I didn't set out to write a book, I merely wanted to not be ashamed of my story. Because I was told no one needed or wanted to hear it. Which felt wrong. Seriously wrong. The wrongest of wrongs. So I started sharing parts of my story on a public platform, and it just so turned out people needed and wanted to hear it. This book contains the stories of stumbling blocks in my life: severe Crohn's disease, miscarriage, divorce, a traumatic car wreck, brain damage, assault, and all the People-Pleasing, Perfectionistic, ways I used to try to navigate. It also contains the stories of my stepping stones: earning a doctorate, founding a company, writing books and speaking to sold-out audiences, becoming an unexpected foster mother overnight-all while hoping to transform the grit in my life into an illuminating pearl. My writing in this book is raw and open. It's unfiltered and unrefined. But real pearls have blemishes, pits, oblong shapes, variations in luster. Yet, indeed they are still a pearl. And it just so turns out, through all that grit, so am I.