The Story Behind the Story: Author Interview Series

featuring Kayleigh Hanlin

"Putting my story out into the world has allowed me to step even more into myself and hold my own and it also taught me how to deal with my emotions when someone disagrees with what I have to say."

Kayleigh Hanlin is the Co-Founder of Empowered Minds and Co-Author of J.O.Y Journal. The J.O.Y. Journal is a guided activity journal for girls and takes the reader through creative prompts to help them discover and embrace their uniqueness while building self-love, confidence, and resiliency. Kayleigh graduated with Honors from Otterbein University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations. She was born with two different congenital heart defects. After three open heart surgeries all before the age of 5, she is thriving and sharing her story with others to inspire hope and inspiration.   

Listen to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/integral-women/

Watch the interview here: https://youtu.be/AQ2YqTfxO4o   

Key lessons:

• live your own life
• discover who you are
• for young girls 9-13

"We tend to look so far in the future or get so anxious about the past and this book was born because we wanted to teach young girls about being joyful and happy by living in the moment, to build that self-confidence and that self-love and Just Owning Yourself" Kayleigh

Overcoming self-doubt as a writer:

"It doesn’t matter how many doubts you have about if anyone would ever read what you’re writing, your story is valuable and needed in this world.

Through reading other people's stories we discover we are not the only ones." Kayleigh 

 "When you start writing there are some internal doubts that pop up, notice the limitation and then burn it to the ground." Sierra 

"The question of “who am I” doesn’t go away, keep showing up because that’s how we grow, by continuously showing up in the face of doubt and fear." Sierra

What I found from reading women's voices changed my life, and so I want to make sure that there are more women voices out there.

Sierra

Intuition only works in the presence, it’s that whisper that cannot talk in the past nor in the future but only in the present moment.

Sierra 

There is something that was systematically stripped from us at a very young age and most of the women I work with in their 20s, 30s and 40s come up against the question of “who the hell am I, who have I been being” because they don’t identify with the self they have constructed.

Sierra 

I feel like your book has a  sort of an antidote to take what was stripped from us before it was so, before you lost everything, before you lost yourself.

Sierra 

Kayleigh's Social Links:

• Facebook (business): https://www.facebook.com/justownyou
• Instagram (business): https://www.instagram.com/justownyou/
• Instagram (personal): https://www.instagram.com/knhanlin/
• Website: www.mindsempowered.com

Watch the episode on YouTube

Listen to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/integral-women/ or wherever you

listen to podcasts (search Integral Women Soundbites)

Connect with your host, Sierra Melcher, here or on https://linktr.ee/integralwomen & learn more about redthreadbooks.com