I’m not exactly what you call a religious person. I was born in heart of the Bible Belt and was raised in a Southern Baptist Church, I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover 3 times. However, my beliefs about who I can love seemed to conflict with the teachings within those realms so I decided in order to be myself and to be able to love who I loved, I would need to make the cut and burn the bridge. This was a powerful lesson and one that took an enormous amount of mental fortitude at the age of 16. I had to denounce most every single one of my friendships and the church community in which I was raised to find safety, kindness and compassion within myself in order to feel that I could live a life that was fully mine, in alignment with my beliefs. I’ve had to do this so many times in my life. Understanding that my mission here on this Earth was so much larger than just getting married, making babies and settling into a sub-serviant life to my husband. This was the dream of the girls around me. I knew everytime that I tried to mold myself to these ideals that my soul literally felt like it was coming out of my body with resistance to that life. I knew that in order to set my soul free, I would need to cut that tie and burn that bridge.

This is my earliest recollection of Burning Bridges and what would come to be known as my signature move and entirely on Brand for me. Through the years, I learned how to cut ties and burn bridges like a skilled pyromaniac. I could detect the exact moment when a relationship to a person, intitution or environment was no longer serving my higher good and I would make the cut and burn the bridge. I was the “untameable, loner, free-spirit” type that grew restless with conformity. I actually got uncomfortable when people started trying to get to know me deeper. Like the lyrics in the Avett Brothers song, Weight of Lies, “disappear from your hometown, go and find the people that you know. Show them all your good parts. Leave town when the bad ones start to show.” As soon as my “bad” parts started showing, I would pack up and move on. Little did I know at the time, that I this was Neurodivergent behavior patterns and that I might actually be suffering from undiagnosed, untreated ADHD/Autism. All I knew was that this place was no longer serving my mission in life and I needed to find something else.

I always had this dream of being more in life, of truly helping people on a deeper level. I was attracted to work that let me really help people who were suffering. I had this overarching desire to help people on their hardest days, extreme empathy for what they were going through and was a warrior for fairness in all things. I fough madly for the people and things that I loved and would attack anyone that tried to break those people further by using my words to fight back. I was a pitbull for fairness and equality to the point of completely leaving jobs, realtionships and situations with no warning. If I had expressed that things were not fair and equitable and there was no immediate action, I removed myself from the situation. Isn’t that what we are supposed to do?!?!

I would learn later in life that this was also a trait of ADHD/Austism and that many of the things that I felt my whole life were, in fact, just the way my brain was wired. You see, I was born to create! I was born to be an adventurer. I was born to be an innovator. I was born to be an inventor. I have 100’s of journals full of inventions, ideas, half written-books. I have helped 100’s of people come up with brilliant ideas for business’ that they are now using to make a living! I had no idea that my burning bridges, cutting ties and general uncomfortability with the structure of the world in which I live, came from the fact that I was trying to fit into a neurotypical world with a neurodivergent brain. I really was born to do more! I really wasn’t born to fit into a structured 9-5 job. I really wasn’t meant to live in the herd with the herd mentality! The herd mentality actually choked the LIFE out of me! I was born to be a free spirit, free agent and to explore. I was born for deeper conversations. I was born to be an innovator and a creator! I was born to burn bridges to that neurotypical world and blaze a new path forward!

The success that I have today can be accredited to the fact that I boldly stepped into the unknown! I left my hometown and the comforts behind, I left relationships and friendships that wanted to fit me into a box. I left institutions that wanted to keep me chained to their ideals. I will continue to make cuts and burn bridges that keep me bound to things that no longer serve me. If we aren’t our own champions and cheerleaders in this world, then we have nothing. If we continue to turn a blind eye to the things that aren’t serving us and allow them to rule our lives, then we can expect to follow the herd to our own demise! I choose me! I choose my way! I choose the hard path! I choose to make a difference in my own way and refuse to continue to be tied down by the burdens of society and people and things that drain my lifeforce energy. This path might be bumpy, messy, scary, unknown and incredibly lonely at times but I have never felt more FREE!