When you decided and you thought about, hey, I'm about to write this book up of my own experiences,
my ministry journey, tell me about your vision for the book.
Wow. Well, my vision for the book is to help people rebuild their lives after a soul crushing,
life altering, disappointment or transition. What I experienced when I was going through mine is
after I finished grieving my losses, what worked for me before didn't work. And I thought to myself,
there are other people who have reached a level of success in their lives, who are now finding
themselves struggling. I didn't think that that was a new thing and would need to find new tools,
new strategies. But at the same time, you know, we're sold a bill of goods, at least in the
United States, where, you know, you go to school, you get your degree, you get married, you buy a
home, you have the career, and they don't tell you you're going to have to go to school again.
They don't tell you, you might have to get married. And I shouldn't say have to, but you might
experience more than one marriage for many reasons. I was divorced and I'm a widow now.
Right. And so you go through things multiple times, but not expecting it. You kind of go,
I'm, you know, I got married and you're thinking it'll be for life, meaning your life, not the life
of your partner. And you go check, check, check. And then here you are having reached these levels
of success, right? Because you check these boxes off, now finding yourself with a whole bunch of
empty boxes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sitting here like, oh, you're preaching to me because
at the end of the day, it's crazy because you go through life and then you do, like you stated,
you have these certain tools, but it's very interesting. It made me think of a toolbox.
You start off with something super small, right? Because it's cute. It does the basic. It has your
screwdriver, your flat head. And then you get a bigger project, which is something in life that
just takes this turn. And now you need a drill and you need this and you need that. So that's where
my head went. It's like, okay, sometimes this little box isn't going to deal with something so big.
And then you might have to hire someone, which is, you know what, let me find a book. Let me find a
book that I can read when I'm alone and I need to try to work on this myself. And so in my mind,
that's what I imagine your book to be. So what are some of the tools that you have in the book
that can help others? Well, it's amazing what you're saying, because I actually have something that
I call God's creative toolbox. I have God's framework that's a part of God's creative process,
things that God used. And so people who are familiar with the Genesis one creation story
know that God created by speaking. He spoke things into being, but he spoke different things
each day into being. And when you, you know, you, so you'll start with a vision that you'll start
talking about, right? But you will talk about it differently than you talked about your last vision,
right? You won't talk about it the same way. And so I, I 100% agree with what you're saying. I also
believe that the systems and the structures that you had for maybe your last vision or even your
last book, right? Might not necessarily be the processes and the structures that you'll use for
this one. And one of the things I found really shocking that was different was my support system.
Right? Before my mother was a great support to me and she's still with me, thank goodness,
but my mother's 97 years old. And prior to my, my husband passing, I started noticing that our
relationship was changing, that I was becoming a support to her more than she was a support to me.
And that was fine, but I needed support, right? And if my mother wasn't going to support me,
who was going to be my support in this new season? And so I say to people that this, this,
the tools that you had before, meaning the people that supported you before might not necessarily
support you in the same way. It's not necessarily that they're gone. Yeah. My mother, I feel like
is still my greatest cheerleader, right? But she's not the one I go to with all of my problems
anymore because I don't want to stress her out with all of the stuff that I'm dealing with.
Yes. And then, so as far as that goes, and you're right, you know, I'd be at that age,
I remember knowing or hearing the fact that of course, when you born, you're a baby, but also
when the end is coming, you go back to childlike ways. And so I guess we wouldn't depend on our
children to care for us. And that has to reverse, which brings so much more or so many more challenges
in you that says, okay, that support system is gone. Like you stated, now what? So when, when that
occurred and then it took a shift, who was your support system then? At first it was my husband,
but one of those unexpected trying losses that I went through was the unexpected death of my husband
when he had a heart attack one afternoon while jogging. Wow. My sincere condolences. I can't
imagine. And I know that life just, man, it blows up sometimes. And there's, yeah, yeah, I don't know
what toolbox could actually fix that, but God, you know, and I think that at that point, that's
probably the only security, the blanket, the Kleenex, the everything is all him because no
worldly person could have ever fixed your mind to say, Hey, this is, this is for a reason. And as you,
when that did occur and now you have a book, where did you find your strength at?
Well, it was in the word of God, you know, being a minister and someone who, like I said, I knew for
a long time that I would be sharing the word. I call myself a Bible teacher more often than I call
myself a speaker was that I went to the word first for myself. I'll just be honest about that. I
wasn't really thinking about how was I going to help anybody else. I needed help Dawn today.
And sometimes that's where you are, right? It's just, it's just about me, not because I'm not
thinking about other people, but we do really have to take care of ourselves first in order to be
a blessing to anyone else. And at that point in time in my life, I wasn't in a position to help
other people, but I found in scripture that it wasn't just for me, which is not unusual, right?
That after I got my healing and got found that process, I saw a universal applicative application
for what I saw in the scripture. Yeah. And, and I'm sure that that, that was the biggest step and
thing that you could do in order to rebuilding. And, and I mean, rebuilding is, is long-term that,
I mean, I'm sitting here and at the smile in my head is because I believe and I'm a strong believer
in God, but the tingles in my body says that that rebuilding is not easy. And I'm sitting here
thinking as a realtor, which I'm a full-time realtor, we got to start with the foundation,
which is God, but building a house and a home is not that easy. So as you continue to do this and
you continue to promote your book and still be in ministry, what next? Wow. You know, before I go
onto what next, I really want to pick up on what you were just saying about the foundation too,
because one of the things I found was that your foundation changes as someone who's in real estate,
you wouldn't build the same foundation for every single house. And so that took me to a different
stage of my life. And I realized that along the way, and this is not at first, right. I thought I
was going to connect with God the way I used to, right. I used to read the Bible for, you know,
chapters of the Bible a day. I used to pray for sometimes hours journal, most write multiple
pages, but at this stage of my life, you know, I might've only written the date in my journal,
right. If I got there reading the Bible, meaning actually looking at words with my eyes,
I listened to the Bible, right. Because I couldn't focus enough to, you know, read the Bible. And so
I just want people to know that even your relationship with God, even the foundation,
right. Might be different in this new season. It's not that you're not going to have a
foundation. Like you said, you have to have a firm foundation, but it may look and feel different
in the next stage of your life than it did in the previous stage of your life. But to answer your
question about what's next is I'm actually working on some new products, right. I'm working on a
meditation starter kit around exactly what I was just saying, because when I came out of my healing
and grieving process, I was having trouble focusing on scripture. And so I said, you know,
people need resources that aren't just reading resources, right. And so let me provide some
meditation where, you know, today I might only be able to think about God. I might not be able to
read or write, right. Or even talk about God. I might just need to just think about it for a
minute, right. And help people in their thought process, because our minds can be a really
ugly and negative place after loss. And so to help them focus in more positive and correct ways
about God, along with that meditation starter kit, I'm also creating a prayer routine starter kit
that is kind of like a step two to the meditation starter kit. That is awesome. So is it, will it be
like a video or is it all going to be audible? It's going to be both video and audio. Yep. And so
for those people who like video, right, will have that option. But for people who only, you know,
if you're in your car driving and can't really watch, you can listen and it will provide,
the meditations will be simply meditations, but the prayer routine starter kit is going to have
devotions. It's going to have journal prompts. It'll have some video teachings that will start
out that are like a minute, maybe two minutes long, and then gradually get a little bit longer
to help people grow and move through the process. Yes. And it's funny because when I started
meditating, I always thought it was like a, you can't think about anything else and you're
supposed to be in your zen. And I'm like, I'm not in my zen. I got a headache. I really don't want
to do this, but I'm going to try to focus. So I really love the fact that you said it'll start
with some basics and then grow because thereafter there becomes this system that it begins to work
for you and not to mention the meditate on the word and having that with you when needed, you know?
So I love that for you. So when can we expect that? I'm hoping to have it out this summer.
Of course. Yeah, I'm teaching a class at my church this spring, right? And I'm going to
share it with them first so that we can perfect it. And cause I want it to be really good when I
share it with everybody, but I'm really hoping that at the conclusion of the class, I'll be able
to share it with people this summer. Well, I'm super stoked about it. I love the fact that I get
to hear it. And now the audience gets to hear it. Please share with them where they could find any
of your information at, and if you have any social media handles as well. Yes, I'm at dawn man,
Sanders.com that's dawn D A W N man, M A N N Sanders S A N D E R S.com. And it's the same on all of my
social media handles. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, threads, and LinkedIn. Nice. Well, I thank you so
much. I'm super excited about your book. Also, where can you get it at? Oh, you can get it
wherever books are sold. It's at Amazon, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Target, and some, you know,
lots of other outlets as well. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into
Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll
invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a vision for yourself.