You must have wondered why I have an image of million pieces of confetti freely flying and happily falling in the middle of the stadium. And if you notice the color, it’s about 50 shades of purple. This is how I would like to celebrate being a woman on International Women Day 2019, unfiltered and unscripted.

This past year had marked significant progress in recognizing the world’s view on women. To state the obvious:

1. In Humanity – The success of MeToo and TimesUp resulted in the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service that turns the page and assembles a force against abusive power.
2. In Business – California has mandated publicly traded companies to seat at least one female as a board of director.
3. In Finance – Stacey Cunningham and Adena Friedman put a chip in the glass ceiling on Wall Street, bringing feminism into the world’s largest stock exchange.
4. In Sport – World Surf League announces pay equality for women starting 2019. What about last year? Here’s the stat: in 2018, men competed for $607,800, while the women’s pot was $303,900.

But that is not all the winners in my stadium. During the course of 2018, I read fifteen non-fiction books from different authors. By chance, they are mostly women. They wrote about the ups and downs in their careers as professionals, mothers, spouses, daughters, and within themselves. Getting inside their writings is an emotional and inspiring journey where readers collect specific qualities in women that help us rise so strongly and when orbit, gracefully, much like the beautiful confetti in the arena. What I find sexy among these books is the balancing skills that these women juggle days in and days out. In no particular order:

Kim Scott, in “Radical Candor,” struggles with balancing her management approach, care personally and challenge directly, among the “rockstars” and “superstars.” 

Amy Cuddy uncovers incredible realization within herself, to justify the authentic best self vs. imposter syndrome during the early days of “Presence.” 

Megan Kelly recognized the imbalance in public news television career, noticed the absence of equality, and walked out gracefully in “Settle for More.” 

Goldie Hawn‘s childhood and the search within herself resulted in “10 Mindful Minutes.” She doubled down in creating MindUp – a balancing approach to enrich relationships between parents and children towards empathy and kindness. 

“In Defense of Troublemaker,” Charlan Nemeth celebrates the balance between dissent and diversity to avoid false comfort of agreement, and to seek debates more than harmony. 

And lastly, Sallie Krawcheck just simply chopped the word “empower” out of the balancing equation. In her book “Own It,” women do not need to be empowered in order to own our success. 

On the floor seats, though, I have many wonderful female role models that are masters at balancing. They are anywhere between mid-20s to late 60s, equally gritty in what they do. We often joke about how celebrities who have personal nannies, personal assistants and yet still struggle to balance their homes and careers under spotlights. My contribution to that talk is: we are the support and we’re supported by our female circles. Indeed, we share grocery trips and do the exchange at school pickups (the way: I’m close to Costco and you are next to Trader’s Joe!). We take turn carpooling our kids around town for their after school or weekend activities. We start Food Tidings to support a family in needs when they have a newborn or serious illness. We show up with a warm latte (or a bottle of chardonnay) to realign career priorities (or to ease a heartbreak). In other words, we’re balancing one another with a large-than-life network. Doesn’t that sound sexy?

In light of IWD this year, March 8th, I want to extend the invitation to all gender identities, to sincerely reach out to your female circles to find balance, notice its absence and celebrate its presence. Bring your female family, friends, mentors, acquaintances to the arena – whether to watch from the nosebleed section or to look upon freely flying purple confetti – and celebrate Balance for Better.