For me this is a Significant day - not an ordinary day in any sense of the word! I’ve shared some of this in my last blog post called Five Years Later . But it seems important to include some of it here again because it is such a key part of my journey. Heads up - this is a long one. But I am an author now.
It is the Last day of TRIBE FIVE (a conference for writers and creatives put on my Jeff Goins and his team). It is the last day of the last conference. He's up to something else- we just don't know what - yet.
On the last day of the first conference, I heard Jeff say,
“You are a writer when you say you are a writer.”
So I said I was a writer.
I was also struck by a quote from speaker, author, writing coach Allison Fallon who said.
More than likely you will find your voice
on a path you least wanted to go down.
Sometimes the sufferings, not the healings,
are the source of greatest transformation of our life.
I made the decision to finish writing the book my daughter Leisha had started in the back of her journal. We found it the day after she died in a car/ pedestrian accident at the age of 15.
At the second conference I was thrilled to introduce my newly launched book, LOVELY TRACES of HOPE. I felt like I had overcome some tremendous hurdles to finish the book Leisha had started for me.
But from conference two to conference four I floundered. In some ways, I wanted to set the hard things of grief and brokenness, of loss and heart break to the side. I wanted to be done with them
I tried this and that thinking I was now ready to move on.
Not that I can ever not be a grieving mom, Or a woman with scars/ But I didn't want to focus on that any more. So I got clear on some new goals and took steps to reinvent myself .
But with every step forward I tried to take to make my remarkable difference, I was hindered.
I felt stuck.
Every time I tried to do a thing that really mattered to me, I had to first work through some new level of stuck place.
Stuck felt heavy, it felt small, and it was hard.
Why couldn't anything be easy?
I felt tethered. I felt as if my feet were in cement- or at least sticky mud up to my ankles. I felt like every ‘ball I hit’ was tied to a rope that was tethered to me. Instead of soaring off to a destination of my choosing, the rope caused the ball to circle around me until it tied me up in knots.
I felt as if the space around me was shrinking inward. I couldn't move. I was completely aware of my limitations. I couldn't see what was next, let alone what was down the road, and for sure felt like I was not going anywhere.
I wondered how I could possibly help the woman that came to me saying the same thing.
I want to make my difference.
I want to do the things that matter.
I want to live my life with confidence that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing.
But she also said, "I feel stuck"
I began to sense that perhaps this place of STUCK was the place I was supposed to be. That the issues of STUCK was indeed what I was supposed to be doing.
Addressing my own stuck places
So I could help my woman deal with hers.
That's about the time I went to TRIBE 4.
I heard Jeff Goins talk about how we work so hard to be the 'greatest showman' and yet we really only accomplish that by being who we really are.
Then speaker and author of Fierce Faith, Alli Worthington, shared with us that God has given each of us a field to work. But we look at our field and say,
No, that field is too rocky, too many weeds, Soil is too hard. I'm not going to work in that field.
I'll find one that is better.
Easier
Ready for a good harvest.
So we try another field, but nothing really seems to work there.
We try another, it just doesn't seem to produce a crop.
And yet another- nothing, nada, not it.
We finally turn around and find ourselves standing at the same exact field we started with, the one God had given us to begin with.
Only this time we see it.
It is our field.
It is the place we are to do the hard work in.
Weeding, pulling out rocks, turning over the soil.
Planting and feeding and nourishing.
I sat in my seat at TRIBE 4 as I listened to Alli's descriptions of the fields and I saw the previous 2 years of my life. I wanted desperately to do anything but what was in front of me.
STUCK PLACES- hard places- rocky places
Territory that was overcome by weeds
of false truths, (oxymoron)
Lies that I had accepted as truth
Limiting beliefs that 'tethered' me
Even an awareness that I was trying to be something I wasn't
Tried to be better, more, 'like her', whoever she was
Only to discover- even if I was I wouldn't be happy
Because she was not me.
So I left TRIBE 4 determined to work my field
To do the work in my own stuck places
To wrestle with the thistles, thorns and weeds
To nourish and prepare my own soil for planting
With each layer of UNSTUCK. I felt some of the hard around me begin to break away.
I began to breath easier
The world- though still full of hard
Felt softened
I felt changed
I could see more clearly
I began to see a bigger picture
And felt a freedom to take the next step
And courage to take the risks
And in doing so…came this awareness that this is indeed the space I help my woman with most.
To help her do the hard
To invite her to see the stuck
So she can break free to BE who she truly is
To do what she was made to do
To help her make her remarkable difference.
Here I am at TRIBE 5- last day of the last TRIBE conference
Day One I was invited to FEEL what my woman was feeling.
What does it feel like to be stuck?
I remembered the heaviness, the Hard, the rocky, the confining, the limiting.
I felt it in my body, My gmt, my shoulders, the front of my head
Tears rolled down my eyes
That's how it feels for me to be stuck
What did it feel like to be UNSTUCK?
I started to describe a feeling of lightness, freshness, and freedom
As I did I raised my arms as if they were floating
Supported by water- no, by air.
Suddenly I saw the butterfly- my butterfly - the one on the cover of my book
That was born out of my own journey to UnStuck
That broke free of the chrysalis
That still feels the fragility of life,
but also the strength
that has come from it
That gives her the freedom to soar
That butterfly is launching today!
EnVision YOU: UnStuck and Confident
Launching on the last day of the last TRIBE conference.
She is ready to soar- to fly freely to new places
To touch lives of women who long to make their remarkable differences
Who also feel stuck.
Fifty or so women have already read it.
From them I have heard over and over
There it is, I see it
I own my stuck
This opened my heart
This book is powerful
This book is impacting me more spiritually
This book has changed me.
I have written a book that is changing the lives of women.
I don't say that out of pride. I say that out of confidence
This is what I was made to do.
I own my field.
You may be that woman that is ready to take a step forward
But you feel stuck
Or you have a woman in your world that longs to do the things that matter most to her
She feels the hard places of stuck.
Today is the day we tell her about
EnVision YOU: UnStuck and Confident
In celebration of the LAUNCH, it is free on Kindle- for just a couple of days
AND It has a free companion workbook she can download with it.
AND we will do this together
With a girlfriend
With a Facebook community
With me- someone who gets first hand how hard STUCK can be.
Get your KINDLE version today
Share it with the woman in your world
Share it with the woman who works with women in your world
Yes, it will be available in paper and hard back very soon.
But today - it is in Kindle - Did I mention it's free for the next couple of days?
Let's be women - who help women -
Embrace the truth of who we really are
So we can make our remarkable difference.
EnVision YOU: UnStuck and Confident