I’ve shared a lot of practical insights, mindset shifts, and even personal development tools with you over the years that might have you thinking I have it all figured out…
I don’t.
I’m still learning and growing just like you!
The only difference is I’ve made learning and growing my JOB.
And I need you to know that I’m not perfect.
I have not had a perfect life that gave me the perfect blueprint on how to live perfectly. Perfect isn’t possible.
I had to mentally and physically move forward after the hard parts… just like so many of my amazing clients and maybe even you!
So I’m going to be completely vulnerable with you and share the hard parts of my past that made the best parts possible.
There is a purpose for this… hang with me!
Hard Part: A biological dad that I haven’t seen since I was 12, had habits that hurt, and was manipulative.
Best Part: Learning what I didn’t want my family to look like and marrying a dependable, honorable man who has walked through hell and high water for me and our kids.
Hard Part: Daily sexual abuse at childcare when mom was working multiple jobs to support us.
Best Part: I took him to court years later to make his actions public, to protect his young daughter and any other girls he might be around. I also won a settlement that gave me the opportunity to be the first in my family to graduate from a University.
Hard Part: Living between Tucson and friends’ houses in Jr. High/High School while my grandmother struggled with her health after a liver transplant.
Best Part: Seeing her hold my babies when they were born… something she fought for. Watching her taught me how to be strong in my own health crisis. Ironically, my kids became my will to live as well.
Hard Part: Growing up with little (like tinfoil star on the Christmas tree “little”).
Best Part: My mom showed me that hard work and character changes circumstances! I developed a work ethic that changed my future, a belief in possible over impossible that I instill in my own kids, and true sense of what’s really important (why we work) by her example that gives me balance in my own life today.
Hard Part: As a kid and teen, there was always a “bully” or “mean girl.”
Best Part: Those low moments taught me how to be resilient and currently helps me relate to the things my teen clients are going through in their own lives today.
Hard Part: A friend on my high school cheerleading squad was murdered in a drive by shooting in our neighborhood.
Best Part: I learned the importance of community (a huge part of my heart behind Rooted Teens and The Uncommon Coach), a bit about grief and mourning that would help me later with other loved ones who passed, and how to wrestle with things that “aren’t fair” in life.
The Hard Part: Brain cancer, craniotomies, seizures (and other health stuff).
The Best Part: Finally living like I mean it… refusing to live the same day over and over and calling it a “life”… to reach for more… to love harder… and to develop my faith like never before. It also gave me a platform for a best selling book, speaking across the country, and coaching SO MANY beautiful souls over the past few years to also live like they mean it.
Now it’s your turn.
Look back on your own life and take inventory. Acknowledge the hard parts.
What good came from the hard parts? What did you learn? How did it refine you?
I encourage you to really think about this. Even write it down.
When you can find and focus on the good, you take the power away form what hurt you.
You can move forward knowing that the deeper the valley you’re in, the higher the mountaintop ahead.
But only if you take that first step forward… and then the next.
Yes it will be a journey, but you’re so capable, and it’s so worth it.
