Please don’t wait 40 years like I did.

After 600 self-help books, a house fire, and the long road home to myself… here’s what I finally know for sure

Often I’m asked why I’m so adamant about what I do — guiding women back to their passions, their dreams, and most of all, their relationship with their own soul. This true story — about me and a movie called Same Time, Next Year — will shed some light on how I came to this mission.

It all begins in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, a little town seven miles northwest of Tulsa. It was 1978. I had a three year old daughter at the time.

I was all of twenty-three years old, already five years into my marriage to the preacher-man. My life was nothing but a daily to-do list of what I should do, what I might do — never, ever what I wanted to do. Wanting would have been unforgivable.

The Sand Springs Women’s Club — a very proper local ladies’ group — had it written right into their charter that all ministers’ wives were automatic members, no forms, no way out, no say in the matter.

So, I went. Once. The one time I chose to attend their gathering happened to be the day they were all going to see a newly released movie at the theater: Same Time, Next Year.

Thank goodness — at least I got to see a movie, because I knew — knew — I could not sit in someone’s perfectly decorated parlor, nibbling petit fours off a china plate with a lace napkin on my lap, pretending to belong. I have never once successfully pretended to belong anywhere, and that day was not about to be the exception.

As it turns out, that movie launched the beginning of my thirst to understand life. And that’s not nothing. After all — I was a preacher’s wife, wasn’t I?

According to everyone else, we preacher’s wives were supposed to have it all together and know about life.

Not hardly — not at all, especially not at twenty-three.

All I can say is — thank goodness for that movie, because it cracked open everything for me.

Same Time, Next Year, starring Ellen Burstyn and Alan Alda, is the story of a couple who meet by chance at a retreat on the California coast.

After spending one night together, they make a promise to meet again at the same place, the same weekend, every year.

But what really caught my attention — and stayed with me — wasn’t the romance.

It was the breathtaking evolution of Ellen Burstyn’s character.

When they first meet in the 1950s, she’s the perfect picture of a stay-at-home wife — heels, pearls, polite smiles. But year after year, scene after scene, she grows.

Her clothes change, her language sharpens, her energy expands.

By 1978, she’s running her own dynamic catering business — a woman who’d completely remade herself.

Even back then, something inside me knew: this life I was living could change. I wasn’t stuck!

That movie marked me.

It set a yearning inside me that never left — a question I would carry for decades: how do I grow? How do I become someone I can respect?

That fortunate night was the beginning of my quest — my thirst to understand more, to live more, to experience more.

I had a taste, and I wanted more, although it would be many years before my search became serious.

It wasn’t until my mid-thirties, when I met the man who became my second husband — who introduced me to new thought and new age teachings — that my world cracked open again, this time even deeper.

The search was long, winding, sometimes painful.

But from the time I saw Same Time, Next Year until now, my life has been an unfolding.

I’ve been a music producer, a talent manager, a published writer in music magazines, and the owner of a small online newspaper at one time.

I’ve had dinner with Gorbachev, Richard Nixon, Madeleine Albright, and a whole slew of others.

I was exposed to a buffet of life — choices and paths laid out right in front of me.

I would question these “bigger-than-life” people, asking them how they came to build the lives they had. None of their answers were particularly memorable, but they had one thing in common: they just knew, without a doubt, that they were on a mission.

Each conversation confirmed something I already sensed: there was far more to a happy, successful life than what I was shown growing up in the bayous of South Louisiana.

This was when my obsession with self-help began.

At one point, before my house in D.C. burned down, I had a library of over 600 self-help books — enough, in hindsight, that the fire marshal probably should have asked a few questions.

I devoured every one of them, convinced the next chapter, the next tool, the next revelation would unlock the thing I couldn’t quite name.

And somewhere along the way, it did.

But — let’s be honest — it didn’t have to take as long as it did.

Looking back, I can see it clearly now: I wasn’t just committed to growth. I was addicted to it.

That’s why I often call the self-help industry the original codependent relationship.

I had it all — the books, the life coach, the tools.

But it still wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t until life forced me into brutal honesty that everything began to change.

At that point, I had lost nearly everything — no one to lean on, no sense of safety, not physically and certainly not financially.

All I had was myself, and my cat, who offered no advice whatsoever and judged me the entire time anyway.

That’s when I sequestered myself — shut out every outside voice and surrendered to the power of simply sitting with me.

No announcements, no declarations.

I just decided: I’m staying in.

I shuttered the windows — not to block the world, but to soften it.

And in that hush, I finally heard something I hadn’t in years: my own soul, whispering back.

In the evenings, I sat by the window and let the moon keep me company; in the mornings, it was the birds, singing just for me, it seemed.

With each quiet day, the shroud I had worn — stitched from years of expectations and obligations — began to fall away.

Just like Ellen Burstyn’s character in Same Time, Next Year, I realized that time wasn’t my enemy — it was my teacher.

She didn’t let age or circumstance define her. She grew, changed, and broke the rules that were never really hers to follow.

By the end, she wasn’t the same woman she’d been at the start — she was fuller, wiser, more alive.

And that’s when it clicked for me: time doesn’t close doors. We do.

But we can open them, too, at any moment.

Peace had finally replaced the need to understand.

And in that peace, something new was born — a desire to carry a torch for others.

Especially for women with stories like mine — women who spent too many years living by shoulds instead of desires.

I want to share what I’ve learned, to show other women how to create lives they’re proud of, to help them recover the dreams they thought were lost, and the power they were never taught they had.

And now, after all this time, I can tell you the truth it took me half a lifetime to find: honesty with yourself, and the willingness to actually know your soul.

That’s why I offer the resources I offer today.

Not because it’s trendy, not because it’s easy.

But because I don’t want you — or anyone — to spend your retirement searching for what’s already inside, waiting.

You do have to be hungry for it.

No one can do that part for you.

But when you are ready, the path can be so much shorter than mine was.

That’s why I’m here, and why I create.

If you’re ready to meet yourself — not the version the world trained you to be, but the one who’s been waiting underneath all along — the BREAKTHROUGH guide is here for you.

It’s not just a guidebook — it’s a mirror, a map, a key, all at once.

It’s the starting point I wish someone had handed me the day I first woke up starving for more.

You don’t have to wait forty years. You can start today.

👉 I invite you to join this movement, now 7K strong of ladies who are breaking the noise of “ should be, or ought to do” handed to them on a silver plate. It is my delight to make my BREAKTHROUGH guide a gift to each new subscriber. It is available on the PERKS page.

Additionally annual subscriptions are available with a 20% discount, currently.

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.