Two years ago, on an ordinary cool spring day, I was walking the lake path by our house when a book idea stopped me cold.
You need to write The Hard Times Playbook. That was the whole message. Share the tools. Share what got you through.
I wept. One of the biggest cries I can remember. Right there in the middle of the trail.
I’d gotten ideas before. But this one didn’t feel like mine. It landed like a lightning bolt wrapped in a whisper, a download from the Divine. A seed God trusted only me to grow.
I told Jon. I told one of my best friends. I jotted a few notes in my phone. And then I left it there.
For two years I’ve carried it. Turning it over. Wondering if I’m equipped. There are people who’ve endured much harder things. Why me?
A few months ago, Jon said it out loud, casually, like he was mentioning the weather. “I think you should write The Hard Times Playbook. A lot of people are going through hard times and need help.”
Self-doubt won again. Nothing happened.
Then came a particularly hard day, and afterwards, a phone call with two girlfriends, the kind of conversation that puts the oxygen back in the room. (Thank you, Natalie and Lauren.)
After that, I opened my laptop and created the file.
Creating that file brought the invisible idea to life.
Here’s what I know to be true: we’re not taught how to move through hard times. We’re taught to numb out, to keep going, to slap a smile on and soldier through. We’re taught resilience. We’re taught grit.
But we are rarely taught how to grieve.
We hear about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We hear almost nothing about Post Traumatic Growth — about who we become because of the hard thing. More compassionate. More empathetic. More gracious. More whole.
I don’t claim to be a guru. I am a guide.
I know what’s given me life as I’ve navigated divorce, losing the father of my daughters, moving to a town where I had no family or friends, blending a family, a debilitating eye condition, and the emotional tidal wave of perimenopause. These have been the hardest years of my life.
Through my own grit, and by the grace of God, I’ve learned (and taught) tools to help people resource themselves. To expand their capacity to hold whatever they’re facing.
Being ReSourced. That’s what this is about.
Not pretending the hard things don’t happen. Not staying positive. But being with the rupture. Doing the inner work. Tending to your nervous system. Finding the right support to slowly, steadily shift into the life that exists on the other side.
There is no going back to who you were before. There’s only leaning into who you’re becoming because of it.
Last week, at the Scaling.com Spring event, I had another download. Jon and I were co-leading the retreat with hundreds of entrepreneurs, when after a Wisdom Circle, a woman shared her a-ha: she was going back to her mission. The whole reason she started her business in the first place.
The word mission exploded in my chest like a firework.
I thought: The Hard Times Playbook isn’t just a book for my daughters. This is a mission for everyone who’s struggling. For everyone who feels lost and alone in the middle of a hard thing, the way I did.
And then I thought of the people I love who have lived — and are living — inside the unbearable.
Chris. My beloved ex-husband and the father of my girls. He lost his mother, and just days later, he was gone too, leaving my daughters without their dad.
Ashley. My dear friend and college roommate. She endured devastating loss over the 20 years I called her my friend, and in the end, the weight of her grief became more than she could carry. I miss her every day.
Emily. My dear friend who is right in the thick of it, holding her twelve-year-old daughter through cancer, through losing her leg, through things no mother should ever have to face.
And Whitney. My client, carrying a kind of heartbreak that arrived without warning and rearranged everything — her family, her identity, her daily life — overnight. She’s rebuilding, one day at a time.
Each of them deserve(d)s a lantern in the dark.
I think about what Chris and Ashley needed that they didn’t have. I think about the moment the pain became too big, and whether the right tool, the right word, the right person showing up and saying I see you might have changed something.
I’ll never know.
But I know this: there are people walking around right now in that same darkness. People who are white-knuckling it through grief and loss and change and overwhelm. People who are one hard day away from breaking. People who need someone to say — I see you. I’ve been there. And here’s what helped me find my way back.
That’s who this book is for.
For the ones who are still here, still fighting, still wondering if they’re going to make it through, maybe even sensing their pain as a pathway to their deeper purpose.
You’re going to make it. And more than that, you’ll hardly recognize the beautiful human you’ll be on the other side. I’m here to witness your transformation, to help you find your way.
The Hard Times Playbook is coming. And I cannot wait to put it in your hands.