She Carried the Courage First

Some people teach you by sitting you down.

They give you the advice. They tell you what they learned. They hand you the lesson.

And then there are the ones who never say a word about it.

They just live.

Lisa Copeland is that kind of woman in my life.

We have known each other more than ten years now.

Client. Friend. Mentor.

And one of the women who changed the direction of my life without ever setting out to.

Next to my Uncle Ronnie, Lisa is the biggest reason I ever got my real estate license.

But this is not a story about real estate.

It is a story about courage.

When I first knew Lisa, I was still becoming who I am.

There were pieces of me I knew were in there.

Dreams I had not said out loud.

A voice I had not learned to trust yet.

There was boldness somewhere in me.

I just was not brave enough to live from it.

Lisa already was.

And she still is.

She lives out loud.

She walks into rooms on purpose.

She believes what she believes.

She is not afraid to take up space, build something bigger, change direction, say the hard thing, or decide there is another chapter waiting for her.

And I watched her.

I don't know that we talk enough about the people we watch before we are ready.

The ones who show us what courage looks like while we are still borrowing it.

Lisa carried some of mine for a while.

Not because she sat me down and told me who to be.

Because she showed me.

There is something about being around a woman who is unapologetically herself.

It makes you start noticing every place you have been making yourself smaller.

Watching Lisa taught me that strength and femininity can live in the same woman.

That ambition does not require an apology.

That reinvention is not failure.

That you can love people deeply and still know exactly who you are.

And she taught me it is okay to do it scared.

Because I was scared.

Every step of the way, I was scared.

I did it anyway.

That is what watching her gave me.

Not the fear leaving...

Just the willingness to move while it was still there.

And this one took me the longest...

Living authentically is not about getting everybody else to understand you.

It is about finally being willing to understand yourself.

That lesson got much bigger in my life years later.

Real estate was one door.

Then business brokerage.

Then writing. Music. Speaking.

And eventually this whole crazy, beautiful thing I have come to call Welcome Home.

Looking backward, I can see what I could not see while I was living it.

God had been putting examples in front of me long before I understood why I needed them.

Lisa was one of them.

Long before I stood on a stage talking about remembering who you were created to be...

I had already watched a woman live like she knew.

Long before I could say this is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what I was made to do...

I watched Lisa move through the world like that was the only way to move.

Her courage is contagious.

Maybe that is one of the greatest gifts we hand another person.

Not instructions.

Not permission.

An example.

Sometimes somebody has to walk boldly in front of us before we understand we are allowed to walk that way too.

Today, when I think about the woman I have become... and the one I am still becoming... I know there are pieces of a lot of people in her.

Lisa is one of those people.

Friend.

Client.

Mentor.

And one of the women who carried the courage in front of me until I was finally brave enough to pick up my own.

She is still doing it.

She spends her days telling women it is never too late to become who they were meant to be.

Her new book, Lioness Unleashed, comes out September twenty-fourth.

I have spent the last several years unfolding my own light.

Only this last year recording. Singing. All the rest of it.

And here is what I found...

I did not have to become someone new.

I just had to remember the light that was already in there.

That is what I tell people now, and I tell them boldly.

You do not have to become.

You already are.

You are already enough.

Lisa and I got there from two different rooms.

We are saying the same thing.

It is never too late...

And you were never missing anything to begin with.

Maybe that is what courage does.

It keeps getting handed forward.

Sometimes all it takes is watching somebody live free enough to make you wonder...

What would my life look like if I stopped being afraid to be exactly who God created me to be?

And sometimes, years later, you find out you have become that for somebody else.

That is how we carry one another home.

Thank you, Lisa Copeland.

You go first.

And you are still going.

With light and love,

Kristi J

Welcome Home