Andrea Balboni

Summertime highlights. 🐝🍒And in between the sweetness of peak experiences, heatwaves and droughts (hello climate change) reminding me to savour it all.

And to root further into the work I’m doing to support all those who love (couples and those solo), to shift into new ways of being with one another. ♥️

Vera Wang opens in London with the most wonderful crowd she could hope for The Women's Chapter® ~ B Corp networking community members (of which I am proudly one), filled the room with laughter, high fashion and fun. NYC meets LDN ♥️

🎂 Beautiful birthday celebrations. Tribe is truly everything. So wonderful to be part of many special ones. ♥️

Conway Tennis Club was where this gathering was at. Love my tennis buddies!! And all of the friends, old and new that joined us.

Summertime sweetness drop 🍓

Last Friday at the historic London Stock Exchange, I got to be a part of the inaugural Disruptors Festival, created by Sophia Ukor, Founder and CEO of .

There are moments in our lives when our past catches up to the present.

When who we were, and who we are meet in the NOW time register.

And when these parts of us meet, there is a reconciling. 
A kind of integration. 
A new sense of wholeness that happens.

I sat on stage with two other incredible women, Emmie Wills and Poppy Delbridge, and in conversation with a room full of people willing to look at life differently.

To talk openly about subjects that want speaking to precisely because we don’t have the answers. Or at least we’ve not lived the answers to the questions on our heart fully yet.

Questions like:
“What is your current relationship to change, and where does it challenge you most right now?” As we live in uncertain times.

Questions like: 
“When is ‘doing it on your own’ an affirmation of our strength, or a suit of armour that keeps us from loving another?” When we have choice in how we’d like to live.

Questions like: 
“Why is it that empathy and compassion are the hallmarks of a healthy human, and so many ‘successful’ leaders in business are quite the opposite?” When the world we see around us doesn’t seem to reflect or support our values, what do we do?

We sat in the unknowing together. And in that space we began to craft the world in which we’d like to live.

The world of today. And of tomorrow. And perhaps, even of yesterday.

I hope for many more opportunities to sit in circle as I did at the Disruptor’s Festival with leaders like the ones I met throughout the day.

Together we rise.

Huge thank you to and for inviting me in. And to who introduced us.

And for beautiful conversations with Cath Kirchmann, Michele Paradise, , , Petrina Montrose, Aiko Sato, Dhruti Shah, Harsha Harjani James, Usha Kong, Arber Shining Ismaili 💫🌟💖🔥🌎 and so many more.

And those there in spirit Julia Streets, MBE. : )

If you’re as fortunate as I a have been and have travelled abroad since the late 90s, you may have experienced what it was like to visit a place where the open-hearted curiosity of children met you and stayed with you more than anything else.

It was only on visiting Siwa, an oasis in the desert, a 9-10 hour trip by car from Cairo (and hence quite isolated from hoards of visitors), that I was reminded of the sweetness of these early travels.

I asked how was it that despite apparent poverty, the kids weren’t begging. Nor were the shop keepers heckling.

The response: Community.

If a family needed, the Siwaians took from a communal pot and shared.

There is a difference between being poor and being desperate.

And this was it.

Community.

I fear this one might be under threat with a new airport opening not far. And with new waves of tourists, the delicate balance between them and the locals comes under question.

The world is changing. Yes.

And yet I suspect a return back to community will be necessary to bring us to the other side of what is coming.

It wasn’t until my first trip to the desert that I actually understood its soul.

What a wonderful thing to meet it again.

Solitude. Vastness. Expanse. Movement.
Ripples of time. In place.

An experience of the deeper essence of our souls.

The first female pharaoh in ancient times, Hatshepsut didn’t have it easy.

Nor did she play clean.🩸

Memories of her etched in stone were erased by chisel, as were the stories of so many women through time, were their stories ever recorded at all. We humans hold a complicated history.

Sweet Siwa, may you never lose your tender charm.
An oasis in the desert. And a reminder of how life used to be.