I met Karen at a writing conference in Franklin, TN. I determined that her story has lessons that others can be inspired by. I knew she dealt with resolving conflicts in personal and corporate environments and I wanted to know more. Here are excerpts from her story:

“My involvement in the corporate world came from a desire to change from a chaotic environment growing up.

“A lot of people look at change as a negative thing, and I think, in hind sight it was a very positive thing to me. OK, this model of our family unit did not work. So, change is good.

” We came from a functionally dysfunctional family. My dad—heart as big as the sky—but he had a little bit of a problem playing the field. He was married and divorced six times. So lots of different families going on there. Never really there as a dad, but always there as a person.

“So when I learned to love him for who he was—it made me a better person.

“It had to be something to let go of. The attachment of him being a certain way, and allowing him to be himself allowed me to grow.

“So you can look at it both ways, right?

“I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I just knew that I wanted to change.

“Change means, I didn’t buy into the whole poverty lifestyle. I didn’t buy into the fact that all those rich people are bad. So I wanted to figure it out. So I tried something to figure it out.

“Sometimes we had a lot of money because my dad was working. Other times he spent it all—so we didn’t have any money.

“Then once my parents divorced, my mom was raising four kids by herself.

“So it was really just a matter of, geez, everybody else is doing it, how can I get this done?”

Karen Love
KarenAboutYa.com