Lauren Alaina - Getting Good at Being You: Learning to Love Who God Made You to Be

I met Lauren Alaina in 2019 at the CMT Awards. A bunch of us girl singers had joined together to pay tribute that night to the legendary Tanya Tucker. I was sharing a dressing room with a lot of the newer female artists in country music, but I gravitated to Lauren.

Her laugh and her sense of humor, which were evident right off the bat, drew me in. She was also drop-dead gorgeous but didnt seem to know it, or at least didnt seem to let it get in the way of being real. I liked her immediately.

After the performance, we all went our separate ways, back to our tours, our businesses, our lives. I went back to planning the next season of my cooking show, TrishasSouthern Kitchen. We always have a brainstorming call to talk about potential episode ideas, and I brought up Lauren.

I dont really know anything about her, I said, except I think shes one of us. (Thats always a big compliment in my book!) Lauren had just released a song called Getting Good and I loved it. It reminded me of something I would have recorded earlier in my career, and it spoke to me about loving where you are and not always wishing for whats next. I especially relate to the lyric Once I learn to grow right where Im planted, maybe thats when life starts getting good.

So I guess I wasnt surprised that when Lauren came to be a guest on my show, we hit it off and became friends. She brought her manager, Trisha, with her that day. You can tell a lot about a person by who they surround themselves with, and I knew Lauren understood the importance of having the right people in her corner. That day we laughed, cooked, ate, even served fast food as a stunt for the show, and had the best time.

Lauren, at twenty-six-years old, is the same age I was when my first single, Shes in Love With the Boy came out in 1991. Yeah... before she was born, but Im fine with that! I call her Junior because we have so much in common, from our small-town Georgia roots to our love of a good meal with friends and family. But Lauren has something I never had at her age: wisdom and a strong sense of self. In reading Getting Good at Being You, I found myself reliving my own young adulthood, agreeing with so much of what she has to say, and even saying amen out loud a lot!

Young people, young women especially, are so hard on themselves and each other. Add celebrity on top of that and its a train wreck waiting to happen. No wonder so many of us never get to a place where we can fully embrace and accept who we are. Reading Laurens story reminded me that Im still that young girl looking for love and acceptance, and Im almost fifty-seven years old! We never outgrow wanting to fit in, wanting to be enough, but Laurens book lets us know were not alone in those feelings and gives us tools to help remind us we are exactly who God wants us to be.

For me, faith is believing in a power greater than myself. God is my true north, and my life is always calmer when I turn the worries and the stresses over to Him (sometimes I forget to do that). Its equally important to say thank You and be grateful when the good things happen. Getting Good at Being You encourages you to find your higher power and the strength to get through the bad and to be grateful for the good.

Im glad Lauren wrote this book for all of us, but Im even more glad I happened upon this happy-in-her-own-skin gorgeous soul back in that dressing room in downtown Nashville a few years ago. Everybody needs a friend like Junior! When youre reading this book, youll know shes your friend too.

L OVE , T RISHA

Do I love myself?

Ive asked myself that question a lot over the years. Not just, Do I feel pretty good aboutme and my choices? but, Do I actually head-over-heels, cant-get-enough, shout-it-from-the-hilltops love myself?

Do you feel that way about yourself? Do you really and truly love yourself?

This is such a difficult question to answer, but I truly feel like I can confidently say that I doI love myself. And getting to this point has been life changing. I have never felt more at home in my own skin and sure of who I am and the life I want to livebut, let me tell you, it has taken