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I was watching my ad results. People were clicking. They were curious enough to look. But nobody was signing up. I kept refreshing. Kept watching the clicks. No registrations. I had spent money I didn't have to spend on something I believed in completely. And the silence on the other end was loud. The question that follows a moment like that is never really about the numbers. It's always the same question underneath: is it me? Am I not good enough to do something like this? I sat with that for a while. Then someone left a comment on one of my Facebook videos. I had shared how I used AI to help me find the right plants for my container garden. The comment said I could have used a gardening website instead. That too much AI meant I wasn't thinking things through with my own brain. I didn't get defensive. I got curious. Because that comment told me something I hadn't fully understood yet. The women I most wanted to reach weren't avoiding my workshop because they didn't need it. They were avoiding it because something about it felt like too much. A Zoom call. Being called on. Not even knowing what problem to bring. I had been starting in the middle of the story. Teaching the thinking before they'd found the thought. So I went back to the beginning. Finally Forward starts where women actually are — in the swirl. Circling the same problems. Knowing something needs to change but not being able to land on one step forward. That's where we begin. Not with answers. With one important thing to name, and one small move to make. I talked it through with Jaycee, the way I always do when I'm working something out. I ask her what she thinks. She looks up at me with those soft brown eyes, and something in all that quiet love just settles me. It's never advice exactly. It's more like permission to keep going. She's never once suggested I quit. Neither should you. If something in this letter is sitting with you, stay close this week. I'll be in touch. Hit reply and tell me if this resonates. Jane |
Practical wisdom for women starting over.
Hi friend, I got the news at work. An email I'd been waiting on for a long time, sitting right there in my inbox. I read it once. Then again, slower. It was good news. The kind you brace for so long that when it finally comes, you're not quite sure what to do with your hands. I could have gone home. I could have gone to our usual park, where I throw golf balls for Jaycee until my arm gives out. But none of that felt right for this. So I did something different. I picked a trail near me. Well...
Hi friend, This is where you'll usually find me lately. First cup of coffee, still warm in my hands. Maybe ten minutes after my feet hit the floor. Jaycee curled up beside me on the recliner, not quite ready to start her day either. And lately, before anything else, I open a little app called Yuno and let it teach me something. This week it taught me that the Vikings reached America. In longboats. About five hundred years before Columbus. Long before the story I was handed in school. I sat...
Last Sunday at my church — The Bridge in Cleveland — the pastor said something I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Our reactions and responses build a reputation that becomes our legacy. He was talking about legacy. Not what we accumulate. Not what we achieve. The reputation we leave behind — built one moment at a time by who we choose to be to the people right in front of us. Then he put up a chart. Two columns. Reaction on one side. Response on the other. Click on the image to...