Today, I’m sharing what became of something that began right here on Hands Free Mama thirteen years ago, when a teenager responded to one of my essays. I had no idea then how much our exchange would shape my life, or how it would eventually lead me to something I’ve spent nearly a year creating.
I was two years into my writing career when a teenager left an unforgettable comment on one of my blog posts.
“I’m in my late teens, and I’m sitting here with tears running down my face.
I’m not a mom, but I have one. And she doesn’t know me.
I know for a fact that she dislikes or downright hates many things that I like, feel, or believe, so I lie to her almost constantly.
I’ve grown resigned to the fact that I will never have a relationship like I want with my mom (or dad, for that matter), and then something like this comes along and rips the feelings open all over again, making me question.
Why couldn’t she have bothered to know me?
She snapped at me for writing short stories instead of doing schoolwork. Even now, I cannot write short stories or songs because of the feedback I got from her.”
-The Girl Who Isn’t Known
Though this teenager’s message was painful to read, it was lined with a trace of hope. The writer in me spotted it immediately, and I felt compelled to respond right away. There was not a minute to waste.
In my mind’s eye, I saw an elevator door quickly closing. I yearned to do everything in my power to stick my hand between the metal panels, causing them to open wide, wide enough for an escape.
As quickly as I could type, I responded with words of encouragement. I hoped to squeeze in a different perspective before a future of writing completely closed.
This is a portion of my response:
“Dear one,
I was only a few sentences into your comment when I said to myself, ‘She is a writer.‘
You are a writer.
Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Trust me. I know good writing when I see it. Please keep writing. Even if you show no one, write.
My friend, writing saved me. My problems were different than yours, but each time I wrote down my thoughts, struggles, and triumphs, I was able to release the baggage I was carrying and reconnect to the dreamer within me. Writing carried me far beyond the desolate place where I had begun.
If you need encouragement to write, come here to this space. Leave comments if you’d like. This space is open to you. You have so much to offer.”
I hoped she would not just read that message but take it in and allow it to become part of her inner fiber. I knew words someone said to you could lodge inside you forever because it had happened to me.
I was nineteen years old and taking a poetry class in college. When I turned in my notebook filled with the most vulnerable truths I’d ever written about myself, my English professor said:
“You have a powerful voice, Rachel.”
Nearly twenty years later, in a desolate moment when I was trying to find my way back to myself, I reached for those words.
They were still inside me.
Instead of choosing to escape from life, I picked up my spiral notebook and chose to stay. I filled its pages for over a year before my sister encouraged me to take my writing online. Fueled by Dr. Goertz’s words, I had the courage to create a public online journal called Hands Free Mama.
It was an essay on Hands Free Mama that brought this young woman into my world, giving me the chance to offer her the kind of encouragement someone had once offered me.
Later, I heard from the young writer. She was writing short stories again and had also begun working on a full-length book in the fantasy genre.
I cried.
The elevator doors were open.
That exchange stayed with me through the years that followed. I often wondered who might be carrying something beautiful inside them that had never been given enough encouragement to come forth. I thought about all the dreams and passions that might never come to life because criticism, whether from someone else or from within, had shut them down.
So, I became a great believer in saying the encouraging thing out loud.
I said it to my special education students whose gifts were often overlooked because of their challenges or history. I said it to readers who shared their struggles and self-doubts in my inbox. I said it to women at retreats standing at the edge of something new, unsure whether they had what it took to begin.
When it came to other people, seeing possibility came easily and naturally. But the voice I carried for myself was often much harder to please.
I could encourage someone else to share her gift without waiting until it was perfect, while holding back my own because I didn’t feel “ready.”
I could remind another person that her worth had nothing to do with what she accomplished, while measuring my own by productivity, numbers, and outcomes.
I could assure someone that one person’s opinion didn’t define the value of her work, while letting a single negative response make me question the value of my own.
I knew how to hold the door open for other people. Learning not to close it on myself would take much longer.
It was a painful moment with my daughter Natalie over a bag of spilled rice that truly opened my eyes to the way I spoke to myself. I realized that if I wanted her to grow up with a compassionate inner voice, I needed to change the one she was hearing me use with myself.
That moment on the kitchen floor left me with a question that would change the way I lived:
Could I learn to become that loving voice of encouragement for myself?
I began paying closer attention to the way I spoke to myself and trying different ways of responding when my Inner Critic showed up. Little by little, through practices I returned to again and again, another voice became easier to hear.
It was a voice of compassion, curiosity, and love.
I call her my Inner Kind voice, and she offered me another way forward, one that didn’t rely on criticism, shame, or pressure.
She said things like, You don’t have to earn rest.
You don’t have to prove anything here.
This matters to you. You don’t need anyone’s approval.
And sometimes she said the very thing I had spent years saying to other people:
Don’t close the door on this yet.
Over the past fifteen years of my writing career, after thousands of conversations with women who love deeply, give generously, and carry far more than anyone sees, I have noticed something.
Most of us didn’t intentionally set out to lose touch with our dreams and passions or stop making space for our gifts.
We adapted.
We learned to meet expectations, respond to what felt urgent, take care of the people who needed us, and keep going even when we were depleted. It became easier to hear the voices telling us what we should do, who we should be, and what everyone else needed than the quieter voice reminding us of what made us come alive.
I wonder sometimes how much is waiting inside us because somewhere along the way, we learned to close the door on it.
The painting never painted.
The song never sung.
The book never written.
The garden never tended.
The adventure never taken.
The person within us we never got to meet.
What might come forth from a human being when the voice inside them finally becomes one that helps them begin?
Years ago, when I saw an elevator door closing on a young writer, I did not hesitate. I reached for the words I hoped might hold it open.
You are a writer.
I knew she needed a voice stronger than the one telling her to stop.
What I didn’t understand then was how many years I would spend learning how to offer that voice to myself.
There won’t always be a Professor Goertz to write, You have a powerful voice.
There won’t always be someone reaching between the elevator doors before they close.
Sometimes we will have to become the voice that says:
Keep going.
What you feel matters.
You don’t have to do this perfectly.
You are allowed to trust what is right for you.
Don’t close the door on yourself.
That is why I have spent the past ten months creating Grow Inner Kind.
But the truth is, I have been finding my way toward it for much longer.
I have come to believe that one of the most life-changing things we can do is learn to recognize our Inner Critic and strengthen the Inner Kind voice that helps us become more fully ourselves.
I can’t wait to share it with you.
For today, please remember this:
If someone’s criticism closed a door inside you, that doesn’t mean the door has to stay closed forever.
You have so much to offer.
And should you have the chance to be a voice in someone else’s head, let yours be one that holds a door open.
My hand in yours,
Rachel
A note about Grow Inner Kind
For nearly a year, I have been working on a project called Grow Inner Kind, a self-guided experience that can be taken with or without my live support.
I identified the steps I wish I’d had when I first began trying to change the way I spoke to myself: a clear path from Inner Critic to Inner Kind.
I think about how much can remain waiting inside us while a voice says, You can’t. You shouldn’t. You’re not ready. Who do you think you are?
And I think about what might become possible when that voice no longer gets the final say.
Grow Inner Kind is arriving in a few weeks. I’m offering a special introductory price for the inaugural group to thank those who join me at the start. If you’re curious about taking this next step, add your name to the interest list here. You’ll be the first to know when it’s ready, so you can decide if it’s the right experience for you.
I truly believe everything I have created through Hands Free Mama, Only Love Today, Soul Shift, and Rachel’s Treehouse has prepared me to create this offering. And for the first time in my writing career, I created something of this magnitude entirely on my own, without outside voices having a say in what it should be.
There is something especially meaningful to me about that. 
