Breaking Free: From Silenced to Bestseller

Do you dream of breaking free from societal expectations? In a world where she was constantly overlooked, Leigh Lincoln found her voice in the most unexpected of places. Now this unapologetic author challenges women to embrace their true selves, and prioritize personal growth, despite facing the conflicting pressures of conformity and authenticity. Show Notes | Transcript "I don't care what your passion is. Go find it. Go use it. Go change the world." - Leigh Lincoln Joining me on Live. Love. Engage. is the talented author Leigh Lincoln. With a passion for crafting emotionally impactful novels, Leigh's work aims to inspire, uplift, and ignite meaningful conversations. Having dedicated over 30 years to homeless and poverty advocacy, Leigh brings a unique perspective to our conversation about personal growth and fulfillment. Her journey and experiences have led her to empower women to find their voices and redefine societal rules. With her profound insights and relatable storytelling, Leigh's presence promises to offer our audience enhanced self-awareness and a deeper sense of fulfillment in life. In this episode, you will be able to: Cultivate self-awareness for personal growth and fulfillment. Embrace authenticity to enrich your relationships. Harness the power of love for personal and professional success. Live life to the fullest by seizing every opportunity. Pursue passions and embrace growth for a fulfilling life. Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy: Sarah Walton’s Secrets to Empowering Women Entrepreneurs Mentorship Secrets for Success with Author Christine Van Horn Empowering Women Leaders with Pattie Grimm Resources: Connect with Leigh here Join the Soulful Women's Network here Send me a message here ☕ Support the podcast here ❤ Love this episode? Leave us a review and rating here Connect with Gloria Grace: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube TRANSCRIPT 00:00:29 - Gloria "Grace" Rand Are you ready to redefine the boundaries of your life and career? Well, if so, today's edition of Live Love Engage is for you. And first off, I want to say Namaste. As I realized, I normally start my podcast off by saying that, and I didn't do that. So, Namaste. I am Grace Rand, the light messenger and holistic business guide. And I'm delighted to be with you today and to also have a guest. And we are broadcasting live on Facebook and LinkedIn today. And I am so happy to be back doing live interviews in the new year. So I want to tell you a little bit about our guest today. She is an author whose passion lies in crafting inspiring novels that impact readers on a deep emotional level. And her name is Leigh Lincoln. And she aims to inspire, uplift, and provoke thoughtful conversations. And she also believes that no one is too old not to adapt, to evolve and to achieve something more. And she says that all women can find their voice, no matter who they are or what they do. And we're going to talk about that in a moment. But first off, I want to bring Leigh onto the show and welcome you officially today to live love engage. 00:01:51 - Leigh Lincoln Hi. Thanks for having me. 00:01:54 - Gloria "Grace" Rand I'm so glad you're here, and I'm really curious to know more about you. But I did want to start off, as I said there, to talk about a little bit about why you really do believe that it's important for women to find their voice and make their own rules. So why do you say that? 00:02:17 - Leigh Lincoln Well, we, as women so often are told we are “just.” And you can fill in the blank with whatever that is. We're just a woman. We are just moms. We are just whatever. And then that puts us in a box, and it often limits us and limits what we think we can do. And society has a lot of rules for women that we're supposed to follow and how we're supposed to look and act, right? And a lot of times, if women are forceful, loud, brag about their accomplishments, then they're told that they're pushy or rude or aggressive. And that isn't true. No. You should be loud. You should be proud. You should know who and what you are, right? Yeah. And you shouldn't let people tell you any of those things. You should know who you are. You should know what your passion is, and you should be out there screaming to the world what you can do, and you should be able to change the world because of it. Gloria "Grace" Rand Now, I'm curious about something because I definitely, I 100% agree with you. Number one, and I can feel your passion about this. So is there a particular reason, is this maybe close to home about why you feel this way, I wonder? And maybe that fits into why you started to write books, perhaps you could kind of touch on that. Leigh Lincoln Yeah, the whole reason this kind of got started was because I didn't set out to become an author at all. So I used to do homeless and poverty advocacy for 30 something years, and I was at a community meeting one night. Well, to back up a little bit, I worked in homeless shelters. I was on all these committee meetings and helped low income families, blah, blah, blah, whatever. The list went on. So I was at this meeting one night, and the topic was really interesting to me. I had something I wanted to say, but the guy who was running the meeting pointed to the politician, to the businessman, to all of these other people, and he just ignored me. So at the end of the meeting, I went up to this guy to try to get my point across, and he shut me down in a hot minute. And instead of listening to me, he gave me 50 excuses why he didn't want to listen to me. I was just a mom. I was just a woman. I didn't have the right background, the right education, blah, blah, blah. Right. It would have taken him less time to listen to me than it did for me to hear his excuses. And I went home that night, and I was just so frustrated and angry because it had hit me like a slap in the face that this guy was not the only one who just ignored my opinion. It had happened over and over and over again, but it was just this wake up call. Like, what in the world? Why do I keep letting people do this to me? And so I went home that night, and I just started. I pulled out a notebook because I was a homeschooling mom at that. Not only was I a single mother, I was a homeschooling single mother. So I pulled out a notebook, and I just started journaling out my frustrations. And three months later, or something like three months later, I looked at what I'd written, and I had accidentally written a novel, because at some point, I flipped from writing about myself to writing in first person perspective from a homeless woman because I'd worked with so many homeless women. And I can see why I did it because there's a lot of parallels between feeling ignored like I did, because a lot of homeless women just are completely ignored. They hide in the shadows. And so I can see why I did it. I don't know when I did it, but I just completely flipped. And I wrote my first novel, Road Home. And I was just like, okay, nobody's going to read this because everybody's been ignoring me for all these years. Why would anybody read it? So I thought, I'll clean it up a little bit, throw it out in their universe, see what happens. Maybe I'll sell 10, 15 copies, maybe 20 if I get lucky, right? Raise a couple of bucks for charity. Life will be good. But here's the thing. You publish a book, all of a sudden you're an expert. It's a thing. Gloria "Grace" Rand That's wonderful, isn't it? Leigh Lincoln Yeah. Gloria "Grace" Rand So what did that mean for you, though? What impact did that have on now suddenly being called an expert? Leigh Lincoln Yeah. So I still didn't have the degree everybody wanted. I still didn't have the job experience. No, nothing else changed in my life except for now. I had this published novel out there, and so all of a sudden, I was getting asked to speak on homeless and poverty issues. All of a sudden, everyone wanted my opinion. It was kind of crazy. And I was selling these books like hotcakes. It was, like, kind of insane. And it took me a long time to really see myself as different because I'd been told I wasn't anybody for so long that even I had kind of internalized it without even realizing it. And so it took me a while to really grasp what had changed. And so after a few months, people started saying, well, you really need to write another book. And I was like, well, why? I'm not an author, right? Because it took me a long time to accept that as part of my identity. And so here's the thing. And again, at the beginning, right, I said that we need to really figure out who we are and claim that because we allow other people to tell us what we are for so long, right? And I did. And I was just like, wait, no, I'm just this quiet little mom, right? And so it took me a long time. It was years before I really got up the courage to write another book. And when I finally did, I was like, who's really going to read this? Because it's kind of out there and weird. But then people loved it. And I was like, okay, then I guess I'm going to claim this I'm an author thing, right? Gloria "Grace" Rand I think you should. Leigh Lincoln And now I have five, so we're just rolling. Gloria "Grace" Rand Oh, my gosh. Wow. Well, so many things are going through my head right now. And number one is, what do you think it took to really make that switch in your brain to finally say, okay, yes, I'm going to claim this. I am an author. Was there, like, one particular moment, maybe, where you finally said, okay, I'm going to do this, or what do you think? Leigh Lincoln Well, I think a lot of it was just the validation I was getting from others as part of it. People just kept saying, it was a really good book, my first one. But part of it was me realizing that I had a lot to say, and I'd just been bottling it up for years....