The Year Of The Great Fire

You know, when. When I went through what I went through, I did set an intention. And I don't know that I fully remember the moment when I said, the first time I said, I want to be the face of grace and peace. Those are the two things that I want to make sure that I am, that I exude and that I experience in. In this process. Those were. Were very, very important to me. So I call that year the 2018, the year of the Great Fire. And it was the year that I discovered my husband of 20 years being unfaithful in our marriage and realizing that the best option for me, for him and our family was to get divorced. And that was really, really painful because I believe in marriage. And I also wanted to make it work. And I had often heard people, even before my own experience, but I still hear this today. Right. I wanted to save my family. And I thought that saving my family meant stay married, and that meant that I needed to do whatever it took. And so I'm a person that, you know, very much like you, that if I know what I need to do or if I don't know, I'll hire someone that knows and they will train me and I will. Will do the work and I will train as if it was a marathon. And I'm willing to show up and make it happen and do the work. But what I also learned in the process is that two people need to be willing to do the work. And there was only so much that I could do.

I wanna interrupt you real quick because I witnessed that.

Yeah.

And I disagree a little bit in that two people need to do the work at the beginning. At the beginning, you can be the one man show that initiates the work and takes on the load 100%, which you did. You're a testament of that. Eventually the idea is that you will inspire the other person to jump in. And then, yes, eventually you do need ultimately for both of you to be in it and doing the work. But at the beginning, I just. I want to emphasize that you were doing the work alone. And that is very possible. Like, if it's meant to be, if it's in God's will, what will happen is that by you doing the work, the other person is inspired and drawn to join in. And then together, you complete the work. And you did not leave any stone unturned. You did the work. What did that look like? Ah.

I think that looked like a lot of introspection, a lot of receiving love and support and therapy. Right. Finding experts and surrounding myself with People that knew what I didn't know and could give me that perspective. You know, I. We often hear that you don't see the lid of the jar that you're in. And for sure, in that time in my life, I wasn't seeing the lid of the jar that I'm in. And I think I did. I got so focused on. On saving my. My marriage. And I think the reason why I'm saying that was because I think I did save my family, and I saved my family in a different way. And I got to redefine. Just the same way that I help women redefine success, and I help them see that success is not linear and success looks differently in your business and in your life at different stages and phases. I got to see that I could redefine success with my family. As much as it still pains me today that I don't have, I did not raise my children the way that I was raised, which was, you know, my parents were married until my father passed, right? And I. And I had, you know, a home with a mother and a father living together. Right. I wanted that so badly for my children, and it didn't work out that way for us. And I got to redefine what a successful family could look like, what the opportunities were to teach my sons grace, and probably even more importantly, resilience. Because I see the young men that they've become, and so much of who they are is because of what we went through as a family.