Reclaiming Your Hue

Ep. 56 with Elaine Lankford | Founder, She Steps Forward

• Kelly Kirk

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The Divine Redirection: How Crisis Led to a Global Mission

What happens when the career you've spent 16 years building suddenly crumbles beneath your feet? For Elaine, this devastating reality became the unexpected doorway to her true calling.

From oncology nurse to pain management specialist, Elaine had built a respected medical career while balancing motherhood to her son Nicholas and her younger cousin Julie, whom she'd taken in to provide stability. Then came 2008 – the year everything fell apart. Her medical practice was abruptly shut down, her father passed away, and her husband was diagnosed with cancer – all within months.

"I can remember sitting in my bedroom in the dark, silent, with the tears rolling, not able to move and just thinking 'where are you, God?'" Elaine recalls of her darkest moment. Yet it was precisely this crisis that forced her to rediscover who she truly was beyond her professional identity.

Through volunteer work, mission trips to Nicaragua, and eventually publishing her first book about her journey, Elaine found a new direction – empowering women entrepreneurs who felt called to start businesses, ministries, and nonprofits. Today, her organization She Steps Forward operates on two continents, providing coaching, seed funding, and community for women stepping into their purpose.

What makes Elaine's story so powerful is how motherhood influenced her resilience. "I can't let my kids watch me fail. I can't let my kids not know that God is real," she explains, revealing how her determination to model faith and perseverance for her children became a driving force in her darkest moments.

Whether you're facing a career setback, considering entrepreneurship, or simply need inspiration to push through difficult seasons, Elaine's journey demonstrates how our greatest challenges can become the foundation for unexpected purpose. Listen now to discover how sometimes losing your way becomes the first step to finding your calling.

Connect with Elaine:

Contact the Host, Kelly Kirk:

  • Email: info.ryh7@gmail.com

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Credits:

  • Editor: Joseph Kirk
  • Music: Kristofer Tanke


Thanks for listening & cheers to Reclaiming Your Hue!

Speaker 2:

Good morning, elaine. Good morning, it's so good to be with you, kelly.

Speaker 1:

It is. It's so good to see you, and it's been. It's been just a little bit of time since we had our first ever interaction and it was so amazing. I can't even begin to explain to you like I got off that I think we talked for like what? An hour and a half, almost two hours.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, Like friends I know and I got off of our zoom call and I was like Elena, somebody who I can wholeheartedly tell is making such a huge impact in the world but you had. You left a lasting imprint on my heart. It was just so incredible. So I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast. I'm thrilled for our listeners to hear you share your story. So let's go ahead and dive in. The first thing I would love for you to share is how it is that we got connected and how our listeners can connect the dots of our almost two hour conversation we had before we set everything up with this interview.

Speaker 2:

So fun. So you were kind enough to have one, andrea Anderson, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in her own right doing great things, and I'm so excited that Andrea is a part of my board for my non-profit, she Steps Forward International, and Andrea connected us, thinking that this would be a good conversation for your podcast.

Speaker 1:

Andrea knew, she knew well, and it took just a little bit of time for us to get everything in place for the actual date for the interview. But, alas, here we are and I'm so thrilled, let's, let's go ahead and dive in. What came first for you, elaine? Was it motherhood or was it entrepreneurship?

Speaker 2:

For me it was definitely motherhood, because I had a very long standing nursing career. That's where I started out. I was an oncology nurse for the first half of my 16 year career and then I went into pain management. And after I graduated nursing school which I'll tell on myself in 92, my husband and I waited just a little bit, and then we had our son, nicholas, in 1998. And then we also took on a bonus kid, which was my younger cousin, julie, who was about 12 years my younger, and so we had a newborn and a teenager in the house all at the same time, and that's how my story starts.

Speaker 1:

Right. Well, I feel like we could unpack a lot there, so let's do it. I got it. I got to know and I'm sure the listeners are very eager to hear this as well Like what was the dynamic of that in the household. Let's, let's unpack some of that, because that's quite a stark difference between age ranges right and now.

Speaker 1:

I think of like when we had our daughter in our household and the oldest was going to be turning nine, I want to say, yeah, nine. So I mean that that in itself is is close enough to what you're speaking to. But let's, let's talk through this, because I think that that's kind of cool and it's obviously a part of your story.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think people should really know off the bat that I got the guy. I'm gonna say that right off the bat. My husband's been just a rock in my life and as we started out we knew that we wanted to spend a little time together after we got married, before we started our family. But in the midst of all of that, my younger cousin was always on my radar. She had gone through a very tumultuous time where her parents, very young when they had her, they were both on very different dark paths in their life and she had to be taken from them and she was living on the other side of the family at the time and we would see her on weekends and things like that. And as we became an official couple and as we first got married and we're living in a little trailer park when we got started we would get Julie and we'd have her on the weekends because I just I had just, for whatever reason, god gave me a connection to her when we were younger and I didn't want to let that go.

Speaker 2:

And as time went on, her father, who had been in prison, got out and got custody of her and that situation just got really sticky and it was obvious that he was not prepared to have a child in his life after being without one for so long. And we made a bridge for that, because the two sides of the family long story but could not cooperate with each other. And we happened to be the bridge for that and we just knew in our hearts that Julie needed a new home and we were open to that. And time went on and we weren't sure how that was going to all unfold. But we ended up going ahead and starting our family and I got pregnant with Nicholas and super thrilled to be having a little boy. My husband was an only child, so it was great to have a boy. And, yeah, about a year, within that year, the whole situation around Julie just got very serious and her father actually because of the bridge that I had made called me and asked me if I would take her. And after a long conversation, daryl and I said yes, we would do that.

Speaker 2:

And so it was interesting in the beginning. I'm juggling a nursing career, I'm juggling a newborn. I think I was even in school back then for a short period of time. And then we have this 12 to 13 year old who's had such a rough start to life, already trying to deal with all those emotions and all those things. But we were determined to make this happen so that she would not turn out to be a statistic and through the bumps and the lumps we made it through, nicholas didn't know any different because she was already in the house by the time he got older.

Speaker 2:

It was the bonus sibling. He knew that was not his biological sibling. We were always up front about who Julie was and all of that and it was. It was funny over time as they grew up, um, nicholas was an only child. He took on that role well and, um, you know, there was some like this is supposed to be my house kind of stuff that went on at certain times as he got older. But they really meshed well. Julie, yeah, having the bonus kid at a different age bracket took some time because obviously she went through middle school and high school well ahead of when he was even, you know, just getting into school and so just juggling schedules and things were were something. But when you know that, you know that, you know you're supposed to do this, you just do it. And I think being a nurse and being a multitasker, naturally because of that kind of helped me, and so we just we did it. I don't know how we did it some days, but we did it.

Speaker 1:

Isn't there something about, like the characteristics of nurses, is the nurturing aspect of who they are wholeheartedly right, and so it does not surprise me by any stretch of the imagination that you decided hey, god's calling me, he's speaking to me, that this is, this is something that is needed in in my cousin life, which is a foundation of stability, consistency, love, nurturing and really unpacking a lot of that stuff and kind of going okay, you can let go of those emotions, those feelings. We don't have to go back and relive anything about the past, but we can forget about that stuff, because this is what it's like now how incredible, but like as a new mom. That had to be, like a lot of waves of emotions for yourself personally, because, you know, I think of going through that experience myself, being a first time mom and holy cannoli, it's the wave of emotions and the hormones and you know that everything is so new. But then you're also, like you said, juggling a career, juggling an individual, a family member, who's who's had a, had a, you know, maybe a dramatic upbringing, holy say the least share share, you know part of with willing

Speaker 2:

yeah, I was gonna say part of it for me was, um, I'm, I'm from the south, uh, from Virginia, and raised up with strong family ties and raised by a set of parents that were actually older. My parents waited a while before they had children, and so I was used to being around the older generation and the older generation values, and you just didn't not do for family. Family was family and you just did for them and it was something that just kicked in, that knew it was right and that I was, that we were the, as you said, the foundation that needed to be. She'd never been in a stable home since she was two, and the one she was in before then was not good, and for me as a nurse, it was another person that needed assistance, right, and so what was hard in raising Julie was to see the beauty in her and she not seeing it in herself and to fight through that for all those years. And we went through all the things we went through as she got older the just depression issues. We went through substance abuse issues, we went through boy issues and just going through all of that and just fighting for her that what she was born into was not going to define her, and I was determined she was going to grow up knowing that and so, over the course of time and looking back now, that's exactly how it played out.

Speaker 2:

She is much further along in life, she is, is flourishing in her own right now obviously still things that probably need to be worked out in her life over time but now has a 18 year old son of her own and she's a fierce mom.

Speaker 2:

She's a fierce mom and I I appreciate the fact that Julie always comes back now and tells us how grateful she was that we took her in and for the foundation we gave her, and that's the outcome you want. It could have went another way. We gave her and that's the outcome you want. It could have went another way, but I believe God was on our side. And then, uh, yeah, her and Nicholas have kind of like interacted over the years. We've tried to make each of them special. That was the biggest thing, as you know, trying to raise any two kids, even if they're your own kids, trying to make each of them feel special in their own way and recognize them and yet try to establish a relationship between them. And so, yeah, they'll always have each other in some fashion or form, and there's just a lot of connection with that.

Speaker 1:

That's so incredible and, yes, 100% can testify to that, that emotion that's invoked in you as a mom, to want to be able to spread the love, and there's there's really no way to do it equally or evenly right, because each child is going to go through their own seasons and need more nurturing or less nurturing, just depending on what right. So I'm getting to a point and, just to refresh your memory, I've got two bonus boys and then my biological daughter, maddie, and it is you know, they're 10 and eight now and I look at them and I'm like they are, they're becoming little men. They are becoming little men, which means that they, like they're also getting to a point where they just don't necessarily need as much from us. It's not that they don't need the love and the nurture. They just don't need us to to consistently be like what about this, what about this, what about this, what about this? You know what I mean? Like they kind of got it, like they're, they're there, uh, they're firing on all cylinders, they got it. But to be able to really fully comprehend, um, what does that look like in terms of what they actually do need for the love and the nurture side of it? It's.

Speaker 1:

That in itself is a whole other topic of conversation that we could go down, but this is Elaine's story, and so let's, let's keep, keep down the path of Elaine. I can't help but wonder and I don't want to spoil quite yet, because I know that we've got a little bit more of a journey to go on but I can't help but think that there's some connective tissue between what it is that you do now and how you supported your cousin through all that she went through. So we're going to leave that as a little teaser for our listeners. Okay, sounds good. I can't. So we're going to leave that as a little teaser for our listeners. Okay, sounds good. So you know really the genesis of who you are as a person. In the occupational stance was a nurse, right, and so that's your foundation. And can you share with us how long it was that you were nursing before stepping into the entrepreneurial side of things?

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely so it was. You know, I tell people I knew since sixth grade that I was supposed to be a nurse. I can tell you the classroom I was sitting in the window, I was staring out and I heard that small still voice say nurse, nursing. And my whole high school trajectory was built around that. There was no other career path that I was going through and so I started back in 89 when there were three year RN schools and I went to the Overseas School of Nursing for three years from 89 to 92.

Speaker 2:

And then I started out in the oncology ward of the hospital doing oncology and hospice again for about seven and a half years. I almost immediately went back and got my bachelor's and when Nicholas came along I was working on my master's and toward the end of that I went into pain management. And that was because in 1999, there were regulations that came out from the powers that be that regulate hospitals that said we have to do better in this area. And for whatever reason probably because I was a go getter I've always taken on leadership roles in anything that I do I was asked by the hospital to head up a committee on pain management to help put the regulations in place. And so there was a whole committee of us pharmacists, doctors, and I was just leading the committee, and so I became fascinated with this world of pain management and how we can make it better, because I'd had some oncology patients that it did not go great Like we did the best we could and they still were in just terrible pain when they passed. And so I was all in to figure out how we do this better.

Speaker 2:

And so through that process I got to meet this wonderful lady named Maureen Carling. She had come here from England, had worked in the hospices in England, which are way more advanced in their thinking than what we do. It's working for another hospital system in the area and she was consulted to come over and show Obesee what she was doing at her hospital, and because I was heading up the pain management team, I got to be around all of that and Maureen essentially took me under her wing and she taught me her way of assessment, where this lady had brilliantly matched up how the pain felt and what medicine made it better, and it was different than just the standard thing that we thought of. And so I love that. And so with her training the hospital advanced my career and put me in place as the pain management nurse for OB-GYN and put me in place as the pain management nurse for OB-GYN, and I got to, for five years, run around and assess patients and consult with the physicians and give them suggestions on how their pain management should be arranged and, if they agreed, to go back and reevaluate those patients, and we had many, many successes doing that. I learned not only to improve cancer pain but to do post-op and chronic pain, and for the first time in many years, that hospital's pain scores, meaning pain satisfaction, went up. And so we made a big difference.

Speaker 2:

And it wasn't just me, it was everybody coming together and following the rules and putting things in place. But having an advocate in the hospital was absolutely the driver. Had I not been there or someone been there to drive that, it would not have gone as smoothly. And so I did that all the way up until about 2005. And I noticed that people were leaving the hospital and not getting the same care in the area of pain management. Doctors were dropping off their medicines or stopping their regimens or just it was suboptimal care once they got out of the hospital. And so me, being me, wanted to be part of the solution, and so I went back to school to get my nurse practitioner. And so from 2005 to 2008, and so from 2005 to 2008, about three and a half years of that I was a nurse practitioner in a private setting with a physician doing pain management in the area, and I enjoyed it. I love the patients, it was fulfilling what I did, and then the world changed in 2008.

Speaker 1:

And that's when we hit the bumps we're going to talk about.

Speaker 1:

I'm here for it. I am sure that the listeners are eager to hear a little bit more too, so let's go ahead and dive into it, because, you know, I this evolution of us as mothers who are entrepreneurs, like there's that, that point where you know you, you're a mother and then you become an entrepreneur and life just changes, right. But we also have to remember that there is this foundational piece and this is what we're building up on is like there's all of these foundational pieces that lead to why we make the decision to go into entrepreneurship. And that doesn't come without its high highs or its low lows, and you've shared a lot about, like, some of the incredible, impactful, progressive aspects of what you had been doing. But, man, I mean I'm recollecting on that conversation before leading into our interview, where you shared and it's we're there, we're ready, we're it's time. Go ahead, elaine. Go ahead. So important for our listeners to understand the, the lows that you went through and how it absolutely for you to be able to then come up out of that valley.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so in 2008,. You'd have to look back and see that. And by that time my son was around 10 years old, 10 going into 11. Julie was older than past her 18th birthday, out kind of doing her thing, and I had gone into this path of being a nurse practitioner and I worked about 45 minutes from my house. So there were some adjustments there. My parents, thank goodness, were still of an age and a mindset to kind of help and look out for, and my husband and I made adjustments to our schedule because I didn't come home until later in the night when he was, when he would have to go and get Nicholas, I would drop him off, he would have to go get him, kind of thing, and so there was a little juggling going on there.

Speaker 2:

But in 2008, you know, we're, we're life is good, like I'm in a good career, I'm making a good salary, daryl's doing well, like the family unit has kind of grown up and we've made it past some major humps of having two kids in the house, right, and things are kind of blissful. And then in August of 2008, much to our surprise, I was in a single physician practice, me and another nurse practitioner. The medical board walked in one afternoon at two o'clock in the afternoon and told us to see our last patient and to send everybody in the waiting room home, and that was just like what is happening right now. And so once we had done that and gathered in the back, we found out that our practice was being shut down and that investigation was being opened up against the physician, and it was just life altering Like we'd worked so hard to build a good pain practice. You have to understand that in 1999, as I said, the pain management regulations came out and everybody was about pain treatment.

Speaker 2:

By 2008, the pendulum had swung again and all of a sudden it became very controversial. 2008, the pendulum had swung again and all of a sudden it became very controversial. There had been some bad actors out there. Admittedly, like in everything, someone's going to spoil it for everybody, and the state had started to really crack down on these single physician practices. We didn't know at the time that they had been building a case against the guy that I worked for. He didn't know they were building a case against him. The guy that I worked for he didn't know they were building a case against him. It was a complete and utter shock, but what happened was the practice shut down. So now I'm out of a job. I have no recourse. We have all these patients we have to reroute because we're not allowed to prescribe for them past the practice being shut down.

Speaker 2:

And then, because part of the process is for everyone to be interviewed, the state board of nursing came and interviewed me and basically, because I would not flip on my physician, because there was nothing to flip on we tried our very best to follow all of the current pain standards across the nation at that time in 2008. They actually opened up one single solitary case against me and kind of made it up as they went along. And so now, not only am I in the shock of not having a job and not having an income, all of a sudden I'm in the position to defend a 16 year career that was unblemished, untouched, no complaints against me, that I knew of all, because there were some political trappings that were going on and we were devastated. Let me just be real honest and say to your audience like you think that physicians and nurses have malpractice and insurance to cover all of these things, nurses were not as well covered. Money was coming out of my pocket to all of a sudden get a lawyer and all of a sudden go through the process of defending myself, and it would go on for a year. But let me not go that far quite yet, because in the midst of all of that, in August of 2008, they come in, they shut the practice down. I'm going through this, having to start defend myself a month later, In December, my father passed away and it was a freak kind of little car accident that they were involved in, and so all of a sudden my father has passed away.

Speaker 2:

He was kind of the glue of my little four person nuclear family and then we're still in the process of defending and doing all of that. The next month, around May-ish of that year, my husband at 47 was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Now he was early stage and he's had surgery and he is okay. But at the time my whole life reflected Job, like Job in the Bible, and everything that I thought was stable and good was just swept out from underneath. And I'm sitting in ashes thinking, lord, what in the world just happened? What just happened? And so it was just a dark period of time. And here I am with a 10-year-old and, you know, an 18, 19-year-old just out of the house and they know me, your kids know you, right, and it's like what's going on, and so I really had to sit in that for a little while.

Speaker 2:

It was a period of time where there was no work, there was a lot of defense, we were going tens of thousands of dollars in debt I'm trying to defend me and then all the things going on with Daryl and trying to get him through treatment and make sure we're on the right path for that.

Speaker 2:

That at the end of the year, still in defense mode, still seeing them push against everything that I was trying to prove to them, it became very obvious that they were not going to let it go the board, and so I made a decision that my family was more important than my career, and I signed something called a consent order, and that means I don't agree with you and you don't agree with me, but we're going to settle on these terms so we can end this process because we didn't. I just didn't want to financially ruin my family, and so in 2009, didn't? I just didn't want to financially ruin my family, and so in 2009, late, late 2009 I basically walked away from my nursing career, not knowing where that was going, but knowing that family came first.

Speaker 1:

I cannot even imagine and again, I know that the listeners are going wow, to just have this massive perspective, like I was getting chills from re-listening. To now I've had the opportunity to have understanding, before going into the interview, of the context of that, but the reminder of it just gave me chills, elaine. Like chills because you are not only going through a trial like I think like figuratively, but you know, actual trial and tribulation. And then on top of that, because there's all of that financial component. But when it comes to the medical side of things, with diagnoses, that comes with its own financial burdens as well. But the biggest thing is the emotional burden that all of this brings.

Speaker 1:

And you nailed, you hit it hard when you said your kids know you, and so I would love to hear just a little bit more about like and what was kind of your rock through that. I think that you've probably alluded to it, but let's talk about what the rock was through all of that. And then the other thing too is you know, from 2009 to 2025, when you decided I'm going to set this down, I think it'll be important for us to dive into like this there's a lot of time between 2009 and 2025. And so let's, we'll start to explore some of the areas there, but let's, let's first start off with what was your rock during all of that. It could not have been easy at all.

Speaker 2:

No, it wasn't, see I. What was so heartbreaking for me is like I grew up in the church. Right, I was a church girl, I tell people. I'm pretty sure I was spit out in the nursery of the church, though they tell me it was at the hospital, because my parents were always there when the door was open and, um, up until that point I had a pretty pretty what I call bubble-wrapped Christianity. Nothing had gone wrong, everything was cool. God was up there, I knew he liked me.

Speaker 2:

You know I was baptized at 11. The whole, you know, my husband was baptized when he was a kid. The way we grew up in the Southern Baptist ranks and yeah. So when this all hit, we had, fortunately, just two years earlier, gotten connected with a non-denominational church. We and part of the reason we moved into the non-denominational church, which is important for the moms out there, is that in our little southern baptist church, which was nothing wrong with, there were only like six kids in sunny school and we were parents that were determined we wanted our kid to be raised up and like church and want to go to church.

Speaker 2:

and so we moved over to a church that had determined we wanted our kid to be raised up and like church and want to go to church. And so we moved over to a church that had like a 50 kid kid ministry which is part of the move and it grew to 400 before we left that church. So he had a great upbringing in church. We were. We were grateful for that. So we were in a church family. We were serving a small group leaders. My husband played in the band. I was eventually going to start doing mission trips, which I'll talk about, but we were surrounded by a loving community and I think God did that on purpose. You know, daryl and I really started. We knew Jesus and grew up with Jesus, but we didn't really start chasing Jesus until 2006. That's what people have to understand. There's a point where you know him but then you don't really chase him.

Speaker 1:

And we were chasing him by 2006. That happens, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so it was. I think God set us up well. Our community loved on us when this happened. We were not shunned at any point. Everybody knew us. They knew who we were. They came around us in just droves. My pastor at the time was very great. I was very grateful for him. He was one of the ones who stood up for me, would write letters for me, would talk to anybody about me, trying to help me through the process of what was going on, and so we were well surrounded with people when it happened. But it still happened and we still had to kind of like go through the questions and things like that that people curiosity would have. But we just kept going.

Speaker 2:

And this was my crossroads and this is where I think God was setting me up all along is when something like this happens and the whole world shuts down on you and your person of faith. It's at a crossroads where you're either lean into your faith or you'll. A crossroads where you're either leaning to your faith or you'll let it go. And there are more people than you can imagine that actually will let it go. And so I was not of that nature. I got stubborn. I have a stubborn streak. He's given it to me. And I leaned in and I said, god, if you're the God that you say you are, I know you called me into nursing. I heard you. Why would you take this career from me? I'm going to need you to explain that to me and that period of time. Yeah, I need you to explain all this to me, right?

Speaker 1:

Hey, hey, hey, buddy, now's the time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, can we talk about this a minute, cause I'm a little confused? So from 2008 to 2013 is my struggle period, right? So in the beginning, in 2008, 2010,. Here's I'm questioning God Like he's not talking to me, but I'm questioning him Like I I'm getting brave, I'm like what is it? And I'm journaling the things he's downloaded into my soul. I'm sitting out in the driveway just kind of trying to contemplate my life and what I realized over time is that I had not let my life be Christ-centered, I had let it be career-centered, and I realized that I was identifying myself with all of those initials on the wall through all of those diplomas, and when I didn't have them anymore, I didn't know who I was. Who am I? Who is Elaine? Elaine has always been a nurse, a mom, this, that and the other, and all of a sudden it all just felt a daughter. It just all felt taken away. But the career was at the center of it.

Speaker 2:

And I know now that he was pulling me out of something where I was shifting away from him and it look, if you do it, he will set you down, because the Bible tells us he chastens the ones that he loves and the chastening hurts because he needs to get your attention and I he, he got my attention and so, as we're traveling through this and we're working it out and I'm learning about myself and work, things kind of went wrong and I can honestly say and I think I said this to you, brie, interviewed before when we talked like I can honestly say in front of God that there was nothing I could have done more in the medical situation that happened and that I was accused of things, that my career was a loving career, that I love my patients. I would never do anything to harm a patient. But I got away from God, I stopped identifying with God and that God was giving me this career and that God had given me the wisdom to do the things that I did in nursing. And that was what he was trying to get me out of. I was materialistic, you know. I was spending, you know, a lot of time in the career, which means I got home late and I wasn't spending the time with Nicholas I probably needed to be doing. See, it all rolls. It all rolls. When you get out of balance, it all gets out of balance, and so God was trying to realign me and so, through this process, what I did is in leaning into God and knowing that I did not want to go the other way.

Speaker 2:

On the crossroads was I leaned into service, like what can I do? I can't sit here anymore, I can't cry anymore, I can't fret about it anymore. I'm going to have to figure out what we're going to do, but what am I going to do in the meantime? And so I did. The simplest thing is I got up one day and went down to my church and volunteered to put the worship folders together, or bulletins, or whatever you want to call it. You know the thing you get when you come in church and it's got multiple things in it. I just went down there and started sorting because I just I could do that and because I did that day after day, I'd find other little things that I could do in service to the church or in service to other people, and servant leadership will bring you out of a situation like this. Serving others and getting outside of your head is where God is trying to get you to go, and when you can lean into that, you will see him move. And how he moved in my life is as I served and as I did.

Speaker 2:

Our church started going to Nicaragua about 2010 on mission trips once a year and I started going with them. And the very first year that I went see, god shows up because I get down there I'm a nurse. The pastor's wife that we're partnering with is a nurse in her own right in Nicaragua. She finds out I'm a nurse. All of a sudden, my little trip where I thought I was going to like hang out with some kids in an orphanage turned into you need to come over and teach female health education. Funny enough, god put a biology teacher on that trip. So me and Val went around and started talking to girls about their female health. And it went from, you know, the girls at the orphanage to over 200 girls in the local school community. And here he is in my despair, doubting myself, using me in a nursing fashion, showing me that when he's in it he can still use it. And so we continued on those trips.

Speaker 2:

I didn't always use my nursing, but I started leaning into my story and started doing the Bible studies down there, and right around that period he'd asked me to put my whole story of that moment of everything going wrong into a book and I thought, oh, I don't want to do that, I don't want to tell people my stuff. God like, nobody's going to believe me against the machine, right? Who's going to know that I'm telling the truth, against that. But I journaled, I had dotted, I had done all kinds of things and all of a sudden I looked down and had all these notes and it took me about six months to compile it.

Speaker 2:

And I compiled my first book that I ended up self-publishing and I called it. Love Echoed Back. I cried out. He answered Because that's what I felt like had happened. His love had come through to me in this devastating time and he wanted me to show people the lessons I had learned. So I put it in the book, to self-publish it, and I even used the pre-bones of that to go down and do study in Nicaragua.

Speaker 2:

And it translated over. They understood hardship. Oh, my goodness, they understand hardship. Hardship is universal. And so that's when I kind of got into this way and I thought, wow, wow, I'm going to be the next Beth Moore, maybe. That's when I kind of got into this way and I thought, wow, wow, I'm gonna be the next Beth Moore, maybe that's where we're going. That's great, because I love talking and I love writing and like this could be a thing. And then, as I'm sitting in Nicaragua one year, I heard him say very, that's that small still voice coming again. I need you to go home and raise up my daughters. And I thought what? All right, wait a minute. I know Jesus. I have been down here helping these girls and helping these ladies and helping ladies at home. But like I'm not the girl who had a lot of girlfriends in high school, I'm not a sorority chick, like I really didn't like girls at some point they were mean. What do you mean you want?

Speaker 2:

me to go home and raise them up, right, right, um. And so I went home and kind of contemplated what I was hearing. And long story short, I looked up one day in the congregation that I was in, which had grown from like 400 to about a thousand or so. We'd moved over to a new building, and I looked up and I thought, wow, there's a lot of wasted potential sitting in this congregation. Like, I know these ladies, I know their stories, I know how they could help people, but they come in, they check the box and they go home.

Speaker 2:

What's up with that? And that's when it clicked. That's that's when he dropped it in. Like, you are here, you're not going to be the one that I push forward yet, but you're here to push them forward and when you obey me, you'll see where I'm taking you. And I thought, all right, I can do that, right, yeah, so that was the crux of what I started and and you can, we can. I'll pause a minute and see if you have any other questions on that point, but yeah, that's where it's headed at this point.

Speaker 1:

You know more of a testament. To get me to my next question, I want to just take a step back and help the listeners understand whether you are Christian. More of a spiritual girly universe, kind of woo, woo, whatever it is. I think that, to kind of understand things and put it into context, um, for us as Christian women, god comes first. God comes first. To like understand this lineage, so just bear with me.

Speaker 1:

God comes first, and then it is your significant other, husband or wife and then it is your family, and then it is your community and, interestingly enough, nowhere in there is like I, me, myself, and all of that. You learn through all of it about yourself. You learn God allows you in, in, in following this track of obedience, because obedience is really important, because obedience is really important. And again, there's many women who have been on the podcast, many women who listen that are not perhaps full-on Christians but they believe in a higher power. And if you can kind of just keep this as your track, you're going to continue to push forward in a very positive trajectory.

Speaker 2:

No doubt.

Speaker 1:

No trajectory, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt and Elaine is literally giving you the track there, but I want to just put that into context how important that is, and even for the Christian women, who perhaps haven't had the light shed on what this looks like like God, husband and wife, husband and or wife, family, community, and that can be your pathway to joy. My God, seriously, it's so incredible and you are just really nailing it home by explaining through your story, through your testament, in doing that and being obedient to God, how it allowed you to be able to work through all of the muck to get to the other side of it. Work through all of the muck to get to the other side of it, and it doesn't come without its. You know additional ups and downs by any stretch of the imagination, but I just had to say that, because this is something that I just recently had my eyes opened to and, interestingly enough, you said something that's really important as well, which is like for for us as christians, like sometimes, a lot of us are just checking the box, and it isn't until you actually get to know god and get to know jesus that, all of a sudden, your mind is just expanded and your world is opened up to this Like it's. It's unbelievable to me Like I feel like my heart is on fire now and I just learn and learn so much on a daily basis.

Speaker 1:

So I also have to remind myself sometimes, like I'm like, am I just checking the box right now, like I've got my routines in the morning, like am I just checking the box, or am I actually like being filled up right now by listening to scripture and like really coming to learn and understand who our God is? It's interesting. Like I have to give myself the little like hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, ma'am, we're not here to check off the box. Like God always comes first. So just a reminder, but I just had to kind of relate that and pull that in. I want to start to refine everything with your story, though, though, because what you are doing is so cool and you've given us a taste of what you've done internationally, but how did you get to where you are at now? Let's start to unpack that part of the story sure.

Speaker 2:

So after I had that epiphany, if you will, about moving women forward, that became my mission and I've always loved teaching. That's a natural part of nursing. Nurturing is a natural part of nursing. Like he's still using my skills right, it's just coming out in a different way now. Um and so, and I had a lot of um women who respected me in the community and and and I say that humbly like I'm always like what me? They're like no girl, that story of yours I'm like. Well, um, I realized the power of my story. I realized that some and this was such a great learning point for me within the journey that I took is that we say this so casually, but it's true, you cannot have a testimony without a test, and God had just given me the biggest test in the world and he was setting me up to use my testimony. I just had to open my mouth and then my my um charge was to get other women to do the same and to figure out where they fit. And, uh, we get very comfortable in the Christian community. I'm not. I'm always going to applaud the local church. I believe it is a life-saving station. It is part of what we use within the Christian faith to help with that part. But we're also supposed to mature and go out and we're not all meant to serve on the you know, the staff of a church. So if that's not where your lane is, where is your lane? Because God has given us all a purpose. He's made that very clear from cover to cover in the Bible. And so where is your lane and what is your purpose? Some of us, it is going to be the mom situation where you're homeschooling kids or or those kinds of things. But what I love to push women is is how can you expand that? So in that and I'll say that because you may have a lot of listeners in that lane like there's a great woman down in Georgia who's a homeschooling mom and she's now expanded it out so that her community of black children have an option of homeschooling Like that's going beyond checking the box, right, yes, be a homeschool mom, but what else? What else? Always ask what else. And so I love pushing women in that direction.

Speaker 2:

And so, 2017, I went, got a John Maxwell certification because who doesn't love John Maxwell? And I started with my first yeah, yeah. So. And I started with my first coach, and so I had a great gentleman who kind of helped me start meshing my idea together. Over time, he has really and he I mean God has really refined it into marketplace, and that means women who are trying to start businesses, ministries and nonprofit, who are faith-based, who want to use their faith to empower their businesses. And so 2019, he had given me an idea for a conference a year before, and in 2019, I launched what's called the she Steps Forward Conference, and the emphasis there was to motivate and inspire women to dream. What is it that God's given you to do? And to mesh that with mentoring and coaching.

Speaker 2:

Well, where is that in the Bible? Elaine, look at Mary and Elizabeth. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was mentored and, I would say, coached by Elizabeth so that she could walk into the biggest purpose anyone on this earth has ever had. When we read through Mary's story, we don't catch the part that the angel said your cousin, elizabeth, is pregnant. Elizabeth's pregnancy was a miracle. She was an old woman.

Speaker 2:

Mary knew that, as a Jewish girl, what that meant, and we forget that when she got through with the discussion with the angel the next day, she got up and with haste and went to see Elizabeth. And what we don't know in our western culture is that where Mary was in Galilee to where Elizabeth was in Judea was 70 miles. She got up, ladies, and walked 70 miles to figure out what God was trying to tell her to go to the person he had named. And she gets there and she just calls out like they didn't have cell phones. Elizabeth didn't know she was coming, like there's this whole story I could tell you behind that. But like they didn't have cell phones, she walks and she calls out and the bible tells us that john in elizabeth's womb leaps at the sound of mary's voice.

Speaker 1:

And I tell people.

Speaker 2:

I tell people what happened was. Mary walked in with the miracle maker and the miracle within. Elizabeth responded and she calls out and she says blessed is she who would believe there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord? And that is the verse that God has sunk into my heart. But then let me just fast forward just a minute to the end of that story, where it tells us and we never talk about it that Mary spent three months with Elizabeth. Well, what was going on in those three months? This was.

Speaker 1:

I don't even know this part.

Speaker 2:

Ah, yes, it says. If you read it it'll say she stayed there three months before she traveled home. That means at the end of that three months mary was starting to show. Mary was getting ready to go back into a community that would not understand. Mary had to go back and talk to joseph. She may have said something to him before she left, we don't know, but we know she had to go back and talk to joseph. Mary was getting ready to walk into a situation where her life could have been in danger because she's an unwed, pregnant Jewish girl.

Speaker 2:

What was going on in that three months? God gave her the one person who could pour into her and understand her situation and there was a strong connection between the two of them. We miss this in the Bible, ladies. This is our purpose is to build each other up, to empower each other, to pour into each other, to make sure we're ready to step into our real callings. I can't imagine the conversations that went on, the motherhood conversations, the purpose conversations, the miracle conversations Like I can't imagine. But she needed that before she walked into her destiny, just like Jesus spent that time in the wilderness before he went into his ministry. We don't. We miss that story in the Bible. We miss that piece of the story in the Bible. And so that lit my heart on fire. That gave me purpose, that gave me my scriptural preference for what I was getting ready to do, and I knew that's what women needed to know and to learn. And so she Stuts Forward has been completely based on Luke 1.45. Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. And I stepped into that. I'm going to believe you, god. What is it you want me to do? And the one door after one door, I'm just going to walk through it.

Speaker 2:

So from that conference, we had about 60 ladies come out to start dreaming again. They got all excited. We had 15 local women vendors that we supported by allowing them to vend. We had three local female-run nonprofits that we supported by gifting them something through the conference. It was all about empowerment. People were starting to catch on. And then God, in his funniness, on the very first conference, not only did he send me a few people from out of state, he sends me an international attendee.

Speaker 2:

I get an email a couple of weeks before conference from a lady in Kenya and I thought I have won the Kenyan lottery. You know how you get those emails all the time Somebody if you just give your bank details, you're going to have like a zillion dollars come in. But I went back and I read it and it was very sincere and she was asking all the right questions, and so I responded to her and she responded back and I sent her the link and behold, two weeks later she bought a ticket and I thought, oh my God, she exists. And so we started communicating through WhatsApp and all this technology that we have. She came in, she came to that conference, she spent the conference with her.

Speaker 2:

She was a mom herself of five brilliant kids, a co-pastor with her husband in Kenya, the local small church. She spent some time with me here in the area after conference and before she left to go up to see family up north, because she has family here on the east coast. She asked me if I'd come to Nairobi, kenya, and I thought what? But it lit my heart on fire because I'd always been a missions kid. I give that back to my pastor. When I was growing up as a teenager, he put missions on my heart. I'd done travel to Nicaragua for nine years. Oh, oh. Now I'm seeing why the experience of Nicaragua is coming into play, because now I have to start leading people over to Africa.

Speaker 2:

And so in February of 2020, before the world shut down with three other people in tow went to Nairobi, kenya. We launched the first G-Steps for Africa conference. We had 60 ladies from five different African countries represented and I thought this is bigger than I thought, this is crazy big right. And so you can't go over there for two days. So we stayed for a week and she went around and showed us different things and I met Miss Grace.

Speaker 2:

Miss Grace, who is running a 65 plus kid orphanage in part of the poorest area in nairobi, has been living off the grace of god since the 90s. As she's doing this, trying to house and educate children and give them a start to life, and I thought, wow, if she could plug away day after day and do that with nothing, what can I do back home? Right? And then we met phyllis. Phyllis is a part of, she has something called the moses baskin edition think about moses in the water of the now and she's a teenage girl advocate. So in nairobi, or in africa in general, girls can have difficulty purchasing sanitary towels and napkins something we can go to everyday store and get and they will get solicited for sex to get these products. And then they'll end up pregnant and kicked out of school when they get pregnant and need an advocate to get back in school.

Speaker 2:

And she's trying to break the cycle in the community along with going over to a village about 45 minutes away where girls as young as 10 years old are being put into child bride marriages because the community is so poor that the dowry situation is still in place or the dowry system is still in place. And so there's Phyllis and I'm like, oh my gosh, this brave woman with two young boys of her own and a husband risking her life for all of these girls because that's what she believes. And then we meet Mary and Wilson, who run the UMAJO Disability Center, and a large portion of their population is women with disabilities or women with children with disabilities. And if you think having disability here in the states is rough, oh, go to a country where the resources are low and the roads are not cobbled, and you know it just. You know it just. It's crazy, right. So where children with a disability are put in the streets.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know it's rough yeah, it's just so much differently over there too, with in third world countries with you know, individuals with disabilities the not even remotely close to any stance of equality, like and even for the women, even for the women, women it's still a largely patriarchal society.

Speaker 2:

So you are even there's a higher bracket in the christian community, but it's a patriarchal society still. And you're considered a widow not only if your husband died but if you're divorced. So it's a lot of you know, a lot to overcome over there. And so we fell in love with this, these women. We fell in love with this country. We just knew that we had to do more and so just decided to make a whole missions week. I don't know how we're going to do this, but we're going to make a whole missions week. I don't know how we're going to do this, but we're going to make a whole missions week. We're going to come back every year. We're going to figure it out.

Speaker 2:

So I came home, the pandemic ensued. I decided to go back to school and get a master's in theology, because what else are you going to do in a pandemic? But go back to school, went ahead and started my paperwork for a nonprofit, because, seeing the Africa piece, I just knew we need more of a nonprofit. So here I am with LLC. Now I'm starting a nonprofit. It's all ministry to me. All right, god, I see you. I see you.

Speaker 2:

So we're doing these women's conferences here in the States every March and then I go over every May and do one in Kenya. We're getting more and more into the entrepreneurial piece. I'm happy to tell you that since we talked, our board has expanded. We're gearing up for a conference in March of 2026 in Virginia, here in the States, but we are launching four African women into their business and nonprofits right now.

Speaker 2:

We've had four that I've been working with since the fall and, as I go over this May, we're going to award them seed grants and get them registered for their businesses and keep moving with them, and their stories are phenomenal. Like they have the know, they know what they're supposed to be doing. They just didn't know how to get there. And that is the work that God has given me to help women find the A to the Z and the points in between, and to cheerlead and motivate and empower them so they don't give up. Because you know as well as I do, here in our country, businesses and nonprofits fail at a 50% rate and it's probably higher for women because we don't have the backing and the support that we need.

Speaker 2:

Oh it's imagine what it is in Africa.

Speaker 1:

So the percentage is just so staggering, even, you know, just for the states. And then to your point about the massive, massive difference of what it looks like in other parts of the world, specifically third world countries. You know the women are even viewed, is already a huge question. It's like a huge question mark like why are women being treated the way that they are? Like, why are women being treated the way that they are? But to just back up to your point about, like that statistic, it's pretty staggering here in the States. But then you also think about as mothers, right, like what does that typically look like? We typically are taking on and putting on many different hats, and a lot of that has to do with taking on this hat of CEO of the household, right, like I've I've referenced that on too many occasions now on the podcast, because I think that that's just what the reality of the situation is and I can't imagine that that's much different than internationally too.

Speaker 2:

That's right. That's right. There's just a lot more single moms internationally. Yeah, it's a lot more single moms internationally.

Speaker 1:

So, out of curiosity, can you help connect the dots? So are you. Are you now in as all of this is evolving? Elaine, and it's just your story of she Steps Forward is so beautiful and so I'm sharing that, because I don't know if the listeners caught the she Steps Forward. So that is what the name of Elaine's business is, what she's doing in the entrepreneurial world. But are you then also what does it look like here within the States? Like you mentioned that you've got the conference, but are you then having individual conversations with other entrepreneurial women or like, talk us through what that looks like, and maybe I'm putting the car before.

Speaker 2:

So no, no, no, no, you're fine, no. So as it's expanded, what has happened is there. I have she steps forward coaching, which is my LLC private coaching practice for women who are ready to step into the one on one coaching business. They really want a handheld experience from ideation to launch. So I have a 12 month coaching package for that with a few other things. And then our nonprofit, the she steps forward International piece is a four pronged approach. We do have our annual conference that we'll be bringing women in. We'll have main sessions and breakout sessions. We have we have amassed here in the States a network of entrepreneurial and coaches that are female, that are seasoned, that are ready to pour back into women who are ready to step into entrepreneurship Because, again, our target is zero to three community-based women who know that, they know they have a gap to fill in a business ministry or nonprofit stance but don't know how to get there.

Speaker 2:

So we do conference, we are doing a monthly online membership. So if they want a low level way to have access to some coaches on a little bit of frequency, we can. We have that. We're going to be hopefully launching a beta cohort, like we've already done in Africa, here in the States this fall we're going to gather about a handful of women to just go through the process of ideation to launch in about six months that will become an application process program. And then we really, really at the heart of my heart is that I want she Steps Forward International to become a seed money grant program where we give small amounts of seed money in with a little bit of coaching to launch as many women as we can into their God-sized dream of entrepreneurship.

Speaker 2:

And we're doing that. We're doing all four of those. Things are building up. We're going to be doing them here and over there. We're just the cohort piece went faster in Africa and I'm excited we'll be able to give them their seed money grants when I go during conference.

Speaker 2:

But we're going to do the same thing here and so that US people know we have our three outreaches in Africa that we're in love with and we support and we try to raise money for them and do things for those women who are involved in that and give women-led businesses an opportunity to vent and show their products at our conference and to also acknowledge some nonprofit-led organizations, women-led nonprofits to showcase them at conference so that if people want to get involved with their organization, and that is our give back here in the state, since we have a little more support than overseas, but we can acknowledge some. We want to acknowledge some great women here in the States that are doing great things. It's about the us and not the I and she Sups For will always be about empowering women who are walking into their God-given purposes, and so it's not all about us. It's a lot about just women in general, and we want to give back to women in the States in that way.

Speaker 1:

It's so incredible and I am, I'm just floored that you, your approach, started on that international scale and then filtered over here to the States. And normally it's like. You know, maybe not normal, I don't know, I, I I tend to probably think like it would start here. You know cause you start with your friends, your family, your sphere of influence, and then it starts to expand and people start to talk and things grow through the grapevine and then it goes to the international. But, ladies and gentlemen, elaine has done it from the international back here to the States and that's like. I commend you for that because that's incredible.

Speaker 2:

You know something that his ways are higher than our ways, aren't they? He gave it to me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, something I want to tie in and really weave into this, because this is the essence of the podcast, is what has that looked like for you in in the realm of motherhood, like how old, how old was your son when all of this really started to come to fruition, and and and grow and just continue to expand?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So again back in 2008, he was around. You know 10, right? So he's watching me from 10 until 20. He's now 27. Go through this process and Julie as well. Like she, she's gone from where she was 12 and 13 that she's now 42. And so they're watching me over the years.

Speaker 2:

And I really want to emphasize this is one of the things you and I talked about. One of my driving factors was absolutely my faith. One of my other rocks was absolutely my husband. But one of my other motivations was my kids. I can't let my kids watch me fail. I can't let my kids not know that God is real. I can't not walk into this and give it all it's got, because they have to know that he is who he says he is.

Speaker 2:

And that was one of my other big motivators in the background is my kids are watching. My kids are 27 and 42. They're not perfect. They're making their own life choices and mistakes nothing major, but you know how you do it when you're young and you got to find out for yourself. But what they do know is that they've watched somebody keep walking it out. They've watched someone come through the fire. They've had their own Bible story play out in front of them, and so that was incredibly important that I did not falter in my faith, because what I know is, if you raise them right, they come back right.

Speaker 2:

Raise a child up in the way they should go and they will return, and so all of our lives are testimony to everybody in the world. There's a quote I know you've heard it. It says you may be the only Bible someone ever reads. Your life may be the only Bible someone reads. And that always was in the back of my mind. And, if anything, my kids know who God is through my life and through my testimony and I believe they are always going to be productive people and he's going to. He's setting them up for great things. But that was important to me, that was a driving factor and they have just watched over the years.

Speaker 2:

My son is very um, he's very analytical. He's good at computers and coding. He has been able to teach himself various language. I don't even know where that comes from because I can't speak english sometimes. The child has taught himself three different foreign languages. The last one has been Japanese and he is hard worker. Like this is my gamer. Like I was, like oh my goodness, is he going to ever grow up and be able to hold a job? When he got a job, work ethics came out. Work ethics came out.

Speaker 2:

I saw my child transform into the person I thought he was hoping he would be and he knows he's watched me and he's watched me and his dad work hard our whole life to give it all. We've gotten to be honest and integrous when we do our work and so I have to believe he's seen that, as in his family and Julie has blossomed into a really great real estate agent. I'm very proud of her. She's dug into that. She's a people person. She knows how to talk to the, to the, to the hardest of hard hit in society, up to some of the richest, and that's been part of her journey. But also watching me be open hearted with people, I believe. And so my kids are watching and my kids have grown and my kids are starting to show that what, what I've, what we've shown over the years, has stuck and that's the most rewarding thing you can ever see or come to know as a mom and a dad is that your life made a difference in the life of your kids.

Speaker 1:

I just want everyone to chew on that.

Speaker 1:

For a second Cause, it's really what I cannot help to point out is that, in and through all of this, you were building foundations, foundations with Julie, foundations for yourself, foundations of what walking in God's God-given will for you was, and and I loved what you said, elaine where you're like, in order to have a testimony, you have to go through tests, and through all of those tests is what, like you have really talked and coached us through is like those tests allow you to build this foundation, whether it's the foundation of getting you closer to your relationship strength with God, of getting you closer to your relationship strength with God, or building a foundation of strength to get you closer in relationship with your significant other or your children or extended family, whatever that really needed to look like, right, that's just something that's just really stirring through me right now, that I feel is kind of resonating through our conversation, and it's so, so powerful.

Speaker 1:

You know you've talked a lot about some of those valleys, right, the tests that you went through so that you could have your testimony, and that testimony is what you're speaking to right now. Maybe you alluded to this already, but could you share or maybe expand like through all of what you've shared. Was there like a particular moment where it was like your deepest, darkest moment? And I think what's really important, above and beyond that to share, is what was it that helped you work through that deep, dark moment?

Speaker 2:

I mean, I can remember when everything hit and it was absolutely the deepest, darkest moment of my life is when the career accusations came and I knew that I had done everything I could do in my nursing career. I can remember sitting in my bedroom in the dark, silent, with the tears rolling, not able to move and just thinking where are you, god? And is this what Jesus felt like on the cross when he said why have you forsaken me? And how do I reconcile what has just happened to what I thought was going to happen? And that was the. I'll never forget that night. That has to be the most darkest, painful night I think I've ever been through in my life, because it pierced my soul, like it wasn't even just about hurting my feelings, like it was a piercing of the soul.

Speaker 2:

And it's funny because, if you remember, back in the bible they warned mary your heart will be pierced at some point, meaning jesus was going to die and her heart was going to be pierced. And so we have to go through this dying of self. Self. You don't recognize it when it first happens and you got all the questions what he's doing? He's trying to get you to die to self.

Speaker 2:

And it was that night that I truly I knew Jesus, when I accepted Jesus to love and I knew what I was doing. I had a great pastor who pastored me. But that night I died to self and that was when it all started turning around and I can only tell you it was the grace of God, it was the love of a strong husband, it was the drive of having children watching me that brought me out of that and that leaning in to who he was. But you have to die to self and that's when it happened and I've never been the same sense. No materialistic thing could you give me now that I would trade for that night. It's worth it to me.

Speaker 1:

I have to expand off of this. You literally stole the words from my mouth, Elaine, because I was like okay, there's a truth in all of this and it was the. I like to say it's like the ego piece, the ego had to be set, that we have to do on a daily basis, Like because we are consistently battling against what I like to call captivities. Right, so, like cynicism, it just overall egotism and not feeling like we're enough. Maybe sometimes feeling like we're like we kind of boost ourselves too much. We consistently are dying every single day because we are not perfect. We never will be perfect until we die and we go to heaven, and then that's where everything is poured into us and we become perfect self, like yep you are.

Speaker 1:

You. You're beautifully stating I had to let go of this old version of myself to be able to move forward and taught. Like. This is the essence of this podcast. Like, let me just hit it home for everybody this is the reason that this podcast is even happening right now is because I had to let go of all of these terrible, terrible things I was holding on to in order to be able to move forward, and that meant letting go of a career that was not serving me. That meant letting go of an ego that wasn't serving me anymore, and I just am so thankful that you literally knocked that baseball out of the park. Home run, home run. It's home run. So beautiful it's just lighting me on fire because I don't.

Speaker 1:

I want the listeners, the women, the husbands who are are listening to their, their wives, like share their stories and their testaments Like. This is what it is and this is what allows us as, as women. You know the. The name of this podcast is called reclaiming your hue. It really follows like what the story of a flamingo is right. Like, as flamingos, they, when they have their babies, they lose their coloring, and sometimes this happens, like when we are birthing a business too, and out of that comes a different shade of who we are as individuals. Okay, and in the, in speaking to the context of flamingos, they start to regain some of that coloring back as women, we start to learn who we are as women and in this conversation, because Elaine and I are both Christian women, who we are as Christian women, to our faith I don't even know what else I can say our faith, I don't even know what else I can say.

Speaker 2:

I would just pair that with the Bible tells us we're changing from glory to glory and we have yet yet to scratch who we truly are and how he sees us, and the only way we're going to come close to that on this side of eternity is to keep digging. I'm probably not going to say it right. There's a really great quote out there. It's just one of those sayings that you see out there, and it says something like the woman I am today thinks the woman I was yesterday, because now I can see the woman that I'm becoming Like. We have all of these layers that are being pulled back to get to the true essence of who we are the daughter of God that we are and the woman that he's creating us to be. We just have to be brave enough to keep walking that path out and to keep asking what's next? What's next, what else? Where am I going now?

Speaker 2:

I have yet to see where, for instance, she Stubs Forward is going right. Will it be encapsulated to two continents or not? I don't know. My heart stays open on that one. I've yet to see the full version of my family, right, yeah, yeah, yet to see the full version of my family, like how many grandkids will I eventually have not rushed in that right now, but how many grandkids will I eventually have? You know, what will my kids be doing in the latter years? How will that all fall out? Like we just, we just have to keep marching our lives out but become the better versions of us every time we get a chance and let at. Like you said, let go of all the things because we're holding on to stuff he wants us to give him, because he does create beauty from ashes, but we got to give him our ashes I want to start to land the plane.

Speaker 1:

This has been so incredible, elaine, and I knew it was going to the second that we hit record. I was like this is gonna pack a nice little punch for our listeners and I can't wait for them. But we're we're ready to start landing the plane. And so you kind of set me up really really nicely with what you just shared, and so I would love for you to share with the listeners what you just shared, and so I would love for you to share with the listeners like what do you think is next for she Steps Forward?

Speaker 2:

We are absolutely on a path to work to create a national footprint here in the United States. I'm very blessed to have we have an eight person board. Most of our members are from across the country. I'm here in Virginia, but we have people from Pennsylvania, minnesota, ohio, florida. We are determined to become a national voice, not only here in the States but across Africa and so beyond Kenya. I hope that one day we can take she Steps forward up to somewhere like Ghana or down to South Africa.

Speaker 2:

My heart right now is completely for Africa. As far as going outside of the States, I don't know if it, like I said, I'm not sure if it'll ever go beyond that, but right now there's a lot of territory yet to cover in Africa. But he's setting us up and setting us up Well. I cannot even begin to tell you the people and things that have come through my pathway to keep building this plane right, and so I'm just going wherever he opens the door next and we will see what happens. But I hope that what we will accomplish between.

Speaker 2:

What I love about our board is the core of the women are again coaches and entrepreneurs, but I hope together that we birth thousands and thousands of women here in the states and Africa doing marketplace ministry, which means a faith-based not necessarily out front with that, but your faith-based running a business ministry, a non-profit, and serving people in society through what you do in those entrepreneurial ventures. And I just know that when we change their lives, they're going to change the lives of their community and I'm excited to see what's going to come from that.

Speaker 1:

Well, on the heels of that, who would be a good connection for you? As you're talking through all of this, I'm sure that there's some things that come to mind and who would be a good connection, so I'd love for you to share that and drop that to see if we might be able to help kickstart that for you.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. We're always, always open to making connections with other seasoned female entrepreneurs and coaches out there to come alongside and be a part of the she Steps Forward community. We have spaces and places for you to give of your talents. We're also looking for business and corporate sponsors that see the value in female entrepreneurship in general, because we know, as they say, the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and female entrepreneurship is a huge driver in business and communities growing, and we absolutely would love to see people come alongside and feel like this is a place that they could donate into. And there's so many ways and things you can donate into, whether it's donating into our conference, donating into our seed money grant program, donating to one of our outreaches over in Kenya there's all kinds of ways you can show the love to the next upcoming female entrepreneur.

Speaker 1:

So incredible. Hey, how can people get connected to you?

Speaker 2:

So people can find me at she steps forward coachingcom or she steps forward internationalorg. We have a Facebook and Instagram handles by both of those names and they are happy to reach out to me directly at Elaine at she steps forward internationalorg.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. I'll be sure to drop that in the show notes for everybody so that they have accessibility to get connected to you. I've got two last questions and then I will let you go on your merry way with the rest of your day, even though, selfishly, I want to talk to you all day. I know what is a piece of advice that you would give a younger version of yourself, knowing all that, all the wisdom that you know now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think the biggest piece of advice that I would want to give her is have grace with yourself. Have grace with yourself. You're not going to always get it right, but you're on the path, that he sees you, that you're right where you need to be, that you are enough, and that you are going to be so shocked by the things that you do that are going to overshadow every accomplishment that you had to let go of, and the life you're going to lead is going to be power packed and purposeful. That's what I wish. I could go back and tell her that's.

Speaker 1:

That's good, and I'm sure that there are women who needed to hear that in the moment so that they can remind the younger versions of themselves. Just give yourself some gosh darn grace. I think we all could take a little dose, a little injection, of that. What's a piece of advice that you would give a woman listening right now who's nibbling on the edges of entrepreneurship?

Speaker 2:

I want to say to that woman that girl, don't do it alone. Come, come, find your Elizabeth. God gave us that story in the Bible for a reason, and the one thing that she sets forward is trying to be as an Elizabeth to a whole bunch of Marys we know that are out there that are going to do powerful things. So don't try to do it alone. You're going to waste time and effort when there are women who would be willing to pull you up to show you what went wrong, to cut your time frames down, to help you save finances. Lord, girl, I have done it all, trust me, and I've made all the mistakes, because he never lets me do anything easy, and that is why we're here is to help you get there and to get there faster and to get there more efficiently. Don't do it alone. It's better in community. We were built for community and the Bible reflects that over and over again.

Speaker 1:

Amen, sister, and on that note, I just want to say from the bottom of my heart, first and foremost, thank you to Andrea for the connection, because that's the root. Thank you, andrea and Elaine, thank you so much for carving out time, and especially, you know, on a Saturday morning. I greatly appreciate you and I truly hope to see you in the not so distant future, because that would be even more incredible to actually meet you, give you the biggest hug that I want to be able to do right here and now. But again, thank you so much for carving out the time. I appreciate it and I hope that you have a great rest of the day.

Speaker 2:

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Kelly, and just invite me into the space, and I just I really appreciate you giving voice to all of those that you're giving voice to, and I just want to tell you keep asking what's next. There may be more what's?

Speaker 1:

next there may be more, and that is an amazing, amazing last bit of like drop mic drop for our listeners. Elaine, I hope you have a great rest of the day. Truly, truly, it's so great to see you.

Speaker 2:

Thanks.

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Kelly Kirk

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