I’m experimenting with something new here in Queen Creek!

What if women over 50 had a welcoming place to drop by, meet other women, enjoy a little conversation, and simply spend time together?

No agenda. No assignments. No expectations.

Some Gatherings might be casual Open Houses where you can come and go as you please. Others might be Playshops, book-sharing afternoons, or opportunities to explore something interesting together.

We’re just getting started, and I’m curious to see what develops!

Come as who you are. No performance required.

A personal invitation from LauraJo

I'd love to tell you a little about what I'm imagining. Press play and hear it from me.

What might a Gathering look like?

Maybe you’ll stop by for a little while, meet some interesting women, and enjoy a few conversations.

Maybe you’ll settle into a comfortable chair with your favorite drink, bring your knitting, or spend some time visiting on the patio.

Some days we might gather around a question, share books we’re enjoying, or explore something playful together.

Other days, we’ll simply enjoy being in one another’s company.

There’s no expectation that you share your story, participate in a particular way, or arrive with anything figured out.

That’s part of the adventure!

Want to join us sometime?

I‘m planning future Gatherings at my home in Queen Creek, Arizona, near Meridian and Ocotillo.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, I’d love to keep you in the loop.

Let me know which days and times generally work for you, and I’ll send you an invitation when the next Gathering is scheduled.

Keep Me in the Loop

Come as who you are. No performance required.

LauraJo

P.S. We’re just getting started. I don’t know exactly what these Gatherings will become, and that’s part of the fun! 💜

Note from LauraJo: This is Part 2 of an introduction I recorded back in May 2026.

In Part 1, I shared a little about my family, my career, and what led me to begin rediscovering myself at 58.

In this second part, I share more about the unexpected turns my life has taken, including losing my husband, Don, and what has been stirring within me as I’ve begun imagining a different kind of next chapter.

As I mentioned in Part 1, quite a bit has changed since I recorded this. But these reflections are part of the story of how SheAwakens began, and I want to share them as they unfolded.

Morning Reflections with LauraJo | Episode 04 - Part 2 of 2

Welcome to Part 2 of this longer-than-normal episode about me.

And if you missed Part 1, I know you’ll definitely want to go back and listen to it, especially if Part 2 feels incomplete.

As life has occurred over these last five years, my husband, Don, who was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2017, was stage four in 2020 during COVID, when he had to go in and have a liver resection.

Then, in November 2024, the tumors were growing on his liver again. He ended up in the hospital very jaundiced because the tumors were putting pressure on his bile ducts, and his liver wasn’t functioning properly. He needed to have some stents placed.

That was a palliative care procedure that had to be repeated every eight weeks.

So we knew in November 2024 that he would pass at some point in 2025.

And that was a very dramatic shift from having his cancer diagnosis in 2017. He almost died from his first chemo treatment, which is another story.

My oldest daughter was surprised that we had not had these deep conversations about his passing. And I know for me, I didn’t want to have those conversations. I didn’t want to bring his passing about any faster than it was already going to occur.

We look back over those years from 2017 to 2025, and he was here for the birth of six grandchildren. Three boys who, at the time of his passing, were pretty much eight, six, and four.

And he was here for the first birthday of the triplets in March of 2025.

Those triplets brought us so much joy. And in the dark, they were a light.

I laughingly told my youngest daughter, who is the parent of these three kids, that it couldn’t have just been one baby to offset the sorrow. It took three!

And so, yeah, what a blessing. They were in our life and continue to be in my life. The joy they bring is just so beautiful.

So when they say joy and sorrow can coexist, that is truth.

But my husband did pass away in May of 2025, and one of my recent posts/recording was some reflections about the last year and my personal growth after his passing—Peace Is Not the Absence of Grief.

I’ll mention again here this visual image of his passing that came to me, and it has been, I think the right word is, such a solace for my heart.

The image is of us walking, holding hands, down this road. And then, at this point, our paths diverged.

There’s nothing right, wrong, good, or bad. It was just that our paths diverged.

And I love the thought that at some point in the future, our paths will come back together again.

But I don’t know.

He is on his path. He is on his new adventure as I continue on my own adventure in a way that I did not expect to be living this part of my life.

That image has been such a blessing for me. I don’t know where it came from, but it’s the image in my mind and in my heart, and it really does give me comfort.

So here I am, standing in a very different chapter than I anticipated at this point.

Not broken, not destroyed, and not lost.

Instead, I feel very much awake. Reflective, as you can probably tell. And this whole thing is about reflection and rebuilding a life with intention and leaning into living in the unknown.

I think we, and I want to say all humans, just want this step-by-step guide.

You know, hey, you want a good life? Here’s the things you need to do. Ba bum, ba bum, ba bum, ba bum.

But that’s not the case.

I remember Brian Tracy sharing a thought with my husband and me when we went to dinner with him one time years ago.

He talked about standing at the end of a hall and looking at the door at the other end. And we’re headed down this hall toward that door because it’s the only thing we can see.

As we’re on this path, headed toward this door, as our perspective changes, as we’re moving forward, all of a sudden, over here on the left, oh, there’s a door!

And over here on the right, there’s this hallway to another place.

And oh, here are these other doors and halls that we couldn’t see from the other end.

But once we got moving in a direction, we could now see these other opportunities, these other experiences.

And that had such a great impact on me.

It’s what is meant when they say you can’t steer a parked car, or you’ve got to take the mooring lines off the boat and start going, because you can’t make change and discover new things if you’re just standing still.

And I think what’s coming to mind—you’ll learn this about me—I’m not really good at remembering phrases and stuff.

It’s so funny because I always remember what the words start with or what the initials of the person are, but I can’t remember the rest.

But I’m working on that.

And so they say...

Oh, now I just lost my train of thought!

Oh well, isn’t it nice that I don’t edit these?

Anyway, I have found myself learning to live in the unknown and really leaning into trusting that I’ll know what the next right step to take is.

I’ve got my house on the market. I don’t know when it will sell. I don’t know where I’m moving to. I have a general idea, but all of it is the unknown.

But I go back and look at how we found this wonderful home that I live in, that we’ve lived in since 2014.

It was a dot-to-dot.

I could not have gone from where we were to this house in that way. It was this whole dot-to-dot series of events that I totally followed my intuition on.

From the moment I was sitting at my desk in January 2014, and this thought came to mind: “You need to move in nine months.”

Really?

The words were so clear. And so I knew we needed to move in nine months.

And that’s another podcast episode. I’m not going to go there now, but that’s a really cool story.

All of this comes down to me exploring ideas, finding clarity through movement.

And I don’t just mean physical movement, but taking action.

Which is kind of funny. My word this year is “Execute.”

And it’s execute in the way of stop thinking about it and go start doing it!

You’ve got ideas. You have things you want to do. You have a community you want to build with women having these deeper conversations.

I have a really cool name for it, but I need to execute on it.

I need to put myself out there. I need to connect with other women who are seeking this same experience of community, deep conversation, showing up authentically.

But back to what I believe now.

We don’t have to already know stuff, right?

I think that the becoming is ongoing. We don’t ever get there. We continue to grow and evolve and learn new things, have new awarenesses.

And being in the in-between isn’t a failure, but it can often be dark and lonely.

And I really feel that women need spaces to exhale. To let the breath out. To just relax and be themselves.

After Don passed, just a couple of weeks ago, I heard somebody say that in grief, it’s not that we just miss the person, but that we miss who we were when we were with that person.

And that has sat with me because I could be truly myself with Don.

And I miss that.

Because, you know, I could truly be myself with him.

And I believe that women need spaces to be themselves. To not be performative, to not be doing, to be honest, and to feel safe.

We’re not meant to do this transition alone.

But I also believe that we need to surround ourselves with the right people, with the right energy.

And a lot of times that doesn’t happen with the people who are currently in our lives, who are worried about us, who have sincere concerns, who are judging us.

And so this, I believe, is my actual soapbox and my mission.

And really, I’m going to end with that because I’ve got a lot more to say, but now isn’t the time to say it.

That’s a little bit about LauraJo.

I’m looking forward to offering Reflection Sessions, one-on-one with other women, and starting to meet these incredible women who have found themselves with these same yearnings, these same stirrings happening within themselves, who want to be a part of my next adventure.

So, as I usually end my recordings:

What’s stirring in you today?

What heartfelt yearning is happening?

Maybe what part of your life no longer fits?

And what conversations might change everything if you could finally talk about what’s happening within?

You could finally put those feelings into words and put them out there to hear for yourself.

How powerful could that be for you?

And what would shift if you stopped waiting to have it all figured out? To have the full plan in place before taking the next step?

So when I say Reflection Sessions, it’s not about me reflecting back to you.

I guess it kind of is.

But it’s me, the Permission Giver, allowing you to share honestly with yourself. To add to your own personal awareness, to allow you to have your own personal aha.

So think about that.

Maybe slow down enough to acknowledge that there is something niggling within.

Because I’m almost positive, with the shifts that are coming in our world—and I mean energy shifts—each one of us has a purpose. And each one of us has so much power within ourselves that it’s time for us to wake up.

We have so much to give.

And that’s where SheAwakens comes from. I felt like I was asleep, and I put myself on this path where I have become awakened within.

And I want my next step to be to shine. To share and to shine to others.

What is it? The Marianne Williamson quote about when we hide our light, the fear we have of putting ourselves out there and shining bright.

But that is what the world needs from us. And more importantly, it’s what our soul needs us to do—to shine. Not to hide and close ourselves off, or be in denial, or make it about us.

Well, it is about us!

It’s more important about what we bring to the conversation.

I have my areas that I think about, and I have my perspectives. But when I’m with other women who bring their perspectives and their life experiences, we make powerful conversations.

And I have been in rooms where I’ve brought three or four women together, and I get the conversation started. And then I get to, for the most part, sit back and watch them teach and coach each other.

No one being further ahead or the guru of anything. It’s more of life experience, thoughts, training.

It’s just so beautiful, and that’s what I’m looking to create.

So anyway, you can be checking out here.

I will be posting a link soon to offer Reflection Sessions—90 minutes to sit with me and talk about “What’s Next.”

I’m not a coach, and I’m not going to coach you. I’m on this path, and I hope to be a guide. And I’m not giving myself a title because I’m not a guru.

Like I said, I kind of call myself The Permission Giver.

My mom was my permission giver.

I would express thoughts to her that I never knew I was really thinking. And she would just say, “So why don’t you do that?”

And it was like, yeah, why don’t I?

And she was my permission giver. Such a blessing in my life. I miss her often.

And so, yeah.

With that, I’m going to sign off. Make it a great day.

Find the good things. Find the joy. Find the things that are going right in your life. Find the things to be grateful for.

Because in sorrow, there is joy.

And we have it. We have so much.

So anyway, thanks for listening. If you got to the end, thank you!

Make it a great day.

Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day here with me. I value that time, and I hope you found something to connect with in my words.

This is Part 2 of my introduction, and a little more of my story.

I share about Don’s cancer and his passing in May 2025, and the image that has brought me so much comfort—of us walking hand in hand until our paths diverged, each continuing on our own adventure.

I talk about learning to live in the unknown, trusting that I’ll know the next right step, and how life sometimes unfolds like a dot-to-dot. We can’t always see where we’re going, but looking back, we begin to recognize how we got here.

And I share why I believe women need spaces where they can exhale, be themselves, and have meaningful conversations without needing to have everything figured out.

I also talk about my mom, who was my Permission Giver, and why that experience means so much to the work I want to create through SheAwakens.

As always, I leave you with a few questions to contemplate.

What’s stirring in you today? And what might become possible if you stopped waiting to have it all figured out before taking the next step?

🌿 Missed Part 1? Listen to or read Who Is LauraJo? (Part 01) — The Beginning of My Story before continuing with Part 2.

Morning Reflections with LauraJo — SheAwakens, A Space for Remembering

A lot has changed and evolved over these last five months, but when I listened to it again, I realized how authentically it reflects who I am and what was stirring in me at the time. So rather than re-record it or try to bring everything up to date, I've decided to share the original recording, along with a lightly edited written version.

There’s plenty more to share, and I’ll catch you up on what’s been happening in future reflections. But for now, here’s a little bit about me and the beginnings of SheAwakens.

Morning Reflections with LauraJo | Episode 03 - Part 1 of 2

Happy day!

I realized this week that after recording two episodes, I never introduced myself!

I’ve been doing Morning Reflections with LauraJo since 2022, although not with any regular frequency. I started by sharing some Instagram reels in 2022 and 2023. Then, as my husband’s health declined in 2024 and he eventually passed in 2025, I didn’t do any.

I’ve been on this journey—or adventure, as I like to say—for the last five years. A very intentional adventure. And when I got on Substack after a mentor recommended it, I just kind of dove right back into sharing my thoughts.

But this week I realized that most of the people I’m connecting with here don’t know me. They don’t know who I am or why I’m doing Morning Reflections.

So I thought I’d take a little time to share who LauraJo Richins is.

And it started with me quitting my job in February 2021 to discover—or rediscover—who LauraJo is and what she wants out of life. That took me down this big adventure, and it still continues. There have been some major shifts along the way.

I was a wife for more than 43 years to an amazing man. I’m a mother of five—a son and four daughters. Between child number three and child number four, there was a six-and-a-half-year gap. So we had what the kids called the first family and the second family. It’s been really fun watching how those families transitioned and came together as the kids grew up.

And now I’m a grandmother of six. Three boys from my son, and then my youngest daughter had triplets. Those two-year-old triplets bring a lot of joy into my life.

I’ve worked almost all of my married life. Even as a teenager in high school, I loved office stuff. Typewriters! I started taking typing in eighth grade. I took shorthand and was part of the Cooperative Office Education program in high school, taking home awards my senior year as the top shorthand student and top typing student.

All of which seems kind of funny now.

But I was naturally drawn to the clerical, secretarial, administrative side of things, and that has shown up throughout my life. It’s interesting now that I know what my Human Design is, but that’s another topic.

I’ve spent most of my years in administrative positions, and it’s interesting to look back at how those different positions impacted me.

There were points in our marriage when I was the main breadwinner. And as many women my age know, that could be hard on spouses. At least it was on mine, because they were taught that they were supposed to support the family and be the main breadwinner.

I’ve always managed the finances in our marriage. I was always the one who took responsibility for that.

And my life was really focused on being productive.

I carried a lot of guilt, and guilt showed up in my parenting style because that’s how I was parented, right?

My main focus was being productive, contributing, always needing to be capable and have the answers.

I think for most of those years I was happy. I found lots of joy. But I think that outward success hid a woman who was afraid to take a close look at herself.

I shouldn’t say I think that. I know that.

I needed a lot of outside validation.

I remember when people would talk about taking a journal and going off into the woods to spend some time with themselves. That freaked me out!

I mean, honestly, why would I want to do that?

Because I was sure I wouldn’t like what I discovered if I looked too closely at myself.

And I’m sure that’s a topic for another podcast.

But I was always doing. Always doing.

If I ever sat down and there was laundry to be folded or the kitchen to be cleaned, I felt guilty for just sitting and watching TV or playing with the kids. I always felt I had to be doing something.

I remember saying to my husband once that I just needed to sit for a little while. And he looked at me like, “Yeah?”

And I said, “Well, I don’t want you to think I’m ignoring the fact that there’s laundry and all these things.”

He looked at me like, “What are you talking about?”

He never thought those things! But I thought he thought those things.

And that put a lot of pressure on me.

Those were truly my own expectations of myself, culturally passed down to me, of being this super mom and this super wife and all those things.

But underneath, especially over the last sixteen years or so, I had felt something stirring. Something was missing from my life.

And I began to acknowledge that I was disconnected from myself.

I think it was in 2019 that I was having a conversation with one of my daughters, and she told me, “Mom, I’m getting curious about my beliefs. I’m stepping back and looking at each one of them and asking myself, is this my belief, or is this a belief I was raised to believe? Is this me, or does this belong to someone else?”

And that was the first time curiosity came to the forefront of my mind.

The idea of getting curious about what I believe, who I am, what I want.

At the time, I remember telling her, “Good for you,” but I don’t think I understood this path she had started on.

I’ve looked back on that conversation with such gratitude for a wise daughter who was taking the time to get to know herself on this deeper level.

Why do I believe this? Why do I behave this way? Why do I react this way?

All of those things.

So the idea of getting curious about myself really took root over these last few years, and I’ve loved it.

I was also acknowledging this yearning for something different. I was exhausted—physically exhausted, mentally exhausted—from the weight I had carried for so many years. The expectations of myself, raising a family, supporting my husband.

I think I was seeking more depth, and I didn’t even know it. Depth within myself.

And this is important, because my story isn’t about the grief of having my husband pass last year, of losing my best friend.

My story is about rediscovering myself.

The reason I started sharing Morning Reflections is because I truly believe there are other women out there who feel this way. Women who have these stirrings, these yearnings for something more, for a purpose that is soul-deep.

And they don’t know what the next step is.

I think some of them feel like they’re alone in this.

So I felt this desire to share my voice, to speak out about my own experiences. I’m not afraid to do that. That’s part of who I am.

At the same time, I want to protect my husband, my kids, and their privacy.

So these are usually my own inner awarenesses that I share. My own aha moments. Maybe some people listen and go, “Yeah, duh!” But maybe they’re new realizations for me.

And I’ve discovered on this adventure that sometimes it’s just a very small shift in perspective that can have such a great impact on our lives.

I think about my daughter and her “get curious” comment to me.

That just sat down there and percolated.

Percolated is very much my word.

It percolated underneath everything else going on in my life, and there was a point where it bubbled up and I wanted to get curious.

Who is LauraJo, and what the heck does she want in her life at this point?

I kind of chuckle now because I see women doing this in their late forties and early fifties, but I was 58 before I took any action on all these thoughts and yearnings that were happening within me.

So at 58, I stepped away from a Director of Admin and Finance position with a company I’d worked for eleven years.

And I took a deep breath.

Honestly, it took me probably six months, nine months—probably closer to a year—to come off the adrenaline high.

All those performative expectations, not just from my employer, but from myself and how I showed up.

I think back to the fact that I’d been trained to meditate for two years, and I could never quiet my mind enough to really be in a meditative state.

But through a few things, I reached a place where I can sit in peace and calm and be with myself and love it.

And it feeds my soul.

But anyway, I’m getting a little off track. I wanted to keep this episode more as an introduction to me, and I know there are going to be a lot of things I mention that I can come back and talk about.

Leaving that position began this adventure that, I want to say, revived my soul.

It was about reconnecting my head with my heart and my gut.

Because I live in my head.

There’s some stuff behind that, but I try to do everything very logically.

And yet I’ve had those moments of inner knowing, that woman’s intuition, mother’s intuition, whatever you want to call it. We’ve all got it.

I’d experienced that intuitive knowing at certain times, but I wasn’t truly connected with it.

I made my decisions mostly from my head, with an occasional input from that intuition, that inner knowledge.

After I quit my job, I came across a modality for healing our thoughts called Creatrix. I got certified in that, and there’s a little story around how that happened.

But after my very first session, something amazing happened.

It took me three to five days before I noticed.

One night I woke up needing to go to the bathroom. Usually my brain, my self-talk, would immediately turn back on, and I’d start getting after myself for whatever happened that day.

What I did wrong. The wrong food I ate. The wrong response I gave.

All this constant negative head trash.

And as I was walking back to bed, I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m not beating myself up in my head. What the heck happened?”

And I haven’t done that since that experience in 2021.

My negative self-talk got turned off in that very first session, and that alone opened me up to hear myself better, to connect with myself.

I did get certified in Creatrix and got to share that with a number of women.

But I felt I needed to be on a different path.

I don’t feel like I’m meant to specialize in one thing. I’m more of the town crier, the gatherer, the communicator.

I’m not sure.

But I don’t feel like I’m here to specialize in one modality, and I also don’t believe there’s one modality that fits every woman because we’re all coming from such different places in our lives.

I had some amazing experiences with Creatrix that I’ll share in future episodes.

Because Creatrix is truly what I believe is helping women teach themselves.

I didn’t tell women anything. I just got to facilitate a conversation that she had with herself.

And what I got out of that experience, which has been so powerful for me, is that when people say we have the answers within us—we have the answers within us!

For me to sit across from a woman and have her bring these answers up to herself was such a beautiful experience.

To know that we do have the answers within.

So this inner work that began in 2021, rediscovering myself and reconnecting with myself from the inside out, allowed me to question these old structures and beliefs and start noticing and acknowledging my own voice.

And that is the beginning of my story.

And if you survived this long, catch the rest in Part 2!

I realized after two episodes that I never actually introduced myself. So this is me fixing that.

In Part 1, I share a little about my life—the years of being productive, always doing, always contributing, and how that outward success hid a woman who was afraid to take a close look at herself.

I talk about a conversation with my daughter that got me curious about my own beliefs and started percolating. Leaving my Director position at 58. The inner work that began in 2021. And the beautiful experience of watching women discover that they really do have the answers within themselves.

This is the beginning of my story.

🌿 Prefer reading? You can read the full written reflection here.

Morning Reflections with LauraJo — SheAwakens, A Space for Remembering

I originally shared this reflection as an audio episode of Morning Reflections on May 12, 2026. I'm now sharing the reflection here as a written article, with the original recording included, so you can listen, read, or simply sit with the words a little longer.

The reflection itself remains as I originally shared it.

Hi.

Today, this isn’t a morning reflection. This is a late-at-night reflection.

Today is the one-year anniversary of my husband’s passing. Don passed away on May 11, 2025, Mother’s Day.

So while I’m recording this on May 11, I probably won’t post it until May 12.

With that said, this is not a grief post. It’s more of a reflection. Just some thoughts I’ve had over this last year on who I’m becoming, the peace and calm that I’ve found, and the desire to continue this life adventure.

And I think at the core of this is an understanding of myself. A love of myself.

When I quit my job in 2021 to rediscover who LauraJo is, I don’t know what I was expecting to do. It didn’t go how I thought it would. And looking back, I don’t even know what I thought that would look like.

But I had been running on adrenaline for so long, it felt normal. I’m sure many of you can relate to that.

I’d actually suffered from adrenal fatigue a few times over the years, and my body was keeping score even when I wasn’t paying attention.

When I finally stopped, it took me, honestly, nine months to a year to truly come off that high and allow myself to be still without guilt.

And through this, I discovered peace.

It was really a beautiful thing.

I could quiet my mind, something I had been trying to do for a few years. I was trying to meditate, but I was so busy in my head that there was not a quiet, peaceful place during my meditations.

And when I learned to quiet my mind, it was quiet.

I think finding this place of peace and calm allowed me, over these last few years, to just be in such a different space.

It doesn’t mean my life was perfect by any means. It doesn’t mean I had it all figured out, something we can talk about here shortly. And it doesn’t mean everything went the way I expected it to.

What it does mean is that I felt good in the moment and was able to live more intentionally.

I’ve never been a big worrier, but it does pop up. And I know that I made some not-so-smart decisions in 2023 with this underlying fear. I was really the one who was hurt by those decisions because they resulted in some financial hits.

But that’s another topic for another recording.

I’m just so grateful for the work that I had done.

Even in my conversations with Don after November 2024, when we knew that the things he needed to do to keep functioning were palliative and required him to go in for outpatient surgery every eight weeks, that’s when we started having those real conversations about his passing and what things might look like for me.

This process of connecting with myself from the inside out was really beautiful because it gave me the capacity to hold grief differently than I think I would have five years before that.

Life is an adventure. It is not this perfectly mapped-out journey.

Adventures rarely unfold exactly as we planned them.

I thought the next chapter was going to include Don physically beside me. But instead, this adventure has changed shape, and I still get to participate in my life.

I’m still here. I still have next steps to choose.

And one of the things that has brought me so much peace—and I don’t even know that I can say it came from a specific place or a specific thought—is this vision that shows up in my mind.

Don and I walking this path together for 43 years. Five children. Six grandchildren. Walking this path.

And on May 11, 2025, those paths diverged.

Don went on to his next chapter, his next “what’s next” place, and I continued on my path.

So in my mind, our paths have diverged for this period of time. I don’t know if they come back together at some point. I like to think that they do.

But at this point in my life, he has gone on one path, and I have gone on this other path.

And that has given me such comfort.

My love for him can still exist. It’s just different.

And so, in my mind, I’m on this path. And for the first time, I’m on this path alone.

I say alone because it is just me in my household and in my life. Yes, I have children, and yes, I have friends, but it’s really my life.

Having gone from living 20 years with my parents—even though I’d been off to college for a year—when I married Don, I had just turned 20. I lived with him for 43 years, and now I’m on my own.

And so I’m in this beautiful space.

It gives me this opportunity to live with grief but also have peace. To feel sadness and yet also feel such great gratitude.

Yes, there’s loss, but I am still living.

I miss him. I miss how I was able to be when I was with him. And I get to continue forward.

There is uncertainty, and I’m leaning into trust.

There can be tears, and yet I can feel excitement about what’s still possible.

As we say in many of my conversations with friends, joy and sadness can coexist.

I’m grateful for the people in my life who support me. The few of my children who are cheering me on and reach out with intention.

One of my daughters, the one who lives out of state, flew in Friday night and surprised me Saturday morning. She woke up and felt that she should be home this weekend. So she booked a flight and flew home.

I got to spend Saturday, Sunday, and today—this afternoon and evening—with her. She flew in for Mother’s Day and this significant weekend, and it was so beautiful to have her here with us.

And my other daughter, who is just a rock for me. She gets to hang out with me—or I get to hang out with her—every time they have an open house here at my house.

And then my daughter and her husband with the triplets, my triplet grandkids.

On Saturday, I got to see my son and his wife and their three boys. Got to see him twice because we had an unexpected run-in at Texas Roadhouse.

I’m just surrounded by these people who are so supportive and cheering me on.

And I have these friends who are witnessing this chapter in my life.

You know, widowhood is unfamiliar territory for most of the women around me. In my circles, it’s new territory for all of us.

I do have friends who have lost partners, but they’re not people I talk to on a regular basis.

The beauty of being supported while I’m still finding my way is something I am so grateful for.

I feel less alone while I’m still on this deeply personal path in this adventure.

And I apologize for the coughing. But since I don’t edit these recordings, I’m not going to take it out.

So while I’ve been on this path, like I said, life rarely unfolds according to plan.

I’ve let go of control because that’s always an illusion anyway, right? It’s a false sense of security.

But this peace I feel comes from the relationship I’ve developed with myself over the last few years.

I’m not seeking outside validation for the decisions I’m making.

This is an internal job.

And this reinvention continues to happen, even with this profound loss, with this path I started on in 2021 of rediscovering myself, getting to know myself.

Oh, and I can tell you how scared I was in another recording.

But it has been a beautiful adventure, and it’s taken me into this place of leaning in to trust myself. To not have to figure it out. To not have to know the next step and to be okay with that.

Because in my head, I always want to figure it out.

But I’ve learned that if I’ll just trust—trust that I’ll know the next right step and that I’ll know it at the right time—that has given me such freedom.

I can stay in this place of peace and calm.

I listed my house, for example, in February.

And then I had this big work project that came up in March. It was so funny because I finished it around midnight on April 16 or April 23. I think it was April 16.

I finished it up, and about three days later I thought, “Oh, I’m ready to move. Bring the buyer now. It’s the right time.”

I had this internal shift.

Even though I’d already listed my house, and my house was ready—some agents have walked through it and wondered if anybody was living here, which it really doesn’t look like anybody is unless you look at my office—I had this internal shift of, “Oh, I’m ready to move now.”

And that was another reminder that I do know.

If I trust those emotions and lean into that knowing, I do know.

Anyway, those are just a few of the reflections I’ve had on this one-year anniversary of Don’s passing.

Our paths have diverged. The adventure continues to take shape.

The work I’ve done didn’t keep me from grief, but it helped me stay connected to myself inside the grief.

I’m learning to trust the next right step instead of needing the whole thing mapped out.

I still miss him, but I’m still here.

And I have learned that peace is not the absence of grief.

The grief is there, and it hits me at some of the strangest times, just out of the blue.

I no longer believe that life has to go according to a plan to be meaningful. That I have to produce a certain thing or be a certain way.

I’m allowing life to unfold instead of demanding that it show up in a particular way.

And honestly, there is so much freedom in doing that.

Ponder on that.

How is grief showing up in your life?

Is life an adventure, or is it a journey that you’re bearing, that you’re grinding through?

What small shift in your life, what small awareness, if you could notice it, could make a difference in how you feel every morning when you wake up?

Or even better, every night when you go to bed.

What’s keeping you awake at night?

Maybe that’s the best place to start.

I’m sorry, I don’t have a purpose when I start these recordings. These are just thoughts coming out of my head, out of my mouth to you, good, bad, or ugly.

But maybe it’s what’s keeping you up at night that you should take a look at.

And I would love to hear from some of you what those things are.

But I think with most other things, including Don’s passing, I have found this beautiful peace.

And I am so grateful.

So, what’s keeping you awake at night?

Let’s start there.

Make it a great day. 🌿

A few weeks later, I found myself sitting in my car outside a testing center, realizing something I hadn’t felt in a long time: I could still do hard things.

I didn’t end up selling real estate. But that experience became part of a much bigger adventure—rediscovering who I am and what I want.

In this first Morning Reflection, I’m contemplating that space between knowing something and actually doing something about it.

Something to ponder: What’s something you’ve been thinking about but haven’t moved on yet?

Make it a great day! 🌿

This reflection is about the peace I’ve discovered through getting to know and trust myself, and how that peace has helped me experience grief without losing my sense of possibility.

I share some thoughts about the 43 years Don and I walked through life together, the paths we’re now traveling separately, and what it means to continue participating in life’s adventure even when it unfolds differently than expected.

Because I’ve discovered that grief and peace can coexist. So can sadness and gratitude.

And perhaps the question worth pondering is this:

What’s keeping you awake at night?

🌿 Prefer reading? Read the full written reflection here.

Morning Reflections with LauraJo — SheAwakens, A Space for Remembering

I’ve been thinking about something lately. About how long I can sit with something, thinking about it, before I actually do anything with it.

Does that sound familiar to any of you?

As I was thinking about this, it took me back to late August 2020.

I was at my desk working late, because that’s what I did, when a thought popped into my head.

Hey, it’s COVID. People can’t go in for classes. I wonder if they’ve put the real estate licensing classes online. No driving, no set schedule.

I stopped what I was doing, went to the Arizona School of Real Estate website, and pulled it up.

And yes, I was right.

COVID was doing what COVID did. And I was doing what I always did, which was working late, managing life, trying to hold myself together, working 60 to 80 hours a week, late into the night.

I had a good salary. I had a good job. And I absolutely had no time left over to wonder who I was outside of who I was being for my work.

But in that moment, something changed.

I can look back now and know that I wasn’t really looking for a real estate career. Something else was emerging.

What I was really looking for, underneath working all those hours, being busy all the time, and being tired, was some sign that I could still do something different. That it wasn’t too late. That I wasn’t so stuck in this rut and this commitment that I couldn’t find something that brought me joy. That was fun.

That there was still a LauraJo inside of me somewhere who didn’t want to just work. She wanted to find other things.

I remember going to talk it through with my husband.

Am I nuts to be doing this?

And he was just his loving, supportive self and reminded me that I could do whatever I set my mind to doing.

So I signed up for that licensing course on September 1st.

I finished it in two and a half weeks. I studied, passed the school exam on a Saturday, and signed up for the state exam the next day, Sunday, September 20th.

I still remember standing outside the testing center waiting to go in, listening to people talk about coming back for their second, third, even fourth attempt.

These were experienced Realtors who had licenses in other states, and they were talking about how difficult the Arizona exam was.

One of them looked at me and asked how many times I’d taken it.

I said, Oh, this is my first time. I just passed the school exam yesterday.

And they laughed.

Well, good luck. You’ll be back.

And I said, No. I’m going to pass it.

Then they laughed some more, like I was clueless about what I was getting myself into.

Well, guess what?

I passed.

As I came out of the testing center with that piece of paper that said I’d passed, I went and got in my car. Because it was September, for heaven’s sake! It’s still really warm—hot—in September here in Arizona.

So I was sitting in my car with the air conditioning on, cooling off.

And I remember sitting there thinking:

Oh my gosh. I can still do hard things. I can still commit to making something happen and actually follow through on it.

Something shifted in that moment.

I think what was happening is that I had been thinking about change for a long time, but not actually doing anything about it.

And I still notice that in myself sometimes.

There’s this space between knowing something and actually moving on it. Taking action.

Because I didn’t end up selling real estate.

What I ended up doing was rediscovering myself. Rediscovering who LauraJo is and what she wants.

Who am I?

I needed to get to know myself because I had lost myself over the years.

That question is what this space is about.

It’s not because I have the answers. I don’t.

But it’s because I’ve learned there’s something powerful about being willing to ask the questions.

As one of my daughters taught me, get curious.

So maybe that’s the place we begin here today.

Just with the question. Not a plan, not an answer, but with the question:

Who are you? Underneath it all, who are you?

You don’t have to answer that yet.

I don’t think that night changed everything, but it changed something.

I’ve been thinking about how many of us are sitting in that same space, feeling a gentle nudge, a yearning, where we know something, but we’re still just thinking about it.

What’s something you’ve been thinking about but not actually moving on yet?

Don’t answer that question.

Just ponder on that and notice what comes up for you.

Make it a great day!