From Fearful to Fearless

​In my senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with a learning disability after years of struggling. The disability affected my test-taking and writing. I went to Westminster College specifically because they had a wonderful learning disabilities program I was accepted into. I could take my test untimed, and I got additional help with writing papers. I received the most amazing support from my professors and an amazing advisor who helped me navigate those four years.

I carried this fear of writing with me for years. I took it with me in every job I’ve ever had. I was worried I was going to be exposed and I would be judged. In my last job, before becoming a coach, my boss was critical of my writing. He knew I had a disability, but I still felt shamed for it. He even made me take a business writing class, and the joke was on him because I got an A in the class. When someone is struggling, the last thing we need is to be made to feel little, flawed, ashamed, and made to feel less than. Thank goodness I learned to give myself grace and kindness.

Here is the twist in all of this. Since becoming a coach, I have written chapters in two coaching books. I was asked to write a book review for a coaching peer, which was included in the book, and then, I was asked to write the forward to a book. You can only imagine what these experiences have done for me. Of course, in the first chapter I wrote, I was so scared that they would never accept it and realize I was not a good writer, but that didn’t happen. However, the biggest surprise came when I was at a work event several years ago, and someone approached me with one of the books in hand and asked me to sign their copy. She told me that of all the chapters in the book, my chapter had the most impact on her. I don’t take compliments very well, so I turned red, was embarrassed, and, of course, doubted everything she was saying because the story I told myself was that I am not a writer because my writing has been criticized for so long.

It is amazing how the fear and the stories we tell ourselves can stop us in our tracks, paralyze us, and create a narrative that we are not good enough. Why would someone pick me to contribute to these books? These experiences gave me the confidence and the courage to write my own book. I had to overcome the notion that I had to do this alone, that I would not get the support I needed and have all the necessary tools and resources to do it. So, you can see that writing this book was the scariest, most challenging, and greatest thing I have ever done. I was fully committed to doing this, not just because I wanted to do this for all the people I interviewed for the book. I wanted to tell their stories, but because it was outside my comfort zone and challenged me to do something I had so much passion for and, at the same time, so much fear connected to it. My new story is that I can actually call myself an “Author.” Never in my wildest dreams would I have used that word to describe myself. I turned something so fearful into something that became fearless.