Eyes bright, heart open, mind sharp
We enter this new world ready, ready to rise all of the way

We are sold on the amazement of making it, in awe of how far we’ve come,
And told to honor others who paved the way with gratitude

We are told we are the lucky ones and to work in grace
We put in the extra hours, we take on the bigger challenges, we learn, and then learn some more

Our devotion is celebrated with another challenge, more work to do
Our voices are honored through repetition like parrots from those above us

We push ourselves harder and harder, and we sacrifice more and more
We are sold on the belief if we can work harder, learn more, accomplish miracles, we will be rewarded

And as time passes, the rewards start to dwindle
We continue to rise, but slower

We begin to find more of our voice,
We want to save the world and share what we have seen

And that is when it becomes more clear
It’s like standing on a platform seeing the train darting fast, screaming to warn, but nobody looks up

When we use our voices to warn, we are told to be more tactful

When we use our voices to share, we are told to keep quiet so others can talk

When we use our voices to shine a light, we are told to manage our emotions

When we use our voices to call out injustice, we are told it’s strong personalities colliding

When we use our voices to solution, we are told others know better

When we use our voices to lead, we are told we are not giving space to the team

When we use our voices to bring attention to bias, we are told there is a logical explanation

And when we finally use our voices to walk away, we are replaced with a man given exactly what we were asking for all along

And so that brings us down the mountain, with only an uphill battle in our site

It breaks away at our soul a piece at a time
It makes us question our minds and our opinions

We want to be honorable, so we try to hear others
But soon our hearing quiets our voices, and dampers our light

We begin to recede so far from where we started
We never were moving forward, from day one we were moving backward

Our voices are used against us, while our ideas are stolen from our hands

This is what it is to be a woman in business.

Do you have what it takes? Do you even want to?