Putting My Passion First

As I have posted before, I "lost" a local pageant in September. After that, I decided that I was done with pageants. I hated feeling like I had done better than the results showed. I also wanted to just eat whatever I wanted and start working out for fun instead of for a goal. So I was done. My competitiveness clouded my judgement and what was really important to me.

But then I attended a Dairy Girl Network event in Sioux Falls in November. For two days, I watched amazing and inspirational women in the dairy industry with similar goals and dreams speak and it was like they were talking directly to me.

Dairy Carrie with my friend Chelsea and I after her presentation .

Before one of the sessions, these two women sitting next to me asked if I had ever been a dairy princess and I shared that I had been a butterhead in 2012. Then I told them how now I held a local crown within the Miss American Organization, and I was still promoting dairy with it. They got so excited and one of them said "you have to keep doing it." My heart smiled as they spoke and I knew at that moment that yes, I HAD to keep doing it. Then the very next speaker, Dairy Carrie, showed a video of the main actress in Bones, Emily Deschanel, one of my favorite shows. She was speaking on behalf of PETA. After that video, I just had this weird feeling that if I just gave up on promoting my platform in pageants, PETA won. (Sounds crazy, but it was the push I needed.)

So when I step on that stage this Saturday and Sunday competing for Miss Rapid City, I will put everything I have out there. I will not be afraid of not walking away without a crown because by just performing my talent, I will have shown what dairy farming truly is to an room full of people, hopefully encouraging them to support their local community by buying dairy products. I will know that I have put nothing before my love of promoting the dairy industry and my cows. Nothing, not even a cheeseburger or pizza, nor a night I just did not want to go to the gym, nor my fear of losing again, nothing!

7342, my favorite heifer on the SDSU Dairy Farm.

On a dairy farm, cows come first. In my heart, cows come first. So when I get on that stage, cows will come first and nothing else will matter because Monday morning I will be with the cows once again and they will love me no matter what, crown or no crown. And if I have the honor of winning that title, I would be more than pleased to promote dairy across this wonderful state of South Dakota.