About Sallie
This was never in my plan.
From the outside, I usually looked fine.
That was one of the things I was best at.
Where It All Began
I didn't set out to become a writer. I became a wife and a mother at sixteen, when I was still trying to figure out life myself. I had no grand plan. I was trying to raise my children, keep a roof over our heads, and do the best I could with what I knew at the time.
And believe me, there was plenty I didn't know.
I worked whatever jobs I could find to keep the lights on. I didn't have a college degree or a career plan, but over the years I discovered abilities I hadn't recognized in myself and went on to become successful professionally. I'm proud of that. Along the way, I spent nearly fifteen years living in Bermuda before coming home to North Carolina.
What I Didn't Understand Then
I knew how to keep going, take care of people, and do whatever needed to be done. What I didn't understand was how much of that came from things I'd lived through long before I was grown. I didn't have the words for it then.
In my sixties, I reached a breaking point I could no longer push through or smile past. What followed was the hardest and most honest work I've ever done: therapy, recovery, faith, and finally looking at how my past had shaped the way I lived and loved.
One of the hardest lessons I've learned is that loving someone doesn't mean I have to keep allowing them to hurt me. I spent much of my life taking responsibility for other people's feelings, choices, and problems. Learning to set boundaries, detach from unhealthy relationships, and sometimes go no contact was not easy, but it became necessary for my own healing.
I've also learned that silence doesn't protect families from the truth. Too often, it protects the very patterns that allow harm to continue from one generation to the next. I know because I've lived it. I refuse to keep participating in that silence, and I refuse to pass it on.
Finding My Voice
Somewhere in that season, I started writing. What began as memories I wanted to leave for my children and grandchildren became a way of putting words to things that had gone unspoken for generations. Eventually, those memories grew into my first book, a memoir that is now undergoing developmental editing.
Speaking isn't new to me. In my thirties, I served as a women's ministry leader and spoke in church settings, including services that were televised locally. I shared personal experiences and messages of faith and encouragement.
But the God I understood then was very different from the loving God I've come to know through a personal relationship with Him.
Now, decades later, I'm finding my way back to inspirational speaking from a different place in my life. I haven't arrived at some final destination where everything is figured out. I'm still learning, still growing, and still doing the work. But I've come a long way, and I want to speak as someone who knows that healing is possible, generational cycles can be broken, and what we've lived through doesn't have to determine what comes next.
As my own recovery progressed, I wanted to understand how to walk alongside others who are still in the middle of their own struggles. That led me to earn my North Carolina Peer Support Specialist certification and a certificate in Trauma-Informed Professional Practice through the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
I'm not a therapist. My perspective comes from lived experience and the professional training I've pursued. I know what I've lived, what I've learned, and that I still have plenty to learn.
I love Jesus, I talk to God throughout the day, and I'm far from perfect. I love fiercely, and I'm loyal, sometimes to a fault.
I've been married to James for more than twenty years. I'm a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, and some of my favorite moments happen around a full table with the people I love. I enjoy decorating, gathering family, painting, and playing guitar.
