Ache and joy overlap. There are no perfect bows, only layers we learn to grow inside. Within those layers, beauty is still being revealed.
And hope keeps showing up 🫶🏽🥹
Share this with someone who needs the reminder today. Save it for yourself, too.
You’re not stuck.…
You’re too loyal to a version of you that no longer fits 👁👁
Welcome 😉 to the community. We don’t do neatly wrapped lessons or polished endings here because getting through isn’t the same as getting AND STAYING free🗣️🔥
I built this platform in the middle of starting over. Not in a “look how strong I am” kind of way, but in a messy, figure-it-out-as-you-go kind of way 🥹
This space is for those who’ve lived through the hard that doesn’t come with instructions, those who don’t fit the mold, those who’ve been called “too much,” “too direct,” or “too ambitious” behind closed doors and right to their faces.
I walked away from the corner office to build more than a career. I desire to clear a path for people still searching because I know what it means to have nothing but faith and a resolve that will not die 😮💨🙌🏽🥹
I’ve lived many lives. Some wildly successful. Others were filled with gut-wrenching loss that reshaped me. Now, I take all of it and lay it bare. On stages. Podcasts. In rooms where real conversations happen.
So if you’re done folding inward, over-explaining, or shrinking to fit spaces, you’re in the right place 😉 And if you’re a businesswoman who is also a mother, I already know we speak the same language. 🗣️🔥
Start Here:
📖 Read my book: Face Forward
📩 Join me on Substack for the raw, unfiltered truth
📌 Scroll through. What you need is already here 🫶🏽
🎙️ Catch me on these recent podcasts: @typologypodcast@anthonyoneal@imposterhourpodcast@ciarastockeland and @cassandralspeer (H&H podcast)
🎤 Invite me to speak at your conference or business event on topics related to faith, resilience, self-doubt, decisive decision-making, leadership, and more
No more playing small. No more just getting by. If you’re ready, let’s gooooo 🗣🔥🔥🔥 tell me about YOU or what you need from me 😉
I come from a long line of phenomenal women.
Today, my grandmother, Bernice Ricks, turns 100. A full century of living, faith, and building a family strong enough to outlive hardship.
In this photo, I am a little girl in her arms, unaware that I am being held by history.
Women like my grandmother rarely called themselves strong. They simply woke up each day and carried what life placed in their hands. Somewhere along the way, her name became part of my own.
My full name is Bethny Bernice Ricks-Jackson. I am grateful to carry the name of a woman who made it to one hundred.
Happy birthday, Grandma. Your life built more than you will ever fully know 🥹❤️🔥
Some of us carry our brilliance like contraband, hiding while others benefit from our silence, waiting for permission to shine as though purpose requires approval.
Women are often taught to treat uncertainty like wisdom, listening when it whispers caution and mistaking hesitation for humility.
Somewhere along the way, insecurity gets dressed up as theology, polished until it sounds like wisdom, and handed back to us as advice.
On this International Women’s Day, I’m proud to share that @navpressbooks will publish my next book as we tackle what happens when women stop negotiating with doubt 🗣️🔥
So take your seat! Even if the doubt is loud. Even when the room hesitates. Even when the voice in your head insists you are not ready.
Do it anyway.
When I was young, my mother gave me a gift.
Not only her wisdom, but proximity.
She surrounded me with women who never played small. They carried rooms without announcing it. Never declared themselves leaders, but moved like it anyway. They were not branding strength; they lived it.
I learned ambition and resolve at kitchen tables and living rooms thick with laughter and strategy. In these conversations, I watched women hold grief in one hand and vision in the other. Never once did they waver.
See, when little girls grow up surrounded by strong women, average feels foreign. Shrinking becomes unnatural. And you don’t flinch at your own fire, because it was familiar long before it was explained.
We come from women who did not fold. And this is a reminder that we are the continuation of those someone once labeled “too much,” but who kept standing anyway.
Happy Women’s History Month.
This is for the woman who learned to arrive late, speak less, or quietly disappear because you were pushed aside.
There is a particular humiliation in being discussed before you are understood.
Watching distance grow polite while you are being labeled. They call it wisdom and rename their judgment “discernment,” but beneath the surface, withdrawal is simply easier than compassion.
But you are not alone. So many women know this terrain. We have felt the same recalibration, carrying both the ache and the strength of surviving what was never said out loud.
And yet, we are still here! Whole. Called. And unwilling to shrink 🗣🔥
The women who alter the trajectory of your life are rarely the loudest. They are the ones who interrupt your small thinking. Tell you the truth when agreement would be easier. Who see the next version of yourself before you have language.
Listen, our ceilings will move simply because we’re cheered on. They move because someone refuses to let us live beneath them 🗣️🔥
Tag the women standing beside you #tentoesdown
Courage is expensive if you do not have somewhere to exhale. Greatness requires both fire and foundation.
I don’t just want women to be great. I want them to build what they can sustain for a lifetime.
Build a life that can hold your ambition 😉 🫶🏽
