Toni Peters – Author

Tag: faith

  • Go Ahead, Tell Me No

    Go Ahead, Tell Me No

    Toni Peters. November 4, 2026.

    In the late 1990s, I was an independent contractor with a global skin care and cosmetics company. It was sales, which meant my days came down to asking women yes-or-no questions.

    Would you like to get together for a facial?

    Would you like to try the products I use and love?

    Would you like to hear about a company that offers flexibility, independence, and room to grow?

    With my family and friends, I could ask. They already loved me, so a no from them didn’t cost much. But the minute I stepped outside that circle, I froze. I’d see a sharp, put-together woman and know exactly what I wanted to say, and nothing came out. My self-esteem was a lot lower back then, and one simple question to a stranger felt like more than I could risk.

    One day stands out. I was sitting at my desk with the phone right there and a list of five women and their phone numbers in front of me. I couldn’t even pick up the phone. My body froze. It literally wouldn’t move. I was frustrated, but worse than that, I was disappointed in myself. And that made everything harder, because I kept beating myself up over it day after day.

    My business didn’t fail all at once. It fizzled out, one unasked question at a time.

    A woman's hand resting on a desk beside a corded telephone, seen from the shoulders down.
    A woman writes in a notebook beside a vintage telephone and books in warm sunlight.

    What a no actually is

    Recently I listened to a sermon Dr. Charles Stanley preached in the early 1980s, and it took me right back to those years. It made me ask what I was so afraid of.

    At its simplest, rejection is someone saying no. We ask a question, and they answer it. So why does a two-letter word carry so much weight? And why does just the thought of hearing it keep so many of us from asking at all?

    Dr. Stanley said that when someone tells us no, we hear three messages underneath it: we don’t belong, we aren’t worthy, and we aren’t competent.

    I recognized every one. Those were the voices in my head every time I almost asked a stranger to try a product. And none of them are true.

    “You don’t belong”

    A no can feel like a door closing with you on the outside. Usually it means this group, this job, or this person isn’t the right fit right now. That’s a much smaller thing than being shut out of everything.

    Here’s what I know now. I belong to God, no matter what. I have brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m part of the Church. Ephesians 2:19 says we are “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” I do belong, and no one’s no can move me out of that house.

    “You aren’t worthy”

    This one cuts deepest, because it goes after who you are instead of what you asked. A woman who turned down a facial was telling me about her schedule, her budget, or her skin. She had no way to measure my value, because she isn’t the one who set it.

    Psalm 139:14 says we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Ephesians 1:6 says we are “accepted in the beloved.” My worth was decided long before I ever asked anyone to try a moisturizer. I am worthy, and I know now that I’m worthy of the life I’ve designed for myself. So are you.

    “You aren’t competent”

    Sometimes a no really is about skill. Maybe the pitch was clumsy or the timing was off. Even then, it’s about one conversation on one day. Skills grow with practice, and mine never had the chance, because I stopped practicing the moment it got hard.

    Fear blurs “not ready yet” into “never good enough.” Scripture keeps them apart. Second Corinthians 3:5 says “our sufficiency is of God.” Today I know what to do and how to do it. If there’s something I don’t know, I can learn it. Incompetence should only ever be a temporary situation.

    What I was really afraid of

    Looking back, what scared me was what I thought a no would prove. If a stranger turned me down, it would confirm everything I already suspected about myself. So I decided for her. I said no on her behalf before she ever had the chance, and I called it being careful.

    Every question I didn’t ask got the same answer I was afraid of. I just gave it to myself.

    Then I punished myself for it. Every day I didn’t call became more proof that I wasn’t good enough, and that made the next day’s call even harder to make. The shame of not asking hurt me more than any woman on that list ever could have.

    Hands sorting old family photographs beside a cardboard box
    Family members gather around a table to sort through cherished photographs and memories.

    Asking again

    Almost thirty years later, I’m asking again. I’m building a business that helps families turn their stories into books, and that means asking people I don’t know whether they’d like to talk.

    These days, asking isn’t a big deal. I know there are families out there just like mine, families who love to share their stories. They love reunions and family gatherings, passing around photos and rehashing old times. Those are my people. If one of them tells me no, maybe they don’t have the money right now, or maybe the family historian is too ill to share stories. Whatever the reason, it has nothing to do with my sense of belonging, my self-worth, or my competence.

    So go ahead, tell me no. I know who I am now, and a no can’t change that.

    Is there a question you’ve been afraid to ask? A friend you’d like to reconnect with, a job you want to apply for, a dream you’ve kept to yourself? Ask it this week. Then come back and tell me how it went.

    Toni Peters, author and founder of Warrior Storytellers

    About the author

    I write about women who survive things and become someone new on the other side. I’m a citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a grandmother who answers to Mimi, and the founder of Warrior Storytellers. I live in Edmond, Oklahoma, where I write before the sun is all the way up and spend most of what’s left of my free time on the water.

    Something’s coming.

  • Hope Is Not a Strategy

    Hope Is Not a Strategy

    Toni Peters. October 28, 2026.

    What twenty years in wind energy taught a woman who writes about hope.

    On Sundays, I write to you about faith. About purpose. About chariots on a hill you can’t see until your eyes are opened. I am, for lack of a better word, the hope lady.

    On Mondays, I go to work and help kill budgets.

    I don’t lead with that at parties. It doesn’t pair well with the faith writing, and it takes a minute to explain. But I’ve spent more than two decades in the wind energy industry, and I love it, and I want to tell you about the day one sentence from a conference room lodged itself in my brain and never left.

    Budget season

    We were outside Houston, deep in budget season. If you’ve never done a corporate budget cycle, picture this: a windowless room, too much coffee, and a spreadsheet the size of a small country. Our job was to go farm by farm, every wind site in the region, and find money. Cut a cost here. Squeeze an efficiency there. Then roll it all up into one regional number clean enough to send to headquarters without flinching. We were hunting margin. We wanted the bottom line healthy, and healthy bottom lines do not appear because you were nice to the spreadsheet.

    Printed spreadsheet with red pen, glasses, and coffee on a table
    A printed data sheet, red pen, glasses, and coffee create a focused work setting.

    Somewhere in hour three, someone floated a cost-cutting idea. A teammate looked at it, thought about it, and said the most human thing a tired person can say in a budget meeting:

    “I hope that’ll work.”

    And one of our Service Area Managers, a man not known for speeches, looked up and said, flat as a level floor:

    “Hope is not a strategy.”

    Reader, I nearly applauded.

    Which is a little rich, coming from me. I had, at that point, already started writing about hope in my off hours. Hope as a lifeline. Hope as the thing that carries you through the fire. And there I was in a fluorescent-lit room in Texas, nodding hard at a man telling a room full of adults that hope would not, in fact, lower our cost per megawatt.

    Both things are true. That’s the part I want to talk about. But first I have to confess something embarrassing.

    I love a strategic plan

    I mean I love it. I have two bachelor’s degrees and an MBA, and nothing makes me happier than a real plan with a measurable goal, action items, honest deadlines, milestones you can actually check, and a column for what we’ll do when reality laughs at the first three. Show me accountability and a clean set of milestones and I will get more excited than a grown woman probably should. My family has watched this happen. They’re used to it. It’s a thing.

    So the SAM was singing my song. Because here’s what twenty years in this industry taught me about the difference between a plan that works and a plan that doesn’t, and hope has nothing to do with either one.

    A solid plan. Clear goal, real action items, deadlines with teeth, milestones, room to adjust when the wind does something the forecast didn’t. That plan, executed, moves the number. Every time. Not always in the direction you wanted, but it moves, and you can see why, and you can steer.

    A weak plan. Vague goals, fuzzy milestones, nobody actually accountable, communication that dies somewhere between the meeting and the doing. That plan produces frustration, low morale, and a bottom line that limps. Also every time. And no amount of hoping at it has ever once nudged it back into the black. I’ve watched people hope at a bad plan with real sincerity. The plan did not care.

    So the SAM was right. At work, hope is not a strategy. I’d put it on the wall if the wall weren’t already covered in safety posters.

    But I went back to my hotel room that night still turning it over, because I’m me, and I couldn’t quite let it sit as clean as it sounded in the room.

    Where the hope lady and the budget lady shake hands

    Hope was never supposed to be the strategy. That was never its job. Hope is the reason you sit down and build the strategy in the first place. It’s the thing that says this is worth the windowless room and the giant spreadsheet and the hard conversation about accountability. Hope points at a future worth the work. Then you still have to do the work. The two just clock in on different shifts.

    I’ve lived the version of this that has nothing to do with wind farms. I’ve spent seasons of my life hoping. Hoping something would change, hoping a situation would fix itself, hoping and praying and waiting for a different life to arrive on its own. It didn’t. Not once. What changed things was hope followed by a plan followed by actually doing the thing. Hope opened the door. My feet had to walk through it.

    Footprints crossing a cracked, dried lakebed with cattails and trees beyond
    A trail of footprints crosses the cracked bed of a dried lake beneath a quiet tree-lined horizon.
    God can part a whole sea.
    You’ve still got to walk across the floor of it.

    So I keep both hats, and I’ve made peace with the pair of them. On Sunday I’ll tell you hope is worth everything. On Monday I’ll tell a room full of colleagues that hope is not a strategy. And I mean both, all the way down.

    The folks at work don’t know about the Sunday hat.

    Now you do.

    What’s the thing you’ve been hoping at instead of planning for? Tell me in the comments. I had a list, and I’m not proud of how long it was.

    Toni Peters, author and founder of Warrior Storytellers

    About the author

    I write about women who survive things and become someone new on the other side. I’m a citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a grandmother who answers to Mimi, and the founder of Warrior Storytellers. I live in Edmond, Oklahoma, where I write before the sun is all the way up and spend most of what’s left of my free time on the water.

    Something’s coming.

  • What If Pumpkin Spice Could Change the World?

    What If Pumpkin Spice Could Change the World?

    A paper coffee cup on a car dashboard, a line of cars in a drive-thru visible through the windshield in bright midday sun.

    Toni Peters. September 22, 2026.

    It’s September 15th. I know this because my phone told me, and because every establishment within a thirty-mile radius has declared it, officially, fall.

    Never mind that it’s ninety-four degrees outside. Never mind that I’m sweating through my shirt in the Target parking lot. The signs have spoken. Pumpkin. Spice. Season. Is. Here.

    And I have questions.

    We have lost our ever-loving minds

    Somewhere, at some point, some person in some test kitchen took a squash. A squash! And turned it into a personality. And it worked. Boy, did it work. What started as one seasonal drink became a billion-dollar empire and, I’m convinced, a national personality disorder. We have pumpkin spice coffee, fine. We also have pumpkin spice cereal, pumpkin spice hummus, pumpkin spice dog treats, and pumpkin spice deodorant. Somebody out there is spraying gourd under their arms and calling it self-care.

    We have lost our ever-loving minds. Completely.

    There are grown adults setting phone reminders for the drink to come back. There are group texts, I’ve seen them, with a countdown. People who can’t agree on anything, who won’t so much as make eye contact at Thanksgiving, will drop every last grievance the second that orange cup returns. First sip and they close their eyes like they’re hearing from God.

    I roll my eyes at all of it. Every year.

    And then every year, around the last week of October, I catch myself.

    The wanting is the whole event

    Because here’s what I notice when I stop rolling my eyes long enough to look. For a few weeks, otherwise cynical, exhausted, buttoned-up people let themselves want something. Out loud. With their whole chest. No apology. A grown woman will sit in a drive-thru line twenty cars deep for a paper cup of warm sugar and feel not one ounce of shame about it. Do you know how rare that is?

    We’re so careful the rest of the year. We downplay what we want. We act like we don’t need much, like wanting something small and good and a little bit silly is something to be embarrassed about. Heads down. Wanting nothing out loud.

    Then fall shows up and hands us permission to be delighted by a beverage. And we take it! We take it every single time.

    The pumpkin’s just the excuse.
    The wanting is the whole event.

    So maybe the mania is trying to tell us something.

    What if we let ourselves want the other stuff that loud? The rest. The quiet morning with nobody needing anything from us. The phone call to the friend we keep meaning to call. The dream we’ve got filed under “someday” because saying it out loud feels like too much. What if we chased those the way we chase a limited-time latte?

    I’m not telling you pumpkin spice is going to fix the world. It can barely fix a Tuesday.

    But a little thing that gives millions of tired people permission to feel good, together, for no reason other than it’s here and it’s warm and they love it? That might be the most powerful thing on the whole menu.

    So enjoy your latte. Set the countdown. And while you’ve got permission to want something small and warm with your whole heart, go want something bigger the exact same way.

    See you in the drive-thru line.

    What’s the small thing you’re unashamed to want this fall? Tell me in the comments. I’ll go first.

    Toni Peters, author and founder of Warrior Storytellers

    About the author

    I write about women who survive things and become someone new on the other side. I’m a citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a grandmother who answers to Mimi, and the founder of Warrior Storytellers. I live in Edmond, Oklahoma, where I write before the sun is all the way up and spend most of what’s left of my free time on the water.

    Something’s coming.

  • It Took a Stroke to Make Me Rest.

    It Took a Stroke to Make Me Rest.

    This piece talks about a recent stroke and what came after. Nothing graphic.

    Toni Peters. September 16, 2026.

    This morning I sat with a group of women for two hours and listened to them talk about their lives. The challenges, mostly. There was a lot more challenge than opportunity in that room, if I’m honest.

    One word kept surfacing. Boundaries. Who has them, who doesn’t, who’s scared to death to set one. Every woman had a version of the same story.

    But there was something underneath the boundaries that I couldn’t shake. These women were tired. Not sleepy. Tired all the way down. The kind of tired that’s been building for years and has nowhere to go.

    I know that tired now. I met it thirty-two days ago.

    You’ve had a stroke

    I woke up not feeling right. Figured I was dehydrated, so I drove myself to the ER and asked them to hang a bag of fluids. The doctor ran some tests and came back with a sentence I’ll hear for the rest of my life. “You’re not dehydrated. You’ve had a stroke.”

    I was stunned. The next twenty-four hours were the worst of my life. The worst headache I’ve ever had. Throwing up long after there was anything left to throw up. I never once pictured a stroke into my life. But who does?

    Here’s the part that matters. In the days after, there were mornings I could barely get out of bed. And mornings I knew better than to try. And for once, I listened to my body. It was telling me it needed to rest. It needed to heal. It needed time to make sense of what had happened and what it meant for the rest of my life.

    For once. Sit with those two words, because they’re the whole thing.

    It took a stroke to make me rest. Not a hard week. Not a warning. A stroke.

    My body had to take the choice clean out of my hands before I’d finally give it what it had been asking me for all along.

    And I don’t think I’m rare. I think I’m the rule.

    The two kinds of hard

    Somewhere we learned to treat exhaustion like proof we’re doing it right. Like the tired is the receipt for a life well spent. We wear it. We compare it. A lot of us women especially were raised to believe that suffering and virtue are the same thing. That the good woman is the one still standing after everybody else sat down, running on fumes, smiling about it.

    So we stop telling the difference between the two kinds of hard.

    Some hard is worth every bit of what it costs you. Raising your kids. Building something that matters. Loving people who don’t make it easy. That hard leaves you tired in a way that means something.

    And some hard is just grinding you into the floor. Taking and taking and giving nothing back. We keep carrying it because we think putting it down would make us weak. Or selfish. Or a bad mother, a bad wife, a bad Christian.

    Most women were never given permission to even ask which one they’re in.

    I see it in my own girls. My oldest is trying to wrap her mind around her boy, my grandson, with a broken neck from a football tackle. My youngest is a young mama raising two toddlers on her own with next to nothing to work with. They’re tired down to the bone, both of them, and they’re too far inside it to see it.

    I keep asking myself. How did we get here? And the bigger one. How do we carry what life throws at us without it driving us into the ground?

    Show me where it says that

    This isn’t a faith problem. I want to be clear, because I already know what somebody’s going to say.

    Somebody’s going to tell me God will never put more on us than we can stand.

    And I’m going to ask them to show me where it says that in His Word.

    Because it isn’t there. The verse people reach for is about temptation. That He won’t let you be tempted past what you can bear, and He’ll give you a way out. It says nothing about grief. Nothing about a wrecked body. Nothing about a woman so worn down she can’t lift her head off the pillow. Somebody took a promise about temptation and turned it into a command to suffer without a word. And that lie has kept tired women tired for a very long time.

    God never asked you to be a martyr to your own life.

    So here’s where I’ve landed, thirty-two days in.

    The difference between hard and harmful starts with one question you’re allowed to ask. Is this worth what it’s taking from me? Or is it just wearing me down to nothing?

    You don’t have to wait for your body to answer it for you. I did. I don’t recommend it.

    Rest isn’t the reward you get after you collapse.
    You’re allowed to take it before. You’re allowed to take it now.

    Which kind of hard are you carrying right now? Tell me in the comments. You can be as vague as you need to be. I read every one.

    If you ever wake up not feeling right the way I did, call 911. Don’t drive yourself. I got lucky, and I’d rather you didn’t have to.

    An unmade bed in soft morning light, a glass of water and folded reading glasses on the nightstand.
    Thirty-two days ago my body took the choice out of my hands.
    Toni Peters, author and founder of Warrior Storytellers

    About the author

    I write about women who survive things and become someone new on the other side. I’m a citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a grandmother who answers to Mimi, and the founder of Warrior Storytellers. I live in Edmond, Oklahoma, where I write before the sun is all the way up and spend most of what’s left of my free time on the water.

    Something’s coming.

  • The Fear That Connects Us

    The Fear That Connects Us

    If you shared your story with me, this post is for you. 

    Writing about your life requires a specific kind of courage — the kind that doesn’t roar, but trembles. The kind that doesn’t arrive fully formed, but grows in the cracks left behind by fear. The kind that asks you to tell the truth even when your voice shakes.

    I’ve learned this from the women who have opened their lives to me.

    Women from every walk of life — wealthy, poor, middle-class. Women of different ages, different ethnicities, different histories. Their traumas vary: betrayal, abuse, abandonment, the slow erosion of identity, the sudden collapse of safety, the quiet violence of being unseen.

    Their stories are different. But their fear is the same.

    Fear is the thread that runs through every story I’ve been trusted with. Fear of leaving. Fear of staying. Fear of being believed. Fear of being blamed. Fear of losing everything. Fear of losing themselves.

    And when you strip away the circumstances — whether the trauma was work-related, relationship-related, family-rooted, spiritual, or the kind of trauma that doesn’t have a name but leaves a mark anyway — what remains is the same shared experience:

    Fear.

    Not the dictionary kind. Not the kind you can summarize in a sentence.

    I’m talking about the real thing — the kind that lives in the body.

    Fear that smells like metal and adrenaline. Fear that tightens the belly and crawls up the spine. Fear that narrows the world until all you can see is the next breath. Fear that whispers, “We’ve been here before,” even when the present moment is safe.

    Fear is not weakness. Fear is memory. Fear is the body remembering what the mind has tried to forget.

    And yet — every woman I’ve spoken with kept moving. Sometimes in inches. Sometimes in strides. Sometimes stopping completely until she could gather herself again.

    But always forward.

    Because fear may shape us, but it does not have to decide our fate.

    These women — the ones who trusted me with their stories — have taught me more about courage than any book ever could.

    They taught me that courage is not loud. It’s not glamorous. It’s not a Hollywood moment.

    Courage is a whisper. A breath. A trembling step forward when everything in you wants to freeze.

    Courage is telling the truth about what happened to you. Courage is naming the thing that tried to break you. Courage is choosing yourself — sometimes for the first time in your life.

    Courage is saying, “This happened. And I’m still here.”

    Fear is not an idea. Fear is a presence.

    Fear has a temperature — cold at first, then hot. It has a texture — sharp, metallic, electric. It has a sound — the rush of blood in your ears, the thud of your own heartbeat, the quiet click of your breath catching in your throat.

    Fear sits low in the belly — a tightening, a twisting, a sudden drop like missing a step on the stairs. It crawls up the spine. It settles in the jaw. It clenches the hands.

    Fear narrows the world. It pulls the edges in. It makes the room smaller, the options fewer, the future shorter.

    Fear is the moment the body says, “We’ve been here before.” Even when the mind insists, “We’re safe now.”

    Fear is memory. Fear is instinct. Fear is the echo of every moment when power was taken, trust was broken, or safety was lost.

    Fear is not weakness. Fear is the body remembering.

    And yet — fear is also the moment right before courage.

    A Call to Trauma Survivors

    If you are reading this and you are a survivor — of abuse, betrayal, abandonment, violence, manipulation, neglect, or any trauma that left you questioning your worth — I want you to hear me clearly:

    You are not alone. You are not broken. You are not behind. You are not too much. You are not too late.

    Your fear makes sense. Your pauses make sense. Your survival makes sense.

    And your healing — in inches or in strides — is sacred.

    You do not have to rush. You do not have to explain. You do not have to justify the ways you protected yourself.

    You are allowed to move at the pace your nervous system can hold. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to rise. You are allowed to rewrite your story.

    And when you’re ready — when the ground feels steady enough beneath your feet — you are allowed to tell your truth.

    Not for the world. Not for validation. Not for applause.

    But for you.

    Because your story matters. 

    And because, as Mary Oliver taught us:

    “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

  • More on Eleanor Roosevelt……

    More on Eleanor Roosevelt……

    What do we really know about Eleanor Roosevelt?

    Most people know the headlines: She was the wife of a President. She was outspoken. She was a published author. She was a global advocate for human rights.

    But beneath the public figure was a woman shaped by a childhood that taught her fear long before she ever learned courage.

    She grew up in a painful, unstable home. She lost both parents early. She was raised in an environment of criticism and emotional neglect. She learned to shrink, to stay quiet, to disappear into the background. Sound familiar?

    She was shy. She was introverted. She was fearful. Again….familiar to many.

    And that is exactly why her words about fear still land with such force. Because she wasn’t speaking from theory. She was speaking from experience.

    Fear: The Emotion We All Understand

    Being afraid is something every one of us understands. Fear is universal. Fear is human. Fear is the quiet companion that walks beside us in moments of uncertainty, transition, and truth-telling.

    Eleanor Roosevelt understood this deeply. She lived with fear — not as an occasional visitor, but as a constant presence.

    And yet… she became one of the most courageous women of the 20th century.

    So how did she make that shift? And more importantly — can we?

    How Eleanor Roosevelt Moved From Fearful to Courageous

    Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t wake up one day fearless. She didn’t wait for confidence to arrive. She didn’t wait for fear to disappear.

    She made a choice.

    A choice she made again and again, in small moments and large ones.

    1. She chose visibility over hiding

    Despite being naturally shy, she held press conferences, gave speeches, wrote a daily column, and traveled the world. Every act of visibility was an act of defiance – not against people or ideals – but against her own fear.

    2. She chose purpose over comfort

    She stepped into arenas where she knew she would be criticized — civil rights, women’s rights, human rights. Of course, she felt fear. She did it anyway.

    3. She chose action over paralysis

    Her most famous line — “You must do the thing you think you cannot do” — wasn’t a slogan. It was her personal mantra. And we can borrow it!

    4. She chose growth over safety

    She believed courage was built through repeated exposure to fear. Every time she faced it, she expanded her capacity, her ability and her influence.

    5. She chose meaning over approval

    She stopped living for other people’s expectations and started living for her own values.

    This is the shift. Not from fear to fearlessness. But from fear to forward movement.

    What Her Life Teaches Us About Our Own

    Eleanor Roosevelt’s story isn’t about perfection. It’s about possibility.

    She teaches us that courage is not the absence of fear — it’s the decision to take action anyway.

    She teaches us that fear is not a flaw — it’s a signal. A threshold. A doorway.

    She teaches us that the life we want is often waiting on the other side of the thing we’re most afraid to do.

    And she teaches us that we don’t have to be fearless to be brave. We just have to be willing.

    So What About Us?

    We’re all afraid of something. Afraid of failing. Afraid of succeeding. Afraid of being seen. Afraid of being misunderstood. Afraid of telling the truth about our lives. Afraid of stepping into the next version of ourselves.

    But Eleanor Roosevelt’s life offers us a map:

    • Start where you are.
    • Feel the fear.
    • Take the step anyway.
    • Let courage grow from the doing.

    Courage is not a trait. It’s simply a daily practice. Remember…Do one thing every day that scares you. You’ve got this!

  • The Fear That Connects Us If you shared your story with me – this post is for you.

    The Fear That Connects Us If you shared your story with me – this post is for you.

    Writing about your life requires a specific kind of courage — the kind that doesn’t roar, but trembles. The kind that doesn’t arrive fully formed, but grows in the cracks left behind by fear. The kind that asks you to tell the truth even when your voice shakes.

    I’ve learned this from the women who have opened their lives to me.

    Women from every walk of life — wealthy, poor, middle-class. Women of different ages, different ethnicities, different histories. Their traumas vary: betrayal, abuse, abandonment, the slow erosion of identity, the sudden collapse of safety, the quiet violence of being unseen.

    Their stories are different. But their fear is the same.

    Fear is the thread that runs through every story I’ve been trusted with. Fear of leaving. Fear of staying. Fear of being believed. Fear of being blamed. Fear of losing everything. Fear of losing themselves.

    And when you strip away the circumstances — whether the trauma was work-related, relationship-related, family-rooted, spiritual, or the kind of trauma that doesn’t have a name but leaves a mark anyway — what remains is the same shared experience:

    Fear.

    Not the dictionary kind. Not the kind you can summarize in a sentence.

    I’m talking about the real thing — the kind that lives in the body.

    Fear that smells like metal and adrenaline. Fear that tightens the belly and crawls up the spine. Fear that narrows the world until all you can see is the next breath. Fear that whispers, “We’ve been here before,” even when the present moment is safe.

    Fear is not weakness. Fear is memory. Fear is the body remembering what the mind has tried to forget.

    And yet — every woman I’ve spoken with kept moving. Sometimes in inches. Sometimes in strides. Sometimes stopping completely until she could gather herself again.

    But always forward.

    Because fear may shape us, but it does not have to decide our fate.

    These women — the ones who trusted me with their stories — have taught me more about courage than any book ever could.

    They taught me that courage is not loud. It’s not glamorous. It’s not a Hollywood moment.

    Courage is a whisper. A breath. A trembling step forward when everything in you wants to freeze.

    Courage is telling the truth about what happened to you. Courage is naming the thing that tried to break you. Courage is choosing yourself — sometimes for the first time in your life.

    Courage is saying, “This happened. And I’m still here.”

    Fear is not an idea. Fear is a presence.

    Fear has a temperature — cold at first, then hot. It has a texture — sharp, metallic, electric. It has a sound — the rush of blood in your ears, the thud of your own heartbeat, the quiet click of your breath catching in your throat.

    Fear sits low in the belly — a tightening, a twisting, a sudden drop like missing a step on the stairs. It crawls up the spine. It settles in the jaw. It clenches the hands.

    Fear narrows the world. It pulls the edges in. It makes the room smaller, the options fewer, the future shorter.

    Fear is the moment the body says, “We’ve been here before.” Even when the mind insists, “We’re safe now.”

    Fear is memory. Fear is instinct. Fear is the echo of every moment when power was taken, trust was broken, or safety was lost.

    Fear is not weakness. Fear is the body remembering.

    And yet — fear is also the moment right before courage.

    A Call to Trauma Survivors

    If you are reading this and you are a survivor — of abuse, betrayal, abandonment, violence, manipulation, neglect, or any trauma that left you questioning your worth — I want you to hear me clearly:

    You are not alone. You are not broken. You are not behind. You are not too much. You are not too late.

    Your fear makes sense. Your pauses make sense. Your survival makes sense.

    And your healing — in inches or in strides — is sacred.

    You do not have to rush. You do not have to explain. You do not have to justify the ways you protected yourself.

    You are allowed to move at the pace your nervous system can hold. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to rise. You are allowed to rewrite your story.

    And when you’re ready — when the ground feels steady enough beneath your feet — you are allowed to tell your truth.

    Not for the world. Not for validation. Not for applause.

    But for you.

    Because your story matters. 

    And because, as Mary Oliver taught us:

    “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

  • “Never Let fear decide your fate”

    Part 2 of the Go at it Boldly Series

    Five months ago, I hung a notecard on my wall with a quote from Basil King — a man who lived more than a century ago, who wrestled with illness, fear, and faith, and who wrote from the depths of his own uncertainty. His words became a daily ritual for me:

    “Go at it boldly, and you’ll find unexpected forces closing round you and coming to your aid.”

    That sentence taught me to imagine courage as a circle of protection and helped me move forward when everything in me wanted to freeze.

    But boldness is only the first step.

    Because even when we choose boldness, unfortunately, fear doesn’t disappear.  Instead, it whispers in our ear. It even tries to bargain its way back into the driver’s seat.

    And that’s where the next quote entered my life.

    A Modern Voice for a Modern Fear

    The line comes from Morgan Benton, a contemporary writer who shared her work on Medium. She’s not a philosopher or a literary icon. She’s a woman who wrote honestly about anxiety, healing, eating disorders, relationships, and the daily work of choosing courage over collapse.

    Her writing is raw, present, and deeply human — the kind of truth that comes from someone still in the middle of their own becoming.

    And in one of her essays, she wrote:

    “Never let your fear decide your fate.”

    A simple sentence.
    A modern echo of Basil King’s wisdom.
    A reminder that fear may speak — but it does not get to choose.

    When I first read Morgan’s words, something in me relaxed.  Here was a woman writing from the trenches of her own healing, saying out loud what so many of us feel:

    Fear lies.

    Fear is loud.
    Fear is convincing.
    Fear even sometimes feels like safety — even when it’s not.

    And yet…Fear has never once led me toward the life I want.

    So I added Morgan’s quote to my wall, right next to Basil King’s. On purpose.
    Two voices separated by a century.
    Two people who knew fear intimately.
    Two reminders that courage is not a one‑time decision — it’s a daily practice.

    Basil King tells me:
    Move. Step forward. Be bold. Help will meet you.

    Morgan Benton tells me:
    And when fear tries to reroute you… don’t hand it the map.

    Together, they form a kind of spiritual choreography:

    1. Choose boldness.
    2. Refuse to let fear choose for you.
    3. Trust that support will rise to meet your courage.

    This is the rhythm I’ve been living in as a first‑time author — navigating contracts, feedback, revisions, uncertainty, and the emotional excavation that comes with writing a memoir.

    I’ve heard fear in my own ear.  It’s told me:

    • “You don’t know enough about publishing.”
    • “You’re not ready.”
    • “What if you get it wrong?”
    • “What if people misunderstand your story?”
    • “What if your book is a failure and you help no one?”

    But every time I’ve chosen boldness instead of fear, something unexpected has shown up:

    • clarity
    • support
    • opportunities
    • people
    • alignment
    • the next right step (even when it’s a tiny step)

    Those are the “unexpected forces” Basil King promised.
    Those are the outcomes Morgan Benton’s quote protects.

    What I Wish I Could Tell Morgan Benton

    I wish I could sit with her the way I wish I could sit with Basil King — two writers who shaped my courage in different ways.

    I’d tell her: “Your sentence helped me choose myself when fear tried to choose for me.”

    And maybe that’s the real beauty of her quote:
    It wasn’t written from a mountaintop.
    It was written from the middle of the climb.

    Every morning, I look at both notecards on my wall.

    One reminds me to move boldly.
    The other reminds me not to let fear steer.

    And together, they’ve become a kind of mantra for this season of my life:

    Go at it boldly.
    Never let your fear decide your fate.
    And trust that what you need will meet you on the path.

    Because it always has.
    And I believe it always will.

  • “Go at it boldly…”: The Quote That Has Been Carrying Me Forward

    There’s a notecard hanging on my wall right now. It’s simple — just a few handwritten words — but it has become a kind of compass for me these past five months.

    “Go at it boldly, and you’ll find unexpected forces closing round you and coming to your aid.” — Basil King

    I read it every morning. I meditate on it. I feel it in my body. And then I imagine it — those “unexpected forces” gathering around me like a sacred circle, securing me, steadying me, partnering with me as I move forward on this wild, vulnerable journey of becoming an author.

    What I didn’t know when I first fell in love with this quote is that the man who wrote it, William Benjamin Basil King, understood fear and uncertainty in a way that feels eerily familiar.

    Basil King was a Canadian clergyman born in 1859, a man raised in a strict religious environment who devoted the first half of his life to ministry. He was intelligent, sensitive, spiritually attuned — and then, in his early forties, everything changed.

    Illness struck. His eyesight began to fail. His thyroid disease worsened. He could no longer preach, no longer lead, no longer do the work he believed he was put on earth to do.

    He entered a long season of fear, depression, and uncertainty — the kind of season that strips a person down to their essence.

    And in that darkness, he began to write.

    His most enduring book, The Conquest of Fear, is where this quote comes from. It wasn’t written from a mountaintop. It wasn’t written by someone who had conquered life. It was written by a man who was fighting for his own courage, one day at a time.

    That’s why the line hits so deeply. It’s not motivational fluff. It’s lived truth.

    When I first read King’s words, I felt something shift. I was in the early stages of my own author journey — full of hope, yes, but also full of the kind of fear that whispers, “Who do you think you are?”

    I didn’t know what was ahead of me. I didn’t know how to navigate contracts or publishing paths. I didn’t know how to hold the enormity of writing a book that asks me to tell the truth about my life.

    But I knew this: I wanted to move forward boldly, even if my voice shook.

    So I wrote the quote on a notecard and hung it where I would see it every day. And slowly, something began to happen.

    I started imagining those “unexpected forces” King wrote about — not as magic, but as alignment. As people showing up at the right time. As opportunities unfolding. As clarity arriving when I needed it most. As the quiet sense that I wasn’t walking this path alone.

    And I wasn’t.

    Sometimes I wish I could sit across from Basil King — this man who wrestled with fear, illness, faith, and resilience — and tell him what his words have meant to me.

    I wish I could ask him what it felt like to lose the life he thought he was meant to live. I wish I could hear how he found his way through the dark. I wish I could thank him for writing from the middle of his struggle instead of waiting for the end of it.

    Because that’s what his quote reminds me of every day: Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the willingness to move anyway — trusting that help will meet you on the path.

    For me, boldness has become less about bravado and more about devotion. A daily choice. A quiet ritual.

    I read the quote. I breathe it in. I imagine the forces gathering. And then I take the next step — sometimes small, sometimes shaky, but always forward.

    And every time I do, something meets me. A person. A resource. A moment of clarity. A reminder that I’m not doing this alone.

    Maybe that’s what Basil King was trying to tell us: When we move with intention, the world moves with us.