EPIC Impact™: Transform Your Message Into a Movement
Chapter 1 One Story Away® (preview)
Why the story you're afraid to tell is the one that could set you free.
I clutched a clipboard with trembling hands in the Department of Social Services waiting room. The overhead lights buzzed and flickered, as if they hadn't worked properly in years. Toddlers wailed. A woman beside me whispered a prayer in Spanish, her voice barely audible above the chaos.
I wasn't supposed to be here.
Just months earlier, I had been the soccer mom who never missed a game, the devoted wife planning anniversary trips, the Bible study leader with all the right answers for other women's struggles. Now I couldn't answer how I'd feed my own children next week.
I had been a devoted mother who packed lunches with handwritten notes, kissed scraped knees, and read bedtime stories in character voices. I mentored women through late-night phone calls, quietly becoming a pillar in my community. I led with compassion, gave without hesitation, and showed up for everyone. Now, I was the one needing help, and so far, nobody was showing up for me. Aside from some financial help from my parents who were doing their best with what they had, I felt utterly alone.
What brought me to that cracked vinyl chair wasn't circumstance but the complete unraveling of everything I thought defined me. A marriage destroyed by betrayal. Financial security vanished overnight. The future I had carefully planned, gone.
I was 31. No degree. No savings. No plan. Only the hope that I could somehow rebuild from the wreckage.
I thought I was finished.
But I was just getting started.
What changed everything? A story.
Not just any story, but a structured story that would eventually become the framework I'm about to share with you.
The Humiliation I Wasn't Prepared For
Instead of my sons coming home to me after school, I was now watching the neighbor's children to make ends meet. The guilt was suffocating, as I chose between being present for my own boys and earning just enough to keep the lights on.
The worst part? Through the neighbor's window, I could see my front yard where my boys practiced soccer alone. Some days it felt like watching my life through glass, caring for someone else's children while mine waited for me to come home.
Then came the scholarship application for my son's soccer club.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard at the question: "Why do you need financial assistance?"
What I wanted to type: "My jackass husband decided to live a double life and I was the last to find out."
What I actually wrote: "Our family is in need."
Five words to summarize the complete obliteration of our former life.
But inside my head, the real conversation raged: "God, am I really that stupid? How did I miss all the signs? How could he look into my eyes every day, tell me how blessed he was, brag to friends about his perfect family, while living a lie?"
The Story That Tried to Break Me—And How I Took the Pen Back
After my divorce, the boys and I lived off food stamps and Medicaid. I juggled side jobs, babysitting, flipping thrift store finds on eBay, anything to survive. Every night, I tucked my sons into bed with whispered prayers and promises I wasn't sure I could keep.
I knew education was my only way out of the black hole threatening to swallow us whole. I'd missed my chance the first time around, graduating high school a year early, only to discover I was pregnant three weeks before graduation. The weight of disappointing my highly educated, accomplished parents crushed me.
As their only child, I'd carried their dreams alongside my own, and suddenly both seemed impossible. But now, years later, I understood that education served a deeper purpose than fulfilling their expectations. If I didn't fight for a future, this cycle would repeat forever.
I quickly completed my associate's degree and landed my first job, a start, but I knew it wasn't enough. To make a real difference in our long-term sustainability, I needed to continue pursuing my bachelor's and eventually my master's degree. That's why this next opportunity mattered so much.
Then one night, after the boys were asleep, I picked up a pen. Not to vent. Not to journal. But to tell the truth, on paper.
A Women's Leadership Foundation scholarship had opened up. I'd made it through the first round. Now they wanted an in-person interview eight hours away. No Zoom. No exceptions.
And I had exactly zero paid time off left at my low-wage job. My boss was already frustrated with my frequent absences, court dates, doctor's visits, and the messy reality of rebuilding a broken life. Never mind that I had no family in the area to help me with the boys. One more absence could cost me the only steady income I had.
I couldn't afford to lose my job. But I also couldn't pass up this opportunity.
Eight Hours to Everything or Nothing
Eight hours of interstate stretched ahead of me, every mile heavy with self-doubt. The radio crackled with static, broken signals searching for something clear to hold onto. My hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles went white. What if I'm not enough? What if they see right through me?
This scholarship was my lifeline. Without it, I'd be trapped in the cycle of low-wage jobs forever, unable to afford the education I needed to build real security for my boys. This was my shot at breaking free from food stamps and midnight side hustles, my chance to show my sons that we could rise above what happened to us.
I walked into that conference room clutching a three-ring binder, literally the only proof I had that I deserved to be there.
Five accomplished women sat across a polished mahogany table, their eyes kind but unreadable. The air conditioning hummed. Someone's pen clicked against the table. My hands trembled as I opened that binder.
I didn't hand them a polished resume. I didn't pitch perfection.
I told my story.
Raw. Unfiltered. Everything.
I brought them into my world: the shame of relying on food stamps when my $15-an-hour job didn't cover monthly expenses. The desperation of babysitting other people's children at night while my own boys did homework alone. The terror of racing to my son's doctor appointments after his fifth concussion, four from soccer, then the worst one when a high school bully slammed him against a block wall requiring two staples, wondering if this time the damage would be permanent.
I spoke of empty fridges and late-night essays, of hospital visits and hallway breakdowns, of court dates followed by sideline cheers at soccer games. I shared how I was fighting not just for a scholarship, but for a future I refused to surrender.
But I didn't stop there. I painted them a picture of the woman I was determined to become, not just for me, but for my sons, who were watching their mother either crumble or rise.
What I didn't realize then was that I was telling a powerful story. I was instinctively using what would later become the EPIC Framework™, engaging those women with authentic struggles, persuading with concrete details, inspiring with vision, and closing with absolute clarity about what I needed.
As they listened, their faces changed. They leaned forward. They were with me. At least, I thought they were.
But the week that followed was pure agony.
Was it enough? Was I enough?
The answer came in a phone call that would either validate everything I'd risked or confirm my worst fears about not being enough.
What happened next didn't just change my life. It became the exact framework that's helped hundreds of leaders, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs turn their stories into movements.
You've reached the end of the preview. The full story—and the complete EPIC Framework™ that grew from it—is waiting for you.
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