Toni Peters – Author

Tag: life

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 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.

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.

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.

November 4, 2026
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.

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.

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.

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.

October 28, 2026
The Pancake Wish

Toni Peters. October 7, 2026.

My granddaughter Paisley turned four this week.

When Scotty and I got to the party, she met me at the door, took me by the hand, and gave me the tour. First stop was the doorway her mom had covered in a curtain of streamers, the kind you have to push through to get to the other side. Paisley walked me through it like she was leading me into a palace. Next stop was the refrigerator. She opened the door and pointed, and there it was: her “marsh marrow” birthday cake. Her mom made it for her, and Paisley wanted me to see it before anybody else got the chance.

She said it out loud

Then came presents. Paisley had asked for one thing in particular, a Disney Junior princess she calls Spinning Sophia. When she pulled the paper off and saw it, she screamed. It was the full-body scream only a four-year-old can make when the world has done exactly what she asked it to.

Then the cake came out. We sang. I was sitting with her little brother on my lap, and everybody leaned in the way you do when a little one is about to blow out candles. And Paisley did the thing you’re not supposed to do. She said her wish out loud.

She closed her eyes, and in the most reverent voice a four-year-old can find, she said, “Pancakes.”

The whole room laughed out loud. And not one of us told her she’d broken the rule. Nobody said, “Oh honey, now it won’t come true.” It was too innocent and too pure to touch.

For the record, pancakes are her favorite food. They’re mine too. She comes by it honestly.

What grown-ups learn to do

I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since. Paisley asked for exactly what she wanted, right out loud, in front of everybody. She didn’t whisper it or shrink it down or worry that it was too small. Same as with Spinning Sophia. She knew what she wanted, she asked for it, and when it came, she screamed for joy.

Somewhere along the way, most of us grown-ups learn to keep our wishes to ourselves. Life teaches us that the things we hope for don’t always come, and if nobody knows what we wished for, nobody has to watch us be disappointed. For a long time I believed that.

This year taught me otherwise.

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

I’ve lived that. I said my dream out loud, that I would write my memoir and it would find a publisher. Then I wrote the manuscript, and the right publisher stepped into my life. Now I wish boldly. I say the thing out loud, and I go after it.

That’s exactly how Paisley went after hers. She didn’t hedge. She named it, in front of everybody, and trusted that somebody who loved her was listening.

Children ask

Jesus told the grown-ups to let the little children come to Him, because the kingdom belongs to such as these. I used to think that was about innocence. Watching Paisley, I think it might be about boldness. Children ask.

So here’s to my granddaughter, four years old and already wishing boldly.

Say the wish. Say it out loud,
even if it’s small, even if it’s pancakes.

Nobody in that room thought less of her for it. We just loved her more.

And the next time Paisley spends the night, Mimi is making pancakes.

Some wishes Mimi gets to grant.

What’s the wish you’ve been keeping to yourself? Say it here, out loud, even if it’s small. I read every one, and I’ll say mine too.

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.

October 7, 2026
I Don’t Bounce Back Anymore

This piece talks about living after a stroke and inside an autoimmune flare, including medication and chronic pain. Nothing graphic.

Toni Peters. September 30, 2026.

I have always been the person who bounces back.

Flu, surgery, injury, whatever it was, I’d go down hard for a few days, feel sorry for myself for about an hour, and then I’d be back on my feet before the doctor expected me. My body and I had an understanding. I asked a lot of it, and it delivered. Get knocked down, get back up, keep moving. That was the deal, and it held for most of my life.

The deal has changed.

I had a stroke. On top of that, I’m in the middle of a flare from an autoimmune disease I was diagnosed with last winter. The two of them together have handed me a body I’m still getting to know. One that does not bounce, does not rush, and does not care what my calendar says.

The naps

I take one every single day now. Not because I’m lazy and not because I feel like it. Because I run out. My energy is finite in a way it never used to be. I get a set amount each morning, and when it’s gone, it’s gone, and no amount of willpower refills the tank. So I sleep. The second my head touches the pillow, I’m out. There’s no lying there sorting through my to-do list. My body takes what it needs and doesn’t ask permission. And here’s the part I didn’t expect: I wake up rested. Genuinely ready for whatever the rest of the day holds. The nap is the toll I pay to get through the day standing up.

The medications

The picture with this piece is all of them, turned around so you can read the labels. I didn’t do that for shock value. I did it because I still can’t quite believe the count myself, and looking at them lined up like that is the most honest way I know to show you what my mornings and evenings look like now.

All of them. Turned around so you can read the labels.

One of them is a weekly injection. It was created for cancer patients. I don’t have cancer, but the drug does something I need, so I take it. It helps. It also lowers my immune system, which means the thing keeping me functional is the same thing leaving me exposed. That’s the kind of math I do now.

Everything helps and costs at the same time.
You learn to hold both.

The flare brings pain I don’t have a polite word for. Extreme is the honest one. There’s weakness on my left side that wasn’t there before. And a new trick my body picked up: I stand up and the room tilts, my head goes light, and I have to wait a second for the world to settle before I move. I’ve never had that in my life. Little things I never thought about, standing, walking across a room, getting through an afternoon, are things I think about now.

The people who bend

None of this is happening to me alone, and that’s the part I don’t want to skip past.

My family has been steady through all of it. They’ve learned to read me, to be flexible with how I’m feeling on a given day, to shift plans when I need to lie down and not make me feel like a burden for it. They don’t hover and they don’t panic. They just adjust. When your body stops being reliable, having people around you who bend instead of break is worth more than I can put a number on.

Why I’m writing this

I’m not doing it for sympathy. I don’t want the comments full of I’m-so-sorrys, and I’m not fishing for anybody to tell me how strong I am. I’m writing it because I’m sitting here looking at how much my life has changed in a matter of months, and I need to say it out loud. The woman who bounced back from everything is learning to live inside a body that doesn’t. That’s not a small adjustment. It’s a whole new way of being a person.

And I know there’s more coming. That’s the truth I’m still sitting with. This isn’t a story where I’ve reached the other side and I’m reporting back with the lesson tied up neat. I’m in it. There are more changes ahead of me, some I can see coming and some I can’t, and I’m learning to make peace with not knowing their shape yet.

Here’s what I’ve figured out so far, and it’s not much, but it’s real. I can’t muscle my way through this the way I muscled through everything else. The old strategy, grit your teeth, push harder, refuse to slow down, doesn’t work on this one. It asks something different of me. It asks me to listen to my body instead of overriding it. To take the nap even when I don’t want to. To let the people who love me help. And to stop measuring a good day by how much I got done, and start measuring it by whether I reach the end of the day with something left for tomorrow.

I used to think strength meant never needing to stop.
I’m learning it means knowing when you do.

For most of my life, my health was simple. I got sick, I got better, I moved on. Those days are behind me. What I’ve got now doesn’t fit on a single line. It’s a stroke and an autoimmune disease and a cabinet full of medications and a body relearning how to be a body, all at once.

It’s not simple. It’s complex.

And I’m learning how to live it.

If you’ve had to learn a new body, tell me one thing that helped. Not sympathy. Something that worked. I read every one.

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.

September 30, 2026
What If Pumpkin Spice Could Change the World?

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.

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.

September 23, 2026
He Was Going Blind When He Wrote About Sight

The help was there the whole time. I just couldn’t see it yet.

There’s a moment in 2 Kings that I keep coming back to.

The prophet Elisha is in a little town called Dothan. Overnight, an enemy king surrounds the place with horses and chariots and a whole army, sent for the sole purpose of capturing one man. Elisha’s servant gets up early, walks outside, and sees it. An army. Everywhere he looks. Between him and every exit.

And he does what any of us would do. He panics.

“Alas, my master! What are we going to do?”

I love him for that, honestly. It’s such a human thing to say. He’s not being weak. He’s looking at the actual situation with his actual eyes, and the actual situation is terrifying. There is an army out there. He isn’t imagining it.

Here’s what gets me every time. Elisha isn’t afraid. Not even a little. He tells the servant, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

Which, if you’re the servant, sounds insane. More than them? Have you looked outside? There’s nobody there. It’s the two of us and a very powerful, dangerous problem.

But Elisha isn’t counting the same way his servant is counting. So he prays one of the shortest, most important prayers in the whole Bible. He doesn’t pray for reinforcements. He doesn’t pray for the army to disappear. He prays: Lord, open his eyes so he can see.

And the servant’s eyes are opened. And the hills all around them are full of horses and chariots of fire.

They were there the whole time.

That’s the part I need you to sit with. The chariots didn’t show up because Elisha prayed. They didn’t arrive as backup once things got scary. They were already on the hills when the servant walked outside terrified. He just couldn’t see them from where he was standing, in the dark, with his heart in his throat.

I collect quotes the way some people collect anything else. I find them in all kinds of places, and when one stops me, I keep it. This one stopped me. And when I went looking for the man who said it, what I found made the words hit even harder.

Basil King was a priest. He was also going blind. He spent years watching his sight fail, agonizing over the day it would go dark for good, and out of that fear he wrote a whole book about conquering it. The Conquest of Fear, he called it. Which means the man who wrote about unexpected forces closing round you — forces you cannot see — was losing his own eyes while he wrote it. He knew something about facing a thing you can’t see your way out of.

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

When I first read that, I understood it backwards. I thought it was a reward system. Be brave, and then the help arrives. Take the leap, and then the net appears. Earn the courage, and God sends the chariots to say good job.

That reading took up precious rental space in my brain for longer than I’d like to admit. And it kept me stuck, because I was always waiting to feel brave enough to deserve the help. I was standing at the edge of the city looking at the army, waiting for the chariots to show themselves before I’d take a single step. Prove to me it’s safe, and I’ll go.

That’s not how it works. 2 Kings 6 shows you exactly how it works, and it’s harder, and it’s so much better.

The forces are already there. King isn’t promising that boldness summons them. He’s telling you they’re already closing round you, on the hills, whether your eyes are open or not. Boldness doesn’t create the chariots. Boldness is what you do before you can see them. That’s the whole thing. That’s what makes it faith instead of math.

Elisha could be calm at the edge of that army because he already knew what was on the hills. The servant couldn’t, because he didn’t. Same town. Same army. Same morning. One of them was terrified and one of them wasn’t, and the only difference was what they could see.

I want to say something about what God actually does in that story, because I think we get it wrong and it costs us.

God didn’t give that servant what he would’ve asked for. If you’d handed the servant a pen and let him write his own rescue, he’d have written make the army go away. Or give us a bigger army. Or get me out of this town. Something to fix the situation he could see.

God didn’t do any of that. The Aramean army was still out there. Nothing about the visible problem changed. What God did was open the man’s eyes so he could see he was already protected. He didn’t grant the want. He met the need.

And the need underneath the panic wasn’t a bigger army. It was to know he wasn’t alone out there.

I’ve come to believe that’s how God tends to work with me too. Not by rearranging the army I’m staring at. By showing me what was already on the hills the whole time. I keep asking Him to remove the thing in front of me, and He keeps opening my eyes instead. For a long time that frustrated me. Now I think it might be the more loving answer, because a rescued servant learns nothing, and a servant who’s seen the chariots is never quite as afraid again.

He cares about the need. Not always the want. And the two are almost never the same thing.

So let me ask you what I keep asking myself.

What are you standing at the edge of right now, seeing only the army?

The thing you haven’t started. The conversation you keep not having. The dream you’ve decided is too big, or too late, or too much for someone like you. You’ve done the math. You’ve counted what’s with you and what’s against you, and the against column is winning, and so you’re waiting. Waiting to feel ready. Waiting for proof. Waiting for the chariots to reveal themselves before you’ll move.

They’re not going to reveal themselves first. That’s not the deal. The deal is you go — bold, unsure, heart in your throat — and somewhere out on the road your eyes get opened and you finally see what was there the entire time.

The army is real. I’m not going to tell you it isn’t. The servant wasn’t wrong about what he saw.

He was just wrong about it being the whole story.

Go at it boldly. Not because you can see the chariots. But because they’re already on the hills.

September 2, 2026
The Weight We Inherited Series – The Name on the Roll

I was scrolling through Ancestry.com, half expecting nothing, when a newborn looked back at me from a government form filed over a hundred years ago. Willie Lee “Pete” Carroll. My great-grandfather. The first time I ever saw his name in writing wasn’t on a birth announcement or in a family Bible. It was on a Dawes Commission enrollment card, filled out when he was days old, his entire existence reduced to a few lines on a federal record built to catalogue Native people for a government that was deciding, in that exact moment, who counted as Indian and who didn’t, who got land and who didn’t, whose blood was real enough to write down.

A baby. Enrolled. I sat with that for a long minute before I did anything else.

My Great-Grandma Carroll was the one who told me about our Chickasaw blood. Years ago. At a kitchen table, in passing, the way these things get told — as simple fact, no ceremony attached. I believed her. I just didn’t have proof.

I’d messaged a second cousin about it once, back in 2023. One exchange. Then nothing, for three years, until this record surfaced and gave that old message somewhere to go. I sent it again: I found him.

The blood I was raised to be proud of finally had a name and a date and a roll number behind it. Not a story anymore. Documented.

I’ll tell you the truth about what that felt like. It was exciting. I love history, and I have always been proud of where I come from, and finding the proof felt like a door opening rather than one closing. Some people go looking for records like this and find grief waiting on the other side. I understand why. The Dawes Rolls were never neutral. They were a tool of policy, a way to measure people down to fractions, to decide who the government would recognize and who it would erase by paperwork instead of by force. That history doesn’t disappear just because the record happens to confirm something you wanted to be true.

But I also know what it means to spend your life being told who you are by other people, and then finally find a piece of paper that says, yes, this part of what you were told is real. Willie Lee Carroll was real. He was a newborn baby in a basket somewhere, and a stranger with a clipboard wrote his name down on behalf of a government deciding what to do with people like him, and that single piece of paper is the reason I can trace my blood back to him with certainty instead of family legend.

I’m not done with that record. I don’t think I ever will be. Every name on it is a door to another name, another question, another relative I haven’t found yet. That’s the part nobody warns you about when you start this kind of research — it doesn’t end with one answer. It opens into ten more questions, and you find yourself wanting to know all of them.

This is where the inheritance gets harder to hold all at once. The blood is real. The pride is real. And the document that proves both of those things was written by people who saw my great-grandfather as a number on a roll before they ever saw him as a person. I’m learning to hold all of that together instead of picking just one part to feel.

August 5, 2026
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.”

June 26, 2026
How to Outsmart Your Own Brain (Harder Than the Algorithm)
A raccoon curiously investigates books and objects on a cluttered attic desk.

How to Outsmart Your Own Brain (Harder Than the Algorithm)

or The Raccoon in Your Attic

Let’s get one thing straight:
Beating the algorithm is child’s play compared to outsmarting your own brain.

Algorithms are predictable.
They like consistency, chaos, and the occasional trending audio.
Your brain, however?

Your brain is a raccoon. Think about a clever, nocturnal, emotionally dramatic raccoon who lives in your attic and rearranges your furniture at 3 a.m.

And yet — this is the creature we’re supposed to rely on for creativity, courage, and getting our lives together.

So today, let’s talk about how to outsmart your own brain.
Or at least how to gently trick it into cooperating long enough to write a paragraph, send an email, or stop spiraling about something that happened in 1997.

Step 1: Accept That Your Brain Is Not Always on Your Side

Your brain has two primary goals:
- keep you alive
- keep you from doing anything remotely uncomfortable
This is why your brain will happily let you reorganize your sock drawer for three hours but will stage a full-scale rebellion when you try to write a chapter of your memoir.

Your brain is not trying to sabotage you.
It just thinks “emotional vulnerability” is the same as “being chased by a bear.”

Step 2: Give Your Brain a Job It Thinks It Invented

Your brain loves to feel important.
So instead of saying, “I’m going to write for an hour,” try:

“I’m just going to open the document so you can look at it.”

Your brain:
“Oh, well, that’s harmless. I’ll allow it.”

Five minutes later, you’re writing.
Your brain is confused, but it’s too late.

You’ve tricked the raccoon.

Step 3: Use Bribery (Your Brain Responds Well to Snacks)

You know who else responds well to snacks?
Toddlers.
Algorithms.
Golden retrievers.

Your brain is no different. Tell it: “If we write for 20 minutes, we get a treat.”

Your brain doesn’t need to know the treat is just iced coffee or a walk outside.
It just needs the promise of joy. Brains are simple like that.

Step 4: Stop Expecting Your Brain to Be Logical

Your brain will:
- remember a mistake from 12 years ago
- forget why it walked into a room
- panic over sending an email
- remain completely unfazed by global chaos
It’s not logical. It’s emotional. It’s a teenage drama queen. It’s doing its best.

Trying to reason with your brain is like trying to negotiate with a squirrel holding a stolen granola bar.

Just… don’t.

Step 5: Outsmart Fear by Making It Bored

In my experience, fear thrives on attention. It loves drama. It loves a spotlight. The trick? The trick is to make fear so bored it wanders off to bother someone else.

How?

Do the thing anyway.
Do it quietly.
Do it without ceremony.
Do it while fear is still mid-monologue.

Fear hates that.

Eleanor Roosevelt knew this. She didn’t wait to feel brave. She acted, and bravery followed.

Your brain will eventually catch up.

Step 6: Celebrate Every Tiny Victory (Your Brain Loves Praise)

Your brain lights up like a Christmas tree when you acknowledge progress.

Wrote one sentence?
Victory.

Opened the laptop?
Victory.

Didn’t spiral into existential dread before coffee?
Major victory.

Your brain is trying.
Reward it.

The Real Secret to Outsmarting Your Brain

Here it is — the truth about outsmarting your brain:

You don’t outsmart your brain by overpowering it.
You outsmart your brain by partnering with it.

By understanding its fears and honoring its limits. By gently nudging it toward the life you want. By choosing courage even when your brain is screaming, “Absolutely not, we are not doing that.”

Your brain is not the enemy.
It’s the narrator.
The protector.
The raccoon in the attic doing its best with the tools it has.

And with a little humor, a little compassion, and a few strategic snacks, you can lead it — step by trembling step — into the life you’re meant to live.
June 17, 2026
Reclaiming the Future: Why I’m Writing a Memoir About Abuse, Hypervigilance, and Healing.
The Mask of the “Perfect” Survivor

When people think of trauma, they often think of visible chaos. They don’t often think of the straight-A student, the hyper-reliable employee, the CEO, or the chronic people-pleaser. But for me, perfectionism and people-pleasing weren’t just personality traits; they were survival mechanisms born out of childhood physical and sexual abuse, and utter abandonment.

If I was perfect, I was safe. If I made everyone else happy, I wouldn’t be left behind again.

But as I sit down to write my memoir, I am reckoning with the massive, hidden cost of that response. Living in a constant state of hypervigilance takes a heavy toll on the mind and body. Even now, years later, I still battle the echoes of that hypervigilance in my day-to-day life. It is a war I am mostly winning, but it requires active, daily strategy. There are moments when I must stop everything that I’m doing, take a few seconds to do a quick “check-in” on the way my body is feeling, and respond in a way that releases the tension. My body gets so tense and so on edge sometimes that I now experience chronic pain diagnosed as an “unspecified autoimmune disorder”. At lunch with a couple of girlfriends last week, I choked on a sip of water. My friend, Mary, started pounding me on the back, trying to help me get my breath back. Pain wracked my body every time she touched me. She didn’t know, and I didn’t tell her. But it was a moment that reminded me of a strange irony: I have to be intensely vigilant about managing my own hypervigilance (sounds crazy, eh?).

Why I am Reliving This on the Page

Writing a memoir is not just about recounting the past; it is about excavating it. It is incredibly difficult to put these lived experiences into words. So, why do it? [2, 3, 4, 5]

The purpose behind my book is simple: To show you that your past does not get the final say in who you become.

Trauma tries to convince us that our ceiling has been lowered—that certain dreams are no longer available to us because we are “broken.” I am writing this book to shatter that lie.

The Healing Framework

In the book, I’m sharing not just my story, but the actual framework I used to heal and navigate a world that my body constantly told me was unsafe. I want to encourage others to realize that they can still become exactly who they were meant to be.
- The Writer is still in there.
- The Teacher is still in there.
- The CEO and Entrepreneur are still entirely possible.
Those opportunities still exist. They are still real. Your trauma might have delayed the timeline, but it cannot cancel the destination.

It is Not Too Late

If you are reading this and you feel exhausted from holding up the weight of perfectionism, or if your body is tired from being on constant high alert—I see you.

I am writing this book for us. To remind us that it is not too late to put down the heavy armor of our survival mechanisms and step into our true calling. If you’re interested in my progress or updates, feel free to subscribe!I’d love to hear from you in the comments: What is a dream or a role (Writer, Leader, Creator) that you felt was lost to your past, but you are ready to reclaim?
June 10, 2026