Laying in the stuffy right side of Bunk 12, listening to the now endearing snore of my cabinmates, I open my notes app and begin typing. Some nights a diary entry, others ideas for platform themes or books to read, and one night, the preface for my International Mazkirah speech. 

Nearly 8 months later, standing on a stage in the basement of the Philadelphia Convention Center, I speak these words aloud to others for the first time. In front of a room of my sisters, I declare the outline for what has yet to be laid: our future. 

“Just two years ago, the B’nai B’rith Girls celebrated our 80th birthday. On that day, we made a promise. Not to ourselves, but to those who came before us, and to those still yet to come. We said, ‘For eighty years and eighty more.’ For eighty years we have thrived, and for eighty more we will continue. Today, two years into this promise, I can definitively say that we have done spectacular things. But we still have seventy-eight to go. What we do with those years, is up to us girls here today.”

Those words were the beginning of will become my next year. As I look ahead, I find myself curious about what led me here. In fact my first Shofar article, nearly 10 months ago, was about how I didn’t quite feel like I had found my place as GMR’s regional Mazkirah. I had never served as chapter Mazkirah, it felt out of my wheelhouse. Even my co, Jack, recently admitted to me that for the first couple months it wasn’t looking too bright. 

Now, should I be telling this to the order that elected me to do that very job internationally? Probably not, but let’s just say things started going uphill pretty quickly. This next year is sure to be one bountiful with change and enthusiasm, beginning as soon as next week. 

As I look back to the girl I was just ten months ago, and inwards to the girl preparing for her last Spring Convention on regional board, I find myself wondering what could’ve been if things worked out differently. I will never know, and I suppose I am glad about that uncertainty, but it nonetheless remains intriguing. 

Because the truth is, this version of me, the one standing here, the one reflecting, the one writing in the quiet corners of bunk beds and delegation meeting rooms, was built from every uncertainty, every misstep, every moment I thought I wasn’t enough for the role I had been given. 

Somewhere between that stuffy Perlman bunk and that stage in Philadelphia, something shifted. Not all at once, and not in some grand, cinematic way, but slowly, quietly, in the small choices. Choosing to show up. Choosing to try again after chapter events that didn’t wow. Choosing to listen more closely, to lead more intentionally, to believe—even when it felt unwarranted—that maybe I was exactly where I was supposed to be. 

Maybe that’s what these next seventy-eight years are about. 

Not the big membership milestones or the conventions or the elections speeches, but the in-between moments. The late-night notes app entires. The whispered conversations across the cabin porch. The doubts we carry about ourselves and the courage we build in spite of them. The understanding that leadership isn’t about arriving perfectly assembled, but about growing into someone you once thought was out of reach. 

So as I stand at this intersection, between who I was, who I am, and who I am becoming, I don’t feel uncertainty anymore. I see possibility. If the past ten months have taught me anything, it’s that the things that feel the most unfamiliar, the most uncomfortable, are often the very things that we need most. 

If we truly mean it—if “for eighty years and eight more” is more than just words we recite—then the future isn’t something waiting to be discovered. It’s already here.