Hey there, Bravehearts. How are you? I hope you're doing well.

Today I want to talk to you. I want to do what my girlfriend Amber talks about. She says it's a messy hair Day. It's a messy bun day. That's what she says messy bun. Well, I don't know how you feel about that. But I want to have a conversation with you just like it'd be two sisters ~ just sitting and talking one to another. I want to talk to you today and ask you a question. I want to do this because I just got done writing a chapter in my new book. And it makes me think about how many women maybe much like me would say of themselves, I am a late bloomer. I don't know about you. But that was true for me, at least I felt it was true for me maybe. Maybe the world is just filled with late bloomers. Maybe that's really the most average way to bloom is late. Maybe the early bloomers are the ones that are a little abnormal. I don't know. But what I do know is that it has taken me a long time to really discover who I am, what my gifts are, and what I'm good at as I was writing, and there's something beautiful about writing.

By the way, if you've never tried just getting on the keyboard and typing your story, just no one's going to read it. Because if you think somebody's going to read it, then you won't really be honest, you'll be editing yourself. Or even just take a pen and write in your journal. No one's going to read it. Because once again, if you think someone's going to read it, you'll add all these flowery words. But if you just took a minute and just really started to write, and talk about yourself to you, who you are, if you're happy with your life, if this is what you saw yourself doing if you really felt like you, you've really tapped all your potential is such an amazing word just springs forth possibilities, and doesn't it just makes you feel excited?

When we talk about the potential it says it's not over yet, there's still more to do. Have you tapped your potential? Have you done everything this life that you've wanted to do? As we get to be the ages that we're coming upon, we start more reflecting on those kinds of things. We want to find significance. We want to make sure that we're leaving a legacy for our children or family in terms of a memory that is honorable. But also that I showed you how to live. I showed you how to keep growing I showed you I taught you how to have energy, enthusiasm, and gratitude for life. I don't know how well, I'm doing. I don't know how well you're doing. But here's the one thing I'm committed to. I'm going to keep doing it. I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna keep trying. But I want to say that many ladies are age start to tap out on life.

I want to encourage you to keep saying yes. Keep saying yes to your future. Keep saying yes to the best version of yourself. Keep saying yes to that new skill, that new opportunity. Keep saying yes to life, all of it. Say yes to life. And the messy soul-stretching work that you have to do. That's why I said this is going to be a messy hair day, a messy bun day where it's just two girlfriends talking. But keep doing the work. Do the hard stuff. Go ahead and take a deep dive inside and find out what might still be floating around in there or beneath the water the iceberg that the parts that you cannot see. Go ahead and get down and dirty and get involved in you. Are you living your best life? Have you been running from some hurts and some wounds that you don't want to look at you haven't been willing to look at? You don't stop long enough to take an inventory. Maybe you find yourself at this point, just not doing what you really enjoy in life and wondering ~ What's it all about?

Well, I want to ask you a question. The question that I want to ask really helps you find more joy and fulfillment. What did you love doing, when you were a kid? What did you love? What did you that was just so fulfilling for you as a kid? But you stopped doing it as an adult? For me, it was writing. I loved it as a kid and then I stopped when trauma happened. I stopped writing. I lost it. But when healing came I found it again. I found my voice I found a reason to write again. What did you love as a kid that you stopped was it fashion was it fun? Sports?. Did you love reading or creating things? Were you an artist? Did you draw? Did you paint?

I have a friend who never knew that she had painting in her and she was 50 years old. She picked up a paintbrush and found out. Guess what? She is incredibly talented at painting. What did you love as a kid that you lost? Was it acting? Did you get in the mirror? Like I didn't do commercials. Did you do voices of different animals or different characters? Was it something that you did you love entertaining? Did you love being on stage? What about music? Did you love singing? Singing? Was it playing an instrument? Was it writing music? Perhaps? Or what about the water? Did you love being in the water? I did.

I was so afraid of the water when I was really little. Then I conquered that fear. I love swimming and diving, being near the water. What about you? I asked you that question because here's the thing. True joy can be found when you reconnect with the part of yourself that you lost when you became an adult. That childhood wonder that beauty of that innocent child. You might not even think you might not even have a memory. But there was an innocent child. There was a beautiful soul a free soul who loved living and we traded that in for a box. We got inside the box.

Robert Bly, who's an American poet. He says it like this, listen to this. I love these words. “We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.” Let me explain and it's self-evident, I suppose. But as we're growing up, we find out the parts of us that don't please other people, we find out the parts of us that get scolded or chewed out or ridiculed or mocked or teased, those parts that are very quirky, perhaps are very different. They're actually the parts that make us who we are, and part of our masterpiece. If you will, of how God created us but because we're not exactly a cookie cutter to someone else, we decide to hide those parts, we mask them, or we rid ourselves of them altogether. As Robert Bly says, we put them in an invisible bag we carry around on our back, then we just start shedding these parts of ourselves that are very authentic and beautiful. We trade those in for the inauthentic, the disingenuous, we start masking and wrapping and covering and bandaging ourselves. Until finally we don't look like anything that we were born to be. We spend the rest of our lives trying to retrieve those things out of the bag, to get them back to call them back to us to say, I used to love that I used to do that. I always wanted to but never did.

It's not too late for you to think about your life. What have you given up? It's the life that you're living right now worth what you're giving up? To live it? What would you do? If fear wasn't part of the equation? Or if money didn't matter? What would you do? I like Jon Acuff. He’s hilarious. I was listening to some as you do things. He was making me laugh so hard. He's just got this dry sense of humor. But he's very funny. But he said this. He said, “More often than not, finding out what you love doing most is about recovering an old love or an inescapable truth that has been silenced for years.” Listen to this, quote, an old love, or an inescapable truth that has been silenced for years. That breaks my heart when I think about it. Has there been a part of you that's been silenced for years? Is there a love that it's been just something that you just adored, but lost it?

He goes on to say, “When you come to your dream job, your thing, it is rarely a first encounter. It’s usually a reunion.” That cool. I like the way you said that. When you meet yourself. That part of you that loves doing that thing. It's not a first encounter. It's a reunion. It's there you are. Where have you been? Good to see you again. Or maybe it is a first encounter like, I always knew you were in there, but I couldn't find you. I couldn't reach you. I couldn't get to you. You're chasing your potential. Who are you called to be? Who are you being called needed to keep reaching? Don't give up. Don't trade for a small box, this spacious, wide-open place of creativity and imagination and believing that you can do or be whatever God put inside of you takes faith to believe that by the way, don't dismiss that don't dismiss that desire inside. Doesn't the scripture say, I will give you the desires of your heart when you delight in me, God gave those desires to you pay attention to them, pay attention to what makes your heart pitter patter because that's a clue to how God wants to use you what he wants to do with your life, right?

So there's still time, it's time to peek outside the box, you might say, I'm not ready to think outside the box. Okay. That's cool. You don't have to think outside the box yet. But you could peek outside the box. Is there something else out there? Is there more out there? Maybe you'll discover that you've been in a box. Maybe you don't even realize that you've had such small constraints. And suddenly, you've lived small and you have such constraints on your life. When God called you to live a large life a big life. You do the same thing day in and day out.

I lived in a three-mile radius for years of my life, school, church, my job, the grocery store, and all my social activities. Three miles, somebody would invite me to do something. I go, where is it? Well, five miles. Yeah, that's kind of far. Not totally. I'm being facetious to stretch the point here. It’s because I don't live small. Do you know what happened? Disruption, that's what happened. My life got turned upside down, I got thrown out of the box. I got kicked out of the box. I got ticked up and thrown hurled out of my little three-mile radius. When divorce hit my life. It was brutal. It was horrible. It was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. I'm so grateful. I rejoice every day that I have today what I have because I got thrown out of the box. Because I was able to retrieve parts of me that had been hidden parts of me that had been swallowed up by expectations and rigid rules and standards I got hurled out of the box. Yay, me!

Now I'm thrilled to be growing to be stretching to be doing things that I never thought I would be able to do and that I was told I never could do. I'm just finished my sixth book that takes grit. Y'all sit down at a computer and write 40 to 50,000 words that make sense. And actually, say something. Thank you, God, it takes grit that takes discipline, it takes determination. But you got the same thing in you. You got the goods. What is it? What is it for you? What did you love doing when you were a kid? Find something that you loved, that you stopped doing, and get doing. Aim for it? Go after it and put a plan in place. Where is life calling you to rise? Where is God calling you to become brave, and step out of your comfort zone? Where must you step up to the plate and live full on because you're going to admit to yourself if no one else that you've been acting small? I've been shrinking. In fact, I've shrunk my faith to make sense of my world. I've shrunk God, I don't believe that he'll do or can do.

For me what he promised I'll just forget asking for big things. So messy hair day messy bun conversation, just to say, What did you love as a child that you gave up as an adult? Because it might be a clue to what God put in you and designed you for and put in your DNA for you. I hope you find it. I hope you'll reach for it. That's what I have for you today in this episode of the bravehearted woman and by the way, yes, bravehearted woman you are called to be brave. That's what it's all about. That's what I'm here to do. Push you and encourage you. And what I want to offer you this week in this episode is if you are in need of some coaching, I have an amazing online course I want to make available to you.

But listen, it's not going to just be a free download. I will however offer you the opportunity to have a strategy call to see if we're a good fit for one another. If you're interested in that at all. You'll see my website right there in the show notes. You can click that and there'll be instructions on how you can sign up for a free strategy call with me. I'm not offering this all the time. In fact, I'll tell you what probably my assistant is going to say, What were you thinking? But because we're just girlfriends talking today, you need some help. I want to help you get there. All right. That's what I want to do. And listen, what you can do for me is you can leave a review. If you liked this episode, and it's helped you and you want to share it with someone else, please do, put it on your socials, and let the world know that we exist. But if you write a review for me, by the way, I put that in the notes to help you know exactly how to write a review. You bump me up in the algorithms, and then my rankings, and that allows other people because the higher the rankings, the more they're going to let your podcasts be found by others, right? I don't want to tell the world we're here. We're bringing the message. So go ahead and write a review for me that would be so great. All right. That's what I have for you beautiful, bravehearted sister today. And I'm going to leave you like I always do because I really believe in this. It's time for you to find you're brave and live your dreams!