The Stories That Have Been Writing Your Life.
Uncover the hidden beliefs shaping your life and discover the power to rewrite your story.
What If the Story Isn't the Story?
Raise your hand if you've ever had something happen that changed you.
- A job loss.
- A betrayal.
- A relationship that ended.
- A door that closed.
- A promotion you didn't get.
- A business that didn't work out.
Something that made you question who you were.
Even though you're reading this instead of sitting in an audience, I bet you pictured yourself raising your hand.
Because if you've lived long enough, you may have experienced one of those moments.
Now imagine I asked you to keep your hand raised if someone responded with one of these well-meaning phrases:
"You'll be fine."
"Stay positive."
"Everything happens for a reason."
"Just move on."
"You have so much to offer."
Most people mean well. I know they do. But what if your mind, body, and soul had other plans?
The Story I Thought I Was Living
For years, I believed losing my job changed my life. I was wrong. Losing my job didn't create my fear. It revealed a story that had been quietly shaping my life for decades.
After spending more than twenty-five years helping build a business, my career ended unexpectedly.
I thought I was grieving the loss of a job. Then something happened that made even less sense. My childhood stutter returned. I hadn't struggled with it for decades. Why now?
I assumed it was stress. But deep down, I knew there had to be something more. That single question—Why now?—sent me on a journey I never expected to take.
The Fear Under the Fear
Over the next several years, I searched for answers through therapy, journaling, leadership development, Toastmasters, neuroscience, and eventually RTT hypnotherapy.
Those RTT sessions changed everything. Instead of trying to fix the woman I had become, I was guided back to the little girl I had once been.
What I discovered surprised me. The job loss wasn't what I feared. Not really. The fear underneath was much older.
As a little girl, I learned that staying quiet often felt safer than speaking up. The stutter wasn't the problem. It was the alarm.
I watched women I loved lose the lives they had built. I didn't have the words to describe it then, but my young mind quietly came to a conclusion:
Nothing is permanent. Safety can disappear. Everything you build can be taken away.
Children don't analyze those moments. They absorb them. And without realizing it, I carried that belief into adulthood.
My career became more than a career. It became my safety. My identity. The evidence that the world was finally predictable.
When I lost my job, it wasn't simply employment that disappeared. It was my identity. It was the illusion that I was safe.
The Stories We Never Knew We Were Living
That experience changed the way I see people.
Today, I believe many of us are living lives shaped by stories we never consciously chose.
- Stories about success.
- Stories about love.
- Stories about money.
- Stories about failure.
- Stories about aging.
- Stories about what women should be.
- Stories about whether we're enough.
Most of these stories were written long before we had the awareness to question them. We inherit them from:
- Our families.
- Our experiences.
- Our culture.
- Our environment.
By the time we're old enough to question those stories, they've already begun shaping our decisions.
Then one day, life happens.
- A divorce.
- A diagnosis.
- A betrayal.
- A layoff.
- A child leaves home.
- Retirement.
And suddenly, the story we've been living no longer fits the life we're trying to live.
Becoming Curious
For years, I asked the wrong question: Why did this happen to me?
Today, I ask a different one: What is this experience trying to show me?
That single shift changed my life.
Curiosity opens doors that self-criticism keeps locked. Instead of judging ourselves, we can begin asking:
Where did this belief come from?
Is it actually true?
Does it belong to me... or did I inherit it?
Sometimes the first answer isn't the real answer. That's why I often ask myself one more question:
What's the fear under the fear?
Because fear has a remarkable way of protecting stories we didn't even know we were carrying.
The Rescue
One of the most powerful moments of my journey wasn't finding an answer. It was finding myself.
The little girl who had spent years trying to hide wasn't broken. She wasn't weak. She wasn't wrong. She had simply done what children do. She made sense of the world with the understanding she had at the time.
For years, I thought I needed someone else to rescue me. Closure. Validation. An explanation. An apology.
Instead, I realized something I never expected: I had gone back to rescue her.
Not by changing the past, but by giving her what she had needed all along: safety, compassion, understanding, and a promise that she would never have to carry those fears alone again.
The woman I became finally helped her feel safe.
Writing the Next Chapter
People often ask me what changed. The answer isn't that I became fearless. It's that I became aware.
Aware of the stories I had been living.
Aware of the beliefs I had mistaken for truth.
Aware that I had the ability to question them.
And ultimately... to rewrite them.
I've come to believe that's where freedom begins. Not when life goes according to plan. Not when someone finally gives us closure.
But the moment we realize...
The story isn't the story.
Because the stories that have been writing your life... don't have to write your next chapter.
You do.
