Marsha Blackburn - Life Equity: Realize Your True Value and Pursue Your Passions at Any Stage in Life

Life Equity

Life Equity

Realize Your True Value
and Pursue Your Passions
at Any Stage in Life

MARSHA BLACKBURN

2008 by Marsha Blackburn

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Scripture quotations marked niv are from HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked nlt are from Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blackburn, Marsha.
Life equity : realize your true value and pursue your passions at any stage in life / Marsha Blackburn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. WomenPsychology. 2. Self-esteem in women. 3. Self-perception in women. 4. Self-acceptance in women. 5. Leadership in women. I. Title.
HQ1206.B447 2008
155.6'33dc22

2008023071

Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 12 QW 6 5 4 3 2 1

IN MEMORY
Ella Jospehine Barber Meeks Emmie Josephine Meeks Morgan

DEDICATED TO
Mary Josephine Morgan Wedgeworth
Mary Morgan Blackburn Ketchel
Each a woman of influence, intellect and strength

Contents

I had a conversation this week with my mother, who, at seventy-seven, is having her first experience with a personal trainer. The human body is amazing, isnt it? How it transforms itself with just a little bit of encouragement.

The true being inside the human body, though, is somewhat trickier to uncover but much more magnificent to set free. In LifeEquity, Marsha Blackburn gives women the tools to do exactly this. It is truly possible, as Marsha shows us, to use the rich talents and experiences we have each been given to pursue our dreamsno matter our age.

At this time in history, more than ever before, it is vital that women understand the crucial roles we play in our civic and philanthropic communities, our churches and schools, and in our world. Were each wired in a unique way, with individual gifts and abilities, and the real world is desperate for the kind of leadership that we are capable of providing, a style of leadership that is built on nurture and encouragement.

Whether we realize it or not, as we live and grow, we accumulate a toolset, which combined with our passion and strengths enables us to move with confidence to the next stage of our liveslives energized in the pursuit of our particular dreams. Lives filled with meaning.

Amy Grant
singer, songwriter

INTRODUCTION
Four Women / Four Questions

J ulie opened her leather-bound day planner and began an absentminded doodle on the space for Mondays tasks. There was plenty of doodle room. The day was wide open, as was most of the rest of the week.

Oh, there was lunch with a friend on Tuesday, the womens Bible study she led on Wednesdays, and a Friday-night dinner party for her doctor-husbands partners and their wives. But little else.

In previous years, this same space on the calendar would have been filled with events, tasks, and objectivesevery day brimming with responsibility and packed with purpose. But a few weeks ago she had sent her baby off to college in another state. Her oldest had flown the nest a year earlier.

Julie had married young and yet managed to simultaneously get her husband through medical school and start a family. She was bright, dynamic, organized, and a proven achiever. Whats more, people had always been drawn to her strong personality and confidence. Whether in support of her husband, her children, or her church, everything to which she had put her hand during the last twenty years had succeeded. But now... ?

With a sigh Julie looked down at the doodle shed been tracing over and over with her pen. It was a big question mark.

Barely forty-five years old, she knew the question her soul was posing:

Am I finished?

Jamie leaned back in her Euro-styled ergonomic desk chair and scanned the wall of her corner office. A neat grid of framed diplomas, awards, and letters of congratulations offered silent testimony to the talent and drive that had made her at thirty-seven the youngest woman ever to make VP at the Fortune 500 company that had been her personal corporate ladder since business school.

By every outward measure, Jamie had arrived. Could it be that she was really considering walking away from it? Now?

She was indeed. For what only her closest confidants knew was that Jamie was bored. Sure, the prospect of spending the next twenty-five years as a well-paid, stock-optioned, golden-parachuted cog in a giant corporate machine appealed to her need for security. But it sure didnt quicken her pulse. And for Jamie, that was a problem.

For more than a year an idea for a new business venture had been brewing in her. It was a flash of inspiration that seemed to hold the promise of exciting new challenges and tremendous rewardsfinancial and emotional. But it would mean taking a leap into the unknown.

Lately, whenever she thought about flinging herself into that abyss, an invisible thug named Fear would kick down her door and take a seat on her chest. As if that werent enough, Fear tended to use that perch on her rib cage to whisper a haunting question in her ear:

What if you fall on your face, Jamie? Now wont that behumiliating?

Not once, in three decades of marriage, family rearing, and community service, had it occurred to Beckyeven for a momentthat she would ever find herself in this position.

Alone. Humiliated. Fifty-four. And utterly starting over.

The truly galling part of it all was being so completely blindsided by the dual revelations of Johns infidelity and fiscal irresponsibility. Was I really that blind? Could I possibly be that clueless?

Now, as her twin embarrassments of bankruptcy and divorce were grinding through the legal system, she found herself on the hunt for both an apartment and a job.

Thirty-three years of homeroom mothering, Cub Scout pack leading, Homeowners Association administrating, PTA fundraising, and community theater event planning had endued Becky with a powerful set of skillsbut with no conventional rsum.

Out of a clear blue sky, a tornado had danced right through the center of Beckys world. Now she stood amid the rubble of her life with a lump in her throat and a question on her lips:

Who will recognize what I have to offer?

Caitlin took a deep, cleansing breath and scrolled through another page of online job listings in the Nonprofit/Humanitarian section. It had been almost four years since she graduated from that prestigious Southern university, and though she had been consistently employed all that time, she still hadnt found her true calling.

Perhaps her dubious father had been right about the professional utility of a sociology degree. Does this mean you want to pursue a rewarding career as a