Women of Excellence

The good news is that my daughter’s COVID test was negative yesterday. We all sighed a big sigh of relief. She works at a local credit union. It started as a summer internship and they asked her to stay on and work part-time during the school year, which happens to be her senior year of high school. I was hesitant about this, for time management reasons, but my daughter loves working there, so my husband and I acquiesced. Recently, one of my daughter’s female managers got promoted, and she was moving to a different location. Upon leaving, the manager wrote a hand written thank you note to my daughter, in which she wrote that my daughter is “a woman of excellence.” I love that terminology, and this is not just because I am a proud mama. One, I love women who support and mentor other women. This is a rarer phenomenon than it should be. Second, I have honestly never seen that terminology in writing before. “A woman of excellence.” What does that mean? I want to be one. I want to be called “a woman of excellence.” I want to believe that I am “a woman of excellence.”

I looked up the word “excellence” in the dictionary. It means “the quality of being outstanding/extremely good”. That’s pretty general, right? I think that we all have things that we are extremely good at, and we all have areas that we could probably work on. Maybe we don’t care enough about certain traits, to work hard enough to become excellent at them. There are certain areas that I do believe that I am “a woman of excellence” and then there are other things in my life that I believe that I am more likely to be called “a woman of sub-standards.” To be “a woman of excellence”, does that mean you have to be good at everything? That feels like a lot of undue stress and pressure, and perhaps, a lesson in frustration and futility. Perhaps being “a woman of excellence” means knowing yourself, knowing your values, and your priorities, and your purposes, and being excellent at these things. I’m not really sure. All that I know is that I would like to be one. I would like to be known as “a woman of excellence.” And I also know that I am grateful that another woman acknowledged and appreciated this quality of excellence in my daughter, besides just her adoring mother. That was an excellent thing for that woman to do, for a young woman coming up in the world behind her. And this vital encouragement is something that all of us “women of excellence” are more than capable to do, for the future generations of excellent women, for whom we are paving the way. If this encouragement and inspiration for young women is the only area that we choose to be excellent at, I am convinced that this will be more than enough.

“Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it. Autograph your work with excellence.” – Anonymous (probably written by an anonymous person of excellence and humility)

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi

“Excellence is not a skill. It’s an attitude.” – Ralph Marston

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.