Clare Marlow | The Grit and Grace Project

6 Things You Should Do to Protect and Advance Your Career

By Clare Marlow / Work & Money, Life & Culture

Are you struggling to advance your career? The biggest mistake you can make is not something you goof up on the job, like forgetting part of your pitch during a client presentation or getting caught complaining about your boss at the coffee station (although this is a big no-no for every employee). The biggest mistake you can make in your career is the one you make against yourself. It’s underestimating your value, doubting your ideas, shrugging off praise that’s well-justified, or settling for a lower salary than you’re worth. It’s taking a so-so job when you know your education and experience qualify you for a better one—or jumping on an offer for advancement simply for the title rather than taking the time […]

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7 Tips to Improve Your Credit Score

By Clare Marlow / Work & Money, Life & Culture

We recently had to put a new, expensive tile roof on our house, and we didn’t have enough to pay for the entire job, so my husband and I applied for a home equity line of credit. When we went to meet with the banker, she coolly informed us that my credit was better than Kevin’s, so my name would go first on all the documents. Of course, I had to gloat a little. We both have excellent credit, so I’m not sure why my score was over 800, and his was lower (although still excellent), but it was a sweet little opportunity for some momentary teasing. Credit scores, however, are not a topic to be taken lightly. Most of us, especially

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Post-traumatic Growth: Finding Hope on the Other Side

By Clare Marlow / Purpose

Post-traumatic Growth sounds like an oxymoron; growth after trauma. But after talking with some childhood cancer survivors, I realized I know a lot of people exhibiting this phenomenon. Essentially, it’s the idea that individuals can be changed in radically good ways by their struggle with trauma. This does not diminish the impact of the battle; it just offers hope for the other side. This may seem impossible in the midst of heartache, but I can assure you I have seen lives that prove this true. When the battle’s over, what remains? I’ve talked to several young adults who walk on eggshells because their cancer might return, or are disfigured or disabled by surgeries to remove tumors when they were four or six or

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6 Easy Ideas to Refresh Your Life Right Now

By Clare Marlow / Life & Culture

When I think about things I want for myself, the first word that comes to my mind is refreshment. To me, to refresh something means to breathe new life into it. The dictionary also defines refresh this way: “to add new vigor and energy.” Which of us doesn’t want that? There’s really no area of my life that doesn’t need newness, invigoration, or fresh energy, but some will take more rest, work, and time than others. So I enlisted some ladies, including a couple of busy working moms of young children, to come up with a list of “doable” areas of life that women can refresh in spring or at the beginning of a new year. Things that can provide an immediate

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When Life Gives You a New Normal

By Clare Marlow / Best Of, Life & Culture

I wouldn’t have given it a name, the gut-wrenching, upside down and inside out change in my life. But I was at a weekend women’s retreat led by a well-known author and speaker whose son had been sentenced to life in prison for killing a pedophile, and she called the rocking of my world my “new normal.” At the time, all I could think was, “What the heck could be remotely normal about transforming in an instant from being a wife to a widow and single mom? I don’t want a new normal!” Many of us squirm over the term “normal” for implying that we’re all alike and our lives are parallel. Nothing is further from the truth; we’re all amazingly unique

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5 Tips for Grit and Grace as a Single Mom

By Clare Marlow / Motherhood

Being a single mom is hard. And beautiful. I was a single mom for nine years. It was not easy. It was not cool. It was definitely not what I signed up for—or remotely anticipated—when I got married and had the child I had always desired. I was walking pretty smoothly through life when it went sideways. I became a single mom in a single instant when my husband died suddenly and tragically. I was in utter anguish over his death. Angry, oh so very angry, about being a widow. But I did not ever experience anguish over being a single mom. Heartbreak about my daughter losing her dad? Big time! Fear that I couldn’t raise her as well as two parents? Absolutely. Lots of it! Anxiety about how I

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20 Things Moms Can Do (With a Little Extra Time)

By Clare Marlow / Motherhood

Oh, the things you moms can do… When the kids go back to school! I know there are some of you mamas who absolutely love summer. You relish having your kids with you every minute of every day and doing all the fun things you don’t have time to do with them during the school year. Others of you are pulling your hair out from trying to keep the littles so busy that they don’t end up beating on each other or crying “I’m bored” every 20 minutes. Working women, you’re just ready for a break from the endless parade of summer camps… And the hefty bills for those, right? Whatever your feelings about the kids going back to school, one thing

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8 Ways to Take the Fear Out of Networking

By Clare Marlow / Work & Money

For many executives and business owners, networking is a non-negotiable part of marketing and generating leads. When you are passionate about what you do, it can be a key way to spread the word about how your products or services can help others grow their own businesses. If you’re an extrovert, you probably get a little jolt of adrenaline over the endless possibilities for meeting interesting new people and the challenge of persuading some of them to give you their business. But for busy working moms, young career starters, introverts, and exhausted over-achievers, just hearing the word “networking” can make you long to curl up in a ball under your desk. It’s intimidating and draining to constantly generate productive small talk. The

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How to Be Prepared Financially in Case of a Tragic Loss

By Clare Marlow / Work & Money

I have a sweet friend who lost her husband very unexpectedly. In the midst of the shock and grief, figuring out their personal finances caused tremendous stress because she had no idea where their financial records were kept. Her sons spent days digging through paperwork and unlocking her husband’s computer to find his will, trust, life insurance and retirement policies, and bank account records. Her husband also handled all the finances for his 83-year-old mother, making the task doubly stressful and concerning. I have girlfriends, also, who haven’t a clue as to what retirement accounts their husbands have invested in, how much life insurance they have, or even the balance in their bank accounts. I’m guilty as well! I pay some of

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This Is How to Enjoy Your Work More

By Clare Marlow / Work & Money

Lots of women love their jobs. That is truly something to be celebrated! But many women are in transition, working one place to gain skills for something better, or struggling in a position that doesn’t fit their gifts and talents because they need a job to pay the bills now. There are some things you can’t change about a difficult workplace, like boring assignments, a grumpy boss, or difficult coworkers. All you can do is make the best of it. Below are five ideas to care for your heart at work…and perhaps help pave the way for something better. And if you’re one of those women who love your job already, these ideas might make it even sweeter! Give praise to others

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Why Now Is the Time You Should Rethink Your “Purpose”

By Clare Marlow / Purpose

It may be time for all of us to stop obsessing about our purpose. Does that statement shock you? I can assure you it did me the first time I thought it! After all, our purpose is us, right? It’s our heart and soul, who we are, who we’re meant to be, what we’re meant to accomplish. Our imprint on the world. Purpose is a buzzword right now for women. Not so much for men, who seem to bind their purpose to their career easily. They may be a husband and father, but their worth and identity is so solidly wrapped up enough in their job that it’s uncommon to find one who ponders his “purpose.” I think we need to stop.

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Every One Of Us Can Help Vulnerable Children

By Clare Marlow / Life & Culture, Purpose

In his book Doing Good Is Simple, Chris Marlow issues a profound four words of motivation: “Get in the boat.” Marlow is a North Carolina pastor who started a worldwide ministry after coming home from a “mission trip” and seeing starving orphans on the streets of Zimbabwe that he had absolutely no way to help. Ten years later, his ministry, Help One Now, provides homes, meals, school, and sex trafficking rescue to children in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and four countries in Africa. The point and purpose of Marlow’s 2016 book about his own journey from cushy church job to nonprofit orphan care is that every single one of us can help vulnerable children right where we are. We don’t need

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How to Quit Your Job With Class

By Clare Marlow / Work & Money

I had a job once with great income and opportunity, but I didn’t like it. Some of the people I worked with were really nice. The work benefitted seniors and I cared about them. But in just about every way, I was a square peg in a round hole and I wanted desperately to find a square hole. I talked myself into a new job with a man I had known for several years after running into him fortuitously one weekend. He had a manufacturing business for products that held absolutely no interest to me, but the job was in marketing and that was right up my alley. Plus, he was a really great guy; a good family man, smart, kind, and

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You Need to Care for Your Heart With Grace

By Clare Marlow / Faith

A friend of mine gifted me a coveted Fiddleleaf Fig tree before moving across the country. You know what they are—just open any interior design magazine or look up pretty home pictures on Pinterest and you’ll see one happily living in an adorable basket in a sunny corner by a perfect chair. Despite my lifelong brown thumb, I have actually managed to not only keep my own two-year-old Fiddleleaf alive, but also watch it grow to more than seven feet tall. They’re super cool looking, but kind of pricey and usually only sold at specialty nurseries, so when she offered me hers for free I was happy to cart it home. Except…in preparation for a massive moving sale, she had placed it

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Do You Have to Like Your Job?

By Clare Marlow / Work & Money

So you have a job that you don’t like or don’t find fulfilling. Welcome to the club! Most of us have had more than one job that made us repeatedly lay our heads down on our desks and ask, “Why me?” It takes both grit and grace to endure circumstances like these! But after a series of jobs that occasionally had me question my worth, value, and purpose, I can look back and say with confidence that each one had merit. Each one led to something better. And yours will too, if you keep a positive attitude. It’s kind of like a pyramid, with the first not-so-great job at the top. It’s a small space up there and you might feel confined,

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The Seesaw Aftermath of Losing My Husband to Suicide

By Clare Marlow / Faith

I have never been able to reconcile my seesawing beliefs about suicide. About the suicide of my first husband, Gary. He was handsome, fit, smart, playful, an adventurer. I loved him deeply and he deeply loved me. He cared about my heart and my dreams. He was a fun and tender and wise father to his children. A man who never took a sick day off work, jogged three miles a day, loved God, was a gifted storyteller, and made long-lasting friends every single place he went. A man whose death packed a church that seats 600 even though we were relatively new to our home across the country from where we grew up and lived for decades. A man who kept

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Paring Your Wardrobe When You Can’t Commit to a Capsule

By Clare Marlow / Health & Beauty

I’ve been reading about capsule wardrobes for a couple of years, and we’ve written about them before. You can find that article here. They intrigue me for a couple of reasons. First, they propose that the few pieces you own are high quality, and I’ve always been a TJ Maxx wear-it-and-toss-it kind of girl. Second, my heart is increasingly burdened for the extreme poor and suffering people in the world, so unnecessary consumerism is becoming less appealing. But…I love clothes! And jewelry. And trends. Gah! It’s an ongoing struggle, and up until now I’ve handled it by continually weeding my closet of a few pieces every couple of months and donating them. But while I was in Haiti recently, during a brief downtime

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