• About
    • The Magazine
    • The Foundation
    • The Collective
    • Columns
  • 2011 Calendar
  • The Dreams for Women Project
    • About
    • Postcards
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 1 – 4
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 5 – 8
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 9 – 12
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 13 -16
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 17 – 20
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 21 – 24
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 25 – 28
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 29 – 32
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 33 – 36
      • Dreams for Women Week 37 – 40
      • Dreams for Women Week 41 – 44
      • Dreams for Women Week 45 – 48
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 49 – 52
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 53 – 56
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 57– 60
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 61– 64
      • Dreams for Women Weeks 65– 68
  • Read Antigone Magazine 
  • Contact Us

Tag Archives: amanda reaume

A Surprise Pie-ing!

06 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by Amanda in women's issues

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

amanda reaume, Antigone, arts, calendar postcard art, canada, charity, comedy, community, crafts, cream pie, dreams, Dreams for women, empower, epic, face, feminism, feminist, fight, foundation, frank warren, fundraiser, funny, girl pie, girls, grassroots, hilarious, hit, magazine, messy, nonprofit, outreach, pie, pie face, pie girl, postsecret, project, slapstick, throw, viral, whipped cream, women's worlds

Thanks to Antigone Board Member Kaitlin Blanchard for buying 10 calendars! She rocks!

Three pies in the face!

05 Wednesday Jan 2011

Posted by Amanda in women's issues

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

amanda reaume, Antigone, arts, calendar postcard art, canada, charity, comedy, community, crafts, cream pie, dreams, Dreams for women, empower, epic, face, feminism, feminist, fight, foundation, frank warren, fundraiser, funny, girl, girl pie, girls, grassroots, hilarious, hit, magazine, messy, nonprofit, outreach, pie, pie face, pie girl, postsecret, project, slapstick, throw, viral, whipped cream, women's worlds

These pies go out to Janice Stewart, Linda Reaume, and Scott Turner who each bought 10 calendars! THANK YOU all so much!

Diary of an Activist, Fear of Failure

12 Monday Apr 2010

Posted by Amanda in Antigone Foundation, Antigone Magazine, Diary of an Activist, Women and politics, women leaders, Women's groups

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

activism, activist, amanda reaume, Antigone Foundation, Antigone Magazine, Diary of an Activist, failure, fear, harry potter, harvard, J.K. Rowling, reaume

I think the hardest part of being an activist is the constant fear of failure that you experience. Especially when you are the one in charge, there can be a constant fear that the dreams and programs that you are proposing or organizing will not work out. There are so many things that could potentially go wrong. You might worry that you won’t get funding. That no one will care. That you won’t make a difference.

When you have the energy and ideas to do something that you believe is important and yet you can’t get the money or the interest or the political traction to ensure that the change or the event happens – this is very frustrating. Sometimes just the fear of not having the money, the interests or political traction is enough to cause you to rethink the whole project. What happens if you decide to organize an event and it fails. What is failure? It all depends on what your goals are and if your goals are quite ambitious… what you define as failure might be someone else’s wild success.

When the cause means so much to you, when your activist identity and self are so integrally wrapped up in the activist work that you are doing, then how frightening and disabling does fear of failure become? How do we push on in the face of fear and obstacles?

Right now, I am working on a number of projects for The Antigone Foundation. One example is the cross-Canada Dreams for Women Leadership Tour. The Cross-Canada Dreams for Women Leadership tour will involve the Antigone Foundation visiting at least 5 cities across Canada where we will run one day long Leadership Boot Camps with the help of local leaders, organizations, and volunteers. We will be providing leadership training to girls aged 10-30. The purpose is to get more young women involved in leadership, politics, activism, and feminism.

As I prepare to start coordinating the Dreams for Women Leadership Tour, I am afraid. I fear that no one will want to sponsor us. I fear that we will not be able to get women to participate. I fear that we will not be able to put the tour on.

I fear all these things. But I also know that this tour will change the worlds of many young women. I hope that it will inspire people. I hope that it will lead to action and achievement and change. This knowledge and these hopes are what keeps me pressing on through the fears and putting myself and my organization out there.

Have Antigone and I failed at a project in the past? According to our expectations (which are always to take over the world), yes. But each ‘failure’ has been incredibly useful and educational. Sometimes the few people who have come out to an event have been instrumental or we have changed the mind or educated one person. To me, that is success. But an event turning out as planned is also a great success and what I always work towards.

Working towards it can be hard but it is also a mental game which takes a lot of energy. The excitement and hope for the event must be stronger than the fear of what you will lose if you fail. It takes a lot of energy because you (as an activist) must try to manifest the dream and the vision that you have for the event. And by manifesting a big dream and vision you are making yourself vulnerable. You are putting out into the dirty, mean world, an ideal and a cherished hope and dream. The world is not easy on these hopes and dreams. It will mock them, thwart them, ignore them, laugh at them, have contempt for them and do everything it does to degrade and demean them, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident.

I find that sometimes when I experience disappointment, I shrink back into myself for fear that this taste of failure will spread across the whole project. I begin to question myself. Who am I to believe that I can do this? Who am I to be dreaming this big? I start imagining everything going terribly wrong and then I have a hard time continuing on. I think that is one of my biggest struggles; maintaining hope and direction in the face of criticism and disappointment. I think I am learning how to do that though. And that is making me a better activist. A more resilient one. A more focused and determined one.

I have experienced things recently that I would have once seen as a failure. But these failures have been quite productive and important to me. They have made me see what is really important to me and what I really desire to do and achieve. They have forced me to focus myself on the things that I truly care about rather than diffusing my energies over a number of different sources. I am feeling something akin to what J.K. Rowling spoke about during a commencement address she gave at at Harvard:

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and I began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I truly belonged. I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized and I was still alive and I still had a daughter who I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I built my life. You might never fail on the scale that I did but some failure is inevitable.

It is impossible to live your life without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I have never achieved by passing examinations. Failure gave me an inner security that I could not have attained any other way. I discovered that I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected. I also found out that I had friends whose value was more than rubies. The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to know yourself or the strength of your relationships.  It is a true gift that has been painfully won and it has been worth more than any qualification I have ever achieved.

Diary of an Activist, What keeps me going

21 Sunday Mar 2010

Posted by Amanda in Diary of an Activist

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

activist, amanda reaume, CCCABC, Diary of an Activist, don't give up, donations, feminism, feminist, reaume, support, women

I have always believed that the world has a magical and mysterious way of ensuring that you have the tools and the people you need at the right times in your life. I am sure you know what I mean?  Perhaps you have also been on the verge of giving up when someone suddenly came into your life and boosted your confidence and your energy? Or perhaps when you were supposed to give up on something – things just didn’t work out and you found your energies redirected towards somewhere that was ultimately more productive? I find this has happened a number of times in my life.

As an activist and the Executive Director of a non-profit, the one thing that has kept me going is the support of others. Whether they are family, friends, colleagues, or complete strangers, I have more stories than I can tell of times when people have stepped in and helped me and Antigone out of a tough spot, or donated money, or donated their time or work, or just complimented my work and the work of the organization. Creating something from nothing, manifesting an organization, a magazine, a book or a set of programs from nothing or nowhere is hard and scary work.

Continue reading →

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007

Categories

  • 2010
  • Abortion
  • american politics
  • Antigone Foundation
  • Antigone Magazine
  • Beauty
  • BlogHer
  • CEDAW
  • Charter
  • child care
  • Commission on the Status of Women
  • CONNECT
  • Darfur
  • Day of rememberance
  • Dec 6
  • Diary of an Activist
  • Dreams for women
  • Elizabeth May
  • Environment
  • Equal Voice
  • Federal Election
  • female politicians
  • feminist freethinker
  • feministing
  • Feminists Who Totally Rock
  • film
  • France
  • Gardasil
  • Gay Rights
  • Gloria Steinem
  • Hillary Clinton
  • Human rights
  • human trafficking
  • I'm a feminist because
  • immigrant women
  • In need of enlightenment
  • Legalized prostitution
  • LGBT
  • marriage
  • Masculinity
  • Media
  • Minerva
  • Mira Hall
  • Morgentaler
  • motherhood
  • NDP
  • Ottawa
  • Oxfam
  • patriarchy
  • pay equity
  • pensions
  • persons case
  • poverty
  • Pro-choice
  • Queer Issues
  • Race
  • Rape
  • Reproductive Rights
  • Retirement
  • robert pickton
  • sexism
  • Sexual Assault
  • Sexual paradox
  • sexuality
  • Single Women
  • Some Leaders are Born Women
  • Spivak
  • status of women
  • stereotypes
  • Stupid misogynists
  • The Feminist Scholar
  • UBC
  • UN
  • UNIFEM
  • US elections
  • vancouver events
  • Vancouver Sun
  • Violence against women
  • Women and politics
  • women in politics
  • Women in the Middle east
  • women leaders
  • Women's groups
  • women's issues
  • Young women
  • Your Voice

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • antigonemagazine.wordpress.com
    • Join 27 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • antigonemagazine.wordpress.com
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar