Once a friend was popping the cork on a champagne bottle and laughingly called it a “critical life skill.” Other critical life skills might include building a fire, changing a tire, making an omelet. The list could go on and on.

We met on the greenway to walk and talk. It is the way Liz Clasen Kelly works these days—like so many women--always needing to multitask.

Note from Women | Faith & Story: This essay from our WF&S website “Submit your Story.” Let us know your story to be a featured writer on this blog. Tell us about you, your work, your hopes, your fears, your dreams, or about a time, like Tilden, when you had to learn to push through.

I had a conversation with my neighbor last night who told me about growing up as a Tejano woman in the 1960’s in Austin. Her husband was abusive and on the night he told her to step outside so he could kill her in front of their two children, she ran.

This summer my daughter, Kailey, was turning 30. It was a milestone she both welcomed and dreaded. Like all of us, she had planned where she might be at 30 and while some of her expected goals had been achieved in three decades, others remained elusive. And like all of us, she worried much more about the ones not checked off rather than the ones she had celebrated.

In 2016, I met our October Doer of the Month completely by accident—or maybe completely by design. I received an email from a woman named Jackie Craig who read my book and asked if I would be willing to meet when I came to speak at an upcoming event in Raleigh…

I started my own business this COVID summer. Even writing that sentence makes me light up and also startles me: Hold up - I did that? Yep, I did that. It took 31 years to work up the courage to do that and to write this.

We are honored to post our very first “Submit your Story” from our WF&S community of women who are Dreaming Big and Doing Good together. Let us know your story to be a featured writer on this blog. Tell us about you, your work, your hopes, your fears, your dreams, or about a woman, like Erika’s mom, who inspires you.

We’re so glad you’re here! This is your welcome but let it also be your invitation. We want to invite you into a community of women seeking to do good in ways big and small, love well for their own families and others, and dream big for what might yet be possible in their lives.

The #1 question we kept in mind when we first started envisioning this community was “Why”? Especially when we ran into a pandemic, numerous technical difficulties, gathered coaches and teammates across multiple time zones, and explained our mission to our friends - Why are we doing this?

To us, Faith isn’t exclusively one belief in one religion. Faith encompasses just that —all faiths. It includes all denominations and includes not only beliefs but hope.

In my book, The Hundred Story Home, and on this blog, you will hear me talk about “Trust the Whisper.” What exactly does that mean?