Courage to Become | Hayley Hengst
“A few months after THAT, my husband, for whom my puppy love had somehow managed to remain strong for ever since I was 15 years old, sat me down on our back patio, with a bottle of wine, rain pouring down in buckets around us, and informed me that the feeling wasn’t mutual #hegone
And the gene that contributed to my mom’s cancer? Yeah, I was a carrier as well.
That was a hell of a year.
Turns out this stage of life IS hard...in ways I had been quite naïve to when I penciled the article.”
A quick note about The Courage to Become Series and today’s, featured woman.
Hi! Catia here. I am delighted to bring you Season 4 of The Courage to Become! I ask women I admire to share a behind the scenes view of their becoming. We often see the result but aren’t privy to the through, to the transformation. And the through is where all the magic happens. The story you are about to read will buoy you with hope. Being a woman is not easy, but damn, if it can be magical. There are inspirational women everywhere, and Hayley is one of them.
Enjoy Hayley’s story of becoming. Hayley is a writer, a great one. She has a gift and I am honored that she shared it with us. Hayley and I wrote together at Austin Moms Blog and I always admired how adept she was at sharing her point of view so beautifully with the world. She’s really something else and I know you will adore her. Please welcome, Hayley!
Hayley Hengst from On a Lighter Note
“This Stage of Life? It’s Hard”.
That was the title of a blog post I wrote about five years ago now, that went viral. Then it went viral again. Then again. It was shared over 200,000 times, reached people in at least 10 different countries, got translated into other languages, and for at least two years after writing it, I continued to receive messages and emails from people all over the world telling me how much the article impacted them....how deeply the words resonated....how relieved they were to know they weren’t the only one who felt the same range of emotions the article described.
Kids. Marriage. Sick kids. Troubled marriage. Parenting decisions. Infertility. Miscarriage. The working mom versus stay-at-home mom debate. In the stage of life where you have young kids at home, the struggle is real, and can encompass any number of difficulties.
When I wrote that article, I felt like my “stage of life” was difficult, sure, but not in a tragic way. Just in a mundane “my kid has an ear infection as I write this, my house is a mess, I can’t figure out a good sleep schedule for my newborn, and I’m completely conflicted if I want to send my kindergartner to public versus private school” kind of way.
Happily married with three kids under 6, I was a bit taken off guard by some of the emails that came flooding in as a result of that article....readers regaling me with tales of why THEIR stage of life was hard....and it was indeed difficult stuff. Children with cancer. Husbands who had left them. Financial devastation. I felt sympathetic for these people, while at the same time (if I’m being honest) relieved that my woes were more of the “normal life problem” variety.
Fast forward two years. Fast forward just TWO years, and my mom was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer.
A few months after THAT, my husband, for whom my puppy love had somehow managed to remain strong for ever since I was 15 years old, sat me down on our back patio, with a bottle of wine, rain pouring down in buckets around us, and informed me that the feeling wasn’t mutual #hegone
And the gene that contributed to my mom’s cancer? Yeah, I was a carrier as well.
That was a hell of a year.
Turns out this stage of life IS hard...in ways I had been quite naïve to when I penciled the article.
I’ll save you all the gory details of what the three years sandwiched between THEN and NOW consisted of, but here’s what I WILL say:
When Catia reached out to me and asked me to be a part of her Courage to Become Series, I was incredibly honored. I had read some of the articles other people had written for this series, but not all of them. So I went back and read more. And thought, “um. Why did she ask me to participate in this? I’m not sure I belong in this group. What exactly HAVE I had the courage to become?”.
I thought about it or a while. What I ultimately realized, was this:
After a long hard road, years of which were spent living in the shadow of someone else...years more spent trying to rebuild what “someone else” tore apart....I simply (recently) (finally) have the Courage to just....Become.
“Become”, as in “an active, ongoing, process”. Not necessarily as in “an end-point".
Sound like a cop-out answer?
It’s not.
You see, I’d spent my entire life (well, my entire life since age 15, anyway), just “becoming” what I thought someone else (my husband) wanted me to be. That’s dumb anyway, but in my case, it didn’t even freaking pan out well.
How in the WORLD had I forgotten to ask myself questions like:
What do YOU want?
Who are YOU, separate from HIM?
What’s important to YOU?
What do you want YOUR life to be about?
I don’t know how I’d forgotten to ask those questions, but I had, and it was time to start asking them.
Had my life not fallen apart, maybe I never would have asked. I’m not sure you can become who you are meant to be UNTIL you ask.
So I'm asking them now, and if I’m being honest, the answers are still a little grey. You don’t go 36 years of life NOT thinking through those things, and then all of the sudden have clear answers to them. “Grey” is a transitionary color though, right? It’s in-between black and white. Moving from white, into black, I suppose. As I’ve begun to ask the questions and sort through the answers, here are a few things I do know:
• I want to write. Writing is what I love. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what other people tell me I’m good at. It’s what makes me feel most like me. Why had I not been doing that?
....and so I’ve started writing again. I’ve started a new blog. It’s called The Lighter Note Show. It’s taking off well. I’ve started submitting writings for other websites...and they’re getting accepted. I’ve been paid for a few. I’ve decided I’m going to write a book.
I want to co-host a podcast with one of my best friends. The overwhelming response I received to the Stage of Life blog post all those years ago made me realize that maybe more than anything else, people appreciate “relatable”. They appreciate feeling like they aren’t the only ones who feel the way they do sometimes. That other people have the same struggles and woes and awkwardness and weird thoughts. They also need an excuse to laugh sometimes. I wanted to create a podcast that provided that outlet for people. So why hadn’t I, yet?
…..and so I did. I’m not sure where it will go or what it will lead to, but I’m DOING it at least, and working on the podcast is one of my favorite parts of life right now
I want to challenge myself. I want to set goals that are hard, make a plan to achieve them, and then achieve them. I don’t want to ever become stagnant and “blah” and aimless again. When and why had I become that in the first place?
….. and so I trained for a 15 mile “heavy half” marathon this year. Ran it. And climbed a mountain, too. The highest peak in Colorado, thank you.
Possibly most importantly, I want to love my little boys well. I want them to feel loved, cherished, secure, and happy.
…..and so there is a lot of apologizing in our house. As in, “me to them”. It’s hard to be the patient, kind, gentle and loving mom you want to be when you are emotionally stretched thin, but there’s a lot to be said for apologizing. Being honest with them. Admitting mistakes. Being vocal and expressive in my love for them. Being honest about what’s hard and crappy, but also highlighting all that is good and wonderful and positive.
Some of you impressive and awe-inspiring women in this series have had the Courage to Become some pretty amazing things. You’ve become doctors. Lawyers. Life coaches. Wildly successful photographers. I’m still convinced you guys are all in a different league than me.
I feel certain though there are others of you out there who, like me, lost yourselves along the way somehow. As a result, you may not feel like you’ve “become” anything at all. While I’m certain that isn’t entirely true...you’ve become SOMETHING...you’ve become a wife, or a mother, or a beloved friend....it COULD be true that you haven’t become what you were MEANT to become. Yet. Maybe you haven’t asked yourself the important questions. Maybe you’ve spent too much time trying to become what someone ELSE wanted you to become. Maybe the fact that it’s actually POSSIBLE to become something that makes you feel proud of yourself and fulfilled has eluded you.
I’d encourage you to ask yourself the important questions:
• What do I want out of life?
• Who am I, at my core?
• What makes me feel most alive?
• What is my purpose?
• What am I good at....something I know I’m good at...others tell me I’m good at...I enjoy it....but I’m holding back?
• What am I waiting for?
It takes courage to even ask yourself the questions to begin with. It’s worth it, though.
I’d love to write the book. Have the successful podcast. Climb another mountain. Be able to pat myself on the back daily for a Parenting Job Well Done. If I do all of those things, maybe I will have “become”.
For right now though, there is a lot of beauty in the “becoming”. The process. I don’t want to speed through that.
So cheers to us...the works in progress. May we simply have the courage to BECOME...period.
About Hayley:
Hello From the Other Side
The "single gal" side, that is. The "after the dust has settled a bit" side. The "am I experiencing PTSD from the drama and trauma of the last two years?" side. Kidding, kidding. No PTSD here.
Probably anyone reading this already knows me, and could do without an "About Me". I used to write all the time, and back then, I wrote everything "about me" anyone could ever care to know, and then some, I'm sure. I wrote for Austin Moms Blog. I wrote for my own blog, Mother Freaking. I wrote for Her View From Home. I pretty much was an open book. A lot has changed in my life since then, though (a lot has stayed the same, too).
What's changed?
-I'm not married anymore. This is a negative development on almost all fronts, but I suppose the "positive" aspect of it is that my writings will no longer be chalk full of corny references to my high school sweetheart relationship, that no one wants to hear about. I mean, I thought it was cute. But I guess not. Another positive could be that maybe you'll get to hear some tales of WHAT in the actual WORLD a 38-year old who has never been single, does in the dating world? (If you have any tips or suggestions, please...by all means).
-I don't live with a man anymore. This means there is a lot of pink in my house. I've hated pink my whole life, and then suddenly it was like "If I WANTED to have pink stuff I could"...and so I did.
What's the Same?
- I'm still mama to Three Little Manimals (that's man+animal)
- They still crazy AF
- Writing is still my favorite thing in all of the world. No wait...reading. Writing is a very close second though.
- It's still a toss-up if my Happy Place is a bubble bath, sitting in front of a fire, or lying in the sun. Warmth...just give me warmth. Throw in some sort of a twinkle light situation while you're at it. Throw in a book and maybe some wine, too.
Other Things...
- I think the song "The Weight" by the The Band is the best song of all time, and no matter how many people argue this opinion (fact) with me, I'll never change my mind
- I can't shuffle cards for shit, and one actual GOAL of mine (this is pitiful) during quarantine was to "Perfect My Shuffle Game". I've got the shuffle. Still can't get the stupid bridge.
- I worked at a gym in high school. Some guys that worked there called me at the front desk, secretly, from a back office, pretending that their dad was at the gym working out, and a family emergency had occurred. They needed me to page him. His name was Mr. Jack Meoff. "Please, can you page him". I did. Multiple times. Thus revealing to the world what I already knew...I'm a bit low on common sense. It's fine. I've accepted it, and feel that likely, it means I'm a genius. Like some sort of mad scientist.
You can follow Hayley’s journey at
On a Lighter Note Facebook // On a Lighter Note
Hi friend!
Welcome to Bright Light.
I'm Catia, a woman, wife, mama, sister, friend, daughter -- you know -- I wear a million hats just like you.
Here at Bright Light, I help parents worldwide enjoy their lives and enjoy their kids.
Family life can be beautiful, but it's not easy. A day in a family can be filled with heartache, guilt, hugs, crying, laughing, and rushing from one place to another.
I help parents create the home life they've always wanted and an environment that feels good for everyone. I teach parents how to strengthen their marriages and relationships with their children.
I believe in the power of parents and families to support and encourage each family member and then take that energy and make the world a better place.
You have the strength to break behavioral patterns, heal intergenerational trauma, and nurture your family in the way you have always wanted to.
To each session, I bring my training as a Certified Conscious Coach, my graduate studies in Marriage and Family Therapy, and my decade-long career as an author and keynote speaker. My approach is multi-cultural, grounded in research and my own experience as the mama of two young girls.
If I could choose ten words that best describe me, I would say: honest, welcoming, giving, curious, loving, earnest, empathetic, spiritual, playful, and sassy. Let's add: adventurous. That's 11.
Nice to meet you!
Want to start feeling really good but not sure where to start? Jump on into our virtual classroom (complimentary of course!) and get a guide on how to walk with confidence and joy! You are divine. You are magic. I look forward to serving you!
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