For twenty years
I didn't know
I could choose me.

Twenty years of not knowing I could choose me.

I was married for twenty years, and for twenty years I did not know that I was allowed to choose myself. I poured into a marriage, into a home, into everyone around me — and quietly assumed that choosing me was somewhere between impossible and selfish. It was neither. I just didn't have the language for it yet.

The day I learned I could choose me.

Eventually I had to be honest with myself. The moment I understood that I was allowed to choose me — that's the moment I found my power. Not in any leaving. In the choosing. That choice didn't just give me back to myself. It gave me back to my children, too — Christian, Caris, and James. Choosing me made me a better mother, sister, daughter — and a better presence in my community.

God let me lose it all — and recover.

God allowed me to lose it all. And He also allowed me to recover. I am forever grateful for the opportunities He has given me on the other side of that loss — the voice, the platform, the people, the purpose. Every room I walk into now is a room I never would have entered if I hadn't first been brave enough to choose myself.

Why I built The I Choose Movement.

I am passionate about going into rooms — classrooms, sanctuaries, boardrooms, living rooms — and reminding people that you have a right to choose. You don't have to allow life to choose for you. You can choose in it.

The I Choose Movement is where we are being participants in our own lives. Where we are creating the lives we want to live, on purpose. Where we are choosing — and choosing — until our I Choose choose us back.