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Hey, Y’all, how are you doing? I hope you all are having a fantastic day today. Hey, I just wanted to jump on here and say, I love you guys. Oh my gosh. I am so incredibly blessed to be able to get to connect with everybody on Facebook. I’ll tell you what I’m so thankful during COVID that we’ve got some social media.

I mean, it is such a gift. Um, I don’t know if you all know or not. I have been going live during this month over on my page. I’m a page on a Facebook page so I can link that below, but I wanted to fill you all in, let you know that I’m doing that. And this month we’re talking all about how to build resilience in her life, how to overcome things in your past, like how to not let your past that take your future. Like, we’re going to go through a ton of that, just going, Hey, you really can live a life that is full and amazing and that you love.

So I’m doing a bunch of those lives over there but I want to jump on here. And this week I’ve kind of started out telling you all some of my story. Now, there is a video down below that I shared from the page, or you can go over to the page that I’m reading the first chapter, the beginning of the first chapter of my book that I’m writing so today I wanted to read you a little bit more of that first chapter.

Now the one that I read before the very beginning, it’s called the beginning you want to make sure that your kids are in the room for that because you know, I’m talking about industry stuff. So that’s not, you know, you don’t want your kids in the room, get the kids out. Okay?

Today, if you’ve got kids in the room, it’s fine. I’m really talking about my grandmother, she taught me so much of creativity and she was just such a loving, loving person. So, and this part of the book, I’m talking about her a little bit. So here we go.

So I was born in 1971. Yes, I’m 49 in a small town called Mount Sterling, Kentucky. According to the us census Bureau the year before, there was a population of 5,083 people. Now, since then, it’s only grown by a couple of thousand people.

Mount Sterling is small town, Kentucky, and will probably always stay small town, Kentucky. There are advantages and disadvantages to growing up in a super small town. One is that the community is close knit. Everyone knows each other. And the disadvantage is that everyone knows each other. So my mom and my dad divorced when I was four and my mom and I lived with my grandmother for a short time.

I loved my memaw. She took care of me. Even later after mom got remarried, I would spend my days after school with her while she worked at the shoe store on Indian mound drive, I’d play in the back room and smell all the new crisp shoes on display. My memaw was a great sales lady. She could fit a perfect shoe on anyone who walked in the door.

She taught me to cook, crochet, sew and fish. She was an amazing lady. I spent a lot of time with her growing up and I loved it, but I would play with the little veins in her hands when I was really tiny and ask her again and again, to see her cards. So she had saved all the cards that people had sent her over the years.

Some had glitter and some flowers, and I loved looking at them and playing with them. I would just sit by her and her rocking chair. I get lost in all the glitter and the beauty of those cards. On special days, she would get out mom’s wedding dress from the back of the closet. And let me try it on. I would stand in mounds of white lace and fabric and feel like a princess.

I could not wait to be a bride someday. My memaw was also well versed in flowers. She grew different varieties of flowers, all around her, a little porch purple and pink flowers, big plants of mint leaves and violets. Id pick them and make a bouquet of flowers for mom’s wedding dress. We’d pick clovers from the yard and tie them together to make necklaces and crowns.

You know, my memaw made me laugh all the time. She was the glue that held it all together. One of my favorite memories of her was we would always go fishing out by the house and she would take her little cane pole down there and we’d have our Mason jars full with sweet tea. We would have another Mason jar filled with cold watermelon that she had cut up the night before.

And we would sit on those banks and fish and talk for hours. So that’s a little piece of the book talking about my memaw because she was wonderful. I loved her so very much. And, I’m excited to finally get this book really started and out there. And, I can’t wait to have it done. Cannot wait to have it done, but I really think, and one of the reasons that I’m going through and telling him my story is when you build resilience or you look at your past and you go, I really don’t know how I can overcome this thing. I think it’s important for us to share our stories to go now, like this is something that you can overcome.

This is something that you can get past and move on to the, to the absolute awesomeness that God’s got planned for you and your life. So that’s why I’m reading a little bit of my story this week and going live all this month, we’re going to be talking about it. So I’ll hope you all have a fantastic day and I’ll see you later.