In these days leading up to Thanksgiving and the official kickoff of the holiday season, I offer you three challenges:
1. Be fully present
Be fully present in all of all the simple, significant and in-between moments spent with friends and loved ones – like the few minutes of fun I savored with a sweet and smart young friend during our joint travels earlier this year.
2. Offer grace and kindness
Offer more patience and grace to those whose grief may be sharper and deeper during the holidays, when their loved one’s absence is all the more real. I’ll be spending Thanksgiving with some who are in this space, and I’m still missing my big brother, who passed away 11 months ago, five days before Christmas. It is the memories we hold and the stories we are welcomed to share about them that will carry us through.
3. Be intentional
Be intentional about leaving everyone you encounter better than you found them. Make those memories and record them. Light a candle for the cherished family and friends who are no longer physically with you.
Move with love and gratitude
And trust that love and light will always win. Give it, be ready to receive it, and keep saying Thank You along the way.
There are so many good and exciting things happening in this season for so many of us, while destruction continues to befall many around the world.
This is the yin and yang of life, and also the reason to keep watch over our hearts, our thoughts, our words and our choices. We may feel helpless, but what we CAN control or contribute to, we must.
Our truths matter, and so do our hope and faith, and our ability to see others and seek to understand them.
Let’s not give up on goodness or each other. Pray for peace in the Middle East, and for peace in many of the cities, towns and homes across our nation.
Instead of bending toward the culture and a “by any means necessary” existence, what if we tried living with a “because everyone matters” perspective?
Your one shift, and someone else’s one shift, and my one shift could perhaps, together, shake the world.
I wasn’t planning to share this on social, because it was such a special moment between my son and me.
However, in the past few weeks I’ve had conversations with several other moms who are in the trenches of parenting, and chatting with them reminded me that sometimes when you’re in the middle of a thing, you can’t envision the difference your commitment is making.
These conversations also reminded me that when I was raising young children and then adolescents, there were moms ahead of me on the journey who encouraged me to keep pouring and loving and correcting and guiding, and to trust that the seeds being planted and the care being rendered were a worthy investment.
It is with this in mind (and with his permission) that I share this sweet note that my 22-year-old son surprised me with back in August, upon finding an old English paper amid his belongings before he returned to college for senior year.
It reads “You are my super hero!” and the note explains that he had described me as such in a paper written during his sophomore year.
In the paper, he explored how super heroes often steal away to transform into their “super selves” and change the world for the better. In my case, he indicated that my super power was writing.
He detailed how, as a young child, he often watched me focus on completing my manuscripts on some weekends and some evenings, and rather feeling resentful, witnessing me fulfill a dream that would give hope and enjoyment to others made him proud.
What a gift that note and the recently found essay were to my mama soul!
And what a powerful reminder that our babies are watching us, and in doing so, learning how to write their own super hero stories.
So, to my friends who are in the hands-on stages of parenting: Don’t let weariness cause you to give up or despair. Trust that just as your efforts to nurture your children and guide their dreams is a gift to them, so is your persistence in leaning into your own heart songs and life’s calling.
You are their super hero, and someday I’m confident that in their own ways, they’ll tell you.
Share with Your Friends!
Enjoyed this Life Untapped blog post? Please subscribe to receive more of Stacy’s occasional musings – and share the link to this post with others in your circle!
I’ve been exercising my creative juices for the past month on a small, but special project that I’m excited to share with you soon.
What I’ve loved as much as the process of refining the words and getting the aesthetics just right (with a gifted artistic partner) are the friends and fam who have offered feedback and edits, burned the midnight oil with me to ensure that I create in excellence, and reminded me that as “Ms. #LifeUntapped” not only CAN I think and move outside the creative box of titles and genres, I betta!
This is what rising together takes.
Iron sharpens iron.
Vision multiplies vision.
Shoulders lower so you can climb aboard.
What matters most is the art itself.
There’s a tired-but-happy place feeling that centers you as you’re producing it, and eventually the joy that comes with hearing readers express renewed hope or joy or value after experiencing your words.
More to come on this project in early October. In the meantime, thank you to my tribe! When it’s your turn, the rising, sharpening, encouragement and lowered-shoulder moments will come full circle.
During my childhood summers in Arkansas, my older sister Sandra would take my nieces and me to the public library every two weeks to check out books, and I would excitedly borrow as many as possible and finish them all before the next visit.
Books stretched my imagination and took me around the world back then, and for many years I’ve supported adult and youth literacy programs in Richmond and nationwide. (Shoutout to The Read Center and to Reach Out and Read.)
Yet, it felt like a full circle moment this past summer to help champion reading on the other side of the globe with a likeminded tribe of friends.
Thank you to my journalist friend Shelby Brown with WTVR CBS 6 for sharing my experience in Kenya with viewers on #NationalReadABookDay.
Trees offer a reminder of the importance of finding balance in life – standing tall, resilient and beautiful on your own, yet being planted close enough to a neighbor, friend or loved one to send encouragement, share special moments and extend some love.
This week, may you succeed with both. Enjoy your time alone and make room to dance with others.
For it is in spending time with you that you discover how you’re meant to uniquely impact the world. And it is in doing life together, with likeminded souls on a positive trajectory, that we rise. Embrace life’s duality and enjoy this season of your journey.
Enjoyed this Life Untapped blog post? Please subscribe to receive more of Stacy’s occasional musings – and share the link to this post with others in your circle!
Around this time a year ago, I was slowly beginning to reclaim my time, after experiencing daily headaches for most of 2022.
Can I tell you how grateful I am at this juncture to read, write, travel, have fun and chillax at my own pace, through God’s grace?
So as I prep for some exciting opportunities this fall – and yes – some of them include writing projects – I don’t take for granted that each day and each experience is a gift.
People say I stay busy, but trust me – I “stay resting” and meditating, too, and it has helped me continue to grow and glow.
Wherever you find yourself on your life’s journey in this season, listen to your heart, your spirit and your body.
Press your way when called for,
Rest your way when called for,
and understand that both are necessary and helpful.
And when those seasons of doing and dancing and planning return, never forget what you’ve been through, because it makes where you’re going all the more special.
Enjoyed this Life Untapped blog post? Please subscribe to receive more of Stacy’s occasional musings – and share the link to this post with others in your circle!
Can you believe there’s just over 4 months left in 2023? Make the most of this day, this week and the seasons ahead.
You matter and so does what you choose to embrace.
Lean into what feeds your soul and forgive yesterday’s troubles.
Choose joy and focus forward.
Enjoyed this Life Untapped blog post? Please subscribe to receive more of Stacy’s occasional musings – and share the link to this post with others in your circle!
My meditation and writing time one morning last week yielded this gem for the main character in the fiction I’m writing, and I have to share, because it’s a word for us, too:
Sometimes we have to give up who we once were, or how we’ve always done something, in order to embrace who we’re meant to be in THIS season. What worked for you a decade ago, or maybe even a year ago, was for that stage, age or chapter.
Stacy Hawkins Adams
So keep learning and leading and loving. Get excited about your present, and for what’s to come, because now you get a chance to write your next chapters with the clarity, confidence and intention that will be relevant for what the world needs now, and for the purpose and peace that are your birthright.
Enjoyed this Life Untapped blog post? Please subscribe to receive more of Stacy’s occasional musings – and share the link to this post with others in your circle!
I write fiction and nonfiction to empower women, but I care just as deeply about advocating for children. So when my award-winning author friend Kwame Alexander invited me and others to accompany him to the Motherland to foster literacy in a couple of rural villages (and fit in a safari), this was one of those quick “yes” moments – Kenya, here I come!
We visited from June 30 – July 8, and I am still basking in the afterglow of having traveled with 20 amazing writers, librarians and teachers (and their children or partners) who care about reading, writing and the transformative power of education.
I was thrilled to read to these preschool students in Wamunyu, Kenya
I traveled with award-winning authors Kwame Alexander (right) and Jerry Craft (left)
Our U.S. group of authors, teachers, librarians, and the friends and family who accompanied us to Kenya.
It was an honor to nurture these gifts in the several hundred school children our group met through the nonprofit Kenya Connect, which serves students and families in 60-plus rural schools, and to meet with librarians and teachers to brainstorm next-level ways to engage these young learners and parents.
My takeaways from this trip?
There are many! I’m still processing the life lessons, and my creative juices are flowing, but here are a few immediate nuggets:
1. Be present in each moment.
Getting an opportunity to dance with village women one day and members of the Maasai tribe on another;
inspire schoolchildren,
sign and giveaway copies of my books,
wake up to the sounds of hippos and elephants grazing near my glammed-up tent, see those and numerous other animals in their natural habitat (including a leopard and cheetah and hundreds of zebra migrating to Maasai Mara) while bonding with my amazing fellow travelers? Priceless and Unforgettable.
2 Don’t postpone joy.
When you can, say yes to opportunities and experiences and delight yourself in something new. You may not be able to travel the globe, yet there are other ways you can expand your mind, give back and grow.
3. Find inspiration all around you.
The proverbial icing on this experience for me was sitting at dinner one evening listening to Kwame and his dear friend and fellow New York Times bestselling author Jerry Craft trade ideas based on our adventures, while I independently brainstormed new threads for my novel-in-progress.
These two authors and the other writers in our group offered one another helpful doses of motivation to keep going, dream bigger and celebrate our stories as well as those of the people we encountered.
Ultimately, the sharing and educating that occurred during this trip were mutually enriching. May we Americans have left our friends in Africa as full of the hope and appreciation for collaboration that they gifted to us.
I loved reading to these attentive students!
This sweet girl clung to me and the delight was mutual!
I gifted a copy of my women’s fiction novel The Someday List to Nada!
Esther, the librarian for Kenya Connect, was delighted to receive a copy of Watercolored Pearls.
I bought many baskets from village women in rural Kenya, including the one made by Elizabeth, which she is holding.
Preparing to leave Nairobi for the Massai Mara desert.
Some of my travel companions and I preparing for Day 2 of our safari.
One of the many animals we saw close up!
Seeing the animals, like this elephant, in their natural habitat, was breathtaking.
One of the Massai tribe women, who sold me jewelry.
We all took turns posing in this beautiful tree!
Enjoyed this Life Untapped blog post? Please subscribe to receive more of Stacy’s occasional musings – and share the link to this post with others in your circle!
Still Unfolding with Stacy Hawkins Adams 