Personal Growth | Grit and Grace Life

The Legacy of One Who Knew How to Love Changed Me

There are women who come and go in our lives, some leave a lasting impact, and some don’t. But then there is a whole different category of those who leave an indelible mark on you… without you really even knowing it—until they are no longer with you. As I mourned the loss of my grandma, I became fully aware of how much she had impacted me. Funny how a life speaks louder to you after they are gone. The day after Grandma had passed, my mom and her four sisters were planning the service and I received a text from Mom asking if I’d like to share anything. Honestly—my first reaction and my actual response was this: “No, I feel like the […]

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Why It’s So Important to Have a Mentor and to Be One Too

By Megan Miller / Purpose, Relationships

For 12 years (or more) we are taught. Being enrolled in school gives us structure and a guidebook to living. We are given this safe bubble of trial-and-error in playtime, classes, and teams. Then we graduate with no syllabus or bell to tell us our next move. Post-grad life is scary, post-wedding life is terrifying, and post-pregnancy life is foreign. We go through all of these life-changes without a compass. The word mentor meant nothing to me four years ago. I didn’t need someone telling me what to do. Nor did I have the patience to coach someone up to lead a life they loved. “You do you, and I’m going to do me,” was a mantra of mine. Until I had

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When You Can’t Suppress Your Pain Anymore

By Jodi Shultz / Faith

One sentence. That’s all it took. One sentence bouncing around in my head. Slowly eroding the emotional walls that I had put up. One sentence that annoyed the crap out of me but also brought about freedom. I had no idea how much I had stuffed down, all in a massive effort to “just get over it.” One sentence, that’s all it took for the dam to break loose… “If you mute the pain, you’ll mute the joy.” And just like that, all the pent-up emotions came gushing out. Anger, frustration, grief, anguish… more anger, more grief. It was like this internal storm cloud broke loose with a deluge of release and then after it had unleashed all its fury, the calm

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Ask Dr. Zoe – How to Find a Career You’re Passionate About

By Dr. Zoe / Ask Dr. Zoe

‘Carol’ Asked: I burned out and am changing careers mid-life. How can I assess my personality and joys to find a fulfilling new path? Dr. Zoe Answered: Carol, Good for you! You are doing what so many women dream of and regret not doing when they are older. It’s great that you are looking for a new path. There are tons of personality and vocation profiling tests and they can certainly be useful, but you have lived half a life. A personality test will give you some general answers about your talents, but it is not fully specific to you. What it won’t tell you is what your passions are. And it’s time to seek your passion, not what may be a

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Are You Missing Your Purpose While Searching for It?

By Jennifer Schoonover / Purpose

Purpose. That seems to be a buzz word these days. Everyone is either searching for their purpose or their purpose is to help you find yours. What does that even mean… your purpose? The word is defined as being “the reason something or someone was created” or “an objective of something.” So, we are all out here searching for our purpose in life like it’s a lost treasure that holds all the power to a fulfilled life of health and happiness. To some extent, I don’t disagree with this, but what if we are so focused on the forest that we miss the trees? What if we are so interested in finding what our life purpose is that we blow by the

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5 Steps to Turn Your Hobby Into a Business

By Christy Wright / Work & Money

One thing I love about the culture we live in is that it’s never been easier to make extra money on the side, or work from home entirely! Over the past decade I’ve coached thousands of women who run their own successful businesses, and as a result, they don’t have to sacrifice their dreams and passions to make money for their families. We live in a side-gig economy where over thirty million Americans are working as freelancers or contract workers. In the last decade alone, women-owned businesses have grown more than 60%—and that number is growing fast. With the growing popularity of websites like Etsy and Pinterest, women are turning their passions into profits now more than ever before. Maybe you’ve been enduring

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Now Is the Time to Stop Wasting Your Talent

By Macea Whisettse / Faith

Do you have talent? Undoubtedly… undisputedly… undeniably… unconditionally… the answer is yes! The Lord says in Exodus 31:3, “and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills.” And just in case some may think He wasn’t talking to us in the present day, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Great news! The Bible is still relevant, and God created each of us with unique skills and abilities called talent. Each of us will have opportunity upon opportunity to use this

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5 Steps for Remaining Hopeful in Seasons of Change

By Cherie Shaw / Faith

I hear the sand crunch under my tires as I make the last left turn toward home. My house, the last one on this dead-end road, doesn’t see a lot of traffic. I drive down the left side of the road so I can pull up to my mailbox and get my mail without leaving my car. I do this most days, most every day I have lived in this house. Today, after placing my car in neutral, after reaching into the mouth of my mailbox and retrieving its contents, after placing the stack on the empty seat beside me, I just sit. Perched at the end of my driveway, I take a long look at our little house dressed in gray

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This Is How to Use Your Gifts to Build Your Business

By Christy Wright / Work & Money, Purpose

Recently, I learned something that absolutely shocked me: the average American spends 90,000 hours at work over the course of their lifetime. That’s more than 10 whole years of your one and only life—at work! If you love your job, maybe that doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice. But if you’re among the 70% of Americans who report being unhappy at work, that’s a whole lot of precious time wasted. But here’s the good news: it doesn’t have to be that way. Imagine what it would be like to work for yourself. To set your own hours, work from home, earn an extra income for your family, and help people by using your gifts! Sound too good to be true? Well,

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Now You Can Ignore Your Haters and Pursue Your Passion

How You Can Ignore Your Haters and Pursue Your Passion

By Jodi Shultz / Purpose

Have you noticed how everybody has an opinion these days? Whether they hide behind the protection of a screen or look you square in the eye and spew their negativity, there’s a fo-real struggle with how to handle the haters who are gonna hate and the naysayers who are gonna naysay. Sister, the minute you step towards your purpose, you better be ready for the Negative Nancys and Debbie Downers to speak their mind, whether you ask for it or not. Even after two decades have passed since I stepped into my passion and purpose as a hairstylist, I still remember the comments and opinions that were hurled my way. “Oh honey, are you sure you want to do that? You won’t

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Can Women Do It All? With Christy Wright of Business Boutique – 091

By Smart Living with Grit and Grace / Podcast

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | TuneIn | RSS | More“A lot of women treat everything in their life as equal, so when push comes to shove and you’re needed in two places, you don’t know what to choose.” That quote from this week’s guest resonated with your co-hosts, Darlene Brock and Julie Graham. It probably does you too! To discuss this struggle and offer possible solutions for most women’s busyness, we brought in an expert on the subject. Meet our new best friend; Author, Business Coach, Ramsay personality and busy wife and mom, Christy Wright. In her casual yet straightforward style, she explains why it’s OK for a woman to want to pursue passions (even growing

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Freedom from the Glass Ceiling and the Glass Slipper

Do You Have to Break the Glass Ceiling to Be Strong?

By Darlene Brock / Purpose, Work & Money

“This isn’t what we fought so hard for when we finally broke the glass ceiling, is it?” I heard this question posed while watching television. In this scene, a successful female lawyer and her law firm peer were confounded by the decision of a younger, promising female lawyer who just announced her intention to resign from her career in order to become a wife and mother. This was television’s attempt to be profound, reflecting what they considered a cultural phenomenon. The glass ceiling they were speaking of is the battle waged in the ’60s and ’70s to create opportunity for females in the workplace. Opportunity for advancement, for holding the leadership positions rather than the clerical. To become the company president, not the

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How to Find Your Own Voice, With JJ Heller – 085

By Smart Living with Grit and Grace / Podcast

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | TuneIn | RSS | MoreHas your life taken an unexpected turn after experiencing disappointment? Perhaps it’s left you feeling like you’re not good at what you thought you were, or worse, not good at anything at all. This week’s guest, JJ Heller, will inspire you. Her unlikely journey from basketball player to recording artist entailed many unexpected turns. She admits that “finding her voice” (not just musically, but figuratively) took time, tweaks, and listening to valuable feedback from others. It also required patience—and persistence too! With her recorded album count now in the double digits, she can attest to the fact that when you work within your limitations and trust God

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Ask Dr. Zoe – How Do I Learn From My Role in a Breakup?

By Dr. Zoe / Ask Dr. Zoe

‘Just Thinking’ Asked: How do you analyze past relationships in which you’ve been hurt a lot, but analyze them to see if you actually had a part or caused some of the issues? It’s hard to get past your personal bias, how can you do that? Dr. Zoe Answered: Most people never do this! We all assume that we were right and our partner was wrong. Although that feels good, there’s no growth in that. So kudos to you for looking at this. First, you must always assume that you had a part in it. Blaming the other person stunts your growth. I don’t care how small your part was, it was there. Relationships don’t happen in a vacuum. Sometimes your part

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Want to Change Your Life? Change Your Mind First

By Phylicia Fraser / Life & Culture

There is never a wrong time to make a change in life; whether your benchmark is a new year, a new job or a new relationship. Recently, I realized that change is something that I needed to live a more happy and healthy life. The biggest question I always ended up with is, “How do I start?” In the past, I never really addressed how negative my thinking was. Negative thinking was in all aspects of my life, but most importantly, it was about myself, to myself. A lot of us women walk around doubting ourselves. We are so hard on ourselves that we extinguish our flame. I always questioned my abilities and even thought, “I’m not going to meet my goal.”

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Unsure of Your Purpose? Discover It With These 5 Steps

By Jenni Catron / Purpose

“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.” – Nietzsche The beginning of a new year. New hopes. New dreams. New goals. New resolutions. We start with so much hope, and yet I’ve rung in the New Year enough times now to approach it with a bit more hesitancy. Will my hopes and dreams really become reality? Is it possible to accomplish my goals? How quickly will I flounder in my resolutions? In recent years, I have shifted from writing audacious goals and declaring new resolutions, to reorienting myself around a sense of purpose and meaning. In fact, I recently re-read Victor Frankl’s seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning to help me reconnect with a sense of

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5 Life Skills You Can and Should Master to be a Strong Woman

By Jessica Harris / Purpose

I almost titled this article “Single? Here are five things you can do now to make marriage better,” but let’s be honest, it’s not all about marriage. So often, we promote skill sets as if life is a college program. Take these classes, learn these things, and this is how you will use them. We act like marriage, career, and school are all degrees for different women. If you want to get married, you do x, y, z, but if you’re going to be career-minded, you need to do j, k, l. Here’s the catch, though: that’s not how this works. The only thing that separates a great wife from a great woman is the fact that she’s married. Nothing else is

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