The 2010 SOAR! Scholarship begins today ladies!  WOO-HOO!

Go to the SOAR! WEBSITE for all the juicy details!  Discover the new prizes (check out the SONY DSLR this year!!)  Explore the forum! Apply to be one of the THREE Recipients, and you may find yourself SOARING this year!

Got questions? We’ve got you covered!  Post up all your questions on the forum, and Linda, Jennifer or Lindsay will be on hand to answer them for you!  Take advantage of their wisdom and experience ladies!  They are so excited to help our new recipients SOAR!

Deadline to apply is Monday, December 20th!

Be sure to meet ALL FOUR video requirements before uploading!  (hint: see #3 thru #7 on the FAQ)

So many things to be thankful for with this year’s Thanksgiving.  SOAR! stepping into its’ second year is one of them.  I also want to give a special thanks to my amazing husband, Brian, who has been working for a couple months on all these details with a team of amazing people under him.  Babe, you make it possible for me to soar.  i love u.

xoxo,

m

*To hear from last year’s recipients, click any of their names; Linda, Jennifer and Lindsay!

Happy Monday friends!   I love the week of Thanksgiving!  Magic is in the air!  Heck, SNOW is in the air!

Today, we are going to do something magical on the blog!  We are going to launch our final and third SOAR! Recipient, Lindsay Baumgartner! This was the video that Lindsay submitted with her SOAR! Application last January.  (seriously, you will need some Kleenex!)

When I watched this video, I was feeling like many of you probably feel right now–in utter shock and amazement for what this little family had gone through.  The ending of their video is so triumphant and unforgettable.  How does a family, a marriage, survive something like that?!  And yet, the Baumgartner’s have done more than survived, they have overcome.

When the panel of judges brought Lindsay’s video to the forefront, I had a secret hope inside.  If Lindsay was picked as a SOAR! Recipient, I hoped she would have a year of discovering “her” story.  Her video shared a lot about what happened to her husband, Kyle, and how it affected their family.  But now that they were out of the woods with Kyle’s condition, where did this put Lindsay?  I know what it’s like to go through traumatic events and wonder where your voice is or whether or not it’s okay to ask for more–more than just survival.

Kyle survived a horrific event.  Is it okay to ask for more?  Are we greedy to want more? Will people think we aren’t thankful for what we have been given?  Is it selfish to want more for your life, apart from overcoming the trauma?  At the time, I had no idea if Lindsay thought about these questions.  But these are the questions I hoped her heart would have space to explore and find answers too during the SOAR! year.

And a year later, with great pride, I stand in awe of how this woman has come into a better, richer sense of who she is and what she’s capable of.  Just like Linda and Jennifer, Lindsay rolled up her sleeves and took on the SOAR! Scholarship with every thing in her.  She didn’t hold back, she worked her tail off, she swam in deep waters, and she discovered more than I can put into words.  Here are few things she wanted to share with all of you…

We LOVE Lindsay, and we are SUPER proud of her!

Will you join me in today’s blog post and post a comment of congratulations as we release Lindsay Baumgartner to SOAR!   Not to soar in the shadow of a horrible accident, but to soar in the wide open skies of her own dreams and impossibles.  To know that she is a woman who is worthy of the best.  And for her to want more than her husband’s recovery is not only okay, but necessary because the world is in need of her gifts and beautiful heart.

Check out Lindsay’s NEW WEBSITE!  It’s pretty amazing!

Lindsay, your growing portfolio is just…wow…incredible.  I’m so proud of you, all your hard work, all your courage, and Brian and I feel honored to call you friend.  Now SOAR! girl because you have everything you need (even when you don’t feel like it ).

love YOU!

-m

p.s.  Do you want to SOAR! this coming year?   Does the SOAR! Scholarship have your name written all over it?  Get ready because tomorrow we re-open the SOAR! Scholarship Program to accept new applications/videos for Year Two!  Woo-hoo!  Spread the word!  Details tomorrow!

I watched Jen Armstrong’s SOAR! submission video last night and couldn’t help but cry. When I first watched it, I was struck by a woman who had been faced with much change. And it seemed that she was set on turning lemons into lemonade. Her background was in teaching, and she was FANTASTIC at articulating her thoughts on video. She was new to photography but had incredible potential from the early shots that she shared in her video. Little did I know how close I would become to this woman, how much I would treasure her friendship in degrees that she will never know. This is her a year ago…

The SOAR! Scholarship is not about “making sure” these women all start photography businesses.  It is about something much deeper.  I wanted these women to end the year with confidence that they could accomplish whatever their goals and dreams were.  But I also wanted them to have a window into my own life.  I knew that this personal view would show them how many up’s and down’s happen as we build our dreams.  How “glory filled” it can look on the outside, but how the courage to not give up–no matter what level you are at–is the main ingredient.  I wanted them to see that dream building is not about waiting for the “right time”.  Dream building is intense and hard, but none of us ever signed up for the impossible because we thought it would be easy.

Jen’s life had so many unexpected things happen throughout the SOAR! year.  One major piece was that her family relocated.  Wouldn’t it make sense to put the dream building on hold and get through the move–come back to this dream building next year?  The SOAR! Scholarship takes that option away. And yet, Jen was determined as ever to not only build a new business but to build it in a new community.  The courage that she mustered to keep going…I want her to know how amazing that courage was and is.

When life interrupts our dream building, it’s easy to feel like everyone is gaining ground on you–moving and advancing farther and faster than you–leaving you in the dust.  These are the battles of the mind that can be fatal.  I had the honor of talking through some of those battles with Jen, and I’m so proud that this little “Texas Missy” ignored all the voices and held fast to her passions.  It is only a woman of passion, that has been broken, healed and broken again, who can create images that leave us speechless…images like these;

When Jen sees kids on the beach at sunset, this is what her heart guides her to capture.  These are images that breathe healing and innocence.  These are images that prove she never lost any ground when the storms of life slowed her journey down.  Instead, we all witnessed around Jen that the well that holds all her passion goes much deeper than any of us knew.

So, if you didn’t cry (like I did) when you watched Jen’s video submission, you may want to get out Kleenex for her most recent video.  The growth and confidence that shines on this woman is so breathtaking.  The way she’s sitting, how she moves when she talks, the calm on her face, how she seems to have settled into herself…amazing.

What should you expect with doing SOAR! this year?  Let Jen share…

With GREAT excitement, I join all of you in releasing Jen Armstrong to SOAR!  See her doing a live shoot on her beautiful, NEW WEBSITE!  Read about her recent photo shoots on her beautiful, NEW BLOG!

And tell this lady she is worth every bit of confidence and courage she has found–every last bit of it!

i love you Jen sooooo much!

-m

For the rest of this week, we are going to do something very special as a community. I am so excited and yet a little sad.  Proud and full of joy.  Grieving and celebrating within.   It’s always a mix of emotions when something good has grown beyond it’s walls.  Our three SOAR! Recipients started the year surrounded by walls of doubt, fear, insecurity, unsure about their photography abilities, unsure of their dreams, the list goes on.  But this week, we recognize that they have outgrown many of those walls.

We don’t release them in the sense of losing them, but celebrate them–recognize what they’ve done.  I’m especially excited to have each of them be Sponsors/Mentors to this year’s new recipients.  These three women have become knitted into my very heart, as I know they have touched your life too with every new week of posts on the SOAR! blog.  We have laughed, cried, and cried some more.  But now, this week, it’s time to recognize their GREAT, hard earned accomplishment of completing the SOAR! year.

We are going to collectively launch our three, hardworking, beautiful SOAR! Recipients!  They have worked more hours than you would ever guess, and they deserve to be celebrated.  Will you help me celebrate each of them this week, as I show you where they’ve come from and where they are now?

Let’s start today with Linda Baylis!

Linda’s submission video struck our SOAR! panel of judges last year.  It was witty, funny, creative, heartfelt and showed us courage from the start.  In her application, she also wrote about dealing with chronic illness, and her determination to never give up no matter how tough the battle.

I don’t think any of us knew what battles we would walk through this last year.  Linda ended up needing to go back to New Zealand for a part of the year, and yet somehow, this unexpected part of her life’s journey played into perfect timing of SOAR!’s mission and support for her.  With every challenge that came Linda’s way, she faced it.  There were many times that she felt scared but there was never a time that she opted out.  I hope that she reads this post today, this celebration of all her successes, and feels great pride for herself and all her hard work.  I hope she has a quiet moment to Pause, let a sense of incredible accomplishment sink in.  She has gone from hoping and dreaming of “how to do” photography, and maybe having a small business, to launching a BEAUTIFUL website and blog.

SOAR! Partner, SmugMug,  has been working for months with all three gals on creating websites and blogs that represent each of their personalities.  Check out Linda Baylis’s NEW WEBSITE and her BLOG! They are Amazing with a Capital A!

What does Linda have to say about SOAR! for those of you who are considering the application process?  Let her tell you in this special video.

Linda has even BIGGER dreams than when we first started last January.  And this alone makes me so excited because I know this little New Zealand mama has what it takes to do WHATEVER she sets her heart too.  This year, every blog post she wrote, every assignment she did, every tear she shed, every time she laughed from total exhaustion, this year and all the above are proof that Linda Baylis is capable of all her BIG dreams.  She is capable of what she thought was impossible.  And it is a honor to release her to SOAR!

Will you help me congratulate this beautiful lady!  Will you stand with me and see Linda Baylis SOAR!

I love you Linda.

always,

m

*In honor of the next few days, celebrating our three SOAR! Recipients, SmugMug is offering a 20% discount on their one year membership!  Copy and paste the special coupon code: MeRaSMUG20.  A very BIG thanks to Smug Mug for all that they gave this last year and continue to give as we prepare together for this next year!  We love you Smug Mug!