Tag: courage

An Open Letter to the Average, Above Average and Perfectly Proportioned Humans

Jodie Beckstine Killian

Thank you for your beaming ear to ear grins and stifled laughs that greet me when you see me waddling by, making my way into the store. The fact that I can hear you making rude and insulting remarks after I have passed are tempered and eased by the memory Read more

Jodie Beckstine Killian

Jodie Beckstine Killian has always been a little different. Growing up in a small Wisconsin town she stood out from the rest as a person born with Hypochondroplasia. As a budding entertainer, this wasn’t a disability but a “super” ability that allowed her to get noticed, but not always in the way she hoped. Stares, discrimination and cruel comments are something she deals with daily and writes about often. She currently lives in Florida. (She doesn’t miss Wisconsin winters). She works in marketing, social media and is currently writing her first novel.

Lost in Translation: How Embracing Vulnerability Saved Me

Julie Anderson

For as long as I can remember, my thoughts have been trapped in my head. An ineffectual communicator, I always listened to others and took to heart the words they said. I never responded. I was silent. Childhood for me was silence. I never exposed a pure thought or an emotion that I was feeling. I just could not find the courage, or the right words to say what I felt.

Julie Anderson

Julie Anderson is the Creator and Publisher of Feminine Collective. Julie was inspired to create this safe place for women to share their secrets, desires, triumphs and pain as the antithesis of what mainstream media offers women today. In her column Pursuit of Perfection, she explores the importance of rectifying the balance of inner and outer beauty through essays, poems and articles on self-esteem, shame, family, and self- acceptance.

Born Again: One Woman’s Journey Out of Religion

Kaleesha Williams

“No thank you, we’re atheists,” I respond with a smile to yet another invitation to church. It happens a lot here in southeastern Missouri. I wasn’t always an atheist. For many years I was what you might call a hyper-fundamentalist, but I wasn’t always that, either. My parents did the Read more

Kaleesha Williams

Kaleesha Williams accomplishes her musing, writing, and goat-wrangling in rural southeastern Missouri—that is, when she has time between homeschooling and adoring her seven children, gardening, making goat milk soap, planning projects with Denny, and trying to get her sourdough English muffins to cook up properly. Her family moved to Missouri in 1990 when her parents realized that the answer to the riddle, “What’s green and goes backward?” was their current state and the state of her birth, Vermont. Now that she’s out of her religious bubble and in her right mind (eh, questionable), Kaleesha is considering that Vermont is actually one of the few states thinking and acting progressively. Regardless, she anticipates calling Fredericktown, Missouri home for a good long while. Though Kaleesha is a homeschool dropout, since high school she has worked as a teacher, nurse, accountant, CEO, mechanic, plumber, electrician, carpenter, landscaper, gardener, photographer, veterinarian, goat breeder, counselor, dietician, chef, baker, dishwasher, laundress, seamstress, event coordinator, chauffeur, diplomat, painter, decorator, fitness coach, masseuse, astronomer, and nanny, all within her own home and among her family, often performing many of these roles in the course of a single day. For peanuts. And brownies. And foot rubs. And she loves it. The first bits of writing Kaleesha had published were some poems as a teenager. Most recently she has published articles in the Countryside And Small Stock Journal and the Astronomical League’s Reflector magazine.

I’m Tired of Being Scared

Michele Rigby Assad

Have you ever said that to yourself?  Admitted that you were exhausted by your own combative thoughts that have consistently held you back? Felt worn down by your need to think through all of the possibilities before you act?  Enough is enough.  You have to stop being your own worst Read more

Michele Rigby Assad

After obtaining a masters degree in Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Michele applied—along with hundreds of others from the university--to work for the CIA. After a long and grueling hiring process and a year of intensive training, she became an intelligence officer for the National Clandestine Service, the covert (operational) arm of the Agency. Serving for a decade as a counterterrorism officer, Michele worked in all of the awful places you hope you’ll never visit, including Iraq during the height of the war. To date, Michele has traveled to 45 countries, lived in six of those, and has a lot of crazy stories to tell about life overseas. While working for the CIA, Michele initially decried the traits that made her different from senior male officers, but later realized that these traits were what made her a great intelligence officer (empathy, intuition, strong interpersonal skills). Now she’s on a mission to show women that they have the elements to be a Femme Fatale—the incredibly intelligent and operationally astute woman that gets stuff done. After years of service to her country, Michele has left the undercover life behind and now works as an international management consultant focused on Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She has a more “normal” life now and a lot more time to do the things she loves: writing, cooking, traveling for pleasure, walking on the beach—and most of all, inspiring others!