PRINCETON: Meredith Vieira moderates at women’s forum

By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
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”It was terrific, it helped me tremendously; I can see women like me who work full time and have a family and have the same juggling act I have,” said Lucy Harmon, a Princeton Borough resident. “It showed me a way to work on a problem I’ve avoided.”
   The star of the show was Meredith Vieira, co-anchor of the Today show, who moderated a panel Wednesday at a Healthy Woman’s Forum, a day-long event that focused on the personal and professional challenges faced by women.
   This will have been one of Ms. Vieira last public events as she will be leaving the Today show next week.
   The forum was also videotaped to be used as a segment on the Today show. It is scheduled to run on June 7, the day before Ms. Vieira’s departure from television.
   Audience members asked about how they got through the hard times, reinventing themselves, finding balance and taking care of themselves first instead of others.
   ”Something is going to get more of you,” said Joanne DeGoria of West Windsor. “The people that are here are looking for self-improvement.”
   ”I’m recently retired and coming to an event like this and sitting with a group of women, it’s amazing how we reinvent ourselves and to sit with a group of strangers and know you’re not alone,” said Michele Sauber of Princeton. “It needs to be done more often, you could feel so much love in the room and a lot of respect,”
   Calling the program and workshops excellent, many attendees wished it would happen again, perhaps annually.
   ”The issues around women’s health and well-being were issues I kept seeing (in my practice),” said Sharon Rose Powell, of Princeton Psychological Partners, who was one of the organizers. “I thought it would be great to bring people together from diverse backgrounds to discuss what was going on with women’s’ health and the challenges women face around their physical and emotional well-being.”
   The forum was put together in four months.
   ”The seed was planted four months ago,” she said. “I said we are going to need someone who is going to attract people to come to the forum.”
   Securing Ms. Vieria was key. Then she designed the workshops, which focused on “issues women really cared about.”
   Morning workshops were designed to engage and had the participants interact with each other instead of just passively listening with experts included staying young at heart, weight loss, alternative medicine, child rearing, breast health and facing fears.
   ”I think everyone can relate to what they discussed, I know at 61 I can,” said Linda Forbes of South Brunswick. “You can’t do it all and a lot of our kids have suffered. They grew up in daycare. I can see it with my own boys if I was home there might have been a different dynamic; hindsight is 20-20.”
   Women really appreciated that the lunchtime panelists admitted women can’t have it all.
   The panelists included Anne-Marie Slaughter, director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State; Amy Robach, an anchor on the Saturday TODAY show and a national correspondent for NBC Nightly News and TODAY and her husband, Andrew Shue, an actor and former professional soccer player and ran the Manhattan-based Clubmom and has set up Cafemom, an online sister site that allows moms to come together; Dr. Stephanie Byerly, anesthesiologist and chief of staff for the University Hospital Zale Lipshy in Dallas beginning in December; and Kate Thomsen, a private practitioner who focuses on integrative healthcare for women.
   ”If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of your family,” said Irene Hachat of West Windsor. “This is one of the best conferences I have attended and it touched on topics for women of all ages.”