Women over 60 think we got it all covered, until

A soul nudge alters everything

I Could Not Have Planned Any of This

There was no way I could have known.

When I answered one direct message from a woman named Beverly, I had no idea my whole life was about to start moving in a new direction.

At the time it was just a message.

One woman reaching out. One little nudge.

But that is the thing about the soul.

It does not hand you a five year plan. It does not roll out a blueprint and say, here is exactly where this leads.

It gives you a breadcrumb.

A person. A message. A conversation. A quiet little yes that does not look like much at first.

And then, if you trust it, it drops the next one.

Yesterday I drove two and a half hours to deliver my painting, Sanctuary, to the woman who is the reason I started writing on Substack in the first place.

Think about that.

A woman I first knew through words on a screen opened the door to a whole new chapter of my life. And there I was, standing in her living room, handing her the painting she had loved from the moment she first saw it.

I had no way of knowing that one little message would lead to that moment.

None.

And yet there it was.

That is what I mean when I say the soul nudges. It does not explain itself. It does not overtalk. It just taps you on the shoulder and waits to see if you will follow.

Beverly was one of those taps.

But she was not the only one.

Around that same time, my friend Greg came into my life.

And if I am being honest, I think he has been part of the same unfolding all along. I am only just now seeing that clearly.

For the last eighteen months, between Beverly and Greg, I have been getting nudges and breadcrumbs and quiet little alerts from somewhere deep inside me. Not loud declarations. Not neon signs. Just moments that asked me to pay attention.

Beverly nudged me toward the writing.

Greg has nudged me toward conversation.

Beverly helped call forth one part of my voice.

Greg is helping call forth another.

And neither of them arrived with a sign around their neck that said, hi, I am here to change the direction of your life.

They just arrived.

As people.

Which I am beginning to think is exactly how it works.

The universe uses other people to nudge us. Not to rescue us. Not to complete us. But to stir awake what is already sitting quietly inside us, waiting.

Yesterday made all of that suddenly visible.

There I was, delivering Sanctuary to Beverly, feeling the sweetness of how far this whole thing has come.

And there I was in the car with Greg on a long road trip that gave us something we almost never get when we are sitting on the patio back home.

Uninterrupted time.

That is why the long car rides matter so much. Nobody walks up. Nobody cuts in. Nobody breaks the spell. It is just the two of us and the road and conversation stretching out for miles.

And somewhere in all that talking, between coffee stops and laughter and stories and big musings about life, we started laying the groundwork for a podcast we are going to record together.

Again. I could not have planned that.

I could not have sat down eighteen months ago and mapped any of this out. Beverly writes me. I start Substack. Paintings sell. Greg and I build something together. A road trip. A podcast.

Life does not come that way.

It comes one breadcrumb at a time.

And just when the day was already carrying more sweetness than I knew what to do with, life did what life always does eventually.

It turned hilarious.

On the way home I told Greg I was hungry, so we pulled into a Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-thru. His driver’s side window does not work but the back one does, so he has this whole sideways technique where he pushes his seat back and reaches behind him through the back window to hand over the card.

This time he dropped mine.

So there I was. Standing outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-thru window, paying for our dinner like that was a perfectly normal thing for a grown woman to be doing while the cars behind us watched the whole absurd scene unfold.

Greg was laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

Which got me laughing so hard I could barely function.

And for the next twenty minutes, every time I needed a comeback, all I had to say was:

Well. You dropped the card.

That was enough to start us both up all over again.

And honestly, that may be my favorite part of this whole story.

Because the soul’s breadcrumbs are not always solemn.

Sometimes they lead you into someone’s living room carrying a painting that means everything.

Sometimes they lead you into a creative chapter you never saw coming.

And sometimes they lead you straight to a Kentucky Fried Chicken window where the man driving drops your card and the two of you laugh until you cannot recover.

That is life.

Sacred one minute. Ridiculous the next. Tender, funny, surprising, and far more alive than anything your mind could have planned on its own.

Yesterday reminded me that the soul never gives the whole map.

It just says:

Here. This person. This message. This car ride. Follow this.

And if you do — if you trust enough to follow what feels quietly alive — one day you look around and realize your life has become something you never could have built by yourself.

It started with a direct message. A friendship. A painting. A long drive. A dropped credit card.

And it became everything.

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Now I want to ask you something.

Think back.

Was there a moment — a message, a conversation, a chance meeting — that quietly changed the direction of your life? Something that did not look important at the time but turned out to be the beginning of everything?

And here is the harder question.

Is there a nudge sitting in front of you right now that you have been ignoring?

A person you keep thinking about. An idea that will not leave you alone. A small quiet yes you have been too scared to follow.

You do not need the whole map.

You just need to follow the next breadcrumb.

That is all Beverly was.

That is all any of it ever is.

Here is the thing about recognizing breadcrumbs.

It is not a light switch. It is not something you learn once and then you are done.

It is a practice. A gentle, patient practice of reconnecting with the part of you that knows what you actually want.

That inner wisdom has been there the whole time. Waiting. Leaving little trails for you to follow.

But we have spent so long ignoring it, second guessing it, talking ourselves out of it — that it takes time to trust it again.

That is what Building Trust With Yourself is all about

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It teaches you how to recognize those breadcrumbs. How to follow them without overthinking. How to stop the spiral of doubt that keeps you frozen.

Because here is the quiet truth: paralysis is just doubt dressed up fancy. And doubt is just fear whispering that you are not enough to know your own mind.

You are.

And the breadcrumbs are already there.

You just have to learn to see them again.