I am late in your inbox. I am aiming for every other Sunday. This piece took a little longer to write. It felt important to share. I am eager to hear from you. I read every email sent to me and try my best to respond in a timely manner. What do you want to read more of or less of here. I have so many dreams for my writing. My biggest dream is when you read my writing, you think about your life a little differently than before.
“You are trending in the Netherlands!” That was quite the text that greeted me one chilly morning in March. It was such a good feeling. Experiencing a wave of pride, joy and gratitude for The Heart Chamber Podcast ranking 12th in medicine podcasts in a country of 18 million people was quite the unexpected milestone. What this really meant was more and more people were being exposed to hope, inspiration and healing for heart surgery from a patient’s perspective.
What started as a way to build my platform for my book has quickly morphed into the greatest idea I have ever had (besides moving to the Tetons).
This last week, I set a goal: my podcast is known in every hospital in the U.S. and abroad. Every week, I add a spoken resource to my growing list of episodes. Soon, I’ll be categorizing them into various congenital defects, types of surgeries, nutrition and lifestyle. I am committed to being 1% better every day at this craft of podcasting. Most importantly, I am committed to helping heart patients, and I strongly believe that no heart should go unhugged.
I fully own that putting my story out into the world every week in spoken and written form is courageous. It’s taken a dump truck’s worth of personal work to find the willingness to be seen and heard in a world that is increasingly judgmental, loud, crowded, and artificial. I believe in my purpose which is my podcast, speaking and writing. And I believe in growing my audience in an organic way, one heart at a time.
I didn’t arrive at this mindset overnight or even in a year. I’ve spent the last 10 years on a journey with a whopping ROI (return on investment). What is my ROI? Freedom.
Let’s time travel back to 1995 - my senior year in high school.
Behind the lip liner, eye pencil, and faux animal print, was an insecure, terrified young woman. I was in my 2nd year at a private school in a city I had moved to just a year prior. I had chosen to live with my mom in Columbia, SC to escape small town living in rural eastern North Carolina after a life-changing argument with my dad. I traded one problematic situation with a much worse problematic situation. I went from being popular, seen, and accepted to being unseen, unheard, and unimportant in every way at both school and at home. While my mom was doing the best she could with the skills and awareness she had at the time, when I think back to those last two years of high school living with her, I just see and feel a void.
That void would shape how I showed up (or didn’t) in the world until I was 34 years old.
Over the last 12 years, there have been several events that shifted the timeline of my life. Karen’s murder. Selling the first home Jason and I bought when we were engaged so then, we could buy our dream home. Concussion. Pandemic. Being nominated for a national ski award. Heart surgery. Death of my mom. Forgiving my surgeon and allowing him to fix a mistake. Writing a complete draft of a book. Launching a podcast. Speaking on the TEDx stage. Breaking my leg. All of these events are gifts… even the really super sucky ones.
For this post, I want to put focus on speaking on the TEDx stage. Besides the excitement and opportunities that have come into my life and how it impacted my heart (it was so stressful, and I’ve spoken about it on my podcast and written about it so no need to go on and on here), the entire experience from the moment I made the decision to go for it (May) until I walked off the stage (November) was an inflection point.
An inflection point is when someone’s life changes direction from an experience or decision. TEDx was my 8th inflection point in life so far. I don’t know how many a human has in a lifetime nor am I interested in keeping score or making comparisons. I guess I just feel lucky that I have had so many opportunities to re-examine life and gain deeper awareness and meaning.
The TEDx stage experience provided the most recent inflection point of facing the stories that kept me small ever since I was 17 years old. Those stories I made up about myself became truth. I was ashamed of who I was, believed that I didn’t deserve to take up space, and feared making mistakes on stage. The stories originated during my senior year when I had to do a yearlong project. I had no support at home or at school to succeed. The topic I chose was collegiate level. At the end of the school year, I had to give a presentation in front of the high school and parents. I was ill-prepared, and the presentation was a flop. While I didn’t fail the project, I didn’t get an A either.
The pain of that experience laid dormant but impactful until last May when I made the decision to stand on the TEDx stage and change the medical world. (A woman can dream, right?)
My soul wasn’t having anything to do with standing on a stage. It fought me hard which looked like depression, self-doubt, ruminating, anger, frustration. Thank goodness I know how to ask for help. I barreled into the discomfort head-on and didn’t give up. I was tired of playing small. I didn’t want other heart patients to feel alone, and I also felt a responsibility to teach others what I had learned from my heart surgery experience. It was four months of hard work diving into my past, forgiving my mom and that private school. But I made it to the other side, feeling free of the baggage my 17-year-old was carrying.
So, how has life changed since TEDx? I am fully leveling up in every aspect of my life. I’m keeping a lot of my leveling up private for now, but suffice it to say, I have never been more inspired to make a difference and I have support everywhere I look. My days are filled with magical moments. Mostly, though, I am free. I can’t think of another time in my life where I felt this free. Just to be. Me.
YESSSS!!!