Don't get hung up on the hard times, the challenges. Tell your story by highlighting the victories. Because it's your victories that will inspire, motivate, encourage other people to live their stories in grander ways.

In speaking the truth of your experience to another, it will serve you well to realize that how they choose to respond is not your responsibility.

If you want to run the show, God will let you. If you want to pull all the strings, that's up to you. If you want to insist that what you are doing is the way it should be done, even when you are not getting anywhere, go right ahead. God will let you run yourself ragged, if you choose to do so. Unfortunately, you may not always be aware that you are in God's way. . . . God has no need to prove to you what God can do.

Forgive yourself for believing things about yourself that are not true. Forgive yourself for believing that you were anything other than a child of God. Then, after forgiving yourself for believing the things you were told, forgive the people who told you. Forgive them not for what they said or did. Forgive them because they did not know any better.

Comparison is an act of violence against the self.

Talk about your negative experiences with the father, with your girlfriends. Not with your children. And bite your tongue when it comes to diminishing, denying, dismissing, name-calling.

You`re demonstrating a courage that most people can`t even fathom: giving it all away in order to have yourself