The Story Wasn’t Over. It Was Waiting for Its Season.
I have been quiet on this blog for a while.
Not because I ran out of stories, but because life was asking me to listen, learn, and live a little more before speaking again.
When I Did Not Miss the Boat was published in 2020, it felt like a long exhale. I had carried my family’s refugee story for more than forty years. Finally, it was no longer living only inside me.
But I knew I had left readers with a cliffhanger.
Book 1 told how my family survived the journey to freedom. It did not tell how I learned to live beyond survival, or how faith, family, loss, reinvention, and finding my voice continued to shape me.
As the world reopened after COVID, new opportunities emerged in speaking and authorship. I was busy learning, growing, and imagining where the journey might lead.
Then my husband experienced a major health crisis, and nearly every plan I had was placed on hold.
I wasn’t ready to write about what came next. I was still living it.
A Wake-Up Call I Didn’t Plan
In 2024, I entered the financial services profession. It was not a career change I had planned. It grew from a wake-up call about the financial blind spots my own family had experienced.
After years as a chemist, entrepreneur, speaker, and community builder, I suddenly became a beginner again.
There is something humbling about being confident in one room and feeling completely lost in another. I had to learn new systems, regulations, strategies, and an entirely different language.
Some days, I could see my progress. Other days, it looked like pages of notes, more questions, and the willingness to admit, “I don’t understand this yet.”
I continued because the work had become deeply personal.
Financial preparation no longer looked like numbers on a page. It looked like time, choices, dignity, and breathing room when a family is already carrying enough.
I wanted to sharpen my skills before speaking too loudly. I wanted anything I eventually shared with you to be thoughtful, accurate, useful, and grounded in genuine care.
Slowly, things began moving in the right direction.
And while I was learning this new profession, my unfinished story kept quietly tapping me on the shoulder.
The Right Season
I returned to the manuscript more than once, but the words were not ready.
Or perhaps I was not ready.
Some stories must be lived before they can be understood. Some experiences need time to soften from pain into perspective. And some chapters cannot be written until we recognize what they were teaching us.
Everything unfolds in God’s time.
The years between my two memoirs were not an empty space. They became the bridge between the young woman who survived the journey and the woman who learned to build a life from it.
This year, the words finally came.
From Boat to Ship continues where my first memoir left the journey, not by retelling the boat story, but by sharing what happened after survival.
Now feels like the right season to reconnect with you, too.
If you are learning something new, rebuilding after a disruption, caring for someone you love, or returning to a dream you once placed aside, please don’t mistake a slow season for a wasted one.
Instead of asking, “Why am I not farther along?” perhaps ask:
What might this season be preparing me to understand?
And I would love to hear from you:
What part of your life—or what story within you—may be waiting for its right season?
I want this space to feel more like a table than a stage, a place where we can talk honestly about faith, preparation, reinvention, family, self-worth, and life’s unexpected turns.
For the rest of this year, I will also be celebrating the journey of my two memoirs. Please watch for announcements about virtual conversations and in-person book signings. I have more to share, and I hope you will come along.
You can discover both books here: https://bit.ly/4iapbyg
The story wasn’t over.
It was simply waiting for its season.
—Lea
What have you been quietly learning, preparing, or building during this season of your life?
