Michele Marie Campbell

Michele Marie Campbell: Speaker: Michele Marie Campbell, First Responder and Published Author, Law EnforcementMichele Marie Campbell: Everybody makes choices, and they all have problems, and everybody has a story.What does being an Influential Woman mean to you?Michele Marie Campbell: OK, well, they asked me to explain what being an influential woman means to me. I don't really feel like I am an influential woman. I think that when someone is true to themselves and they try to Do the best they can to Fulfill their goals and their dreams by making smart choices and understanding the difference between right and wrong and good and bad and good versus evil. I think that makes a huge difference. You see people all the time that have, that have all of this. We used to call it the Goo Goo Gaga phase, where you, oh, they're rich, they're famous, oh, they're beautiful, oh, I wanna be like them. Here's the thing, I've lived on a few different sides of that fence, and I'm gonna tell you that people that have money. I don't care if they have money, they have stuff, they, they, they have power. Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time, and we all bleed the same color, and here's the biggest part. Everybody makes choices, and they all have problems, and everybody has a story. You see it all the time. All you have to do is watch the news and in my mind, I think that if I can make the difference by sharing my story. And if you, my, my series of books called Mother in Blue, the first one laying the foundation is exactly that, it lays the foundation for you to start out my storyline of what I've been through, and I feel like if a person can go through A struggle of being in a huge hole of debt, having no place to live, initially I had zero support, so I did a lot of things, not terrible things. I just had to make, different choices on how I was gonna eat one day, or, how I was going to put gas in my car to get to one of the 3 or 4 jobs I had in 3 states, and so I don't even, somebody said, you're not a survivalist, you're a warrior. And actually it's kind of funny because one of my lieutenants gave me a bracelet and on the inside, It says, I'm a warrior, there's a bad word in there, but, it meant a lot to me. And I think that I don't feel like it's necessarily that I'm an influential woman. I'm not out there trying to take people's money. I see a lot of that too. I see a lot of, a lot of people out there, sure, do, do I need to make money from my books? Do I want to get my, platform for some of my stuff out there, but I do that as a hobby and to be able to, do things to enjoy myself in terms of, my books and the media platform because they're gonna put my story hopefully to screen, that's not free. I have to hire people. So again, you never know everybody's story, you never know where things are coming from, and I still don't know exactly how I'm doing that, but, again, you work that out, you figure out how, to to make these dreams and to make these things that you wanna do, Come true. I think that it means a lot to me. The church made the mistake, somebody called me a priestess. I think that's kind of funny, but I'm gonna roll with that. I, I just, if I can make a difference, telling my story, if I can share, if somebody tells me their story and they don't understand where the good and the silver lining is, I'm happy to help somebody do that. I'm not perfect, nobody is, I have friends in High places of Hollywood and all over the place and all over, all stacks, and I think everybody's got something. Nobody's perfect, and I think we can all benefit from each other, and that's really all that matters to me. That's the only reason I feel like I do, so that's it. Hope it helps.What's one piece of advice you would give to younger women chasing their dreams?Michele Marie Campbell: I think we as women allow. Too many other things to Fill our heads with what's important. We all grow up in different times and The era in which I grew up in, it was you put your head down, you Went to school, you played sports, you applied to colleges, you went to college, you worried about what you were gonna do for a career and you would get a job, then you'd worry about falling in love and The House and and the white picket fence. A lot of us that grew up in that era didn't. Make those choices, I would say. That keeping life as simple as you possibly can and being true to yourself is what's super important because If you're someone that has, that is young, you're not married, you have, and we have different scenarios, so bear with me, and you have no children and not really many responsibilities, then I would say focus on what your goal in your career is, and don't let anything else stand in your way. Don't let any, don't let any men stand in your way, because I can promise you that When you're super young. It's not always love that you, so we'll just leave that there. If you're someone like myself who was married for a super long time and you're divorced and you have some responsibilities, I point to my retired canine, and you have a job and etc. Then you have to prioritize not just your goals and your responsibilities, but your finances, and you have to, you have to be able to understand, what's most important and how things have to go realistically without giving up what you want and what's important right now and how that looks going down the road. There are some, there are some women out there that have platforms where they're telling you to pay them money so they can teach you these things. I'm half in the bag with that because I think there's some women out there that have so much that they don't, if they have that kind of money to give to someone else to teach them something they can learn on their own. I don't know. There's, there's so many women out there that I see that they've got no idea how much they have and what's right in front of them, and maybe they do need to be taught. Maybe they do need to see, and maybe it's because they never had that, and I'm not criticizing anybody. I'm just saying that you, you have to sometimes you have to separate your brain from your heart and your heart from your brain, and yes, that's two separate things, and Sometimes you have to understand that you live in a different world now, and I, I guess the, the biggest piece of advice is exactly that. You got to be true to yourself. You have to organize and prioritize whatever is in your life, no matter what it is, and there's women out there that are raising kids on their own. I did that for a short time and That's not easy. And, when we have little kids in our lives, they come first, but there is ways to find time for yourself, and there is ways to do things for yourself. If I were to look back on my younger self, I probably wouldn't have got married. I would have done exactly what I was starting to do and focused on my career, and I got sidetracked. So, and look where I am now. Um, 25 years of doing for everybody else, and now I'm doing for myself, and, maybe that's the way it was meant to be. We just don't, and that's the way I look at it. I look at it like I am right where I need to be right now and moving forward. I just got to stay focused and organized, and that's what I would say. To, anybody else that's chasing these dreams, whatever they may be, that's it.