EP 13 | Leigh Lincoln "Finding My Voice": A Journey Through Writing, Advocacy, and Purpose Discovery

Have you ever wondered how your life would transform if you found your true voice and purpose? Join us in an intriguing conversation with Leigh Lincoln, a poverty and homelessness advocate turned author, who did just that. After years of being on autopilot as a single mother and volunteer, Leigh had an awakening moment which led her onto an inspiring journey of change and self-discovery. Through writing, she found her purpose, stepping out of society's expectations and onto a path of intentional living, where she embraced her worth and the power of her voice.

As we journey through Leigh's transformation, we explore how she overcame her fears of failure, embraced the unknown and chose a path less travelled. She has woven her experiences of advocating for the homeless into her novels, using her words to inspire and evoke change. Through our chat, you'll learn how she used writing as a tool for self-discovery, and how you, too, can break free from societal norms and expectations to find your passion. Leigh's story is a testament to the power of finding one's voice and using it to make a difference. So, get ready to be encouraged and inspired to step into your power, live with intention, and be brave in pursuing your passions.

Leigh's Website : https://leighlincolnauthor.com/ 
Connect with Lee : https://www.facebook.com/leighlincolnauthor1

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:09

Welcome to the Pivot Point stories of courage, resilience and reinvention. I'm your host, jessica McGahn, coach, producer and creative, whose mission is to normalize the human experience, ignite the soul and move you from feeling limited to limitless. Connect us and my hope is that within this series, you will find at least one story that resonates with you on a deeply personal level, one that speaks to your soul or your current situation, that will motivate you to keep moving forward, inspire you to make bold, brave choices in your own life and help you feel less alone in the process. In today's episode, I speak with author Lee Lincoln about the pivotal moment where she realized she had been living life on autopilot, losing touch with her voice and identity, and how writing helped her align with her purpose, find her voice and step into her power. Lee has spent the better part of the last 30 years involved in homeless and poverty advocacy in one way or another. Her novel Road Home was born out of this work. She wanted to make people think about their lives and how they live, but, most importantly, about how they treat others and how they want to be treated. Her other novels Road to Freedom, finding the Real Road and the Road West look at how our lives don't always follow the path we choose, but yet somehow we must pick up the broken pieces and move on. How we grow and where our strength comes from is what's most important.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Lee has been interviewed on several podcast and radio shows. She loves to inspire others to find their voice, explore the world and never be left out of the conversation. Lee loves to travel, paint and hike. You never know where she'll end up next, for she's on her journey of discovery. Please join me in welcoming Lee to the podcast. Let's dive in. Hello, lee, welcome to the Pivot Point podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I'm so glad to be here. This just is going to be so exciting. I love all the books lined up at the back. Is that in the order in which you wrote them as well? Road Home to Road West is the newest one yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Fantastic. Well, I'm so excited to dive into your story. Maybe you could start us off with who you were and what life was like for you before this pivotal moment.

Speaker 1: 2:46

For a lot of years 30 is something to be exact I was a single mother, just kind of struggling to get by. I did a ton of volunteer work, and by a ton I do mean that literally. I volunteered at homeless shelters, soup kitchens, committees for first time home buyers. I worked with people who were trying to get better jobs. I worked on neighborhood committees you name it. I was probably doing it.

Speaker 2: 3:21

Sounds like you're giving a lot of your time and energy to helping other people.

Speaker 1: 3:25

I was out there doing all kinds of things and I was again a single mother who household. So I think that my whole life was brought to run others and serving others and doing all of these things and it was kind of crazy and very time consuming but I just didn't care because this was just my whole world and it was just me and we were all good. I wasn't really overly concerned about things.

Speaker 2: 3:57

But it sounds like you were happy.

Speaker 1: 3:59

I'm happy, maybe, relative to her, I was probably too snowed under to realize?

Speaker 2: 4:05

Do I realize how much you were giving away?

Speaker 1: 4:08

I was busy, let's put it that way. I just kept myself busy and I was just doing what society expected of me as a good mom, as a good human. I just was doing what you were supposed to do.

Speaker 2: 4:25

Yeah, I hear that a lot in my conversations that I have of just this sense of living on autopilot, just kind of blowing through life, but without putting conscious thought or intention necessarily, and we can get stuck in that. So what happened? What was this aha moment that snapped you out of autopilot?

Speaker 1: 4:49

Well, I went to this committee meeting well, community meeting one night and it was a topic that was particularly interesting to me. I've been this meeting various times over the years, but this one particular night this topic was really interesting and I had something I wanted to share. So ever the leader at this meeting never picked me when I raised my hand. He picked other people who hadn't been part of this committee for as long as I had. He picked political leaders, he picked business people, he picked people with clout, but not me. So at the end of the meeting I went up to him and tried to get my opinion heard and instead of listening to me, he gave me a bunch of excuses. He said I was just a mom, I was just a woman, I was just a volunteer, I was just a blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 5:51

Right, it would have taken him a wealth of time to hear what I had to say then for his excuse, and I went home that night and I was just so frustrated and I was just like you know what's going on. This is the only one who does this to me. It's not the only one who just ignores me and just puts me in this little tiny box, and it hit me I was forgettable, I was unimportant, I was weak, I was powerless, I was invisible, I was a nobody, and I shouldn't have been. I've been doing this work for 30-something years.

Speaker 2: 6:32

And also all the things that you were identifying yourself as in that moment. A mom alone. I believe mom must have superpowers. If something goes wrong in my life, I'm looking for a mom because I just know that they have all the answers. So to just be diminished at all and not respected or heard in that moment? I can imagine the disrespect you felt in that moment.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Yeah, because, yeah, you know what moms have to do in a day Wear the chauffeurs, wear the cooks. I was almost school-y. So I was the teacher, I was everything. I was a single parent, I was literally everything to my child and for him to just treat me that way, I was just like hello, yeah, I was so dumb at that moment, I don't know why it never hit me until that moment, but it did and I was just like I'm done, I'm not going to let this man put me in this box. And again, it hit me at that moment. He was the only one who had been doing it. I think I even at that moment realized I've been doing it to myself.

Speaker 2: 7:51

It feels like it was a really like awakening moment, like a veil was lifted from your eyes. From that. Do you remember what that feeling was that you experienced? Like? I'm hearing a lot of like shock and like aha, but do you remember? Was there any? Well, what would you say the emotion was? If you could label it, it?

Speaker 1: 8:13

was all over the map. I was angry, I was confused, I was frustrated, I was sad, I was hurt. I was all over the map because I was just like you know. This is just wrong on so many levels. For him to treat anyone like this is just so disrespectful and just not something that should ever have been done.

Speaker 2: 8:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:41

I agree. I have just as much of an opinion and a right to have my opinion heard as someone who is a politician or a business leader.

Speaker 2: 8:53

But also, how much energy does that really take to just listen to someone? Like you said, it would have been easier for him to just listen to you and for allow you to feel heard. You just wanted to feel heard.

Speaker 1: 9:04

even just that would have sufficed, I'm sure, in that moment, and that was too much to ask If he had let me have my two cents heard, I would have been happy, I would have walked away. We never, would have gone any further, it was okay, but he didn't. I'm really glad he didn't. Actually, I think this man forever?

Speaker 2: 9:26

Yeah, because this set you off onto your first pivotal moment. So what did you feel called to do in that moment?

Speaker 1: 9:34

So I went home that night and I grabbed out an output because of course I was homeschooling mom, we had notebooks everywhere, right. And I just put pen to paper and I'm still screening at that guy, which I probably shouldn't, but I was too polite because of course I'm a mom, right. So I took pen to paper and I just started journaling. And I just journaled night after night after night and just filled pages after page after page, and I don't know how many notebooks that use. We're all good, nevermind. And I realized after several months when I looked at it that somewhere along the way it flipped from being about my frustrations and my angst and I'm a crazy middle-aged woman with an extra grind to writing from the perspective of a homeless woman and I accidentally written a novel, like literally I did this. I don't know how, I don't know when, I don't know why.

Speaker 2: 10:36

So did you start journaling from like your own perspective, processing your own thoughts and feelings, and then it slowly progressed into creative writing. Yes, fascinating. How long of a period of time was that. From like start to oh, my God, I have a book. Or even like start to oh, I'm a character now.

Speaker 1: 10:58

It was about three and a half months yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:01

Three and a half. That is a short amount of time. Yes, you really were writing. I was about to say it, yeah, clearly, and it was all handwritten.

Speaker 1: 11:12

It was all handwritten. Yes, I just was pouring my feelings out night after night and what I was all handwritten and a total hot mess. I'm just saying.

Speaker 2: 11:23

Yeah, and so I'm assuming that there is a correlation from how the perspective of this homeless person and to what you were experiencing in that moment. You are not a homeless woman yourself, but you could relate to how invisible that the homeless community feels.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Yes, and because of all the work I've done with homeless people, and women in particular, I heard so many of them say I'm invisible, no one cares about me, and so, as I was journaling, I could totally see how this happened.

Speaker 1: 12:06

After the fact, of course, that I internalized all of what they were saying over those years, that I worked with them and I understood completely what they were saying. In that moment that I saw reflected back in my own life, and this is how I ended up flipping the script and writing from the perspective of a homeless woman, because I truly understood what they were saying to me all of those years about how, in their relationships, they didn't feel valued, they didn't feel wanted, and I literally have a line in the book where she's talking about getting thrown away, and she's talking about an object that you can tell in the book. She's actually mentioning herself, and so I just had internalized all of these things I'd heard over the years and then I was reflecting it back on myself, and this is what makes this novel so powerful and why, when so many people read it, they think I'm the one who's been homeless for so many years.

Speaker 2: 13:18

You wrote so much, and from a deeply painful personal place. How healing was this Like by the time you had finished that first book? Did you feel the weight of those motions any longer, or did you still have some processing left to do?

Speaker 1: 13:34

I still had quite a bit of processing to do because even once I cleaned the book up with the help of a writing group locally and with an editor, I still didn't believe that anyone would read the book. So there was still quite a bit of me still feeling like you know, okay, sure, I did this thing and I turned it into a novel, but will anyone read it? I think, ignored for so long, will this really do anything? Will anyone really actually want to read this? So there was still. It still was. Part of the journey was actually putting it out into the universe and saying wait a minute.

Speaker 2: 14:22

You put yourself on the line. That's a vulnerable act. So many people stop themselves at a point like that because of this fear of failure. Oh what if I put it out there and nobody reads it? Or who am I to be putting out a book online and selling it for money, like all these stories we have about ourselves? But it didn't stop you. It didn't stop you. You put it out there.

Speaker 1: 14:46

I put it out there and you know my goal was pretty simple because, again, I had this mindset well, nobody's gonna read it, you know, I'll sell a few copies, raise a couple of bucks for charity, I'll be good. I'll shut it down in a few months because, you know it'll be good, I'll have my name on a book and I can throw it on my bookshelf. It'll be a laughing matter in 10 years, right? You know this joke. Book on my wall, right? But that isn't what happened?

Speaker 2: 15:19

Yeah, tell me what happened.

Speaker 1: 15:21

I threw it out in the universe and pretty much overnight, I go from being born to being an expert and all of a sudden, people are wanting me to speak on homelessness and poverty and all these other things.

Speaker 2: 15:33

So okay, suddenly everyone wants to hear your voice.

Speaker 1: 15:39

Yeah, and it kind of threw me because I was like hello, Five months ago I couldn't even speak at a local meeting and now I'm being asked to go to seminars and speak in front of like a big group of people, right, I don't understand.

Speaker 2: 16:05

That must have had challenged your identity, like who you needed to step into and believe and see yourself as in order to take, say yes to those opportunities.

Speaker 1: 16:17

Yeah, and I had to totally shift my mindset because I had to see myself as someone who could take that tiny little box and slowly expand it and then just eventually just kick the box out completely and just say what box there is no box. What rules there are no rules. I can't do this anymore. I am not a, just a. I have to say what am I now? Because clearly there is much more to me than what everyone always said I was, and that was a really hard mental adjustment. And of course, this all came right about the time my son was getting ready to leave the house because of what age he was, and so I'm hitting the emptiness syndrome anyways. And then I've got this whole other big life adjustment because of what I did with this first book Wrote Home and I'm like what in the world? And everybody's thinking, oh, which is the midlife crisis? And I'm like, oh, no, no, this is way beyond that.

Speaker 2: 17:35

Your life was completely transforming, like completely just it sounds like it did a total 180 on you. The stay at home mom was now transforming to an expert who was gonna go speak on stages whose son was off at school. Like that's huge.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Yeah, and I not only changed my life just a little bit. I moved all the way across the country, I decided to travel. I mean, like all these big things, I didn't just do a few little changes, I did all these big, huge changes and just created this whole new life. And people who knew me back then were just like looking at me, like what are you doing? And I'm just like I don't wanna be a little me anymore, I wanna be big me, I wanna be giant me and I wanna take this platform that I've now been given and do something with it. And everybody's like what?

Speaker 2: 18:46

Wow, that is so powerful. It sounds like you're, like I can even in your voice and how you speak, like I can feel the vibration of you, just like exploding at this period of time in your life, like you found your path and you ran with it. What tools really helped you navigate this time of transformation? Because change is hard for a lot of people. It's an area I work with a lot of my clients with, so what really worked for you?

Speaker 1: 19:19

Well, I'm not sure if this really counts as a tool, but I just really dove into traveling and just reading a lot and just expanding who I was and figuring out who I was now. And part of the traveling was for research for the next books and part of it was to sell books and, of course, to speak and stuff. And I just read a ton about anything I could get my hands on to learn more about the craft of writing, because I'm like, ok, if I'm now an author, I have to learn about this. And then I discovered really quickly that I don't even fit into the box of an author.

Speaker 2: 20:15

How many more?

Speaker 1: 20:18

So, number one I broke the rules about being an author. So my first book is a drama and it's kind of dark and really dramatic, heavy, heavy drama. Well, my second book well, I don't really know what I'm doing which is all good, we're all good, never mind, it's a love story and yet I throw them all in the same series, which you're not supposed to do. That If you're writing a series, they're all supposed to be the same genre. Who?

Speaker 2: 20:50

cares who cares. I love you. You're doing great.

Speaker 1: 20:55

The book sell. I just don't care at this point and I have so many people. When I put out the second one, they're like OK, you need to change the author name, you need to have a separate newsletter, you need to do all these blah, blah, blah things and I'm like, wait, what Confuse people if I put one book out and then I never write another one.

Speaker 2: 21:17

No, no no yeah, why would you have to change your name?

Speaker 1: 21:21

Because it's a different set of readers, is what I got kept getting told. I'm like, oh, forget that. That is just too confusing. I won't even remember who I am tomorrow. Ha ha ha, I'm too old. I am too old to have more than one name. We're all good, never mind. And that makes sense to me fitting them together, because the first book is about a homeless woman who shares her story and figures out her problem and solves it.

Speaker 2: 21:48

The second, one is about a man who's dying of cancer.

Speaker 1: 21:50

He shares his story, he figures out his problem and he tries to solve it before he dies. I thought they fit together. Ok, nobody else gets it, but I get it.

Speaker 2: 21:59

But I think there's also probably another or possibly another layer to this. Like you did this from a place of finding your voice and finding your own identity, and then to just take your name off of this thing that you birthed out of that very purpose, I'm sure would feel wrong.

Speaker 1: 22:19

Almost it would think so too, but I had a lot of experts tell me this is the best way to go and I'm like, nope, you're wrong. You are so wrong.

Speaker 2: 22:29

And they're probably talking from a place of finance or reach, like do you want to be the next JK Rowling? And you chose with the value of I want to be seen and heard and known for this, and that was more important to you than what the experts valued.

Speaker 1: 22:49

Yes, because this is one thing I want people to understand. It's that everyone has a passion, has a voice, and they need to find it and they need to use it. I read yes, minus homelessness, minus helping women find their voice. I have two now. I used to only have one, now I have two. We're good, I found it, we're awesome.

Speaker 2: 23:13

I love that, that you just identified that you have two voices now you went from no voice to two. Like I love that perspective. Sorry, I interrupted you. I just had to point that out.

Speaker 1: 23:27

So my big thing is you're not going to slow me down, you're not going to tell me that just because I don't fit a rule, that I'm doing something wrong, I'm done with what y'all saying this. So yeah, we're all good.

Speaker 2: 23:41

So what have you really learned from this whole experience? Or, for the listeners, what do you really hope they take away from hearing your story today?

Speaker 1: 23:54

Well, again, I really want people to understand that, yes, society has a bunch of rules and some of them are really good. You need to obey traffic laws. Yes, I'm not saying don't stop and stop saying, but some of those rules you really have to follow them. When someone tells you you're just a whatever, or you say you're just a mom because, trust me, I've heard women say this Do you have to listen to that? Or do you say, no, I am a, and say it loud and proud and use your voice, use your passion to change the world.

Speaker 1: 24:38

I love that this is what we need to be doing. There are so many problems in the world right now A million and no one is fixing them, at large part because we are trying to divide each other rather than build something wonderful. So we just need to go, change the world.

Speaker 2: 24:59

I love that message. I really like that you touch on identity. I think a lot of people who struggle at least I see this in my clients they struggle to identify who they are. My curiosity is always like well, who knows you better than yourself? If anyone is going to label you, it should be you. What makes a writer? If I were to just write for myself at home, never publish a thing, can I still call myself a writer?

Speaker 1: 25:31

I think so it doesn't matter if it's published or not. I agree. You know how many junk things I've got lying around that I've written and I'm never going to publish because they didn't go anywhere.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Yeah, you get to label these things for yourself and hold those identities to yourself. Don't let anybody else tell you who you are or what you can or cannot do. I am all about that message and, lee, your story and how you show up in this world is just so inspirational and amazing, and I've really enjoyed this conversation with you. If the listeners want to learn more about your books and you as a writer, or connect with you in any way, what is the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 1: 26:18

All the information about me is on my website, which is lealinkanauthorcom, and there's links to my newsletter, to Facebook, instagram, youtube, everything. It's all on the website.

Speaker 2: 26:38

It's super easy, amazing, and I'll have those linked down below in the descriptions as well, so you can just click that button and get connected with Lee right away. Thank you so much for taking your time out to speak with me today and being vulnerable and sharing your story. I'm sure it's going to help a lot of people. Thank you again, lee.

Speaker 1: 26:57

You're welcome. I'm so honored that you have me as a guest.

Speaker 2: 27:06

If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider liking, subscribing and letting us know your thoughts in the comments below. It truly means the world to me to hear from you. New episodes will be available every Saturday, both on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts, and if you would like to learn more about my work as a coach today's guest or have a story that you would like to share on the pivot point, check out the episode description for more information. Now time for the legal stuff. This podcast is presented to you solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I may be a professionally certified coach myself, but hosting a podcast is not coaching. This podcast should not be used in substitution of working with a licensed therapist, doctor, coach or other qualified professionals. Copy that Amazing. See you on the next episode. Nothing but love, yes.