A little girl grew up to write empowering books for women

My dear cousin unearthed this in her parent’s home, long since unoccupied. She and her siblings were doing the heavy lifting of cleaning out their childhood home after the death of their mother, my aunt.

Look what she found? A letter I wrote to her 42 years ago—dated 1982. I was code switching before I even knew the term. You see, my sister and I would spend many summer nights wrapped in blankets and sleeping bags for sleepovers; and when we should have been asleep, we were singing silly songs, making crazy sounds, making up our own language and as I recall, there was a ton of snorting. We even coined the phrase “chicken dog squat.”

Don’t ask me what it means.

I was 10 years old when I wrote this letter to my cousin—already writing in cursive and attempting wit and a silly country slang and twang in my prose. Yes, my cousin lived in Arkansas, but I think we poked fun at the local drawl by speaking this way to each other. No matter, I had a bad habit with the white-out too. My sister and I use to sit down and write our cousins when we were little girls, and we loved to run to the mailbox to see if they wrote us back, and they often did.

I’ve been writing since I could pick up a pen, and later in college, a weekly column, a staff position at the magazine and a thesis that published and still in the TCU library. I went on to become a writer and associate producer in local television news and also wrote for the local newspaper before finding my way into big-time global agency communications and eventually at a Fortune 10 ghostwriting for many an executive and celebrity.

I didn’t know where all that writing would take me, but this week I would receive a sizable helping of unsolicited validation. Not because of any popularity contest but because my work is just that good and has impact in ways most haven’t experienced or seen before—taking science to the culture to create better leaders. I was going to write and continue to write without said validation, but when you are squarely in your purpose you attract the opportunities, and you can’t be ignored.

I’m not a rules follower. I’m a Holy Spirit follower…which means, I just churn out great books, and however they get published, they just do. So while you watch me work, what HIM work. As someone said to me last week, “ Favor AIN’T fair!!”

True, but I also think I’ve earned it.

Coach L.