Personal & Passionate
Hi! I’m Jesse. I’m in my 40s. I know… it shocks me to say it too!! It feels like way less and way more years on this planet depending on the day and time. Regardless, I’m thankful to be here and to be where I am today.
The brief synopsis of my life to this point… I grew up with my parents and grandparents. I was loved and cared for. I’m now best friends with my parents. That doesn’t mean things were easy or that there weren’t any challenges because there were plenty but everything can be overcome with enough support, love and honesty. (You can’t have one without the others. In fact, I have a blog on that…)
At 19 I married my highschool sweetheart and quickly said goodbye to everything and everyone I knew. Fresh out of basic training, we got married on leave and went to my husband's first duty station together 2000 miles away from home. It was terrifying and thrilling… and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
Our children were born in 2005, 2009, 20011, 2015; boy, girl, girl, girl. I honestly thought I would always be a boy mom. I thought I’d be the only girl in the house desperately trying to hold on to anything flowery or feminine. Turns out us ladies way out number the dudes here and we hold it down pretty well. God knew exactly what and who I needed in my life. I know way less about makeup, hair, skin care and fashion than a mom of three girls should but we make it work.
We lived a very typical yet untypically military lifestyle. We loved every second of it!! Many people think that a military family becomes very military in their family stylings but as much as we could we stayed pretty free and loose. We always lived off post and tried to maintain a footprint in the civilian world by being active in church, the kids’ schools and other opportunities. All that because one day we knew it would come to an end we’d just barely be 40… so much more life to live and gifts to give.
When my husband retired from the military in 2016 our lives were turned upside up and down and then up again. We quickly learned what we liked and didn’t like about the civilian sector despite trying to be in both worlds for the years leading up to his retirement. We also quickly noted being an entrepreneur was the most desirable outcome for my husband and began setting our sights on how to make that happen.
In 2020 he kicked off his full time business of entrepreneurship as a life coach and speaker. We started a podcast together, Tear it Down with Travis and Jesse. I started exploring the world of at home health and fitness and sharing that as part of my business model. All four kids are in school full time now and we had a little extra time to really devote ourselves to becoming the business owners we wanted to be.
As I sit and write this now and think of my wish for my blog, my business, life in general: my main goal is to give people hope. If I could only choose one word to wave as my banner word for forever I would choose HOPE. Without hope there is nothing… but with hope there is a world of opportunity that opens up. Change is possible. Everyday has the potential to be better than the last with hope. Happiness comes from hope. Our future is dictated by how hopeful and willing we are.
I found hope through physical movement, then through fueling my body versus stuffing it with garbage and then realizing that God had somehow taken a backseat on my priorities list. When I revamped what that looked like I found myself much more hopeful and much more able because of the hope I was carrying.
I want everyone to know that whether you are staring down the barrel of doctor’s reports, visitation schedules or divorce, addiction, loneliness, loss, feeling less than confident in yourself for one reason or another you can find what fills your cup and lean on easy routines to bring you back to life.
Like many women who put themselves on the back burner, I discovered that’s about the silliest and worst way to show anyone you love them. Not yourself, not your husband, not your kids, not your friends… I’m all for servant leadership but that’s a totally different thing than neglect or becoming a servant or slave to the idea of what you “should be” or unrealistic expectations from yourself.
My view now begins with I am a loved daughter of God. I am worthy of kindness, respect and grace. I am worthy of hard work, investment and effort. I am worthy of planning, prepping and resting.
I want women around the world who are feeling lost or who need to know there is another ally in their corner, a place to go for a new take on old ideas or new ideas with a little wisdom on top (I did mention I’m 40… my knowledge has transitioned from smart to wisdom - feel free to claim that as well if it fits).
If you could feel my heartbeat when I talk about hope and how to find it, how to keep it and how to grow more of it… you’d understand it’s not just rhetoric… I have a physical response to making one understand that hopeless isn’t a way to live.
I lived there. It’s unfriendly and nothing grows.
To move out of hopelessness there has to be something worth working towards, living for, exploring. Finding your why, writing out interests, pursuing passions and boldly walking in who you are and who you want to be = Hope. I could go on and on here but I think you’re starting to see the picture.
Let me just say one more thing, joy is internal, happiness is an experience. I think people sometimes start to feel hopeless if they aren’t happy all the time. The problem here is that happiness really comes from an experience; going to the theme park, getting a great deal, eating your favorite food, vacation, etc… these are wonderful and I hope that everyone experiences getting to do things and see things they love.
Joy, however, does not come from an outside influence. Joy is inside you because you chose it. There may be many terrible things going on around you but you can still have joy. You can feel the feelings of the terrible things but at the end of the day your joy was not crushed and you have hope that the future will be better, brighter, easier.
Oh, my friends, I could go on and on, I really could. But I want to just say that this blog, my social media, my content is for you from my heart… from someone who has drowned in the feelings, wandered away and come back stronger than ever. So no matter where you are on your journey of life it’s never too late to find joy, grab on to hope and stay in the fight.
Some of me is silly, some of me is serious, some of me is opinionated but all of me is filled with joy and hope because I have lived with and without hope, joy and Jesus and I choose with.
What will you choose?
Stick around and see if some encouragement, some practical tips and strategies, some silliness might be exactly what you need to see you’re still in there and you have people cheering for you too!
