Note from LauraJo: I recorded this introduction back in May 2026. And then life happened, and I never got around to posting it!
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!