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Mirna knew what burnout looked like. She’s a psychologist. She had helped other women recognize unhealthy workplaces, trust what they were feeling, and find their way through.

Then it happened to her.

She stepped into the biggest leadership role of her career, excited and ready. But within the first month, her body was already telling her something wasn’t right.

Then came the questioning. The labels. Too aggressive. Intimidating. Contrarian.

And slowly, Mirna began asking herself the question so many capable women ask when the people around them keep telling them a story about themselves they don’t recognize:

What if they’re right?

In this Courage Story, Mirna shares what finally helped her see that she wasn’t the problem, the night she sat alone in a hotel room and wrote her resignation letter, and the childhood voices that had been making her second-guess herself for decades.

Most importantly, she tells us what she found when she began peeling away all those other voices.

Her True Canvas.

The resilient, honest, curious, funny woman who had been there all along.

Today, through Your True Canvas, Mirna helps other women ask the same powerful question:

What actually belongs to me—and what have I been carrying that was never mine?

If you’ve ever found yourself doubting what you know, overriding what your body is telling you, or changing yourself to fit someone else’s version of who you should be, Mirna’s story may feel very familiar.

Because sometimes courage isn’t becoming someone new.

Sometimes it’s finding your way back to yourself.

Connect with Mirna Mejia and Learn To See Yourself as Your Own True Canvas:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirnamejiaphd
Website: Your True Canvas  www.yourtruecanvas.org

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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For years, two things ran Sarka’s life without her seeing them: she didn’t believe in herself, and she thought she had to be perfect. 

It took a hard question — where will you be in 20 years? — before she turned around and looked to see what her life was becoming.

She became an entrepreneur with no savings and no plan, learned to answer her own fear instead of fighting it, and said yes to a TEDx stage she almost didn’t get — the one she forgot three times in rehearsal and gave anyway. 

Today she helps other people out of hiding, the way someone once helped her. 

Her message is simple and hard to do  unless you know how: you are enough, but it's not a mantra. 

It's something you learn to feel right down to your toes.

CONNECT WITH THE LOVELY SARKA RISCH. You'll be glad you did.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sarka-risch

Website: www.sarkarisch.com

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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Lonna found the answer to her prayers — a faithful man, a fresh start in a new state — and still ended up more alone than she’d ever been. 

Two wounded people with no tools, ten hard years, and a marriage on life support. 

What turned it around wasn’t willpower. 

It was a care pastor who told her she’d never even had words for what she’d survived, a counseling room where she rewrote the beliefs she’d been living out of, and one unforgettable moment in a remembered field where she finally saw where Jesus had been all along. 

In this episode, Lonna shares -

...how she went from a black-and-white world to Technicolor

...how the depth she’d been told was “too much” became the very thing that saved her and 

...how a marriage that nearly ended became one that gives other people hope. 

Here is a story of the slow brave work of opening the doors of her heart until the color came back.

Connect with Lonna:

Lonna spent years uncovering the lies she'd believed were truths about herself and others so she could finally tell the truth about her own story — and these days she helps others tell theirs. 

As the founder of Seven & Associates, she comes alongside nonprofit leaders to help them think like entrepreneurs, building the strategy, marketing, messaging and fundraising that let a mission-driven organization actually grow and last. She's a Fractional CMO and trained AI Architect. Find her at sevenandassoc.com.

Website: www.sevenandassoc.com

Instagram: Instagram.com/7andassocs

Facebook: www.facebook.com/SevenandAssocs/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lonna-gibson/

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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Sharon could do anything. Give her a job nobody knew how to do, a problem no one could crack — she’d figure it out. 

Then she adopted a little girl whose early wounds no amount of trying could reach, and the woman who could do hard things came apart. 

This is the story of what happens after the control runs out: the guilt, the melt, the radical choice, and a rainy night when a frightened girl finally reached for her mother’s hand.

Contact Sharon here: 

Website: https://sharonhujik.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-hujik/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sharon_hujik/

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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Erica had just walked back through a door she thought was closed for good — teaching, after seven years away. 

It was the fall of 2020. Twelve-hour days. New everything. 

And then, in the space of a few weeks... her brother was diagnosed with cancer, she caught COVID, her mom got COVID and her dad went into the hospital alone and came home on hospice. 

Days later, her mom had a breakdown of her own.

Erica was the last one standing. 

Sick herself. Brand new in her job. Every person she loved most, in free fall at the same time.

This is the story of what she did next. 

How she survived hour by hour, ten minutes at a time. 

How she learned to trust a bridge she couldn't see. 

And how everything that felt pointless in that year became the exact skill set she now uses in her work today.

For any woman carrying more than she thought she could.

Connect with Erica:

• Website: https://clarifybuildtransform.com/
• Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-warrick2493/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/financecoacherica/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574475659772

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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Some women learn early that the safest thing to do is disappear. 

Kylyna learned it in a house where her father’s drinking was the weather — always there, never her fault, impossible to fix. 

So she got the good grades. She kept the peace. She stayed in her room. She made herself easy to overlook.

And then she grew up and had a baby. And something in her said no.

This is the story of a woman who held a line almost no one around her understood — with the father she loved and couldn’t trust, with the brother she couldn’t save, and, hardest of all, with herself, when she saw her own pain starting to turn into the same thing she’d watched destroy them.

It’s about the strength she built alone, long before she knew it was strength. 

It’s about grief that doesn’t tie up in a bow. 

And it’s about what gets built on the other side of all of it: a business of her own, two sons who know they don’t have to numb what hurts, and a Sunday-morning phone call nobody would have predicted.

If you’ve ever been the different one in a room — the one holding a line while everyone else looks away — this one is for you.

A gentle note: this episode touches on addiction in the family and the loss of a sibling, held with care.

Find your own next step at tinybravesteps.com.

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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Nadine spent decades helping other women find themselves — as a relationship counselor, NLP trainer, and self-esteem facilitator. 

But for 19 years inside her own marriage, she was quietly losing track of who she was.

It wasn't dramatic. It was the slow accumulation of small surrenders: preferences set aside, choices made around someone else's moods, a voice that used to sing falling silent somewhere she couldn't quite name.

When the marriage ended, Nadine made a choice many women don't know how to make: she refused to let the anger take her down. She changed the locks. She packed her cart with the foods she actually liked. And one day, driving alone, she caught herself singing — and realized she couldn't remember when she had stopped.

Nadine's story is a courage story about identity: what it costs when we give it away, what it takes to reclaim it, and how becoming fully yourself again is exactly what makes the second act possible.

If you have ever looked up and wondered how you got so far from yourself — this one is for you.

Guest: Nadine Hanchar | Relationship Counselor, NLP Trainer, Women's Self-Esteem

Website: https://progressiveplus.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadinehanchar/

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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At 44, Cheryl Ilov walked into a doctor's office and walked out changed. 

When the people she trusted most refused to believe her, she buried it. For a year and a half, she held herself together. 

And then she didn't. 

What pulled her back wasn't therapy or time. It was an acupuncturist who wouldn't stop talking about ninjas. 

This is the story of a fussy girl in pointe shoes who became her teacher's first female black belt — and what she discovered along the way about strength she'd been carrying her whole life.

CONNECT WITH CHERYL ILOV:

https://www.cherylilov.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherylilovvitalityconsultant/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU0oIAa1eygYtcRPuNnLv1g

FIND CHERYL'S BOOKS HERE.

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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In January 2019, Mary Beth went in for a routine appointment and came out with a cancer diagnosis. Ten days after her own surgery, her husband received a diagnosis with a five percent survival rate. 

What followed was a year that asked everything of her — and she showed up for all of it.

This is a story about what you do when the weight is too heavy to carry alone. About the song you put on repeat. About the meltdown in the hotel hallway that let you walk back into the room. 

About the strange courage it takes not to hold on, but to let go.

Mary Beth Plank Mezo is a coach who helps women move from feeling like life is happening to them to knowing they can respond to whatever life brings. This story is where that conviction was forged.

If you are the one holding everything together right now, this episode was made for you.

Connect with Mary Beth:

https://www.lifeleadershipessentials.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/

https://www.facebook.com/marybethLLE

Find your next Tiny Brave Step: www.tinybravesteps.com

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

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For twenty years, Kelly Schuknecht was the woman behind the vision. 

Two CEOs. Two decades. She made everything happen — the platforms, the books, the speaking events, the brand. 

She was exceptional at it. And she was invisible doing it. 

Then, a company acquisition decided she wasn't needed anymore. The layoff hit her harder than she expected. Not just professionally. Deep down, in the place where we keep the questions we're afraid to ask out loud. 

Why didn't they think I was enough to keep? 

The morning after, Kelly made a decision. She wasn't going to go looking for one more person to be the person behind. She opened a spreadsheet, typed three words at the top — Can We Do This? — and started building something of her own. 

This episode is about what courage looks like when the wound is still fresh, and the story isn't finished yet. 

It's about the dream you've been writing down but haven't let yourself say out loud. 

And it's about the question Kelly's husband asked her on a hard day that changed the way she thought about fear. 

You're going to want to hear it. 

________________________________________________________________

 Connect with Kelly

• Personal Website: https://kellyschuknecht.com/
• Business Website (QUIZ is here:) https://twomilehighmarketing.com/

Kelly's Book

https://authorityxfactor.com/ 

Social Media

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyschuknecht
• TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@kellyschuknecht
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/KellySchuknecht
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/kellyschuknecht

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message.