Tiny Brave Steps: Real Women. Real Fear. Real Courage Stories.
She was told by her own team that if she got into trouble, they wouldn’t come to save her. She showed up anyway—every single day for fourteen years. She walked into literal fires while fighting one inside her own chest. And one day, she decided surviving wasn’t enough anymore.
That’s one story. There are so many more.
Tiny Brave Steps is where real women tell the truth about the hardest things they’ve ever walked through—and how they found their way to the other side.
Not with some dramatic, made-for-TV moment. But with what I call Tiny Brave Steps - the kind of courage that happens one terrified, trembling choice at a time.
These are women who’ve faced the fire.
A surgery that stole everything and gave her more than she ever imagined.
A caregiving journey with no finish line.
A fourteen-year silence finally broken.
These aren’t superhero stories. They’re your-neighbor, your-sister, your-friend stories. The kind where you listen and think, That could be me.
I’m Bernice McDonald, Creator of the Tiny Brave Steps method and author of The Little Books of Courage.
Each episode, I walk you through one woman’s journey using the Courage Map - a path from feeling “not enough” to becoming “brave enough.”
You’ll hear her real voice. Her real fear. And the real moment she decided to take that next step - even though her hands were shaking.
Because here’s the truth I want you to know: Courage is never the absence of fear. It’s the judgment that something matters more than the fear.
If you’ve ever whispered I’m not brave enough for this—this podcast was made for you.
New episodes weekly. Bring your heart. Leave with courage.
On a rainy night, ten-year-old Julie Fairhurst was home babysitting her three younger brothers when strangers came to the door and took all four children away.
Two weeks later her mother appeared. Julie ran to her sobbing, and her mother raised both hands and said, “get her off me.”
There had been a car accident, and her mother's closest friend had died.
No one talked about it. There was no counselling and no conversation. The family went quiet and stayed quiet — and every child in that house grew up deciding the coldness was about them.
Julie spent the next thirty years refusing gifts, refusing compliments, and paying every bill so she'd never owe anyone anything.
She called it independence.
Then one night she heard herself say something out loud, and everything turned.
Today Julie has published forty collaborative books and more than 350 true-life stories — and she has never charged women a participation fee to contribute them, because she never wanted money to keep a woman from being heard.
This is how the silence finally broke. If you've ever gone quiet to keep the peace — this one is for you.
Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author.
Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI: www.tinybravesteps.com.
If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.
Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message.
SPEAKER_01
Julie was 10 years old, home babysitting her three little brothers on a rainy night while her mom was out with two girlfriends. She had fallen asleep on the couch. They lived on the second floor of an apartment building, and all of a sudden, someone was out on their deck, banging on the patio door. Can you imagine being 10 years old, alone with three little brothers, and hearing that in the dark?
SPEAKER_00
I remember being on the couch asleep, waking up and hearing that. I remember like just cuddling down under the bed, under the blanket, thinking, you know, I'm not, I'm not answering that. Like whatever is going on there. But it didn't stop, it didn't stop. And so finally I got up terrified and made my way to the patio door. And there's a teenage girl standing there, drenched, because of course it's pouring down rain out. And she's like saying, open the door, open the door. And they were there to collect us, to collect me and my brothers. And they told me that my mom was okay, but that we needed to go with them.
SPEAKER_01
Julie and her brothers were bundled into an old station wagon and taken to the home of people she had never met. For two weeks, the four of them lived out of one bedroom.
SPEAKER_00
Nobody told us what's going on. Explaining to us what was happening.
SPEAKER_01
It would be decades before anyone in her family talked openly about what happened that night. And by then, the silence had shaped every one of them. Before we go any further, I want you to notice something as you listen. Courage has a shape, not a neat one, not a straight line. But there are moments in it that we can recognize in our own lives. Courage isn't something you either have or you don't. And it doesn't suddenly arrive one day when you finally feel ready for it. It gets built. In these courage stories, I listen for four movements. I call them acts. Like a play. First, something wakes up. We begin to see the fear that's been quietly making choices in the background. Then we turn back toward who we are underneath all that protecting. Then we begin to live from that place in ways other people can actually see. And eventually, something we've lived through becomes part of what we can give to someone else. That's our impact. If you've ever kept quiet to keep the peace or built a wall so no one could hurt you again, I think you'll find a piece of yourself in Julie's story. Wake up your courage begins when you finally see the fear you've been living with. For Julie, that fear started in a stranger's kitchen when she was just 10 years old. After two long weeks, her mother finally came to get them.
SPEAKER_00
And I remember running out into the kitchen and I was crying, and I reached my arms and I wrapped myself around her just in tears, and she put her hands in the air. She couldn't touch me. And I just was crying even more and more. And she said, get her off me. So I was dragged off of her, put back in the bedroom.
SPEAKER_01
Julie had no way of knowing what had happened. Her mom was only 30 years old. Two weeks earlier, she had been in a car accident, and her closest friend had died.
SPEAKER_00
So they went out that night, her and two of her girlfriends. And uh at the end of the night, they decided my mom was the most sober one to drive. And on the way home, uh my mom sideswiped a semi, and her best friend was pulled out of the car and killed. And uh, so three little girls lost their mom that night. And I always say, you know, I lost my mom too. My brothers and I lost my mom too. Think about what her mother was carrying, and no one helped her. And back then, you know, she didn't go to jail, uh, which thank God, because we had all these kids to take care of, but she didn't go to jail. There was no, there was no mandatory counseling, right? There was nothing back then like that, like there is today. And so, you know, in her defense, everybody just lived in silence. And so we lived in in silence. Nobody ever talked about this, but of course it affected our family.
SPEAKER_01
From then on, Julie says her mother never touched her, and she rarely had a kind word. But years later, Julie was still calling her when she had good news.
SPEAKER_00
I remember one time I got promoted in a job, and uh I phoned her and I said, Hey mom, guess what? I got promoted to supervisor. And there was death silence on the phone. And then she said, You know what that brother of yours did? Julie left home at 15.
SPEAKER_01
When I asked Julie what all of this did to her, she knew right away.
SPEAKER_00
But I think what it did to me as a as a as a woman, as a uh growing up, as a teenager, uh, and and certainly as an adult, and affected many of my relationships, is I was always there's always been a wall. There's it's gone now, thank goodness, but that wall was there so that I wouldn't be hurt like that again.
SPEAKER_01
A wall. That's how Julie describes it. Something between her and the possibility of ever being hurt that way again. If you've listened to me before, you know I call the fearful protective part of us Fred. Fred isn't the enemy, he's trying to make sure that we never feel that pain again. For 10-year-old Julie, the lesson was simple. When you reach out, you can be pushed away. So don't reach. Don't knead. Don't give anyone the chance. A few years later, at a breakfast table, that wall got another layer.
SPEAKER_00
My stepfather was not the nicest person, and there's a lot of alcoholism in our house. So here I am, and I think I was 13, and uh my younger stepsisters got to go to a concert. Uh, I can't I can't even remember like a kiss concert or something. And then in the morning, we're getting ready to go to school, and he's at the breakfast table, and he starts uh this oh, well, you know, your dad, your dad never did anything for you, and da-da-da-da-da. So I don't, so I don't want anything because now you want something from me, or you're gonna blame me for it.
SPEAKER_01
So that became the rule Julie lived by. If someone gives you something, it will cost you later. So don't take anything. And for most of her adult life, she didn't.
SPEAKER_00
I dated this one fellow once, and um he uh he he took me to uh a fancy jewelry store and wanted to purchase a pretty necklace for me. I refused. Don't buy me anything, I prefer to pay my own way. Um I had someone who asked me to marry him, broke up with him immediately. So I didn't let anybody do anything nice for me. I just didn't on my own. And even now I still have a problem with birthday parties. And I would go away at every holiday so I wasn't disappointed.
SPEAKER_01
She went away every holiday just so she wouldn't be disappointed. I wonder how many of us have done some version of that. Kept ourselves so busy, so far away, that nobody could let us down. The wall held for a very long time. It held all the way through a 10-year relationship. And then one night, lying in bed, Julie reached the end of it.
SPEAKER_00
When I broke up with that 10-year relationship, I remember the moment we were lying in bed and I was so burnt out and so tired, and we were in bed, and I said, Oh, I'm just so tired. And all I wanted was a hug, right? And then he said, Oh, yeah, I'm tired too. And so I lost that was my moment. And I came up on one arm and I looked him in the face and I said, Well, what can I do for you? That was the moment. That was the moment that I knew I could I I now saw what's going on. All she had wanted was a hug.
SPEAKER_01
And in that moment, she finally saw the wall she'd been living behind and what it was costing her. That was Julie's wake-up moment. She didn't know what she would do about it, but she knew that she couldn't pretend anymore. Act two. Embrace who you are. Embrace who you are is the part where you turn toward yourself and get honest about what you find. For Julie, it meant stepping away from dating for almost a year and taking a long look at her own patterns. It would have been so easy to blame the men she'd been with.
SPEAKER_00
But Julie didn't. I needed to take a break and I needed to figure myself out. Because a lot of times we want to blame other people, but when you're the common denominator, you don't even need to look at the other people. You just need to focus on yourself. What is happening with you? Why am I not willing to accept a gift? Why am I not willing to accept a compliment? Why am I, why would I prefer to pay the bill versus him paying the bill? You know, what what's going on with me? And it was all protection. I was protecting myself all those, all those years. Uh, but it wasn't really protecting me. It was it was just, I was in a bubble and I just wouldn't let anybody in.
SPEAKER_01
It was all protection. I love that she could see that for herself. The wall had been her fear, Fred's way of keeping her safe, but it had also kept everyone out. That was when Fred started moving from the driver's seat to the back seat. He didn't leave. Fred would never really leave. Fear is always with us. But Julie was starting to take the wheel.
SPEAKER_00
So what I needed to do was realize I was worthy of all of those good things and get those guards down.
SPEAKER_01
As I listened to Julie, I kept hearing something else in her story. Even at 10, in that stranger's house, she had been trying to understand what was going on with the people around her. She could look at someone who had hurt her and see that they were hurting too. I call that kind of gift a strange jewel. It's something that you were made with that you may never have thought of as anything special. Julie's would turn out to matter more than she knew. Act three. Stand up for you. Stand up for you is where what you've learned about yourself starts showing up in how you live. For Julie, that meant learning to let people give to her. Beginning on a first date. When Julie was ready to date again, she went online. And I love what she put at the top of her profile.
SPEAKER_00
And I remember my headline was like, okay, I'm ready, I guess. Like something like that. I'm just like, oh, brother, this sounds so exhausting.
SPEAKER_01
I think a lot of us can relate to that. She met the man who would become her husband. And on that very first date, when the bill came, Julie had a choice to make.
SPEAKER_00
It wasn't like a one-minute thing. Like it wasn't like, oh, okay, the wall's down. It was, it was gradual. It was very, very gradual. Because I remember the first date we went on on with my with my now husband, the very first date we have, I wanted to pay. And I thought, don't, you know, and it was hard not to take it, you know, it was just so hard to accept the to let him do it. But I did. And then it just got easier.
SPEAKER_01
That was Julie's tiny brave step. Keeping her hands in her lap and letting him pay. It sounds small, but for Julie, it went against everything her fear Fred had taught her. He was right there telling her she would owe this man something. She heard him. And she let him pay anyway. And then she began doing the same thing with her friends.
SPEAKER_00
When why would go out with the girls? I wouldn't be the first one to grab the grab the bill. It's either we're all paying for ourselves or who's paying? I'm not paying anymore. It was fulfilling something in me, but it was false. It wasn't real.
SPEAKER_01
Julie and her husband have been married now for nearly 14 years. And she'll tell you that Fred isn't gone. He still shows up. Julie just knows what to do with him now.
SPEAKER_00
And it was so funny. We went with a group of couples. I think there was like eight or nine couples. And I just sit back because I'm not paying. Like, even though it's our money, I'm not paying. You're, you know, I want to be felt feel like I'm treated. And and he he elbowed me and he goes, look around the room. And I looked around the room and not one man was paying. Every woman was paying the bill. So I've I've I still have a little bit of that in, and I and I have to tell myself, no, let people do nice things for you. Even going, even I stop and let I stop and I'm not opening the restaurant door.
unknown
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
It's a little thing, but I never got any of that ever. For 28 years, I had none of that.
SPEAKER_01
For 28 years, Julie insisted on opening every door for herself. Now she sometimes stands there and just lets someone else open it for her. It still takes something. That's what courage can look like. Not conquering fear forever. Not proving you can do everything yourself. Sometimes it's simply standing at a door and letting yourself be cared for. Small on the outside, big on the inside. Act four. Create your impact. Creating your impact isn't about suddenly becoming important. It's what can happen when what you've lived through becomes something that helps someone else. By 2016, Julie was exhausted. Nearly 30 years in sales, five people leaning on her income, and no clear sense of what came next.
SPEAKER_00
But then she had a dream. And in my dream, I was in this super bright white light. And I remember I heard a voice, and the voice said, Julie, you have to go back now. And in in the dream, I said to this person who I don't know who it was, I said, Well, I don't want to go back. I want to stay here with you. And then the voice said, No, you have to go back. You're not finished yet. I said, I don't know my, but I don't know my purpose. And then the person said, Well, you are your purpose. And I said, in my dream, but but that doesn't help me. And as I was being pulled awake, I remember yelling, but I don't know what to do. And I opened my eyes and the word right popped into my head. Right.
SPEAKER_01
So Julie started with what she knew sales. She wrote sales books. They sold, but they didn't feel like the answer. Something was still missing. It would be three more years before she understood what she was meant to write. And then her family was hit by another loss.
SPEAKER_00
And then in 2019, my niece, September of 2019, my 24-year-old niece died on the streets of Vancouver from a fentanyl overdose.
SPEAKER_01
Her name was Leanne. She was only 24. And she had grown up in foster care.
SPEAKER_00
So the day of her funeral, I came home and I was I was just lost. I thought this should not be freaking happening. This is this should not be happening. This is generational trauma because my mom didn't deal with what she should have dealt with, which affected all of us kids. And uh luckily I was come found my way out of it, but at 14, I was going the same direction.
SPEAKER_01
Julie could see a threat running through the whole family. The accident, the silence that followed, four children growing up inside that silence, and now another generation carrying pain of its own. She wanted to do something. But again, her fear had one more worry for her.
SPEAKER_00
But I thought, well, I'm not a counselor, I'm not a psychiatrist, I don't have a college degree or like I really need my GED. I mean, what am I, what am I gonna do?
SPEAKER_01
What she did have was decades of lived experience, leadership, and an extraordinary ability to see the story beneath someone's behavior. She'd been doing that since she was 10. And that's exactly where her answer came from.
SPEAKER_00
And then it hit me. And I don't know where it came from, but I it hit me. And I thought to myself, you know, if my mom could have got the trauma out of her body and out of her mind, then she could have healed somewhat, you know, instead of living in this silence.
SPEAKER_01
That was what the dream had been pointing to all along. Not sales books, women's stories.
SPEAKER_00
So I went to bed and in the morning I woke up and I called 13 of my stepsisters and my good friends, a couple of clients, and asked them if they wanted to write their true life story in a book with me. And every one of them said yes. The very first Women Like Me book came out in um in December of 2019. I have published over 350 true life stories and helped hundreds of women.
SPEAKER_01
13 phone calls the morning after her niece's funeral. 13 women said yes. The first book came out three months later. Today, there are 40. And the decision she made about money came straight from her own childhood.
SPEAKER_00
These are all collaborative books, but no one not one of these women have ever paid. Not five cents. Because I don't want there to be a price on Haling. I grew up on welfare. I grew up standing in line at the food banks. This isn't about money.
SPEAKER_01
This is about healing. She said most of them don't see their own gifts until they start writing. One woman had carried something for decades and never told a soul.
SPEAKER_00
And so when she came to me, she said, I I go in a room and I feel like they all know, but they don't know. Like I'm so shameful. I'm so the guilt just it was eating her up inside.
SPEAKER_01
She didn't want to live that way anymore. So Julie helped her write her story. But on the morning the book came out, she told Julie she couldn't go through with it. Julie was honest with her. The story was already printed, but she promised to leave her out of the marketing. And then she gently reminded her that this was what she had wanted.
SPEAKER_00
And so she took 20 minutes and then she sent me a message and it said, do it. This is what I want. And it was amazing the support, the love from all these people. I had no idea. Oh my gosh, you're so brave, you're so strong. Over 100 comments after they do their story, if they want. I certainly don't force them, but I if they want, they can come on uh the podcast with me and we can promote their story. And uh and so she said, I just feel free. I feel like I can breathe.
SPEAKER_01
More than a hundred people wrote to her with love and support. That's Julie's gift at work. She can see where a woman's story really begins. And about a year and a half ago, Julie finally wrote her own story. She didn't expect what would happen next.
SPEAKER_00
One of my stepsisters bought the book and she phoned me and she said, Why didn't I know about this? Well, why didn't I know about what happened to mom about the car accident? And I said, I'm not sure why you didn't know. And then she said to me, You know, I thought she hated me. And it just clicked in my head because it was silent. That's why she didn't know about it. Because we didn't talk about it. Nobody brought it up, nobody talked about it. That's why she didn't know. But this is what generational trauma does about being silent. And I said to her, she didn't hate you, she hated herself. It had nothing to do with us. She just hated herself.
SPEAKER_01
Four decades, her sister had carried one painful belief. She never knew what was behind it all until Julie's story. Julie has thought a lot about what that kind of silence costs a family.
SPEAKER_00
You think by staying silent, we're doing everybody a favor. We think by keeping the skeletons in the closet, not letting them out, we're actually helping people. We're doing the exact opposite. Because when people understand why someone is the way they are, they don't start to think it's them.
SPEAKER_01
They don't start to think it's them. That's what silence can do. When no one tells us what happened, we fill in the blank ourselves. And children are very good at making that blank mean it must be me. Julie's mother never really found a way to put her own story down. Years later, she became involved with the ex-husband of her closest friend, the one who had died in the car accident.
SPEAKER_00
And he used to be there. And I'm sure she felt that it was just deserved. They were together for years. Yeah. So self-punishment. We self-punish ourselves. Sometimes we don't realize what we're doing, but we are self-punishing ourselves.
SPEAKER_01
It's heartbreaking. And it's why Julie does what she does, so that other women don't have to carry their stories alone. Even after everything, Julie was there for her mother at the end. She became her caregiver.
SPEAKER_00
So so for me, when she passed, I was just there. I bought a condo for her to live in so that she wasn't living with the creepy guy, and you know, we were there for her, and and um yeah, we were all around her bed when she passed away, but she had a rough life, poor thing, you know?
SPEAKER_01
Listen to the tenderness in that. This is the little girl who was pushed away at 10, talking about the mother who pushed her away. Julie didn't erase what happened. She came to understand that her mother's pain had never been a measure of Julie's worth.
SPEAKER_00
I didn't want to hold grudges. I don't want to blame. Blame does nothing to help anybody.
SPEAKER_01
And when I look at everything Julie has built, I keep coming back to that same gift. She can look beneath someone's behavior and see the story they may be carrying. So if you're the woman who can give and give but has trouble receiving, if you've built a wall so nobody gets the chance to hurt you or disappoint you, listen to what Julie wants you to know.
SPEAKER_00
So I would say to all of those women out there who are living in shame and guilt about their story, that's not you. That's just what happened to you. That's just your story. And your story is going to be the thing that brought you the strength, the wisdom, the kindness, the love, all of those beautiful things about you came because of your entire life. Get that story out of your body. Get it out of your mind. It's taken up rent in there. Quit it. Quit paying it. Get it out. Get it off your plate and start and start fresh.
SPEAKER_01
It's taken up rent in there. I love that. So quit paying it. Maybe you see yourself somewhere in Julie's story. Maybe your wall looks different. You don't have to tear it all down today. Leave your purse in your lap. Stand at the door and let somebody else open it for you. Take one small step that breaks the old rule. You don't get to make this choice for me anymore. That's a tiny brave step. That's how courage gets built. One choice, then another. I'm Bernice McDonald. Thank you for listening to Julie's Courage Story. Julie Fairhurst is the founder of Women Like Me Media. She has supported hundreds of women in finding and sharing their voices. Julie has never charged women a participation fee to contribute their stories to these collaborative books because she never wanted money to prevent a woman from being heard. If the silence in your own family sounds familiar, or if you have a story that's been taking up rent, you can find Julie and her work at JulieFairhurst.com. And if you're ready to take your own next step, the small, honest, doable one, the brave one. Come find it at tinybravesteps.com. Because courage isn't something that you're born with, it's something you build. Remember, you are brave enough for this.
