The First Thing I Had to Reclaim Wasn’t a Dream—It Was Me.

They made all the decisions for me. I didn’t even know I could say no.

I never thought I’d write about this publicly. But at 69, soon turning 70—I’ve learned the cost of silence, and I’m not willing to pay it anymore.

I was twenty years old, six weeks postpartum, and sitting in a room full of church ladies who were thirty to forty years older than me. It was a "circle meeting"—what the Christian Women’s Fellowship called their small-group gatherings. The goal was to build community, fellowship, and support. But that day, I didn't feel supported. I felt a sharp, sudden pain in my chest. I thought I was dying.

They were kind, those women. They laid me on a couch and waited for my husband to come pick me up. He was the associate minister of the church, and I was the minister's wife. In that world, appearances mattered more than autonomy. We didn't talk about inner lives. We certainly didn't talk about choice.

The next day was a Sunday. No doctors were available. I was brought to the emergency room. Hear that again: I was brought. I didn’t make the choice. I didn’t even know I could.

The on-call doctor walked in—a member of our church. The first thing he asked my husband was, "Do you have insurance?" The next thing he said was, "We’re going to take her gallbladder out." He never examined me. He never asked me a question. Just like that, my body became a task to manage.

I remember being put through a series of procedures and baths, observed by nurses and hospital staff as I sat in a tub, naked and shivering, deeply uncomfortable. Nobody explained what was happening or why. I was rolled into surgery, arms stretched out on either side of me, and told to count to ten. That was the last moment I had any say in anything for the next ten days.

I stayed in that hospital for ten days.

Not once did anyone ask, "How do you feel about this?" Not my doctor. Not my husband. Not even my mother or father who drove up from Louisiana. Nobody asked. And I didn’t offer. Because I didn’t know I could.

I didn’t know I had the right to have a voice.

That moment planted the seed of unrest. It would take another 17 years before I left that marriage. Another 30 before I truly reclaimed my sovereignty.

“The Red Lady” by Monica Hebert (She was in there all along.)

In those years, I noticed the women who seemed to be living lives of agency. I watched them. I listened. And most of them—quietly, compassionately—expressed pity. Not for my circumstances, but for how invisible I had become. I was the preacher's wife, the dental assistant, the mother, the housekeeper. Nobody checked in. Nobody asked if I was okay. Because I wasn't somebody you asked. I was somebody who served.

That was my training.

When I finally left, it wasn’t pretty. I didn’t walk away with a strategic plan. I ran. I met a man who became my second husband, not because I was ready to stand alone, but because I still didn’t know I could. He offered a way out. And I took it.

Ten years later, I found him in bed with a 72-year-old Ford's model.

I called my daughter. I grabbed the dogs and some underwear. I left.

That moment in the guest room didn’t feel like a breakthrough. It felt like collapse.
I wasn’t standing in triumph—I was lying on a borrowed bed, staring at a ceiling fan, unsure of what day it was or who I was anymore. The silence was deafening. But in that silence, a question rose up—soft at first, but persistent.

What do I want?

Not what should I do.
Not who should I be.
But what do I want?

I realized I didn’t know. Not really. But I was willing to find out. No, I NEEDED to find out.

So I started small. I listened. I paid attention to what made me feel even slightly alive. I followed breadcrumbs—quotes, dreams, sentences in books that felt like they were written just for me.

That curiosity cracked something open.

I started reading—devouring, really. More than 200 metaphysical books over the next few years. Ernest Holmes. Joseph Murphy. Florence Scovel Shinn. Neville Goddard. Anyone who could help me make sense of what I’d been taught to believe... and what I now suspected wasn’t entirely true.

I untangled my theology from fear. I rewrote what I thought God was. I stopped trying to earn approval—from men, from churches, from some cosmic scorekeeper in the sky.

And in that space, I found something truer. Something quieter. Something that sounded an awful lot like my own voice—finally returning home.

And what I now know - without a shred of doubt - is this:

We are never out of alignment. We are never disconnected. What changes is the quality of our alignment. How we determine that quality is the subject of future newsletters. One of my favorite topic, actually!

Life isn't a curriculum of spiritual lessons we have to learn. We aren't here to teach anyone anything. We are here to express as extensions of universal energy. Some call it God.

I call it me.

And I will never again forget that I have a say.

That I have a voice.

That I am.

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I didn’t plan to write about this.
But one morning, while brushing my teeth, I asked God a single question.
And what came through was this story—and the beginnings of something more.

For the first time in my life, I’m organizing the steps I took to become the woman I am now.
Not for a platform. Not for a program.
But as a gift for the woman who’s ready to stop surviving and start reclaiming herself.

If that’s you, you’ll find it soon—right at the Resource Table, waiting with your name on it.

Because before you reclaim the dream, you have to reclaim you.
And that’s exactly what I did. Be sure to subscribe so you will get the notice that my new soul escourt guide is available.