There was a time when I measured the success of a day by how much I accomplished. Every hour needed to be productive. Every idea had to become a project. Every opportunity felt too important to pass up.
Then life brought me to my knees. Burnout, devastating hurricanes, and the quiet wisdom of my husband changed the way I see everything. This isn’t just the story of how I slowed down. It’s the story of how I learned that time is our only non-renewable resource—and that perhaps the greatest measure of a life well lived is whether we remembered to enjoy it.
A Personal Note from My Heart to Yours
With a heavy dose of redneck wisdom thrown in from Shannon.
I didn’t choose a simpler life.
At least not at first.
If I’m being honest, life chose it for me.
For years, I lived in a constant state of creating, launching, marketing, teaching, coaching, and serving.
There was always another client to attract.
Another course to build.
Another launch to plan.
Another email to write.
Another social media post to create.
Another goal to reach.
I genuinely loved the work I was doing. Helping women transform their lives was meaningful and rewarding. But somewhere along the way, I became trapped in a cycle that many entrepreneurs know all too well.
Everything depended on me.
If I wasn’t creating, the business slowed down.
If I wasn’t showing up online, opportunities dried up.
If I wasn’t launching something new, income could suffer.
The hustle wasn’t just encouraged.
It was required.
Or at least that’s what I believed at the time.
Year after year, I kept going.
Until I couldn’t.
Then came the hurricanes.
Like so many Floridians, we watched storms change our lives in ways we never expected.
The damage wasn’t only physical.
There was emotional exhaustion.
Financial strain.
The weight of rebuilding.
The uncertainty.
The grief.
At some point, I stopped fighting.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I no longer had the energy to keep forcing everything forward.
Life had brought me to my knees.
And strangely enough, that’s where everything began to change.
When you stop fighting reality, you finally have a chance to hear what it’s trying to teach you.
One of the greatest teachers during that season was my husband, Shannon.
While I was still worrying about what came next, he would gently remind me of two things.
The first was:
“Time is the only non-renewable resource.”
You can make more money.
Build another business.
Buy another house.
Grow another garden.
But you can never get back a single day once it’s gone.
The second lesson was even simpler.
He would look at me and say:
“The goal of the day is to enjoy it.”
Not achieve something.
Not produce something.
Not prove something.
Enjoy it.
At first, I resisted that idea.
Surely life needed to be more complicated than that.
Surely success required more effort.
More striving.
More doing.
But the longer I sat with those words, the more they changed me.
Today, I still work.
I still create.
I still have goals and dreams.
But they no longer come at the expense of my life.
I don’t want to spend my days staring at a screen from sunrise to sunset.
I want to harvest vegetables from the garden.
I want to raise healthy puppies.
I want to spend time with my husband.
I want to watch the chickens wander across the property.
I want to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee.
I want to enjoy the life we’ve worked so hard to build.
That may sound simple.
But for someone who spent years believing her worth was tied to her productivity, it has been revolutionary.
And perhaps that’s what And She Grows is really about.
Not building a perfect life.
Not creating a picture-perfect version of success.
But learning, season by season, how to enjoy the life that’s right in front of us.
Because at 58 (almost 59) years old, after all the businesses, all the achievements, all the storms and all the rebuilding, I’ve come to believe something very simple.
Time is precious.
Joy matters.
And the goal of the day is to enjoy it.
With deep gratitude,
