The "End-emic" Era: Emerging With Gratitude

Emerging with Gratitude
By Shelly Roder, Director of Communications and Marketing

Last March, so many of us were about to learn how important the skill of pivoting can be - and we all know it wasn’t because of the March Madness we have come to know and love! As things suddenly shut down - which for us meant the closing of the Hospitality Center and the storefront (which were only 7 and 8 months old respectively) and the abrupt evaporation of our 25th anniversary year’s education, advocacy and sales events. We had to do what people in recovery do: Breathe. Find Your Grounding. Reflect on what you can control. Start there.

But maybe the most important part of what we learned from the ladies that became important was this: bring others along with you. We see this on the streets all the time - ladies looking out for other ladies, asking for resources for each other, encouraging each other. We also see just how important community becomes for women as they go through the healing process. And there’s nothing quite as thick as the bond between sisters who are growing into their best selves together - and particularly women who are emerging from the streets together.

So in our estimation, it’s all of you - our committed supporters - with whom we are emerging into our best self as an organization as we move into what Deacon Steve calls the new “end-emic” era. It’s with gratitude to you for responding to the Community Care Special, which since March 14, 2020, has put close to 2,300 bars of soap or tubes of lotion into your neighbors’ hands.
Close to 1800 of these went to neighbors needing the support of food pantries or shelters in Washington, Waukesha and Milwaukee Counties. The Community Care Special kept our ladies working and kept us all hopeful in the early months of the pandemic.

Then came the Care Packages - in collaboration with other small, local businesses we found creative ways to sell products to customers who could no longer shop in store and who were missing loved ones. You showed up for us. And we were able to support 10 local businesses in the process, bringing our neighbors along with us.

In this spirit, we want to offer you a one day discount to celebrate our neighbors. Enjoy a 26.2% discount on 4-14! (Well, just a 26% discount because our website cannot get that specific, but we didn’t want to leave out our 262 area code neighbors!)

Download the April Newsletter here!