Sometimes women and moms feel like they have lost themselves and their dreams. They need a way to rekindle that spark and joy they used to have. Rachel Marie Martin helps women find these. She is the author of the book Getting Your Spark Back. She is also the writer behind FindingJoy.net and the author of Mom Enough and The Brave Art of Motherhood. She has been interviewed by CBS, Disney, Good Morning America, The Huffington Post, and many others. She helps women find deep joy in the little moments and rediscover their dreams. She challenges people to break cycles, remove their masks, and not let fear take control. She teaches them to pause to see the joy. Tune into her incredible insight in this episode of Women Road Warriors with Shelley Johnson and Kathy Tuccaro.

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This is Women Road warriors with Shelly.

Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

From the corporate office to the cab of a truck, they're here to inspire and empower women in all professions. So gear down, sit back and enjoy. Welcome.

We're an award winning show today dedicated to empowering women in every profession through inspiring stories and expert insights. No topics off limits on our show. We power women on the road to success with expert and celebrity interviews and information you need.

I'm Shelly and this is Kathy. Sometimes women and moms feel like they've lost themselves and their dreams. They need a way to rekindle that spark that they used to have.

Rachel Marie Martin is the author of the book Getting youg Spark Back. She's the writer behind findingjoy.net and the author of Mom Enough and the Brave Art of Motherhood.

Rachel's been interviewed by cbs, Disney, Good Morning America, the Huffington Post, and many others. She helps women find deep joy in the little moments and rediscover their dreams.

She challenges people to break cycles, take off their masks and not let fear take control. Rachel's on the show today to share some of her incredible insights with us. Welcome, Rachel.

I'm very honored to be here. So thank you so much for having me.

This is going to be an awesome discussion. I thought before we explore what you're doing, we could cover a little bit of your background.

What motivated you to speak up about these things to help other women?

You know, for me it was, I, I've always been a storyteller. I've always been that kind of intuitive spirit. That's what I like to say.

But I found my, myself stuck and trapped and in a life that I thought I was the only one. I was in a marriage that wasn't very healthy and I was in, we, we had severe financial problems.

And when you think you're the only one, it's very hard to change. And I, I finally decided, you know what, I'm going to start to share my real and my real life with people and started writing.

And I realized first of all, I wasn't alone.

And I also realized that once you start to share, once you remove that mask that you, that you talked about in that intro, all of a sudden you're spending more time being able to fix things than you are trying to kind of maintain status quo or hiding and letting people not see your inner world. And I've just got this passion for women about living a very authentic, full of joy life.

Well, I'm seeing that your books are things like tough, no Excuses, ways of approaching life while allowing breathing room and grace for yourself. Grace, Gosh, that. I. I don't think a lot of people allow themselves grace, do they?

No, no. And, you know, it's. It was very funny about that.

Is the universe, whatever you want to call it, knew that I needed to learn about grace because I have a daughter named Grace who has taught me a tremendous amount about the word grace. And grace. We. We. It's kind of an overlooked word.

And grace is the ability to say, you know what, I did a good job today and I'm proud of myself, or, you know what? I stumbled, and I'm still proud of myself. I'm going to stand up again. And we give grace to our friends and so often forget to give it to ourselves.

Oh, gosh. Is that true? I think that the truth. Women, I think women are really hard on themselves.

They don't give themselves that pat on the back that they deserve. And a lot of times they don't get the pat on the back from other people.

No, no, you're exactly right.

And I think probably that's one of the things I love about what I get to do is I would write and say to moms, like, I'm going to give you the gold star today. You know, our kids would get gold stars at school. And it's such a simple way to acknowledge somebody, to say, you know what?

I see you, I appreciate what you're doing. And it's very powerful in someone's story.

You know, it's interesting. You talk about gold stars. I used to get those with my piano teacher. She'd put them on the sheet music if I did really well.

And I remember actually thinking, once I became an adult, I don't get any gold stars anymore, you know?

Right, right. And they're nice, they're fun. I loved the gold star moments. And we. We need to give. Remind ourselves of it.

Just because we're an adult doesn't mean that we should ignore the stuff that we do. It's being proud of our stories. Really.

Oh, absolutely. So where did you come up with all of this wonderful insight?

I would say I'm a thinker. I'm, like I said in the beginning, intuitive empath, that kind of feeling.

And I tell other people that I have the ability to articulate what we are all thinking. One of the greatest compliments or comments that I get is, how did you know what I was thinking? How did you know it was in my head?

How do you know how I'm feeling? And I feel like One of my purpose on this earth, on this planet, is to be the voice of what we're thinking.

But sometimes we don't even know how to express. And it's. For me, it's just being able to listen to it, and then when the thoughts come, being able to write it without judging it.

Because as soon as you start to judge the thoughts or what we're feeling, it starts to morph and change. Oh, maybe I shouldn't think that way. Or maybe that's what will people think.

But there is this rawness, if you can capture it in that moment, there's that realness which transcends across the Internet. That's the things and the articles where people say, you know how I feel.

Your titles are very compelling and definitely honor motherhood, which. That's one of the toughest careers anybody can have. When you think about it, there are no instructions.

I mean, when we go to a job, we get instructions. We get an sop. Standard Operating Procedures. There isn't such a thing with kids.

No, No. I have this picture of my oldest. The day that we brought her home from the hospital, and I had put her on a blanket and she was crying.

And I remember thinking, well, now what? Like, I didn't know what to do next. And no matter how much I thought I knew, I didn't know. And. And mothers, we just do the best that we can.

And that's where the grace comes in. There's no manual for it. I didn't know how to raise a toddler until I raised a toddler.

Yeah, it's day by day. It's like, well, this is a new adventure. How am I going to handle this one?

And none of them are the same either. So you think you figure it out, and then another one, you're like, nope, that's not going to work.

Yeah, they're not cookie cutter. You can have multiple children in a family, and they all are different.

Yeah, it's. It's a beautiful story. It's a beautiful adventure. But sometimes when you're in the midst, you're thinking, you just have to kind of go with your gut.

And I. I love to remind moms that you're really doing the best you can. Most of us wake up and we think, you know what? I'm gonna try my best.

Nobody thinks I'm gonna make today the worst day ever. And that little reminder, actually, is quite encouraging for people. Like, we try. We definitely do.

Where do you think moms run amok? Your titles, The Brave Art of Motherhood. That's appropriate and mom enough because that's really appropriate.

Women are always trying to do more and more and more. What are some of the things that women run into that where they run amok and they lose their joy and they lose sight of who they are.

It's the busyness of motherhood. Motherhood is a great, it's a sacrifice you're giving all the time. And there comes a spot sometimes where we lose our own stories within it.

And I really don't believe it's an intentional thing.

I believe we just get so busy and we, when we start to lose who we are and the joys that we have, then there can be this kind of loss of self that, that this kind of wondering, am I enough or am I doing a good job? Or we feel like we're failing.

And for me, for moms, I always remind them that we never feel guilt about putting our kids appointments on the schedule. And we, we know that it's sometimes when we take time for ourselves, then there's the guilt, oh, I shouldn't do that. I have to do everything else.

But if we're not taking care of ourselves, it's very, very challenging to have that energy to know that we're enough and give to everybody else. So I strongly encourage moms take time, schedule time for yourselves because you're just as important.

Oh, absolutely.

It's very critical that we take that time. I know I, I never did.

And I was just so busy trying to, you know, be a young nurse and a single mom with a little three year old, trying to advance my education and try and, you know, teach her. She had a bit of a learning disability growing, you know, in kindergarten and it was really tough. And to be honest, I got lost.

I just couldn't, I didn't have any guidance growing up and with, I had really dysfunctional family. So, you know, and I was at the other end of Canada all by myself with this little girl and trying to figure this out.

Oh my God, it was so hard, so, so hard. And I'm really grateful I only had the one. I mean, had I had more, it would have been, I think even a really, even harder.

So I understand these parents that have these young mothers that have end up single with three, four kids and they're trying to, you know, raise them and work and do this. It's easy to lose yourself because the, the stress of life, especially in this day and age is just brutal.

It is brutal. And I, I really believe because of social media, while there's so many benefits that but there's.

We don't talk about sometimes the hard because we only see the good a lot. And I celebrate the good. I. I tell moms all the time, celebrate the good because when you have good, you want your friends to rally around you.

But so often we don't talk about how hard things can be that seem like they wouldn't be hard.

Like, I remember when my kids were little and that constant mom, mom, mom, that kneading or something spilling and it was like a pressure cooker and I couldn't understand why it felt so hard. And then I would feel guilty about it. And so when we can demystify, it is hard.

It's.

It's definitely hard sometimes at someone waking up at 3am throwing up. That's not, that's not really probably that much fun. And I like to talk about the real. I like to talk about those moments and say it's hard.

It's definitely there are hard days and you've made them through your track record for surviving them. It's a hundred percent. There's also really good days and motherhood is a balance of all of them.

And it's noble and beautiful in the good days, the hard days and the normal days.

I like that it is a balance. You're doing a balancing act.

I mean, you really are a trapeze artist and sometimes you aren't sure what direction you're going to be heading and you don't want to lose your balance.

Right? And you said it, you nailed it when you said it's a balancing act.

There's really never a point in life where you're at balance, balance because life throws you things. You're just constantly balancing, giving over here, giving over there. Something new happens.

And when you look at it like that kind of undulating wave, it takes the pressure off of, if I just do this, then life will be chill. Just knowing you just. You're just gonna go through balancing and you. It's an active kind of. Active effort of living.

Do you think men get what women go through as moms?

I believe. Well, I'm not a man, so I, I always say I can't really tell. People ask me often, like you should, why don't you write for men? And I.

That's what I say. Because I don't know the perspective. I believe it's probably different.

I believe that their, their perspectives, their whatever expectations, whether right or wrong, that society puts on them is different than what we feel. And. But I do believe that whatever their journey is, their struggles, we you know, we can't compare them and rank them.

And that one of the most powerful things that we can do, whether you're a mom or a dad, is just recognizing where you're. Where somebody's at with it. Recognizing, okay, you're feeling overwhelmed right now, or I'm feeling overwhelmed and what can I do?

And maybe not be the person that fixes it, but the person that just listens and hears it and then says, hey, is there something I can do to help?

Women like to talk things out, and they need a good listener. They need somebody who can empathize.

Yes, they do. They do. I. I am very thankful for my. My women friends, for my friends that are just willing to sit in a circle with me and listen.

I have a meditation group that I go to about quarterly, and one of the rules in it is after, at a certain point, everybody just shares. And when somebody's done sharing, you say, everyone says, thank you for sharing. There's no, like, kind of input back and forth, too.

It's just allowing us to get out all that stuff that we're carrying with us without the expectation of even needing it fixed. Just being willing to just get it out and have someone that's willing to receive it.

Yeah. It validates how you're feeling.

It does, it does. It's just almost like you're not being judged by it. There's no judgment in it, and there's nobody giving the even.

You know, people will say, are you open to a different perspective in other groups that I've been in, and I love that question of, are you. Do you. Are you willing to hear something else? Because then you can say, you know what? Yes, I would love to hear something else.

Or no, I just needed to get it out. Stay tuned for more of women road warriors coming up.

Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the irs? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years.

I've helped countless people across the country, and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for?

Our safety champions, the women of trucking. Independent contractors. The next generation of Truckers and more. Help us promote the best of our industry.

Share your story and what you love about trucking, Share images of a moment you're proud of and join us on social media. Learn more@truckingmovesamerica.com.

Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Taccaro.

If you're enjoying this informative episode of Women Road Warriors, I wanted to mention Kathy and I explore all kinds of topics that will power you on the road to success. We feature a lot of expert interviews, plus we feature celebrities and women who've been trailblazers.

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Rachel Marie Martin is the writer behind the site findingjoy.net and the author of both Mom Enough and the Brave Art of Motherhood. She's a founding partner in Audience Industries, a company that's designed to train and equip entrepreneurs in their ventures.

Her latest book is Getting your spark back. Rachel's articles have been translated into over 25 languages. Her site reaches millions of visitors per month.

Rachel believes in the power of the human spirit to overcome, thrive, and find deep joy. She offers valuable perspectives on how women can balance their personal and professional lives authentically and full of joy.

It's a matter of having a tough, no excuses way of approaching life and the ability to give grace to ourselves. We need to acknowledge ourselves and others. We need to remind ourselves of our own power and give ourselves gold star moments.

It's easy to lose sight of our stories, especially when we're balancing motherhood with a career. That's when we begin to wonder, am I enough? We need to be proud of our stories and our accomplishments.

According to Rachel, she's giving us some great insight.

Rachel, your perspective on finding joy in the little things that can get so lost and especially if you've got so many things going on and you've got all of these demands. It's easy to get really angry and maybe even resentful. Have you encountered that with women?

They love their kids, but sometimes they resent the fact that they're stuck in this and especially if they're a single mom or if they don't have the support system.

Yeah. And we don't talk about resentful because we judge ourselves with it. We, we. If we feeling resentment, we're thinking, I'm a bad mom. I'm a terrible.

Like, that's the thought process that goes. And it might not even be resentful about them. It's just the experience that you're in. It's the situation that you're in.

And I always remind moms, women, that it's an emotion that you're feeling. It's not who you are. You're not feel. You're. You're feeling resentful. You're not resentful as a person.

And when we can separate that and go, it's this emotion. What's the next best emotion I can choose? Or what's this emotion actually trying to teach me?

Maybe the resentful isn't about that, but maybe it's trying to say you need to change things up a little bit or you need to try to find support or something different. And it's being gracious with yourself about the emotion versus judging the emotion and judging yourself.

You're giving people permission to feel.

Yes. Yes. Permission to feel. Because I really believe the way I grew up. And I don't know, maybe it wasn't, but it was.

There wasn't this talk about the feelings. I was always told, stop being so overly sensitive. And that was how I feel.

And what's funny about the sensitivity part is that's what I tell people is my superpower now is the ability to tap into how I feel. And I really value. Let's express how we feel. Doesn't mean we have to stay there. It doesn't mean that you stay in that spot. It's just getting it out.

Because otherwise it's just. It's just festering in us.

Oh, gosh. And it certainly can. And then it becomes a volcano.

Yes. Yes, it does.

And depending on the situation, it could be a really ugly volcano.

Yes. I've had those. I've experienced those volcanoes in life. Yes.

You know, I had to relearn how to find joy in life. I. I was at the age of 40. I ended up having a big burnout from. Just from life.

I experienced so much trauma and hardships, and I just had put it all away in a safe little box inside and pretended everything was fine. And I had some really harsh things happen to me in life and just, you know, didn't deal with it until the one day where I was forced to deal with it.

What's that, that, that quote that if you don't make time for your wellness, you'll have to make time for your illness. If you don't make time for your, well, you'll have to make time for your illness or something like that.

Anyway, that's where I ended up and I found myself in this women's center. It was a faith based program for you live for a year and you unlearn all your trauma and then you relearn who you are.

And then the hardest part for me was accepting it, but how awesome I am, but you know, all my qualities and who Kathy really is at the age of 40. But all this to say is that it's in that program where I learned to accept compliments.

There was a whole month in that thing in that program where every woman we had to give each other compliments and say thank you and nothing else because, you know, being broken, anyone would say, you look good today. I'm like, no, I don't. You know, it was an automatic thing. So part of that program was learning to find joy in the smallest possible things.

We had to actually make a list every day of what it was that we found joy in. And it was hard because we're in a treatment center like Monday to Friday, 9 to 4 is our recovery.

We had self esteem, we had boundaries with codependency, we had anger management, we had, you know, sexual abuse recovery group. We had all these things. So, and we're with. There was 25 women from all walks of life and it was really difficult. How do you find joy in that?

Well, I tell you that time there has enabled me to actually slow down when I'm overwhelmed and look at wherever I am, even if it's in the mind in the middle of night shift, I'll find joy in the northern lights, in the star, in the moon, in the way the clouds are, or even enjoying the piece of equipment that I'm running.

I had to learn to break it down into smaller doses and smaller bites in order to appreciate those moments so that when the bigger things came, it even became better. So I'm very grateful for that.

Well, you made me very, very teary when you were telling that because it's such a, such a powerful story and it's such a powerful truth about life. I, I've said so many times that nobody puts in their high school yearbook.

You know what would be fun is when I'm 40, I'm going to go through a divorce or whatever it May be, but we all have these stories, these moments that kind of break us. And you're right about joy finding joy. It's an active choice. It's not just joy doesn't just fall in your lap.

It's choosing to see good in a life that might not be what you expected, and it's being willing to appreciate. Like you said, the Northern Lights. Growing up in Minnesota, there were a couple times where we got to see them.

And I remember my father waking us up in the middle of the night and us going out to see them. And I'm so grateful for that because those. That little thing that was out of my control, these Northern Lights, was joy.

It was given to me in that moment. But most of the time we're so busy, we don't see it. We don't even know. And here in Tennessee, oh, the Northern lights ended up down here.

And I remember all. All of our neighbors, we all came outside and we saw them, and it was like, again, joy was right there.

But we had to make the choice to come out of our house, to stop the busy and then to go see the universe and what's out there. And it was exquisite. And that's the joy part, is you can miss it.

I could have missed that moment by staying in the house, and it would have been right outside.

I think a lot of people miss joy today because they're stuck on their devices.

Yeah, I would say so. I would say the devices create a place where we can be busy and whether, you know, people could be busy all the time. And I'm.

I love the devices for the connectivity that it gives us, but I also recognize there is that moment where you have to put it down and experience something without it. Like a concert. My husband and I, we went to see Tears for Fears because I grew up loving them. And I remember thinking, I'm not going to record this.

We're going to experience this moment. I have waited for this moment my entire life, to hear them play that openings, that opening part.

And it could be very easy to think, I'm just going to try to save that memory versus just experience the memory. And that's the powerful thing about setting them down. There are some moments in life that you don't need to record it.

You don't need to even have it again. It's the memory that's imprinted within you.

That's right. And that's powerful.

It's pretty fascinating. Like that memory of the Northern Lights with my dad. No devices there.

I just remember the sleeping bags on the side of the hill and laying in dewy grass and watching them with my dad and my siblings.

Some of the most wonderful things in life can't be recorded, can't be put on an electronic device. It's out there. We miss it if we're always myopic or we're too consumed with all the minutiae.

And I think when you're a mom, that's easy to get stuck in that whirlwind and miss out on all of those things that make life so wonderful.

It is. And it's a. Well, here's the. The discipline is deciding. I'm going to. I'm going to look for joy today. I'm going to find something that's good today.

And for moms, I tell them all the time, you need to know the season you're in.

If you've got young kids, it's a very different story than me right now with my youngest being almost 15, it's much easier for me to step out, to pause to see the joy.

When they're younger, the pause might be 15 seconds, but you still have to be disciplined to find them and then to say, these are the moments that my grandmother would talk about when she was 80, talking to me about raising kids. She didn't talk about the giant moments. She would talk about these very simple little things that mattered to her.

And those are the moments that I tried to remember, tried to see, tried to recognize when I had younger kids, and I still do today.

She was a wise lady.

She was. She was wonderful.

You know, what's cool is at one point, here's a little hidden tidbit about me that most people don't know is I learned how to play the church organ, so I could play two keyboards and my feet could play. And my grandmother gave me a hymnal that was a special one for people that did that, stayed open and wrote in it.

Well, about seven to maybe about a decade ago, I found the hymnal. My grandmother had died years prior, and in it she had written, may you live a life of finding joy.

And my jaw dropped because that's everything I do and write about.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

Wow.

Fortuitous. Your grandmother saw something.

And my daughter has her middle name. And one of my favorite pictures is of my grandfather, her husband holding my granddaughter or her holding his granddaughter, my daughter.

That's so cool.

Life keeps passing on, generation after generation.

So it does. It does. And it's those little things that people remember. Definitely provides the fabric of life, the tapestry.

It's a rich tapestry if we can only weave in all of those little things. And your books really, I think, do give people that perspective.

Stay tuned for more of Women Road warriors coming up.

Dean Michael, the tax doctor here. I have one question for you. Do you want to stop worrying about the irs? If the answer is yes, then look no further. I've been around for years.

I've helped countless people across the country, and my success rate speaks for itself. So now you know where to find good, honest help with your tax problems. What are you waiting for?

Our safety champions, the women of trucking, independent contractors, the next generation of truckers, and more. Help us promote the best of our industry. Share your story and what you love about trucking.

Share images of a moment you're proud of and join us on social media. Learn more@truckingmovesamerica.com.

Welcome back to Women Road warriors with Shelly Johnson and Kathy Tucaro.

It's okay to feel. It's important to tap into how we feel and express how we feel. Release that negative emotion from time to time so it doesn't fester inside of us.

These are some of the recommendations of Rachel Marie Martin, who's The writer behind findingjoy.net she offers insights to moms, entrepreneurs and all women.

As an internationally published author whose latest book is Getting youg Spark Back, Rachel is also the author of Mom Enough and the Brave Art of Motherhood. She teaches women how to find joy again, which is an active choice. Joy just doesn't fall into our laps.

It's a matter of choosing to see good in a life where you may not have expected it. Too often we're too busy to see it and we miss the tidbits and the moments of joy that can be ours.

Sometimes we have to stop the busy so we can see and experience joy. We have to stop so we don't miss the wonderful moments that life can give us. Rachel now your new book, Getting youg Spark Back.

What is that focus of that book.

Was inspired by my own journey. It's about that moment in life where you're like, well, what's next? And who am I now? And is this all there is? And I. I had that journey in my own.

My own story. I'd fixed my life, and I was ha. I'm happily remarried. And it was kind of during the pandemic where all these thoughts started going through, and.

And I went on a journey to figure out what's the next phase of life, what's the next thing, and who am I now? And as a result of it, people saw my own spark, my soul get reignited, and I started getting all these questions of, how do I get my spark back?

How do I do that? And what I love and I've. I've said over and over is, nobody said, how do I get a spark? It was always, how do I get my spark?

Which is possessive, which means each of us has one. And then they always added the word back. How do I get it back? Which means you've had it. You know, it's there, and how do I re. Nurture it?

Maybe some is just a little. It's just flickering. And I tell people, as long as you are breathing on this planet, your spark is there.

And it's our job to find it again, reignite it, and to go all in with the years that we have ahead of us.

Do you think most people, of course, you can't really categorize, but do you think that a lot of women get stuck where they feel like they've lost their spark or maybe they never even knew it was there?

I do. I believe that it's a universal for women and for men, and we've labeled it different things throughout the years.

Midlife crisis or something happens in their 20s. I really believe what happens is we get on this train ride, we're like, super fast.

And then there comes a moment in life where life isn't what we thought it would be. Or for a lot of people, it was the pandemic where normal got taken away. And we're like, whoa, what happened here? Normal's gone.

And it gives us a second, a moment to reevaluate. And in that moment, we're given a choice, and we have, what. What do I want to do now? And. Or maybe we're unhappy.

And it's those moments where we look at life and we look at our story and we decide, you know what? I want to reclaim who I am.

What's the things that light me up, not the things that the world tells me I should be doing, but what's the thing that lights me up inside? What is it about me? And I've told people over and over again that it's the art of wondering. We encourage our children wonder. I wonder about this.

And as we get older, things kind of morph into it should be concrete. I should know I have to make this decision. And we lose that magic of wondering. I wonder what would happen if I run.

I wonder what would happen if I try this job. I wonder what would happen. And in that wondering, we start to get reacquainted with our own soul again.

This book sounds fascinating.

I'm seeing here Hassel from Seinfeld, one of the original writers wrote Rachel Marie Martin has invited us to find joy, be brave, and now start a fire in our soul. Her writing is honest, open, and deeply insightful about the human condition.

Get yout Spark Back starts as an ember and builds to an inspirational brush fire. Stop, drop and roll into the nearest bookstore to grab a copy for yourself or someone you love. Now, that's pretty phenomenal for somebody to write.

It is. You can tell he's a writer, too. Every time I read his words, I'm like, oh, he's so good with words. But I'm so grateful for it. He's.

He's seen the story. And I think every one of us that has those moments, those pivot moments in life, we get it. We get the importance of finding ourselves again.

Making, kind of dealing with the past, not ignoring it, not deciding it doesn't matter, not any of that.

Figuring out how to go forward with our past, living our life with our fullest now, and knowing that we can do these things, we can live a life of joy in the years that we have left to come.

And there's so much potential, so much out there. Quite often I think people get stuck in a certain time or age and say, well, I can't do that.

I didn't accomplish this, so I'm not going to bother to try. They lose sight of their dreams. I've always tried to live by. I don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up.

I don't consider myself grown up yet, you know, Me neither.

I love that.

I absolutely love that. I think that's so wise. I. It's. It's brilliantly wise, actually.

Well, it. There's so much opportunity. When you think about it as a child, we imagine. We imagine ourselves in all kinds of different roles.

We have imaginary friends and we do all kinds of things and we kind of in our Minds. I put ourselves in different positions, and I think that we lose sight of that as an adult.

We do. We do. I really believe because of the pressure of time is part of it. When we're young, we think in ourselves. I've got 70 years.

I can take chances and make mistakes and all of that. And then as we get older, I've noticed in my own life, you see, like, well, I don't know. I don't know if I want to do that.

The risk part of it seems riskier.

But then I've realized that if I get to live as old as my grandmother that I was talking about, I don't want to live a life of regretting and looking back and saying, you know, I wish I had taken that risk. I wish I had listened to that. I wish. And it's so powerful to watch people kind of reemerge and to tap back into the things that they loved.

My parents invested many, many hundreds and hundreds of dollars on piano lessons and sat by me many, many days, making sure I would practice. And it ended up that I love to play piano. And for me now, one of the things that I love to do the most is play the piano. It's not working.

It's not being a mom. It's not being a wife. It's something that I love. And what's cool about it is when I do everybody in my house, like, we love it when you play piano.

Yeah.

And I think it inspires people. Maybe I should do something else. Maybe I should, you know, reignite my spark. Yeah.

No, I play piano also. And when I do take the time to play, which I need to get back to doing, it takes you away from the craziness of life. You're somewhere else.

And in many ways, probably because I played as a child, maybe it takes me back there too.

Yeah. There's something magical about music in that way. I write with music playing because I can block out the world and I can hear my own heart.

I can hear myself think when I'm playing music, whether I'm listening to it or playing it with my. With my hands at the keyboard.

Music's a wonderful time machine. It will put you back wherever you'd first heard a song. It transports us. It's an incredible thing.

It definitely does. And you're exactly right. What I was thinking about, even my earlier example, about Tears for Fears and the one bar of music.

And I remember hearing it as a child, and when I heard it in real life, it just very emotional. My husband knows that I'm the one that whatever concert it will be, there will be a point where tears will be coming down my face.

Kathy, you're real big with. What's the group that you're fond of? Yeah, the Foo Fighters. Yeah. You feel that way about them, don't you?

And to this day, I just. Like, I've seen them maybe eight times. And every single time, it just. It uplifts me to a point that I can't really explain.

I think it's because of that. That moment of when I was so depressed in that. In that basement suite and there was nothing and I hadn't eaten or washed in three days.

I waited there, waiting for God to save me. And then on the third day, I finally get back on my knees, and I'm sobbing and sobbing and sobbing. And the song is playing, can you go another round?

I will follow you. And it's an acoustic version. And I stopped crying for a minute. And I look up in this.

I was in this really crappy basement suite, and I look up, and out of the window, it was blackness. This ray of light appeared, and the ray of light touched my heart center. And the song is playing, can you go another round? I will follow you.

And I have. I'm a firm. I have a huge faith in God. And so I'm looking at this ray of light, and I'm listening to the words, and I say, oh, you'll follow me.

Hey, we'll see about that. So I get up and I move over to the kitchen. That light never left my heart center. It followed me. So the song is still playing.

Can you go another round? I will follow you. So now, all of a sudden, it has my attention.

So I went from the kitchen, and I'm looking at this light that's glued to my heart center. And I move over to my futon, and I start jumping up and down. The light never left my side. It was in that moment that I completely surrendered.

I dropped back down on my knees and I said, okay. God, I don't know what you have for me. And I know clearly there's a plan, but. Okay. And the light was still there.

And then I hear in this background, this voice saying, kathy, get up. And I panicked because my ex used to. He stalked me for a year, and he used to break into that particular apartment, and I thought it was him.

So I turn around, but there's Nobody in the apartment. And the voice repeated, kathy, get up. So the song is still playing, right? So I get up and I turn, and all of a sudden there's a knock on the door.

And it was the guy who lived upstairs who'd been gone for three days. And he had this intuition that I wasn't doing well. And he. He's knocking on the door and, hey, when opportunity knocks, literally, you answered.

So I answered the door, and he says, hey. Kathy says, I kind of feel that you're not doing well. You need help. And it was in that moment I said, yeah, bring me to detox right now.

And it was from there that I learned that there was a year long faith based program called Wellsprings for Women. And that's when I went to that program. It was from that moment another round. And my life has pivoted ever since then. So, yes, the Foo Fighters.

It's instrumental in my life.

That's powerful.

Very powerful story. Very, very powerful. The three days, the whole thing. I am honored to have just heard that. So thank you for sharing.

Yeah, well, I wrote, I put it in my book just because it's so powerful. And it wasn't just that particular experience. There's a whole slew of them about that.

I talk about tidbits because if I didn't have God and, and my, my. All these intuitive moments and all these. These clear, clear visions, I wouldn't be here today. I honestly, I would.

Down to Toothless Joe, you know, like the. The guy when I was drunk and homeless on the streets. Like, it's just every single thing.

Yeah.

And so you have to keep that faith and put that foot right in front of the other and keep trying, because it's there. You just have to reach out and grab it.

Right, right. You have to keep taking those steps. I. I have said that so many times.

Like, I am so grateful than me 15 years ago that had the bravery and audacity to take those steps into something I didn't know. And it's the same thing. If you had told. If I had. We had told her. This is where I would be now.

I probably would have chuckled and said, I don't even know how that's possible. But it. There is such an honor that I have for that younger me, that courage to do something that was way harder than that.

I look back and I think, how in the world. But sometimes in the brokenness, you know, beauty can arise. And your story, that testimony is very powerful.

The phoenix rises out of the ashes.

Amen.

Yeah, very true. So, Rachel, this really is in tandem with all of the things you talk about. Finding the Joy, Finding the Spark, which is your new book.

Where do people find you and where do they find the book? And what recommendations do you have? A little.

A few good morsels you can share with ladies on how to feel better, how to find joy, and how to find their spark.

Sure. So most people find me at my website, findingjoy.net or my on Facebook Finding Joy blog.

And the book get yout Spark Back is sold everywhere, wherever books are sold, your local bookstore, Amazon, all of that. And for women that are in that spot of needing to find their spark, the first thing I would say is, you're not alone.

You're not alone if you've ever been there and you can find it. And what it takes is the determination to decide, I'm going to do this, and to allow yourself to wonder what it might be.

And I talk often about progress. We don't see it often until we're way farther in the future.

But if you can just decide every single day, I'm going to do something today that brings me joy or that helps other people or something small every day. There's no way after a year of that that you're going to be in the same spot.

And there will come a day where people will say, so can you tell me how you did it? And the only way you get to that spot is if you're. You have the courage to start.

That's the biggest step.

You know, just start.

Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be perfect, people, because I'm a runner, people will ask me, well, I don't think I can run.

I can't do it. So I'll tell them, can you run to your stop sign at the end of your street? Can you try that? And that maybe. And then I. Then they'll do it.

And then I'll say, well, what about in two days you run 10ft beyond the stop sign and you keep doing that. And after a month, running to the stop sign will be easy. It's just deciding, I guess I'm going to run to the stop sign today.

It's building that endurance.

It is, it is. Endurance takes. It takes time, it takes effort, and it takes that faith that those small steps actually do matter.

Well, when you think about it, when you build a house, a brick house, for instance, or a brick building, every little brick counts. And you have to start with the first one.

And I tell them one mile after another, and if I didn't start, there wouldn't have been the thousand.

And that's true about anything we do in life. We have to start and we just keep.

Keep doing it little by little, little by little, and things get better, things get brighter, and hopefully people can find the joy. Because when you accomplish something, you're going to feel joy, you're going to feel good about that.

You will. You will. And it's not going to be perfect. It's.

You're gonna start and you're gonna fall off the wagon and you're gonna have to start again, and then you're gonna start again, and then you're gonna start again. And it's not that it's this perfect linear experience. It's that when you.

When you kind of get slow or you lose sight of it, that you have the courage to say, I'm gonna try again.

That's part of life.

It definitely is.

I love your perspectives, Rachel. This is wonderful. I really appreciate you being on the show, honestly.

Sometimes it just takes that one voice like yours to captivate the audience, and suddenly, you know, the light bulb goes off and they're like, you know what? That's right. I need to re evaluate this. And you did that today, so thank you.

Yes.

Well, I really appreciate being able to talk with you and hear the stories and just to share my passion for women and for moms. So thank you.

This is terrific. Thank you for what you're doing for women. This is empowering.

You're. You're welcome. I am. I feel honored that my story and this on this planet and this earth right now is to be, I would say, the voice of hope.

Because I really believe there. There's someone listening that just needs to know, I can do this. I actually can do this.

And if that's the person listening right now, I totally believe in you and I know you can.

Absolutely. Thank you, Rachel. This has been terrific.

Thank you very much. I've had a blast talking with both of you.

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