Learning the Way on the Way

Posted on October 28, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

A long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:

Most mistakes are unavoidable. Learn to forgive yourself. It’s not a problem to make them; it’s only a problem if you never learn from them.

If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful. The solution to this problem is making friends with failure. You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. Behind every great piece of art there are dozens of failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us.

Bottom line: Just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it never will. Learning the way on the way is key. Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right.

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.

On Setting Goals

Posted on October 21, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

I highly recommend reading Didn’t See That Coming by New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hollis. Here’s a thought-provoking excerpt about setting goals:

The only way I know of to actively pursue growth in my life is to set goals both personally and professionally so that I am forced to grow as a person in order for those goals to be made manifest. I challenge myself in this way as a leader, as a mother, and as a friend.

I truly believe that we find purpose in creating traction against a goal we are trying to achieve, so long as the goal is something we care about. When I talk about this subject it sometimes rubs people the wrong way because they associate the word goal with the industries that have adopted it most.

People think that a goal must be for financial gain or weight loss or a bigger promotion or a nicer car since those are the categories in which the term is most used. But the truth is, a goal can be about anything. It doesn’t have to be associated with what you’ve lost or what has caused you hurt.

You can create a goal to show up as a better mother or to grow in your faith. You can create a goal to learn sign language or to pay off your student loans or to repaint your local community center. You can create a goal to learn to make the world’s best carrot cake. It doesn’t matter what the goal is; it only matters that you have one and that it’s something you care about.

Any area of your life that you feel passionately about can be improved upon by adding a specific goal to it, and the beauty is that you’ll start to see the positive effects of your goal-setting long before you actually achieve anything. Once you start to see traction, once you start to see that you’re truly making strides toward something you care about, you will find purpose not in the achievement but in the pursuit.

Source: Didn’t See That Coming, pp. 206-207.

10 Things I Know at 53 That I Wish Little Gi Had Known at 8

Posted on October 19, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome Gisele Mascarenehas. Today, Gisele shares ten things she wishes she could tell her younger self, along with her new release, She Forgot She Was Free.

Here’s Gisele!

At 53, I don’t think wisdom means having life figured out.

I think it means being able to look back at the beautiful parts, the painful parts, the things you wish you had done differently and the things you wouldn’t change for anything, and finally see how all of it belongs.

Here are ten things life has taught me that I wish I could whisper to the little girl I once was.

1. Take the scenic route.

My dad was a dreamer. He taught me to meditate, to find joy in ordinary moments and not to take life so seriously.

But one of the things I remember most is that he loved the scenic route.

I understand that differently now.

We spend so much of our lives rushing toward the destination that we miss our actual lives happening along the way.

My dad also taught me to hold hands and mean it.

Be there. Feel it. Look around. Take the long way sometimes.

The view matters.

2. Forgiveness is more for your healing than theirs.

This one took me years to understand.

I used to think forgiveness meant saying what happened was okay.

It doesn’t.

Forgiveness allowed me to stop requiring someone else to change, apologize or understand my pain before I gave myself permission to heal.

Some relationships get repaired.

Some don’t.

You can still choose peace.

3. The right love gives you wings.

Ruben gives me wings.

That’s the simplest way I know to describe loving my husband.

His love doesn’t make me smaller. It doesn’t require me to become less of myself so he can feel like more of himself.

His love feels like I can fly.

I think that’s what beautiful love does.

It doesn’t become your wings.

It reminds you that you already have them.

4. Your children will raise you too.

I thought I was going to raise my children.

And of course I did.

But John and Gianna raised parts of me too.

They taught me selflessness. Compassion. Responsibility. They exposed parts of me that needed growing and gave me reasons to become a better human.

Children have this incredible ability to become mirrors.

Sometimes you love what you see.

Sometimes you don’t.

Both can change you.

5. Presence is one of the greatest gifts you can give someone.

My grandchildren, my nuggets, Zen and Zy, gave me a second chance at something.

I wasn’t always the most reliable, completely present human when my children were little. I can acknowledge that now without living in shame about it.

But with my nuggets, I get another opportunity.

When I’m with them, I’m WITH them.

Not my phone.

Not an email.

Not work.

Them.

We play. We laugh. And somehow, when I’m completely present with them, I feel like a kid again too.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts of getting older.

You realize presence was the thing everyone needed all along.

6. Love people the way you want to be loved.

For most of my life, I didn’t have the kind of deeply reciprocal female friendships I have today.

Now I have sisters.

Women who see me. Show up. Pray with me. Laugh with me. Tell me the truth. Let me do the same for them.

And I have realized something.

The more I lead with the kind of love I want to receive, the more that kind of love finds me.

I treasure my sisters because I now understand friendship isn’t measured by how long someone has known you.

Sometimes it’s measured by how deeply someone is willing to know you.

7. Success begins long before anyone else can see it.

Success begins in your heart and in your head.

Your thoughts are constantly shaping your identity, and your identity shapes how you move through the world.

I spent years believing success was something I could point to.

A business. A title. An accomplishment. Something I built.

At 53, I work every day to allow God to be the only idol in my life.

I still love building. I still dream BIG.

I just don’t want what I build to become what I worship.

8. Money comes and goes. Don’t let your aliveness go with it.

Money has taught me that somehow, it arrives.

Sometimes at the last minute. Sometimes from places I couldn’t have predicted. Sometimes more than enough.

I’ve worried about money. I’ve made money. I’ve needed money.

But I refuse to postpone a vibrant life until a number in an account gives me permission to live it.

I believe in abundance.

But my vitality cannot depend on my bank balance.

9. Stop calling everything that hurt you a failure.

I can look backward now at moments I once labeled failure, rejection and even betrayal and see them differently.

They were preparing me.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt.

They did.

But pain and purpose can exist in the same story.

Some of the moments I begged God to remove were cultivating something I would need later.

I just couldn’t see it yet.

10. Little Gi, don’t let the hurt define you.

If I could sit across from eight-year-old me today, I would take her little hands in mine and tell her:

You’re going to get hurt.

Don’t be afraid of that.

When life creates friction, lean in and love yourself harder.

All of you.

When something hurts, feel it. Don’t bury it. Don’t turn it into shame. Don’t spend the next forty years building walls so you’ll never have to feel it again.

Feel the pain.

Surrender it to God.

And then say thank you.

Because another layer of your superpower is being built.

You are going to discover that the things you once thought were weights can become your wings.

So don’t spend your life afraid that someone might hurt you again.

Say:

BRING IT ON! I’m building my superpower!

Because little Gi, here’s what I know about you now that you don’t know yet:

You are kind.

You are honest.

You care deeply.

You are going to love people with your whole heart.

And one day, God is going to use your life, including the messy parts, to help other people feel alive and whole.

So keep dreaming.

Take the scenic route.

Hold hands and mean it.

Love all of yourself.

And when you don’t know what happens next, surrender it all to God.

He will provide. He will protect. And He will show you what is yours.

Blurb

She Forgot She Was Free is an invitation to remember the woman you were before fear, expectations, achievement, disappointment, and survival convinced you to forget.

In this deeply personal and transformational book, two-time best-selling author and founder of The BECOME Method™, Giselle Mascarenhas, shares the lessons, questions, and revelations that led her back to her truest self. Rather than offering quick fixes or another self-help checklist, she invites readers into a journey of honest reflection, identity, healing, and intentional growth. Through compelling stories and practical insights, readers are challenged to release limiting beliefs, reconnect with their authentic voice, and rediscover the freedom that has been within them all along.

Rooted in the principles of The BECOME Method™, She Forgot She Was Free equips readers with a powerful way to move beyond simply surviving and begin living with clarity, courage, and purpose. Whether you’re navigating a season of transition, rebuilding after loss, or simply sensing there is more waiting for you, this book will remind you that the life you long for doesn’t begin by becoming someone new, it begins by remembering who you have always been.

Because the person you are searching for has never been lost.

She has simply been waiting for you to remember her.

Excerpt

“Beat It”

If you grew up in the 80s, you understand what Michael Jackson meant.

Not as a celebrity. Not as a pop star. As a feeling.

My bedroom walls were covered in him. Floor to ceiling. Every page I could tear from every magazine that had his face on it, I put it up. I would climb on my dresser drawers and stand on chairs just to reach higher, just to fit one more. My brother John knew this. And because brothers are built to find the exact thing that will undo you, ripping one of those pictures was his most effective weapon. That was the deal, unspoken but understood, touch my Michael Jackson pictures and I stop raiding your Little Debbies and cereal. We had a whole economy built around it.

But Michael Jackson wasn’t just decoration on my walls.

He was proof that you could be fully, completely, unapologetically yourself, and the whole world would not just accept it, they would lose their minds over it.

Third grade. The school talent show.

I signed up to dance to Beat It. I borrowed a dress. Black tights that were slightly too small. I was not nervous. Not even a little. I was a great dancer and I loved Michael Jackson and the combination of those two facts felt like more than enough reason to get on a stage in front of the entire school.

When the music started, I stopped thinking.

I just danced.

I hit every move. I got lost in it, the way you only get lost in something when you are doing exactly what you were made to do. No performance. No awareness of being watched. Just a little girl and the music and the complete and total freedom of a body that knew what it was doing.

When it was over, the cafeteria stood up.

The whole cafeteria.

Elementary kids on their feet, cheering, for me, for little Gi who had just danced her whole heart out in slightly-too-small tights without a single moment of self-consciousness.

I remember that feeling. I want you to feel it with me for just a second before I tell you what happened next.

That feeling, of being fully yourself, fully alive, and being met with that kind of love, that is vitality. That is exactly what this book is about. Not the applause. The aliveness that came before it.

I signed up again the following year.

I was going to dance again. At this point I was certain, certain, that I was either going to be a ballroom dancer or a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. It was not even a question in my mind. It was just a matter of which one.

Then I got called to the principal’s office.

Mrs. Champion sat across from me and told me that before I could perform in the talent show, I would need to audition privately for her. Because last year, she said, and I still remember her tone more clearly than her words, my dance moves had been vulgar. And I would not be allowed to perform if I did anything like that again.

I was in third grade.

I did not fully understand the word she used. But I understood her face. I understood the disgust in it. The way she looked at me like my aliveness, my joy, my freedom, the very thing that had made every child in that cafeteria rise to their feet, was something to be ashamed of. Something that needed to be contained. Auditioned. Approved before it was allowed to exist.

I went back to my homeroom teacher and told her I had decided not to perform.

She asked why.

“I just don’t want to anymore,” I said.

And I sat down.

I did not have the language for what had just happened to me. I did not know that a grown woman had just looked at a little girl on fire and made her feel like her flame was a problem. I did not know that the thing I did most naturally, the thing that made people come alive, had just been handed back to me with a note that said too much.

What I knew was the feeling in my body.

The same body that had been lost in the music, free and uncalculating, was now sending a different signal.

A warning.

A familiar click.

When the light shines too bright on you, move it.

Point it somewhere else before someone decides your brightness is the problem. Before they call it vulgar. Before your heart gets shattered by someone else’s discomfort with your aliveness.

I had already learned the light switch.

Mrs. Champion just gave me the first real reason to use it.

– Excerpted from She Forgot She Was Free by Giselle Mascarenhas, Mija Media House, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author

Giselle Mascarenhas-Villarreal is a transformational curator, author, and empowerment architect passionate about helping women reconnect with their authentic selves. Born and raised on the South Texas border, she has spent more than two decades empowering individuals to break through limiting beliefs, discover their purpose, and create lives of greater meaning and impact.

As the author of She Forgot She Was Free, Giselle guides women through a journey of self-discovery, healing, and personal transformation. Her work encourages women to release expectations, embrace their worth, and step boldly into the freedom and purpose they were created for.

Through coaching, speaking, retreats, and leadership in global women’s development communities, Giselle continues to inspire women to live with courage, clarity, and intention. Her mission is to help women remember who they are, reclaim their voice, and become the fullest expression of themselves.

Kindness

Posted on October 14, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

In a recent post on the Writer Unboxed blog, author Kathleen McCleary offered suggestions on how to weave kindness into our stories. Here’s an excerpt from that post:

Betrayal, greed, vanity, pride, impulsivity—all the human flaws that drive plots and create good stories are exactly that, flaws. I read a dozen books on my recent vacation, but two that stood out were Ann Patchett’s new novel Whistler and a brilliant work of non-fiction, The Gales of November, by John U. Bacon (and believe me, if someone had told me I’d be gripped by a book about the Great Lakes shipping industry and the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, I’d have said, “Clearly you don’t know me very well”). I also saw The Odyssey, the movie that’s everywhere right now, and it captured me, too. I’ve thought quite a bit about why these works resonated and what I could take away from that for my own writing. And what gripped me were not the mistakes and shortcomings that fueled these stories, but a different theme: Kindness.

It may be that I am especially starved for reading about kindness these days, because no matter what “side” you’re on, we live in ugly, divisive times. And yet, how exciting is it to read about nice people who treat each other nicely and get along just fine? It’s not exactly the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night, desperate to turn one more page. But making sure there’s a streak of kindness in your fiction is exactly the kind of emotional truth that readers respond to, and that helps us as writers plumb what truly matters. Consider:

Kindness as a plot twist. Honestly, when Ann Patchett’s book opened with the main character running into her former stepfather and there were hints of a trauma in her past that involved him, I thought all the worst, most-depressing things you can think about what the book was going to be. And it totally contradicted all of them. It’s not a spoiler to say the stepfather is a lovely, warm human who did all he could to protect and nurture his stepdaughter. It confounded my expectations but also stereotypical plot tropes. It made me delight even more in the relationship between the two. Think about how you could make kindness run counter to what readers might expect.

Kindness as the foundation. One of the overwhelming themes of The Odyssey is kindness to strangers, to treat every guest as an honored friend. This isn’t just a nice thing to do; it’s the foundation for a moral universe, to treat others as you would like to be treated. And to defy or deny this fundamental tenet is to set in motion forces that can lead to destruction and despair. Odysseus plays upon the Trojans’ faith in this in gifting the Trojan horse; it leads to the fall of Troy and to Odysseus’ own fall as he violates a moral code he believes in. His long journey back home, and the pain and loss he endures, are all part of the price he pays. Whatever moral universe you create in your fiction, develop what happens when your character knowingly defies its most important value.

Kindness in unexpected characters. If you think of the men who work on Great Lakes freighters and the captains who oversee them, “tenderness” and “kindness” aren’t exactly the first words that come to mind. But John U. Bacon brings to life all 29 of the men lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and it’s the notes of kindness that make the characters memorable. Oiler Blaine Wilhelm kept every penny he won in card games or every coin he got in change when buying a beer in port and put the coins in a coffee can he would bring home to divide among his seven kids at the end of every season. The captain, Ernest McSorley, a smart and fair and experienced sailor, agreed to take one last run on Lake Superior late in the season to earn extra money to help pay for cancer treatments for his sick wife. These are real life stories about real men, and it’s these small details that stick, in real life as in fiction.

Kindness as resistance. Sometimes, kindness is a form of rebellion or even revolution in a world where evil seems to have triumphed. Eumaeus the shepherd in The Odyssey welcomes a stranger (the disguised Odysseus) into his home, even after he’s been beaten and taunted by the men (the suitors) who are also strangers in Ithaca, and whom he also treated with kindness and respect.

My mother used to always quote Henry James, who once said, “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” (I did double-check the veracity of this quote). It’s not a bad mantra to live by. And, when used judiciously, it’s not a bad mantra to write by, either.

Where does kindness fit into your writing? Are you conscious of making sure there is a thread of kindness somewhere?

Source: Writer Unboxed

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on October 12, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

Nudged Out of the Nest

Posted on October 7, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

Here’s a thought-provoking reflection from international speaker and bestselling author Joyce Meyer:

Baby eagles spend the first three months of their lives in the comfortable nest their parents have prepared. But eaglets get a big surprise when they are about twelve weeks old. Their mother suddenly begins throwing all their toys out of the nest.

Next, she pulls out all the comfortable material in the nest—the feathers and the animal fur—and leaves the babies sitting on thorns and sticks. This is what the Bible means when it mentions that the mother eagle “stirs up her nest.” The reason she stirs the nest is that she wants her babies to get out and fly.

Before long, the mother eagle nudges them out of the nest. The little eaglets, who have no idea how to fly, fall through the sky, probably very frightened. Soon, though, they hear a “whooooooosh” as the mother eagle swoops up under them to catch them. At that point, the mother eagle takes the babies right back up to the nest and then nudges them out again. She keep repeating the process, over and over again, until they finally understand that they have no choice but to fly.

The mother eagle does this because she loves them and wants them to have the best lives they can possibly have. Most eaglets won’t get out of the nest without this push. Similarly, most of us will also choose comfort over challenge unless we have no choice at all.

Do you feel God is working in your life the same way the mother eagle does with her young? Has he been pulling some of the padding out of your nest so you find yourself sitting on prickly branches? Is he saying to you, “Come on, it’s time to fly”? If so, remember the mother eagle’s intentions and know that you can trust God’s good intentions for you.

Source: Trusting God Day by Day by Joyce Meyer

Embrace Every Moment

Posted on September 30, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

A long-time fan of bestselling authors and coaches Marc and Angel Chernoff, I look forward to reading their emails and blog posts. Here’s an excerpt from a recent post:

As we all look forward to the next step in our lives, I know many of us are yearning for a simpler and more selective range of life experiences — the happy days, the normal times, the settings and experiences that make us feel more comfortable. And yet, the full range of our reality often brings something very different. The days ahead will inevitably offer an extensive array of experiences that evoke feelings ranging from sadness and struggle to growth and pride, and more.

So we have a choice starting today. We can revolt against reality — the reality of having to deal with discomfort, cope with uncertainty, and sometimes feel upset. Or we can embrace every experience life gives us, including all our highs and lows — all the blissful moments, frustrating ones, and everything in between. Life is not just happy and comfortable 24/7. It’s well-rounded, and it’s ever-changing.

Embracing the full range of life’s experiences means embracing every moment with our full presence, being open and vulnerable to reality, being gentle with ourselves when moments are tougher than we expected, and practicing sincere gratitude whenever possible…

It means accepting life as it is and accepting ourselves as we are.

It means not expecting the best to happen at every step, but instead accepting what happens at each step and making the best of it.

And it won’t always be easy, of course, but it’s worth remembering and practicing daily so we are prepared when a day comes that’s much harder than we expected.

Note: I highly recommend subscribing to Marc & Angel’s website.

Welcoming Autumn

Posted on September 23, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

Known as the UK’s best-selling living poet, Donna Ashworth first rose to prominence during the 2020 lockdown, when her poem “History Will Remember When the World Stopped” went viral and helped raise funds for the NHS. In the years since, her work has continued to resonate, offering reflections on resilience, connection, and hope.

Here’s one of my favorites…perfect for the season:

International Day of Peace

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

Established in 1981 by a unanimous United Nations resolution, International Peace Day (Peace Day) provides a globally shared date for humanity to rise above all differences and contribute to a building a culture of peace.

I’m sharing one of my favorite poems from Maya Angelou:

How to Quit Complaining

Posted on September 16, 2026 by Joanne Guidoccio

In a recent newsletter, Happiness Professor and New York Times bestselling author Arthur Brooks shared the following advice:

Complaining is the act of expressing your dissatisfaction or annoyance. According to psychological theory, it is a fairly complex process that follows at least five steps, starting with a focus on your own desires. Next, you detect a discrepancy between what you want and what you are experiencing. This leads to negative feelings. Then, you judge the utility of complaining. If it seems worthwhile to you, you let rip; if it doesn’t, you keep the complaint to yourself.

The problem with all of this kvetching is that while it can feel therapeutic, it typically isn’t. Although complaining might offer temporary relief, it’s bad for your happiness in the long run. For example, in one 2009 study, Polish researchers measured people’s mood before and after they complained, and found that the complainers’ mood significantly deteriorated. Other scholars have shown that people who share negative emotions on social media—a very prevalent type of complaining today—experience lower levels of well-being.

Much more likely is that it will be in your interest, if you have a complaining habit, to break it. The people you care about will be happier too. Here are four research-based ways to quit complaining.

Judge less, observe more. Complaining is a fundamentally egotistical act—subjecting something about the world to your judgment. Tomorrow, try to reframe what were today’s minor irritations as simple events. For example, instead of grumbling about someone who cuts you off in traffic, simply observe that the person is obviously in a hurry.

Consider the underlying problem. If you have a habit of complaining, you could find it worthwhile to dig into why you’re so often going over your dissatisfaction threshold. For my own part, I’ve noticed that when something big is disturbing me, I also get impatient about all the little things I don’t like. Perhaps if you deal with what is really bothering you, you’ll find that the weather and politics aren’t really worth complaining about.

Avoid the grumblers. One reason you complain a lot might be that you keep negative company, online or in person. Curate your personal life to the extent that you can, and turn off the complaint machines in your media. Remember, your misery is their fuel.

Be a Stoic. The Stoics, such as Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, managed their feelings about life’s trials through reason. So when you are about to complain, subject your complaint to the Stoic test: Can you do something about the situation? If not, then complaining won’t help. If you can, then get on with life.