Toni Peters – Author

Tag: resilience

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 Difference Between Hard and Harmful

This piece mentions a recent stroke and a family injury. Nothing graphic.

Toni Peters. October 21, 2026.

Some things are hard because they’re worth it and some are just grinding you down, and a lot of women were raised to confuse the two. To think suffering is virtue.

Today I spent two hours with an amazing group of women listening to them share their challenges and opportunities. Mostly, the conversation was about challenges. There was a common thread in the conversation. Boundaries. But there was also an underlying theme that bothers me in this moment.

These ladies are TIRED.

I could relate. Two months ago I had a stroke. And let me tell you, I’ve never experienced this level of tired before. There have been days when I could barely get out of bed. And there were days when I knew not to even try. For once, I listened to my body and what it was telling me. It needed rest. It needed to heal. It needed to process what I’d just experienced and what that experience meant for the rest of my life. I certainly never pictured a stroke into my life, but who does?

I wrote the whole of that story here, if you want it.

Some things are hard because they’re worth it.
Some are just grinding you down.

A warm cup of coffee, keys, and a rumpled cloth rest on a sunlit wooden kitchen table.

I see it in my two daughters. My oldest, struggling to wrap her head around the fact that my grandson suffered a broken neck due to a football tackle. My youngest, a young mother trying to raise two toddlers on her own with limited resources. My girls are tired.

I wonder. How did we get to this place?

But what I really want to know is this: how do we handle what life throws at us without it driving us to sheer exhaustion?

It’s not a question of faith or hope. And if you tell me that God will never put more on us than we can stand, I’m going to ask you to show me where it says that in His Word.

Show me where it says that.

Where did you first learn that suffering was virtue? A parent, a church, a job, a marriage. Tell me. I’m still working out where I learned it.

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 21, 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
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
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
“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.
April 1, 2026
Warrior storytelling with the cheyenne-arapaho people

– Feb 25^th 2026

WARRIOR STORYTELLERS IN WATONGA

Today, I’m writing from Watonga, Oklahoma, where I’m attending the first Workshop on Native American Generational Trauma. Every time I step into this space, I’m reminded that healing is not theoretical here — it’s lived, spoken, carried, and shared. It’s ceremony in motion.

Over the past two days, I’ve met so many Warrior Storytellers. Truth-tellers. People who carry histories in their bones and still choose to speak them aloud. I’ve listened to stories about the first use of peyote and its healing properties, stories about land taken and lives lost, stories about families uprooted and relocated to confined spaces by a government that saw Native people as obstacles rather than sovereign nations.

These stories are not easy. They’re not meant to be. They are the kind of truths that reshape you simply by being heard.

But woven through every account of loss is something else — something fierce, steady, and unbreakable. I’ve heard stories of resilience that defy logic. Stories of courage that rise from places where hope should not have survived. Stories of people who refused to let their lineage end in silence.

Today, I again share space with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people of Oklahoma, and I am both honored and humbled to listen and learn. There is a generosity here — a willingness to let others witness the weight and the beauty of their lived experience. It is not something I take lightly.

The message that keeps echoing through every session, every conversation, every breath of this gathering is this:

You didn’t heal just for you.
You healed so that the trauma ends with you.

The anger, the silence, the shame — none of it belongs on the shoulders of a great people. And the commitment I hear over and over is clear:
It will not be passed down. Not anymore.

This workshop is a reminder that healing is not a destination. It’s a responsibility. A reclamation. A return to self, to community, to story.

And I am grateful — deeply, humbly grateful — to be here, witnessing the rise of Warrior Storytellers who are choosing truth over silence, courage over fear, and future over fracture.

February 25, 2026