FAQ: "What Does Undaunted Even Mean, Anyway?"

I've been some version of different since the moment I was born. Deformed. Marked by the lipoma at the base of my spine, dangerously interwoven with misplaced nerve endings. A year later I was marked again, this time by scar tissue, as neurosurgeons worked to disentangle my tiny nerves, carefully shaving that growing lipoma down. And with the accidental resilience of a child, I healed. With endurance I didn't yet have words for, I walked when I shouldn't have been able to.

By five, I was altered in new ways, because everything in my life had changed. Loss and violence became regular parts of my identity, and healing got harder because trauma doesn't hide the way scar tissue does. You can't just cover it with a longer t-shirt. By six, I had escaped an early death...and paid the price in a partial amputation.

Later, I was the weird kid who loved books almost more than anything. The kid who liked rap music in a country music family. The one who learned to crochet in middle school, back when it was a granny hobby and not a pop culture trend. The chunky kid with skinny friends. Perseverance wasn't a cute meditation, it was a way of life—not because I had any special courage or discipline, but because the human instinct to survive offered no alternative. I woke up, I survived the day, I went to bed, I did it again.

Growth wasn't something I looked for, but it came little by little. Height: minimal. Boobs: decent. Curves: bodacious. But faith? Nonexistent. Consistency? We don't know her.

No one held my hand and said, "Okay look. Here's how to keep going when you feel discouraged." There was no gentle mentor full of wise guidance on living with purpose. And I learned the value of growth that no one applauds the hard way, by showing up when no one noticed...because I could drift into and out of rooms and lives as unseen and unacknowledged as a ghost, but choosing not to show up was never an option.

It wasn't until later that I learned to recognize the beauty of the marks my life had left behind. Strengthened resilience through consistency I built on my own. Personal accountability and growth I embraced, in a desperate effort to give my daughters more than I'd been given. Writing as healing practice. Faith that altered how I saw the world and my place in it.

And it was later still when a string of unremarkable moments solidified everything I knew about myself—who I was, who I had been, who I hoped to become—under one word. One definition. One unchanging theme that suddenly seemed to make all the little pieces of my fragmented being fall into place. Undaunted.

I opened her email the same way I always did—with the kind of joy that sits quietly in your chest when a good thing is on the way. She and I had connected through blogging, become fast friends over similar struggle, and bonded over a passion for writing average things in extraordinary ways. We'd never met in person, but we exchanged emails almost daily, sharing who we were, who we wanted to be. We talked about things we feared, what we hoped for, the lives we dreamed of.

She taught me about healing through daily habits like journaling, and trusted me with writings she was too cautious to share with the world. We coached each other through finding discipline without motivation, holding onto quiet strength in difficult seasons, and she taught me so much about trusting God in small steps when big ones felt impossible.

I never realized I was teaching her too, until the day I got that email. The one where she said, "I admire you so much because you are who you are despite what you've been through. I know you still love Disney movies and cheesy romance, but I need you to know that you don't need a hero. You've become your own."

And I sobbed because it felt good to be seen. To be allowed to put a name to the things I'd experienced without someone else shying away, to be able to share freely and never feel like I needed to sugarcoat things or search for silver lining.

Those words stayed with me long after children and life and the changing world around us made that friendship fade slowly into the past. And years later, a popular book series brought it all bubbling back to the forefront as effectively as a lightning strike. I read the Divergent series, and fell madly in love with Tris Prior's courage.

It's a futuristic dystopian series about a world where people are divided into factions based mainly on personality traits—and it is dangerous to be multi-faceted. Those without clear definition are classified as Divergent. And Divergents are generally annihilated. Tris is Divergent, but she games the test system, gives everything she has to hiding what she is, and chooses a faction: the Dauntless. But her differences create waves, draw notice, and eventually put everyone she loves in danger.

The Dauntless are the law enforcement of the community. The risk-takers, the brave ones. The adventurers. Where other factions focus on brilliance, integrity, peace, or power, the Dauntless are the survivors. Like me.

I'm a nerd, so after I read the books, I couldn't shake the depth of relation to the story, and one day I dug deeper into what it means to be dauntless in today's society. The definition is simple: showing fearlessness and determination. The problem for me was less simple though, because I am not fearless. And while I am determined, I am easily shaken. Complex PTSD is no joke.

Undaunted may sound mostly the same, but the differences made it ring like a bell in my mind. I am not fearless, because I have seen some of the worst things the world has to offer...and I know that monsters are real. But for those same reasons, I am not easily intimidated. I may be terrified, but I will not show it. I will move toward what's necessary, because I must. And while I may be accompanied by—or bombarded with—difficulty, danger, and disappointment along the way, I will always dust myself off, wipe the grime of battle from my face, and keep moving. Undaunted.

The show, as they say, must go on.

These days, this is the core of everything I do. Sharing my life so publicly isn't always easy or comfortable, but I hope in sharing, I can offer strength and encouragement to other people who are still struggling. And my novels are full of hard stories that explore the deepest parts of human suffering because I want to stand my characters right there in the dark, close beside the ache of someone who's hurting—and let the characters promise my readers that they're not alone.

I aim to write stories filled with women who didn't need heroes, women who learned to become heroes on their own...even if they do often find love along the way. Because after everything else, that's what faith and perseverance are made of.

*****

Sometimes people ask what the point is—especially when it doesn't look like my writing is likely to explode into riches and fame. They ask what connects the words I share here, the stories I tell in my novels, and the Christian life I live so openly in the space between. They ask why I use a Phoenix in my graphics, how my faith fits with my non-Christian stories, and sometimes even what the actual end-goal is. Most often though, they ask, "What does undaunted mean?"

And the answer is...I haven't figured out the secret to life and I'm not special or particularly unique, but I've learned how to keep going when everything feels pointless. Even when no one sees the effort. Even when it makes other people uncomfortable. Even in the quiet moments where something magical happens and there's a gaping emptiness where applause should be.

Undaunted living isn’t fearless living. It’s just choosing to move forward anyway. It’s presence over paralysis, consistency over collapse, and faith over the temptation to disappear when life feels too hard to show up for. It’s realizing that courage doesn’t always have to be loud, and accepting that courage won't always lead to victory. Sometimes it's just the desperate slog of a tired soul taking each step by faith, trusting that obedience matters even when the outcome seems uncertain.

For me, staying undaunted lives best in the ordinary moments, in the small disciplines and daily habits that carry me when motivation fails. Undaunted is the fence-line around the boundaries that protect what matters most. And it's the foundation every word I write is built on, strengthened by the faith that is both my refuge and the source of my calling. It is the tangible representation of how faith and endurance shaped the woman I am.

Nothing I write or share will offer perfect answers, and anyone who knows me in person can clearly see how unpolished I am. But the facets carved by the life that sculpted me are why I share so openly. Not to offer perfectly polished inspiration, but to stand with those still searching for a foothold in the dark. To remind anyone who will listen that strength can still coexist with tenderness. And to show the transformational power of survival when we allow it to give us purpose.

You don’t have to be fearless to live bravely, and the scars you bear do not undermine your strength—as long as you choose to keep moving, keep trying, keep showing up, and always...

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