
Sisters, Cynthia is a woman nearly fifty who LIVES her legacy as a company owner of a virtual training company saving companies travel and training expense. Plus, she also is living her legacy as she encourages Seattleites to create their own “Transition Town.” Let me hear how you are intentionally LIVING YOUR LEGACY.
*I wrote about Cynthia in last week’s blog post also as I described her providing on-going leadership for WBE (Women’s Business Exchange), Seattle’s oldest women’s networking organization.
