I didn’t know I was going to cry. I certainly didn’t expect a conversation about why your story matters to be the reason.
Actually, I didn’t even know I had anything to cry about.
Somebody had asked me a pretty simple question.
Why do you blog?
I should have had a business answer.
After all, I’ve spent years trying to figure out this online business thing.
I could have said traffic.
I could have said affiliate marketing.
I could have said I wanted to help women learn how to blog.
And at different times, all of those answers would have been true.
But none of them were the answer that came out of my mouth.
Instead, sitting there on a VIP training call with a bunch of people watching me, I started to cry.
Not the cute little dab-your-eye kind either.
The kind where suddenly you can’t get the darn words out.
And somewhere between trying to breathe and being thoroughly embarrassed that I was crying in front of everybody, I finally said it.
“I don’t want to be forgotten when I’m gone.”
And there it was.
The reason I’d apparently been looking for all along.
I think that’s when I finally began to understand why your story matters. Sometimes the stories that feel ordinary to us are the very ones somebody we love may wish we’d left behind.
In This Story
- Other People Saw It Before I Did
- Then Someone Else Tried to Tell Me
- Then Michelle Asked Me the Right Question
- I Want My Grandkids to Know Who Grandma Was
- I’m Not Trying to Leave Them More Stuff
- Being Grandma Feels Like a Do-Over
- I Was Trying So Hard to Become Somebody Else
- Maybe Your Story Doesn’t Look Important Yet
- I Finally Know Why I Write
- Frequently Asked Questions
Other People Saw It Before I Did
The funny thing is, this wasn’t the first time somebody had tried to tell me who I was.
I just wasn’t listening.
My friend Tonia and I belonged to a content club together. Tonia is a coach, and she has told me more than once that my lane is blogging, storytelling, and coaching.
Well.
She lost me at coaching. 😂
I know how much time coaching takes.
Besides, I’m not a coach.
I’m a guide.
I don’t want to stand at the front of the room with all the answers.
I’d much rather walk beside you and say:
“Here’s what happened to me. Here’s what I learned. Maybe it’ll help you too.”
But at the time, I didn’t hear that part of what Tanya was saying.
I heard a label that didn’t fit, so I pretty much blocked out the rest.
I wasn’t ready.
Then Someone Else Tried to Tell Me
Later, I was talking with a woman I’d recently become friends with on Facebook.
She told me something else I wasn’t expecting.
People don’t follow me because of what I sell.
They follow me because they like me.
Well, that was news to me.
She said I’m truthful.
Honest.
Snarky.
Fun.
Real.
People like hearing my stories. They like getting to know me.
And somewhere along the way, they begin to trust me because they feel like they know the person behind the screen.
I remember being genuinely surprised.
Because how in the world was I supposed to know that?
People don’t exactly line up to tell you these things.
Most people don’t reply to my emails.
A whole lot of people read my social media posts without ever leaving a comment.
There’s no little notification that pops up saying:
Congratulations, Carla. Someone quietly likes you today.
Wouldn’t that be handy? 😂
So from where I was sitting, I didn’t have much evidence.
I was writing.
Talking.
Sharing.
And sometimes it felt like I was talking to myself.
But apparently people were listening.
Quietly.
Then Michelle Asked Me the Right Question
The big aha finally came during one of my Digital Growth Community VIP trainings.
Michelle started asking me some very pointed questions.
And something strange happened.
I knew the answers.
Immediately.
I didn’t have to think about them.
I didn’t have to look at my notes.
I didn’t need another course to tell me what to say.
She asked what I did.
And somewhere in that conversation, I said it:
I’m a storyteller.
Then she asked why I blogged.
That’s where things got harder.
I told her the truth.
Originally, I started blogging because I wanted to sell products.
In fact, I can still go back and read the very first blog post I published and see just how far this journey has taken me.
But eventually, that didn’t feel right.
Then I moved toward writing about blogging.
Teaching people how to blog.
That didn’t quite feel right either.
I kept trying to fit myself into these little business boxes.
What do you sell?
What do you teach?
What’s your niche?
What are you an expert in?
And I kept trying to come up with the right answer.
Until Michelle asked me why.
Not what I sold.
Not what my funnel looked like.
Not what my conversion rate was.
Why did I write?
And suddenly the business answer disappeared.
I Want My Grandkids to Know Who Grandma Was
I started talking about my life’s experiences.
The things I’ve lived through.
The mistakes I’ve made.
The decisions I wish I’d made differently.
The times I fell flat on my face.
And the times I somehow got myself back up.
I told her I wanted my grandchildren to read those stories someday.
I want them to know:
How did Grandma end up being the way she was?
What happened in her life?
What shaped her?
What scared her?
What made her laugh?
What did she believe about herself that turned out not to be true?
What mistakes did she make?
What did she learn?
How did she keep going?
And that’s when I lost it.
The tears came.
I couldn’t talk.
And then, somehow, I managed to say the thing I didn’t even know was sitting inside me.
I don’t want to be forgotten when I’m gone.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one crying anymore.
People in the training were crying too.
Which, of course, made me even more embarrassed.
Because that’s always helpful when you’re already trying to get yourself together. 😂
But something had changed.
For the first time, I understood why your story matters when you’re trying to leave behind more than things – and why these stories mattered so much to me.
I’m Not Trying to Leave Them More Stuff
When I say I don’t want to be forgotten, I’m not talking about having my name on something important.
I’m not trying to build some giant monument to Carla.
Good grief.
And I’m not talking about leaving behind a pile of things.
Things eventually disappear anyway.
Money gets spent.
Houses get sold.
Boxes get cleaned out.
Stuff is just stuff.
I want to leave behind:
Who I was.
What I did.
What I learned.
Where I screwed up.
What I would do differently.
What made me stronger.
What contributions did I make while I was here?
Did I make something better?
Did I make someone’s life a little easier?
Did something I went through help another person feel less alone?
That’s the legacy I’m talking about.
Being Grandma Feels Like a Do-Over
There’s another part of this that’s harder for me to say.
Being a grandma feels a little like getting a do-over.
I wish I’d done some things differently as a mom.
There are places where, looking back, I feel like I failed my kids.
I can’t go backward.
I can’t raise them again.
I can’t take what I know at nearly 70 and whisper it into the ear of the much younger Carla who was trying to figure out motherhood while she was living it.
Boy, would I like to sometimes.
I’d have a few things to tell her.
But I can’t.
What I can do is leave something for their children.
I can tell my grandchildren who Grandma really was.
Not some polished version of me.
The real one.
The woman who got fired.
The woman who started businesses.
The woman who got scammed.
The woman who raised kids and wondered if she was doing any of it right.
The woman who sometimes made really good decisions.
And some pretty lousy ones.
The woman who could be stubborn as all get out.
The woman who sometimes took years to learn something everybody else seemed to figure out in five minutes.
The woman who kept going anyway.
Maybe someday one of my grandchildren will be going through something hard.
Maybe they’ll be scared.
Maybe they’ll think they’ve screwed something up so badly they’ll never recover from it.
And maybe they’ll stumble across one of Grandma’s stories.
And they’ll think:
Grandma went through something like this too.
Maybe they’ll see that she messed things up.
She cried.
She doubted herself.
She started over.
And she kept going.
If one of my stories gives them that…
Then writing it was worth it.
I Was Trying So Hard to Become Somebody Else
That’s another thing I finally saw during that conversation.
I’d spent an awful lot of time trying to become the person I thought I needed to be.
I was trying to be a marketer.
Trying to be a blogging teacher.
Trying to become a book writer.
Trying to learn how everybody else built their businesses.
And I kept judging myself by all the places where I wasn’t measuring up.
I was looking at my failures instead of looking at my forward movement.
I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way – including one blogging mistake that took me years to recognize – but those mistakes are part of the story too.
But when Michelle started pulling these answers out of me, something became incredibly clear.
I already had the bones of what I was trying so hard to build.
I had a blog.
I had stories.
I knew the woman I wanted to talk to.
I had nearly seven decades of life experience.
And I knew how to sit down and tell somebody what happened to me.
Maybe I didn’t know how to put it into some perfect story format.
Maybe I didn’t know all the writing rules.
Maybe I couldn’t explain the proper structure of a compelling narrative if you handed me a microphone and gave me five minutes.
But I could tell you:
This happened to me.
This is what I did.
This is what I learned.
And maybe it’ll help you too.
Wait a minute.
That’s what a guide does.
Why Your Story Matters Even If It Doesn’t Look Important Yet
And this is where I keep thinking about the woman on the other side of this screen.
Maybe you don’t think you’re a storyteller.
Maybe you look at your life and think:
Who would want to hear about that?
You didn’t climb Mount Everest.
You didn’t build a billion-dollar company.
Nobody’s making a movie about your life.
You just…
lived.
You raised kids.
You worked.
You loved people.
You lost people.
You made mistakes.
You learned things.
You started over.
You survived days you weren’t entirely sure you could get through.
You figured things out because you had to.
And somewhere along the way, you learned things another woman hasn’t learned yet.
That’s a story.
And maybe that’s why your story matters more than you realize. You already know what it feels like to live it. The woman who needs to hear it may still be trying to find her way through it.
Maybe you don’t need to become an expert before you’re allowed to tell it.
Maybe you don’t need a title.
Maybe you don’t need to stand at the front of the room and teach anybody anything.
Maybe you can simply pull up a chair beside her and say:
“This happened to me. Here’s what I learned. Maybe it’ll help you too.”
That’s the kind of storyteller I want to be.
I Finally Know Why I Write
Something changed for me on that call.
I didn’t suddenly learn how to build the perfect business.
I didn’t walk away with every answer.
I certainly didn’t become a different person.
If anything, the opposite happened.
I finally stopped trying to.
I’m a blogger.
I’m a storyteller.
I’m a grandma.
I’m a woman who has lived long enough to have some stories worth leaving behind.
And maybe the business grows around that.
Maybe the books grow out of that.
Maybe helping another woman find the courage to tell her own story grows out of that.
We’ll see.
I’m still figuring it out.
But I finally understand something I couldn’t see before.
I don’t write because I want people to remember everything I did.
I write because I want the people I love to know who I was.
And maybe that’s what a legacy really is.
Not just what you leave to somebody.
It’s what you leave inside somebody.
Your Story Matters Here
If you’ve been quietly wondering whether your experiences are worth writing about, that’s one reason I created The Blog Growth Society.
Not because I have all the answers.
I don’t.
But I do believe we shouldn’t have to figure all of this out alone.
It’s a place for women who want to use their stories, experiences, and knowledge to build something of their own – one blog post at a time.
Come walk beside us.
Join me inside The Blog Growth Society →
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Your Story Matters Even If It Doesn’t Look Important Yet
I believe your story matters because your experiences hold pieces of who you are, what you’ve learned, and how you’ve become the person you are today. Something that feels ordinary to you may someday mean everything to someone who loves you – or help another person going through something similar.
What if I don’t think my life is interesting enough to write about?
I used to think a story needed to be extraordinary to matter. Now I look at it differently. Raising children, working, loving people, losing people, making mistakes, and starting over are all parts of a life. You don’t have to climb Mount Everest before you’re allowed to tell your story.
How do I start telling my life story?
I start with something I remember. Where was I? What happened? How did I feel? What did I learn from it? I don’t worry about making it a perfect story at first. I tell what happened to me and work from there.
Can blogging be a way to leave a legacy?
That’s what blogging has become for me. My blog gives me a place to preserve stories from my life, including the mistakes, lessons, and moments I want my grandchildren to know someday. It also gives those stories the chance to help someone right now.
Do I have to be a writer to share my story?
I don’t think so. I didn’t begin by deciding I was a storyteller. I simply knew how to talk about what happened to me. You can start there too. Tell what happened, what it meant to you, and what you learned along the way.
Write Your Story. Build Your Future.