Knowing I KANN

Hello, my name is Paula Rogers and this is my KANN story.

I was introduced to Keisha through my husband as she was once his coworker. Our friendship blossomed and getting to know Keisha as a person and having her in my corner has been very rewarding and uplifting.

She made me believe that I KANN accomplish more things than JUST being a stay at home mom. I put that lightly because that is a job in itself, but yet I just felt….incomplete.

One day I get a text “Will you run in Miss Wyoming with me?”

I immediately jumped on board “of course I’ll do it with you!”.

I wanted to run, until I saw there was a section where we’d be judged on bathing suit attire. Which immediately put a lump in my throat knowing I just simply wasn’t ready for anyone to see me with my postpartum body.

I respond back to Keisha “I’m sorry I’m just not comfortable with my body right now.”

She was understanding but most of all encouraging to take a risk, if I don’t do it this year…try next year!

Her encouragement and just overall compliment of thinking so highly of me to be able to compete with some amazing women well it made me think:

“You know what, I am destined for great things and I KANN accomplish ANYTHING I set my mind to!”

So that’s what I did.

It may not have been competing in Miss Wyoming but it set me up for greatness.

My mother and I started a business that took off like a rocket within the community. I started involving myself in more things and coming out of my shell a bit more.

I wasn’t “just a stay at home mom.”

I am also a business owner, a supporter of small businesses, a genuine friend, your favorite raver, a loving wife and someone my daughter can look up to.

No matter the obstacle, I’d think about how Keisha thought so highly of me. How she instilled the vision of “I KANN” in my head.

If it wasn’t for that push, I don’t believe I’d have the confidence I do now of KNOWING I KANN do anything I put forth the effort and energy into!

You Are Allowed to Reroute Your Life

A few years ago, I never would have imagined that one of the hardest seasons of my life would completely reroute the life I was building.

I was a bedside ER nurse in the middle of the pandemic, and at the same time, I was struggling significantly with my own mental health. I was dealing with depression and anxiety, and there were times when it became so dark that I experienced suicidal ideation. I was still going to work, taking care of patients, showing up for the people around me and functioning well enough that you probably wouldn’t have known how much I was struggling internally. Looking back, I think that was part of the problem. I had become very good at functioning while I was hurting.

As a nurse, I was used to advocating for other people. I could recognize when a patient needed something, speak up when something wasn’t right and make sure other people were taken care of. I just wasn’t very good at doing those things for myself.

During that season, I found coaching. At first, I didn’t know that it would become anything more than something that helped me get through a difficult time. But coaching gave me a completely different perspective on my life. It helped me put words to things I had struggled to understand about myself and made me start questioning how much of my life was actually built around what I wanted versus what I thought I was supposed to want.

I started realizing how much I had been living according to expectations. I wanted to be successful, make other people happy, keep the peace and make choices that looked like the “right” choices from the outside. I hadn’t really stopped to ask myself what kind of life actually felt right to me.

That realization eventually led me to become a coach myself. I built a coaching business while continuing to work in healthcare, and eventually I made the decision to leave bedside nursing. That was a huge decision for me because nursing had been such a significant part of my identity. It was a stable career that I had worked hard for, and leaving it meant stepping away from something I knew for something I was still building.

But I knew I couldn’t keep living a life simply because it was the life I had already created.

As I continued doing my own work, it started affecting my personal relationships, too. I had to learn how to set boundaries, particularly in difficult family and in-law relationships. I had to learn that advocating for myself didn’t mean I was selfish, difficult or trying to hurt someone else. Sometimes it simply meant acknowledging that something wasn’t healthy for me and deciding what I was willing to participate in.

That has been one of the biggest lessons of my life. I used to think that if someone was upset with me, I must have done something wrong. I felt responsible for keeping everyone comfortable, even when doing that came at my own expense. Learning that I can love people and still have boundaries with them changed the way I approach relationships entirely.

More than anything, I learned how to advocate for myself. I learned to listen to my own instincts, take my own needs seriously and stop automatically looking outside of myself for permission to make decisions about my own life.

My life today isn’t exactly what I imagined it would be years ago, and honestly, I’m grateful for that. I don’t think there is one right path that everyone is supposed to follow. What is right for one person may be completely wrong for another, and I think we lose a lot of ourselves when we spend too much time trying to fit our lives into someone else’s definition of success.

For me, rerouting my life meant leaving a career I had spent years building, becoming a coach, starting a business, learning how to set boundaries and learning how to advocate for myself. It also meant doing the much harder internal work of figuring out who I actually am underneath the expectations, the people-pleasing and the version of me I thought everyone else needed me to be.

I’m still doing that work. I don’t have everything figured out, and mental health isn’t something I believe you simply move past forever. There are still hard seasons and moments when I have to recognize that I need support and take care of myself differently. But I am not the same person I was when I was sitting in that ER trying to hold everything together while struggling so much internally.

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that you are allowed to reroute your life. You are allowed to decide that the path you started on isn’t the path you want to stay on. You are allowed to disappoint people, change your mind, set boundaries and make choices that don’t make sense to everyone else.

For so long, I thought living a good life meant meeting the standards that had been handed to me. Now, I care much more about whether my life is actually aligned with me.

And that has made all the difference.

Kelsy Manger Frederick

Maybe I KANN Too

I’ve learned that building something of your own sounds a lot prettier from the outside than it feels while you’re actually doing it.

I’ve been a photographer for years now, and there have been so many moments where I’ve questioned whether I should keep going. When you pour your heart into your work and someone doesn’t see the value in it. When you compare yourself to other photographers and wonder why you’re not where they are. When bookings are slow, bills still need paid, or you’re exhausted from trying to balance your business with being a mom and everything else life throws at you.

There have been times when one difficult situation after another made me think, Maybe this just isn’t meant for me. Maybe I should quit.

But then I remember why I started.

Photography began as something I loved long before it became a business. I’ve been taking pictures since I was a kid, and somehow that little girl with a camera turned into a woman who built something of her own.

It hasn’t been perfect. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve had hard seasons. I’ve doubted myself more times than I can count. But every time I’ve wanted to give up, I’ve somehow found a reason to keep going.

And I think that’s what “KANN” means to me.

It doesn’t mean things are easy. It doesn’t mean you never fail or never question yourself.

Sometimes it simply means you wake up, take a deep breath, and try again.

I’m still building. I’m still learning. I’m still figuring it all out.

But I’m still here.

And maybe that’s the story someone else needs to hear.

Because if you’re in the middle of something that feels too hard, too uncertain, or too far out of reach, I hope you remember:

You don’t have to know exactly how you’re going to get there. You just have to believe you KANN. ♥️