Real Women. Real Stories. Real Inspiration.

From the moment I quit my job five years ago to freelance and have the flexibility to give this writing life a try, that’s been my focus – writing life. It started out as blog by that title, where I wrote lessons and musings from my own life. It morphed

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Winter isn’t coming – it’s here! And it brings reflection and a bunch of sweet bonuses!

Do you ever find that life’s lessons come in the oddest of moments and methods? Yesterday, after less than three hours of sleep (following a crazy intense last month of work), I was on a three hour journey that turned into over a six hour one. I thought, booking my trip

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A Love Worth Rooting For

a love worth rooting for behind our lives

A Love Worth Rooting For … I’ve always enjoyed a good love story. I read Pride and Prejudice when I was eleven or twelve and for the next decade it was my favourite book. When I watched The Notebook, Noah quickly became my ideal man … not just for the intensity of love

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When Life Imitates Art

charlene carr endometriosis awareness

Imagine living years of your life knowing something was horribly wrong inside of you, knowing your pain couldn’t be normal, but consistently being told that it was. Imagine large aspects of your life being defined by that pain—the confusion, isolation, and fear it would cause—yet being told it was all in your head or you just weren’t strong enough to deal with it.

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Navigating A World Full of Grays: Release of Beneath the Silence

Black and white, right and wrong, a world full of grays

When I was a child I saw the world in black and white. There were good people and bad people. Right choices and wrong choices. There wasn’t much room for the in between. Thinking like that felt safe, it made life an easier maze to navigate. But, of course, the

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Giveaway AND Liking the Unlikable Character

Liking the Unlikable Skinny Me

In consuming movies, television and novels, I’ve often found myself liking an unlikable character. They’re interesting, they’re intriguing, they’re insightful. There is something within them that just begs to be understood or that creates delight in being reviled, something that’s distasteful but curious. I was going to list some ‘unlikables’

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An Interview with the Author: Skinny Me

Skinny Me Charlene Carr

An Interview with the Author: I’ve had a number of readers ask me questions about Skinny Me and the A New Start series in general. So to answer those questions for others who may have similar ones … Q: How did you come up with the story of Skinny Me? A:

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Stories are powerful.

stories are powerful

Stories are powerful. This is a truth I’ve believed for years because I’ve experienced it. As a child, the books I read took me out of my own world, my own fears, my own pain, and allowed me to find myself in other worlds. Worlds that, despite their inherent dangers, were

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Let Go of the Past

charlene carr

It’s so easy to let the past cripple and define us. We hold onto experiences, beliefs, and heartache, thinking those things are still real, that they have control over us. But they don’t, unless we let them. Many readers of my novel, Skinny Me, focus on the main character’s weight loss journey

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A novel moment.

As I write this, I’ve just finished editing my first novel for self-publication. And when I say finished I mean really finished – after the months and months of writing, revising, rewriting, getting feedback from others, and editing, editing, editing – I’m done! Of course, there are always things I

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