Some things are easier to write than to say out loud. Sometimes, the page is where we first discover what we need to say.
I created The Write to Sanity to give people a starting point for that kind of writing.
The website brings together my self-paced journal therapy program and What I Was Never Allowed to Say Out Loud: A Guided Journal for Finding Your Voice Again. You can explore guided lessons or begin with the journal’s prompts and space for your own words.
You’ll also find a coming-soon introduction to my memoir, Not What God Promised: What Happened When I Stopped Waiting for God to Save Me. It explores the beliefs that kept me inside an abusive marriage, what they cost me, and the life I began building when I stopped waiting to be rescued.
My work grows out of lived experience with silence, grief, and finding my voice. Through the program and journal, I offer room for you to explore yours.
I used to think “home” meant a place with four walls, a roof, and an address on the mailbox. But somewhere between the life I was trying to survive and the life I am now building, the definition of home became clearer.
Home wasn’t always safe. For 24 years, I lived inside a structure with walls, but also with secrets, with silence, and with the particular loneliness that comes from hiding abuse behind the appearance of a good life.
There is a phrase people use: ” Home is where you hang your heart.” I used to like it. Then I sat with it. To hang your heart, you have to take it out. And if you take it out, you die.
For those 24 years, I understood that phrase more literally than most people would want to because I felt so dead inside.
Home isn’t where I was born.
My dad was a career military man, and we moved a few times before I was old enough to know where I was living. So home was wherever my dad was stationed at the time. By the time I was 12, my dad opted out of reenlistment, and then we called California home.
My definition of home has changed a few times. It changed the first time I realized that the place I returned to every night didn’t feel like rest — it felt like performance. It changed again when we separated, and I discovered that safety isn’t always given. It sometimes has to be chosen and built.
Today, home is where the masks come off. Not the literal masks, emotional ones. The I’m fine, and I’ve got this kind. It is the place where the world doesn’t expect me to smile if I don’t feel like it, where tears can fall without needing an explanation, where laughter echoes off the walls without needing a punchline.
Home is sitting in a recliner in a sweat suit, braless, wrapped in a blanket because the A/C is so cold. There is comfort in being physically and emotionally a mess and being safe in it.
Where I remove the things I wore all day in order to feel put-together and acceptable to society. Where I sometimes strut around in whatever I please. And feel completely accepted for who I am, just as I am.
My home has a husband in it who kisses my forehead in passing, and I feel more loved in that moment than if he shouted it from a rooftop.
Arguments are allowed here, though we rarely have them.
Forgiveness lives in the walls. I have made peace with the shadows I brought with me. I’ve learned to live with them, maybe even learned to love them a little. I spent too many years afraid of what was in the dark to waste this season on being fearful of it.
There are times I catch myself feeling regret. It is emotional, sad, and heavy, with a wish that I could go back and change things. But I know better. If I changed any of it, I would not have this life or this home. And this life is the story I was always meant to tell.
Because home, I have come to understand, is not a town or an abode with bedrooms. It is where I am heard and seen. Where can I stop pretending? Where the hum of the refrigerator at two in the morning is the only background noise I need.
My home is now a safe house, a history book, and a confessional. It is where I sleep the best. It is where I cook. Where I store my good memories and where I have experienced one of my hardest ones yet.
Everyone comes when they are feeling nostalgic or need to see their mom. My home is in the beautiful state of Arkansas.
And after everything I have survived- the years of hiding, the grief of starting over. This life I live today, in this home, feels complete.
Home is my husband, my children, and the woman I finally became. It is found in the life I have built and in the struggles and peace I have made with myself to get here.
And I would not trade any of it. Not the struggle, or the grief. Not even starting over. Because all of it brought me here. And I am home.
This piece was written as part of the Writing Challenge: “What Does Home Mean to You?”
Money & Momentum is dedicated to honest conversations about money mindset, earning more, and building income beyond a salary. This is not about hype or get-rich-quick promises. It’s about clarity, responsibility, identity shifts, and real momentum.
Naomi lit the amber candle in the corner of her room at The Medspa 101. She aligned the towels on the warming shelf, making sure the corners matched and the edges were flush. She opened the top drawer, then the second, then the third. Checking that everything inside lay where it should.
The first client of the day was a woman wanting her lips to look fuller. Once the woman settled into the chair, Naomi pulled on her gloves, then tilted the woman’s head back. Naomi placed her pinky finger along the woman’s jaw to steady her hand. She could feel the warmth of the woman’s breath through her gloves. The smell of coffee mixed with nicotine made it through her mask; it reminded her of her grandmother.
The woman wore a soft, floral perfume that smelled expensive, but strong. She was trying to mask the smell of her morning cigarette. Naomi breathed through her mouth for a moment, then through her nose again. She had trained herself years ago to let smells pass through her without lingering.
Naomi worked carefully, marking the woman’s lip line, measuring, and steadying her hand. The woman didn’t flinch when Naomi inserted the needle. Naomi made several passes with the needle, pausing between each insertion to visualize where to place the next one.
When she was done, the woman opened her eyes. Naomi handed her a mirror. The woman looked from side to side, then turned to Naomi.
“You smell good,” she said.
Naomi’s eyes dropped to the ground. “Thank you.”
Naomi turned to the counter and washed her hands nervously, then washed them again. She hated it when people told her she smelled good. That’s why she had stopped wearing perfume years ago. It must be my deodorant, she thought.
The woman left, pleased with her new lips. Naomi wiped down the chair, blew out the candle, and aligned the towels again before picking up her keys to leave.
The road into town ran past her childhood home. It was the only road in and out. Every weekday morning, she drove it to get to the salon, and every evening, she drove it back home. The old homestead had been sold three times since she moved out — once when her mom and siblings moved, and twice after that. It was so old when they moved there that she couldn’t understand why it was still standing.
For years, she had begged God to burn it down. She was even ready to start the fire herself, but she was too afraid she would get caught. And she knew exactly which room she would ignite first. That middle bedroom upstairs. She had visualized all the ways she could destroy that room. One night, she stayed awake, imagining herself taking an ax to it, starting with the bed.
She shuddered, remembering the tiled ceiling and how she would try counting them to take her mind off what was being done to her. There were nine glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to one of the tiles. From that one time her brother talked about becoming an astronaut. She could still smell the room, still smell him. Dust masked with Glade, and his oily scalp. But one memory that haunted her constantly was what he always said to her. He liked the way she smelled.
She thought moving out would help her forget. But driving past that house twice a day would not let her memories fade. It only strengthened them. Her stomach ached every time she passed. She held her breath as if she was trying not to smell that room. She gave it a quick look, drove a few miles, and then realized she had checked out.
Over the weekend, severe storms and a tornado came through their small town. There was extensive storm damage throughout the area. Her home was spared. She lived in a little valley, and tornadoes seemed to skip over it. But Monday morning, when she was headed to work, she realized the tornado had taken the same path she did every day.
She saw wads of grass wedged in trees left standing, pecan orchards split open, a path leveled to the ground. The roof rolled back on homes. Then, as she was approaching her childhood home, she noticed it had been leveled to a heap of lumber.
She stopped the car and stared. Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tight her neck and shoulders ached. Then she started to cry. She wasn’t sure whether she was sad because a good part of her childhood had been destroyed, or relieved that a bad part of it had been. But it was both. Her prayer had been answered. The home was destroyed, although not in the way she imagined. She turned the car around and drove home, canceling her appointments and telling them she had storm damage to deal with.
It would be months before they cleared the house off the land. Every day she passed it, she was reminded of the destruction that a home was capable of. For 130 days, it looked like the same heap of destruction it had been the morning after the storm. Nothing changed, and no grass grew. The storm had taken the topsoil, too. And a bulldozer sat on the property in anticipation of work.
Day after day, at work, her hands kept moving. She did facials, lash extensions, brow waxes, Botox, and lip injections. And she would light the candle and align the towels. The women in her chair talked about their husbands, their children, and their vacations. Naomi listened, nodded, and smoothed serum into their skin. At the end of each day, she drove home past the wreckage. And the bulldozer did not move. She hated the way the sight of that debris made her feel.
About six months after the storm, on a bright morning, she drove past and saw everything was gone. The wreckage. The bulldozer. All of it. She stopped, then pulled into what used to be the driveway and turned off the engine. She sat there for a moment, both hands still on the wheel. Then opened the door and got out. The cool Autumn breeze felt refreshing.
The lot was bare. Smooth in some places, churned in others, the way a piece of land looks after machines have done their work. She walked to the middle of the lot and stood there. Looking up at where the staircase had been. The one she had to climb to that middle bedroom. Above her, somewhere in the empty sky, was where the ceiling tiles and stars had been.
Then she squatted down and ran her hands through the dirt, remembering the hardwood floors in the living room. The dirt was damp and smelled earthy and clean, like after a fresh rain. This dirt had been hidden under the floor of this house since 1930. She felt something and closed her hand around it. It was a nail. Old, rusted, and bent at the tip. She turned it over in her palm. Then tucked it into her pocket. Stood up and brushed her hands on her scrubs. She let out a sigh; her stomach was no longer in a knot.
She got back in the car and drove the rest of the way to work.
At the salon, she lit the amber candle and aligned the towels — corners still matched, edges still flush. She checked the drawers, top to bottom. Then she washed her hands once. Her first client of the day was a woman she had not seen before. The woman settled into the chair, tilted her head back, then asked Naomi, “What perfume are you wearing?”
Naomi smiled as she pulled on her gloves and said, “It’s just my deodorant. It must be doing its job well today.” She placed her pinky along the woman’s jaw and began shaping her new appearance. She could feel the nail in her pocket pressing against her while she leaned into her client. And she thought of that lot and the fresh dirt. And how she, too, had been given a clean slate.
About The Author:
Yoli Kae Reynolds is the author of Not What God Promised, a memoir. She is a Certified Journal Therapy & Grief Coach based in Central Arkansas. Her writing explores suicide loss, family trauma, and survival in the aftermath of abuse. Her personal essays have appeared on Medium in Women Write, Reaching Hearts, Threads of Life, and Money and Momentum. Her fiction has appeared in The Fiction Journal on Substack. Through both her coaching practice and her fiction, she investigates how systems fail survivors and the violence that echoes through families.
After my divorce from a violent marriage in 2014, we (the children and I) faced another traumatic event, leading us to seek counseling. Each Therapist who heard our story said the same thing:
“Wow! You should write a book!” He shook his head in amazement, mixed with bewilderment and perplexity.
I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath, and looked up. I nodded my head in agreement. (If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that, I would have enough money to actually publish the book!)
He continued, “No, I’m being serious.”
Tears started to fill my eyes. I didn’t even want to come into his office today, but my daughter asked me to be there this time. I laughed mockingly and said, “Yes, I know, but I’m not ready to revisit it.”
His face cringed as he realized that my daughter’s therapy session could easily turn into my therapy session. “I understand, but just when you think that MAYBE you can, then that is the precise time to do it. It may even help you get some closure.”
Closure. But I am over my ex! Or at least I thought I was. MAYBE it is time. MAYBE this is it. MAYBE this is the beginning, to the end.
I wrote this blog on May 31, 2016:
I was not ready ten years ago. I did not want to revisit it. But now I’m telling my story.
Every writing community I’ve been in repeats the same line. “Readers are writers.” It’s said with such certainty that you start to feel like a fraud if you don’t keep up. That quote is repeated so often that people start treating it as a rule rather than a tendency.
Some writers are voracious readers. Some are observers. Some are storytellers first. Some are processors who write to make sense of life. And honestly, when you are balancing work, responsibilities, family, and everyday survival, reading can start to feel like another task on an already overloaded list.
But writing is still feeding you.
You are still studying human behavior. Still collecting dialogue. Still noticing tension, grief, silence, resilience, and contradiction. Still living inside the story. Because reading isn’t only something you do with a book.
Writers read people. We read faces, tone shifts, the pause before someone answers a hard question, and the body language that contradicts the words. We read rooms — who’s tense, who’s performing, who just got quiet. That kind of reading sharpens a writer just as much as a paragraph on a page.
Life itself becomes part of the material.
As writers, we often write from a deeply internal place. A lot of our work comes from reflection, emotional excavation, memory, and meaning-making. That is a different creative fuel source than someone writing purely from literary influence.
I’m not saying writers don’t need fuel. I’m saying the fuel sources are more varied than the maxim admits. Observation, memory, emotional excavation, and listening to how people actually talk in a grocery store line. Reading the look on someone’s face before they say what’s wrong. Catching the tone underneath the words. All of that is study. All of that is reading, just not the kind that comes bound between two covers.
The “readers are writers” crowd tends to collapse all input into one specific kind.
And here’s what the maxim misses: the reading of people never stops. You don’t put it down. You don’t finish a chapter and close the cover. Writers are reading people the entire time they’re alive — at the dinner table, in line at the pharmacy, in the silence after a hard conversation. That’s literacy too. And perhaps that matters most.
That said, reading books does help in specific ways — rhythm and pacing, sentence flow, structure, expanding vocabulary naturally, and reminding you what is possible on the page.
But it does not have to look like consuming 50 novels a year.
It can be:
Essays before bed
Audiobooks while driving
One chapter at a time
Poetry
Medium or Substack pieces
Memoir excerpts
Listening to stories instead of physically reading them
A lot of writers quietly go through seasons where they produce far more than they consume.
Here is my truth: I don’t read books as much as I’d like. I spend most of my time writing. The rest of my time goes into work and the everyday business of being alive. But the writing keeps coming — because I read life every day.
✍️ From the Founder of Threads of Life, Money & Momentum.
Money & Momentum is dedicated to honest conversations about money mindset, earning more, and building income beyond a salary. This is not about hype or get-rich-quick promises. It’s about clarity, responsibility, identity shifts, and real momentum.
For over 20 years, I lived in poverty. Not the kind people always see. The kind where the electricity gets turned off in winter, the gas gets turned off in summer, and rent becomes something you either cannot pay, or simply do not.
There were stretches when we were homeless. Oh, we had a roof over our head, but it wasn’t our home. We lived in church basements and gymnasiums. We stayed with family members and even with a church member for a little while. And in a hotel once. To us, financial stability was almost taboo, sometimes looked down on as being worldly and loving money more than God. So, when we “sacrificed” in the name of God, we thought it made us holy.
But there came a point in my life where I was tired of struggling financially. The scriptures even promised an abundant life, but I wasn’t seeing it in my life. It was discouraging and quite frustrating, to be honest. But the thing that stopped us from being financially stable was not just one thing. It was a combination of things and belief systems. I was married to a man who controlled my every move, and working outside our home was not something I was allowed to do. And working wasn’t something he liked to do.
So, we struggled to make ends meet. And if we did come into some money from an anonymous giver, he felt like Taco Bell was more important than an electric bill or rent. We never invested any time, attention, or money into a financial future. There were no steps to increase our income, only steps to make what was necessary to survive. That is what poverty actually does. It shrinks your time horizon down to the next bill. You stop thinking about financial stability because all your energy goes into surviving today.
I grew up in a middle-class home, an only child. My dad was a CPA and very good with finances. So, I knew what it was like to be financially stable. It took me several years and some religious deconstruction to believe that I was worthy of that financial stability. No amount of budgeting advice reached me until I dealt with the belief that being broke made me holy. That mindset had to break before the money could change.
When I became aware that I deserved better, not just in my marriage relationship but also financially, I started to think differently, respond differently, and stand up for myself and secretly save money. I sold things on eBay and tucked the cash into an envelope hidden in a place he would never look. It wasn’t much. But it was the first money in my life that was mine. And through the process of events, I filed for a divorce. Because you see, sometimes financial stability means being with the right person and leaving the one who drains what you already have.
When I started dating through a dating app, there was one guy in particular who stood out to me. He met all the criteria for what I was looking for in a man, but even better, he made a bold statement in his bio: I know how to make money. And by this time in my life, I had a motto: it is only money, and money can be made as easily as it can be spent.
We started dating, and for the first time in my adult life, I learned what it felt like to have a man step up and be responsible. I continued working and paying my own way because I did not want this amazing guy to think I was with him just for his money. But the truth is, he didn’t have any either when we first met because he had just gone through a very expensive divorce, giving his ex-wife more than she deserved, and a business.
The year we got married, he bought his dad’s business, and he has more than tripled its size and income. Being around someone who knows how to make money taught me things no book had. Watching him operate, take risks, and follow through reshaped what I thought was possible for me.
To me, financial stability means being able to pay your bills, have money left over to buy the things you need and want. I have a number in my head of what I would like to make, and we are not far from it, but I am already financially stable, so those numbers are just a test to see when the universe will make it happen.
I am currently working as an office manager in the family business, handling all the books and payroll. I also suggest ways to invest our money, and I’ve moved some of it into CDs. I am still in the money market, but I don’t like its inconsistency — it moves with the market, and your principal isn’t guaranteed. So now I am looking into T-bills. They are backed by the government, the return is fixed, and you know exactly what you are getting. For someone with my history, predictability matters more than potential. I am also working on monetizing my social media presence while finishing my first book.
What I am learning is that financial stability is not one decision; it is a hundred small ones. Which CD to choose and when to sell. Whether to risk a property offer or to say no to it. Every one of these decisions used to feel out of reach to me. Now they are just part of my week. That shift, more than any dollar amount, is what stability actually feels like.
My husband is a money magnet, and opportunities come to him all the time. For me, however, I seek opportunities. Sometimes I find a great piece of property for a really good price. Like the 10 acres my husband wanted for his greenhouse business. They refused his offer. A few months later, I made a lower offer for the same land, intending to build houses on it. They accepted mine. Same property, different vision, and the timing was on my side.
The skill I am working on improving is presence. I don’t mean being present in daily life, I mean putting myself out there. Being present and visible publicly.
I am working on improving my writing skills and turning them into publishable books. Not only do I have stories from real life, but I also have many that could be made into fiction. This is the part of my life I want to keep improving.
Because I lived in poverty for so long, I went on a shopping binge as soon as I had some extra money in my pocket. It got worse during COVID. I became addicted to the online shopping experience. Grocery delivery, DoorDash, Amazon, all of it. The addiction shows itself when a package arrives at my door, and I cannot remember what I ordered — or worse, why I ordered it.
But now, as I get closer to looking towards retirement, I have had to have an intervention with myself. I have too much stuff and have wasted too much money on things I did not need. Financial stability isn’t a number you hit. It’s a behavior you practice. And the old habits don’t just go away because the income has changed.
At times, I still fear poverty, because I lived in it longer than I have been living in abundance. But there is a strange comfort in doing the same frivolous spending. And because I have made it a habit, stopping it will take me out of my comfort zone.
I had already been thinking about this area of my life for a while, and this prompt is a great opportunity to take action. I will stay off social media — the ones that keep giving me ads for cool stuff I don’t need — for at least 24 hours. And if I can last the 24 hours, then the plan is to go for a few days, weeks, and maybe a month.
I deserve financial stability, and the truth is, I am financially stable now. But I do not always behave like someone who respects that stability. I still spend out of fear sometimes. I still buy things I do not need because poverty taught me to grab comfort when I can. And this is what I am working on now.
Money & Momentum is dedicated to honest conversations about money mindset, earning more, and building income beyond a salary. This is not about hype or get-rich-quick promises. It’s about clarity, responsibility, identity shifts, and real momentum.
My first memory of journaling was when I was around five or six years old. As soon as I knew how to write, I poured my angst about my father onto the page.
I was too young to know that I was doing something therapeutic. It was the only place I was allowed to say what I was feeling. Where I could be heard, even if my homemade diary was the only one listening.
Journaling is what helped me survive a 24-year abusive marriage. And it helped me process a way out. Journaling helped me as I parented through the horrors of sibling sexual abuse, and it still helps me process the emotions of being the mother of both the child who was harmed and the child who caused the harm. Journaling has helped me through the grief of losing a son to suicide.
And journaling still helps me sort through my feelings. Especially with trauma and grief. It’s the salve for wounds that still like to fester sometimes.
When I first went public with my journaling, I came up with a name — The Write to Sanity. My opening page began like this:
I have the write to remain sane.Anything I say or do can and probably will be used against me at any given time.I have the write to my own opinion.If you do not like or accept my opinion, another one will be presented to you.Do you understand these writes as they’ve been given to you?I am “the Write to sanity”.
Because I knew I had the right to have mental clarity, my own opinions, and to tell my story.
And eventually, I realized that the thing that had kept me grounded since I was a child could be taught to other people who need a place where their words are safe.
So I built it into a program — a self-paced journal therapy course with guided prompts and lessons designed to help people use writing the way I did. To process grief and trauma. A place where they can be honest with themselves without spiraling. And a place where they can find their own voice again.
It’s called The Write to Sanity Journal Therapy Program.
Lately, I’ve gained a few pounds. “Few” is the word I give it when I do not want to face the actual number on the scale. But while the numbers keep climbing, I can’t help thinking my body is trying to tell me something — that my hips and belly are not the only places in my life where I am carrying too much weight.
Maybe it isn’t about what I am eating. But about what is eating me.
The root cause of weight is rarely one thing. On the surface, we are told it is simple: calories in, calories out. Move more, eat less. But a human body is not a math equation. Weight can be shaped by hormones, sleep, stress, medication, genetics, inflammation, poverty, trauma, family patterns, and emotional pain. Sometimes it is not even about overeating. It can be a hormonal imbalance, metabolic resistance, low energy expenditure, poor sleep, changes in insulin, or other medical factors that quietly rewrite how the body uses food.
When hormones are low, the body defends its weight more stubbornly. It slows the metabolism, holds onto water, and scrambles the signals for hunger and fullness. It leaves us tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix, and then asks us to exercise more anyway. Weight loss starts to feel impossible, not because we are weak, but because our bodies have been given new instructions.
This is not a failure of discipline. It is a body responding to a signal from within.
We are quick to turn physical struggles into personal shame. When the weight does not come off, we start saying, “I am a failure.” But failure is a verdict, not a fact. Our bodies are not betraying us. They are trying to survive according to the instructions given. The pain comes when we blame ourselves for something our body is struggling to regulate.
I am learning to say it differently. “I am not a failure.”
“I am struggling.”
The feeling of failure makes you want to give up, but the knowledge that you’re struggling gives you the sense that it can be figured out in the end.
Weight can also carry emotional meaning, turning the body into a fortress. Extra weight can feel like insulation against shame, attention, rejection, or grief. And sometimes eating is not about hunger; it is about comfort. I have eaten when I was not hungry. And eaten because something in me needed to be held, and food was the closest thing.
Weight is often a symbol of old wounds. It stops being about our body’s size and becomes about whether we feel lovable, acceptable, and safe.
For many of us, this wound is sharpened by the gaze of men. We know intellectually that our worth is not defined by our bodies. But we still feel judged when men comment on it. The words of our parents or past relationships become ghosts that haunt us. Even current casual comments about other women’s bodies can awaken an old fear: “They say I am fine, but their values are watching me.”
The body only hears danger, even if the mind can reason it away.
The fear can show up physically. A sinking feeling in our stomach can become an alarm bell. It asks: “Am I safe? Will I be rejected?” This reaction does not belong to the present moment. It belongs to a younger version of us who once learned that being judged by appearance could threaten our sense of belonging.
For me, the wound began in middle school, when my teacher looked at an old picture and commented on how fat I was. But I did not hear the past tense. I heard, “This is who I am now. This is how people see me, and the real me is unacceptable.” At that age, a careless comment became my inner law.
Our inner child may pretend not to care, but pretending is often a form of protection.
The middle school girl in me who acted untouched was the same girl who was deeply hurt.
Healing begins when we separate our body from the judgment that was placed upon it. Our body is not evidence of failure. Other people’s gaze is not the truth. We can work with doctors, regulate our hormones, track symptoms, and care for our physical health without turning our bodies into the enemy.
My younger self does not immediately know what she needs. She does not want to move closer to me. She only acknowledges that she has finally been seen. And that is enough for now. She does not need to be forced. She just needs me to say, “I saw what happened. And that hurt.”
The deeper work is not about weight loss. It is learning to live in our body without putting it on trial. It is telling our wounded self, “You are not a failure. You are frightened, exhausted, and you are trying to solve something difficult.” It is asking our partners not to comment on other people’s bodies, because our home should be a place where bodies are not judged. It is replacing shame with protection and punishment with care.
The root reason we might be carrying too much weight could be physical, emotional, social, or unconscious. Often, it is several of those at once. But whatever the cause, the person living inside our body deserves compassion.
Weight is not identity. A struggling body is not a failed body.
Healing begins when we stop asking, “What is wrong with me, why can’t I lose this weight?” and begin asking, “What has my body been carrying, and how can I help it feel safe?”
The scale is no longer my enemy. It is a tool reminding me to slow down and listen to my body.
The Weight Beneath the Weight was originally published in Women Write on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
I’m writing a book for women who feel stuck, confused, exhausted, controlled, unheard, or afraid to be fully themselves in a relationship.
This book is still in progress, but the message matters: every woman deserves to know her worth, recognize what love should and should not feel like, and believe that peace, safety, healing, and freedom are possible.
If you’d like to follow the journey and receive updates, you can join my email list here:
“This dog is driving me crazy.” Always getting in the trash, under my feet at every turn I make.
“This hungry cat is driving me crazy.” She’s so loud and demanding, especially when she thinks I have not fed her soon enough.
“My child is driving me crazy.” Teenagers present their own set of challenges, and each of mine presents me with a new set every week.
“My husband’s actions are driving me crazy.” Coffee cups lined up on an end table and clothes thrown over a closet rod instead of a hanger.
“This slow-heating stove is driving me crazy.” These onions won’t caramelize themselves.
“This weather is driving me crazy.” Hot and humid one day, then cold and windy the next.
“My hair is driving me crazy.” On humid days, the curls pop. But on dry days, I have to use a cabinet full of products to keep them in place.
Everything in my life seemed to ‘drive me crazy.’ And the more I said it, the more life would bring me things to go crazy over. A nail in my tire, almost on an empty gas tank when I was not the last one to drive the car, cat puke when I first woke up, and more.
I didn’t catch it as a pattern at first. I thought I was just being easily irritated. Or having a difficult day. Then I noticed the phrase had become automatic. It was the first words that would come out of my mouth before even thinking about it.
Then I remembered: life and death are in the power of the tongue. Whatever a man thinks, so is he.Be impeccable with your word. The same truths — different languages. Scripture, positive thinking, ancient wisdom. They all say the same thing.
And I realized that I was bringing craziness into my life. Word by word. Complaint by complaint. And if I didn’t stop this loop of professing that I am being driven crazy, then I might actually go crazy after all.
So, I started catching myself mid-sentence. “Oh, my gawd, that is driving meh… (clears throat) um. This situation is a challenge to me in this moment, but I will figure it out.”
“That customer is driving me cra… She is not my favorite customer.”
“Mr. B is driving me… (deep breath in….) Mr. B can be difficult to deal with at times.”
Sometimes I stop mid-sentence, at a loss for words, because some things are better left unsaid.
Money & Momentum is dedicated to honest conversations about money mindset, earning more, and building income beyond a salary. This is not about hype or get-rich-quick promises. It’s about clarity, responsibility, identity shifts, and real momentum.
