She’s a mom who’s had a big corporate career, left to follow the dream of helping people with their fitness and wellness, and somehow ended up catching the eye of HGTV for an Airbnb she and her husband designed. Through it all, she’s held onto God as she’s navigated multiple careers and the road to sobriety.
Melinda Hardin joins Julie Lyles Carr on the AllMomDoes podcast for a conversation about how we navigate seasons of success and learning how to be satisfied with right where we are as we wrap up our latest series on seasons.
Interview Links:
Find Melinda Online | Instagram | Facebook
Melinda’s Book: Uneclipsed: About Shadows, Emerging, Finding the Light
Melinda’s Airbnb Properties:
All Mom Does: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr: Today on the All Mom Does Podcast, I’m Julie Lyles Carr, your host, and I feel like I’m bringing you a guest who can cover, I don’t know, it’s like having 10 guests in one in the best way. Not in a weird way. Not in a psycho thriller way. I’m just saying, this guest is like a cat who has lived nine lives, and so I knew that she would be someone phenomenal to talk to us about seasons in our lives. I want you to welcome my amazing friend, Melinda Harden. Well, thank you so much for being with me.
Melinda Hardin: Oh, it’s so good to be here, Julie. Thanks for having me.
Julie Lyles Carr: Now, I am always fascinated when you and I have an opportunity to sit down and chat. I just, every time we talk, I find out about yet a different season that you’ve had in your life, but just catch us up to right now in this season of your life, where you live in, who you’re in love with, who are the kids, all that.
Melinda Hardin: Okay. Well right now we have moved from our main street home that was an Airbnb and we bought a little ranch that we renovated, I guess about a year and a half ago. We recently sold it, but are renting our home back, still in our little, small town of Shelbyville, Kentucky. Loving that. Still in love with Ben, so that’s great news after all these years. Yeah. Kids are 12 and 14, so we’re, that’s a season, that’s a season in and of itself, but it’s, it’s really fun and its challenging and incongruent in all the layers that it is. But that’s, that’s who we are and where we are right now.
Julie Lyles Carr: You have had some fascinating stories in your life, and I wanna try to take ’em in sequence best I can, because listener, here’s what I want us to really think about today. I think that for a lot of us, we thought that adulthood, in a strange way, would be a place that we arrived to. We would set some things in motion and those things would remain fairly static, and that would be how we were gonna live. When I think about the way that we talk to our kids about going to college, so often we’re very much in the lane of, okay, you’re gonna go, you’re gonna get this degree, you’re gonna go into that field, and then you’re gonna do 30, 40 years in that field and you’re gonna be building up your 401k and your IRA and then we just kind of set that in motion and we sort of assume that will be the season forever and ever. Now statistically, I know that’s not true. When I was doing some research for my book, Raising an Original, one of the things that I came across was that we typically are going to fully change careers five to seven times in our lifetimes. And I don’t mean just sort of a different iteration of being this thing we’ve been, and then going into sort of a different iteration of that. I’m talking full scale. You know, I feel like, Mel, the person’s picture, who should have been next to that research could have been you. Because I’m telling you, when it, I can take a look at my career and I can say, Well, there are a lot of things that all blend together. My career as a mom led me to become this writer in terms of doing some parenting content, but all of that was predicated by being in radio and television and writing. No, no, you, you just went, I’m gonna do this thing and then I’m gonna just do a 180 and do this thing. So, let’s start out here.
Melinda Hardin: It’s true. It’s so true.
Julie Lyles Carr: So before the girls were born, you were a pharmaceutical rep. Is that what you originally studied to be? Is that the thing you aspired to be when you were a kid?
Melinda Hardin: No, not at all. I was an English major in college cuz I always loved to write and so I knew I wanted to write and that was it. But it’s not like you get out of school and then they’re like, oh, all you English majors, here’s a pool of very good jobs for you to ask for you to take on. So I went on an interview to be a pharmaceutical sales rep, thinking I had read somewhere that you interview seven times before you get the job. So I was zero nervous, just went in like, I’ll just give this a shot, this’ll be a really good experience. I think because I wasn’t nervous, I was poised and confident just thinking, we’ll see how this goes. And they offered me the job. And so I accidentally became a pharmaceutical sales rep, accidentally became a pharmaceutical rep. I mean, it was a really, it was so mismatched from my personality from the beginning. I mean, I, I’m outgoing and could talk to physicians and really loved like, the material that we were discussing, but I, it was nothing that I aspired to be, and I felt like I had the wrong shoes on the whole time I did that job.
Julie Lyles Carr: But how long were you in that position?
Melinda Hardin: Well, I did that for 13 years.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right.
Melinda Hardin: So, you know, it’s a really long time to walk around in the wrong shoes. But I, but it was, it afforded me the opportunity to then, while I was doing that, sort of pick-up certifications and education along the way, that would maybe forge a completely different path. And so that’s what I did.
Julie Lyles Carr: You know, Mel, I’ve gotta think that I’ve got a listener out there who’s going, oh man. You know, I started this particular gig after college, or maybe we, maybe we have a listener who’s a stay-at-home mom, who that’s what she really fought for. She really thought that’s what she wanted, and she’s very dedicated to her kids, but she’s starting to feel like, was this the right choice for me? 13 years. I mean, that’s a long time to be grappling with that sense of, do I fit here? What were some of the things that were positives that came out of it? Because you know, I feel like sometimes we underestimate how powerful it can be to be in a place that doesn’t exactly feel like home but has some really great learning curve for us. But then where do we need to be paying attention when it’s time to go? This really isn’t a fit and it’s time to let go. And how did, how did that play out in your life, where you began to pick up on symptoms in your own life of, wow, this is, nothing’s really wrong, but this isn’t really right. Right?
Melinda Hardin: Well, I loved the people that I worked with and I loved the woman that I worked for. I mean, I couldn’t have really crafted a better team or a better boss. And I took cues from her, like she was just incredible, and tenacious, and determined, and gritty. And I loved all of those things about her. So I took, found myself taking cues from her all the time. I just thought, wow, this is, I’m wielding this energy in a really, in a direction that I, I think it could be better served. I was tripped up all the time about hearing that I should be so grateful, it was a great job. And so when you’re conflicted inside about this great job that people would die to have, gosh. You then, you ha, you look around for all the nuggets. You look around for all the gold and make sure that you’re mining for all of it. It started to land in my body. I would get ready, like Sunday would come around and I would just, I mean, people a lot of times say, oh, I don’t wanna go to work tomorrow, but like, I would literally have a physical response and just feel like, gosh, I can’t believe I have to go out and do that again. And at the time I was still drinking and so I would open that bottle of wine a little bit earlier and earlier every Sunday just to kind of numb out that that’s where I was headed. But I learned great business acumen when I was there, and I learned what I could do. And in a situation, I thought, well, if I can be successful where I don’t fit, it just had me always looking over the fence of like, what if I took this same capacity and put it in a place where it, where it might fit?
Julie Lyles Carr: So what was the final straw for you? Because again, I think seasons where nothing’s terribly wrong, it just doesn’t feel right, I think those are really confusing seasons. Because you’ve always got a friend or a close family member or whatever who are going through a truly difficult season where you can see the things that are wrong and you feel a bit like a chump to even turn around and go, well, I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel like the right fit, you know. That could feel really, that could feel like you’re being really ungrateful. So, for you, what was the moment at which you went, okay, I see how I’m behaving, I see how I’m dealing by using alcohol to deal with this misfit situation. When was it that you finally called the game on this particular endeavor?
Melinda Hardin: Well, I in, in sales jobs, corporate sales jobs, they do that, they call ’em different things. Reorganizations, which basically means people are getting slayed, and then some people are moving on, and some people are, shouldn’t have to find a new job. Yeah, well, I lived through seven of those, and so I would find myself perched by the phone hoping that the one call I would get, the one call that said, you gotta go. And so after the seventh, one of those, it’s really almost embarrassing to say it like that. It took that many times when I had people like, sad that they had lost their job. And I was sad that I’d kept mine. But to your point, felt like, am I really complaining about this high paying job with a 401k and a pension and a car and all this? And I, I had just looked at Ben and I was like, I cannot, I literally physically can’t do. Anymore, and he was quite frankly, fatigued from hearing me say that over and over. So he was just like, then quit. I was like, what are we gonna do? I’m our insurance, I’m this. He had just started a business that was literally in its infancy and in true fashion of my husband, he was like, I mean, we’ll, we’ll figure it out like we always do. We will. We have the ability to figure it out. So I sat down with my boss, who I think saw it coming, and she and I both kind of wept cuz we just loved each other so much and cared about each other so much. But even she knew that I was in the wrong shoes. And so I think it was just the, the cumulative effect. And then that one last time where I could have gotten someone to open the door for me to leave and finally, I was like, I’m just gonna have to open this door cuz it’s not opening for me.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right, right. So, and that’s an interesting door that we don’t talk about. I love that you bring this up because so often we’re asking God to open doors for us, open what the next thing is, or I see this opportunity, God please open that door. But I don’t think we understand that there are also doors to leave, that we need to open. We’re always looking for the doors opening into the next thing, which, yes, when we leave a certain season, that also is an opening as well. But that’s a really interesting twist on that to be thinking about the doors that we need to open. To exit. What are some of the things that, in your own mind, obviously you had been support, you were seeing this physical response in your body. Did you have an idea of what you wanted your next season to look like? Or were you just clear that this season needed to wrap?
Melinda Hardin: I think both. I mean, I, when I was in pharma, oddly enough, I got my master’s in holistic wellness and I had started to teach, like Pilates, and I had begun like, sort of a side gig where I would come home from work and I would meet with families and I would meet them in their homes and we would just talk about what it might feel like to live the next best iteration of their wellness. And so I’d clean out their pantries and say, Hey, instead of this cereal, this might be a good next step. Instead of this dress income, they just kind of doing that at night and thought, What if I could make a career out of just teaching people how to feel better in their bodies by eating better foods and making behavioral modifications so they don’t have to get to the drugs that I’m selling, you know, during the day. And so I kind of hoped for that to launch. And I, I had a surprising takeoff into the wellness, into my wellness career at the end of my pharma career that I never could’ve imagined and never would’ve happened if I didn’t walk through the door. I had a, a client or a, a physician that I called on who had a patient, who ran a company, who wanted to design a wellness program. And so this physician that I worked with for a number of years said, Hey I know someone who actually has interest in doing that. And because I had worked with them in a professional setting for so many years, they could speak to my professional ability and so we, he arranged a meeting, and three weeks after I left pharma, I was developing a wellness program for this company. And so,
Julie Lyles Carr: I love that.
Melinda Hardin: It was, it was shocking. Yeah, actually. Yeah.
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah. You know, one thing that I think is interesting about seasons though is some of the demons we fight in one season can follow us through a door to the next season. Even when that next season can look so very different. So here you were with all of this great training, new opportunities, opening up and helping people become well, helping people become healthy in their own bodies, all of these things that are going on. But you yourself, were still fighting some behaviors that had been a coping mechanism while you were in this corporate career. And now here you are. I mean, I know your heart. I know with great veracity you were really helping people and doing some great things, but you had something, you had some things you were having to start working out. When did it begin to dawn on you that this strategy of using alcohol to help you cope with having the wrong shoes on for a while was now following you into a season where the fit felt so much better, but the coping mechanism for stress was something that was completely antithetical to what you were trying to help people do? When did that moment come?
Melinda Hardin: It, I think there was like, the realization when I left, because I was still, I think I crossed the line of coping to dependence probably during my pharma time. But I didn’t, I wouldn’t let myself look in that mirror. So I just kept I, I landed in this wellness career and then a year later we opened a restaurant at the same time, so my stress level went from, I was really feeling great, and then we opened a restaurant which then added to the stress and I was like, Oh, I know what to do here. So there was this season of like, not having as much, and then that compounded, and then I reached for what I knew to reach for, unfortunately. And it dawned on me, but it was like a slow sunrise, you know, it was just a really tough, and then you don’t wanna look at the sun because it hurts, it’s too bright. And so, and so, it was a really, it took a while to admit it to yourself. You know, when you have, when you have an addiction, you, you’d only have to lie to yourself. Just, just convince yourself, and then you operate out of that false truth. And so it was very hard to come to terms with that. And it was still a number of years after I left pharma that I finally laid that down.
Julie Lyles Carr: You bring up something that’s really important. When we talk about transitioning in seasons from something that’s been fine, but now we’re really getting to walk in something we’re passionate about. But you know, stress still follows and it can be good stress because you’re excited about the things that are happening, but it is still stress and its impact on the body, on our emotions, that’s one of those things that I think we often highlight enough for people, is that within the good, within change that is powerful, within things that we want, we can still really experience the ravages of stress. So how did that feel? Did it almost feel at times like, have we, did I make the right decision because now I’m still feeling stressed out? Like how did you wade through all that and figure out if you’d stepped out in the right direction? Or were there times you thought about running back to a, you know, a career in pharmacology? Like what happened in that moment?
Melinda Hardin: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because the year in between just leaving pharma, before I started the restaurant, I was teaching these workshops and the, and I, there was one that was about alcohol, cause I knew I had a lot of heavy drinkers in the company that I was working. And so I crafted this workshop about like, how to, how do you know when you’re having too much? And I thought, wow. This is so interesting. I feel, this feels very familiar. All of these cues and things to look out for are all things that I’m actually doing. So that made me very afraid because I thought, here I am, to your point, in this season of sort of exhale, except I’m doing the same things. Well, I think what, when we started the restaurant, what I knew, so I, I, it was a little farm to table restaurant, sort of taking the things that I was teaching and putting them into practice with families and they would say, well, there’s nowhere to eat in our small town. So we ended up having this restaurant, and that is the one thing that I wish I hadn’t done. But I never looked back and thought that I should go back to pharma. I just thought, wait a minute, I should have just stayed exactly where I was in the wellness industry and not added this. Why? Why do I feel like I need to do more and strive more? Can I just be satisfied with this really sweet season? Why do I have to feel stressed to feel successful? Why can’t I just be in this moment where it feels like, manageable. And so I never really looked back to pharma. I just looked back to not having taken so many steps towards what I thought would make me feel successful. And then I was just overrun and we all sort of reset. Excuse me. We all sort of reset to our default settings. Right. And you know, Tito’s and Juan were my default settings. So when the stress became too much, I just reached for what, what I had.
Julie Lyles Carr: What your reset was.
Melinda Hardin: That answer your question?
Julie Lyles Carr: Yeah, absolutely. And that statement is so powerful. Why do I think I need to feel stressed to feel success? That, boy that resonates with me. And we do do that. It, it’s difficult to allow ourselves to have a season where we feel satisfied, where we feel content. And I think when I look at the writings of Paul, I think that’s what he’s tapping into. It’s a passage we all know, but you know, “I’ve learned to be content whether I have little or I have a lot, whether I’m hungry or I’m fed.” And that just taps into that deeper thing of, why do we do that to ourselves? That we keep pushing beyond that. We can have something that’s really good and we just can’t seem to find the satisfaction in that, that culture, that thing that pushes us so hard at times, plus our own internal wiring. Now in the middle of this, you’re having kiddos and then your husband does a lot of contracting, and you guys get into a whole world. I mean this, so, okay, listener, just to catch you up. We’ve moved from a pharmacological career and now we’ve moved into health coaching, and then we’ve opened a farm to table restaurant, and now we’re gonna get into where some of the listeners may know you from, which is this whole world of renovation of these old, old buildings and redecorating them and bringing them to life. Okay? When did all that happen?
Melinda Hardin: Right. I know. Well, we, let’s see, it was the end of pharma. We had fallen in love with this old building in our downtown. So we traveled a lot and we would go to these small towns and we see, we would see these older towns being renovated and revitalized, and so we found out that there was a building for sale downtown, and we went into the building. We may or may not have just opened the door. And it just, you know, we just got upstairs and might have just peaked. That’s all. might have just taken a quick peek, and it was this huge old building with like, Pigeons and everything they leave behind and, but we just kind of, we, when I say we, really Ben just kind of puts his arm around me. He’s like, could you live here? But in a moment, I was like, Yes. So we just reimagined that space into our home. And when we did that, we had our, the, the building had sort of two, could have two dwellings. So we redid a little apartment and then our house as well. What became the loft above the retail space where we lived. And I mean it, we had only done one small renovation of a little, like 1600 square foot little bungalow that was behi, beside our house. So when we bought these buildings, we really, I think, you know, Always say, I think they call it naivete. Like we just didn’t know. We just had a dream and a little bit of money, cuz that’s what we were able to get the building for at auction. And we sort of sat back in front of this majestic canvas and thought, what have we done? We got this big building, what are we gonna do? And so it, it took us a ton of learning curve to figure out how to bring these old buildings up to today’s code. Never mind that, just imagining the decor. I mean, it took us four and a half years just to get it built before we could put the first coat of paint on there, built out before we could even begin. And so we ended up living in this loft and loving it. Alongside the way, like doing little side projects, flipping houses. Ben was really the fourunner of that, that’s his thing, it’s his lane. That’s what he, where he loves to be. And I sort of did some ancillary opinions and and input. But I loved living in this downtown space. But there we were, and it was at the onset of sort of the uptake of Airbnb. And so then that became a thing where it was like, let’s put this little two bedroom apartment on Airbnb and see what happens. And while we’re at it, let’s just throw our house on there just to see, with having just no idea that we would get rentals. So we started. We moved there, we renovated it, we decorated it, we moved in, we put it online for short term rental, and before we knew it, we had a whole nother business because those Airbnb rentals that started very slow were all of a sudden, we were getting notifications all the time. And there we were in the throes of a whole new thing.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. Right. And then, and this is the part that is so wild to me, the Networks notice. And so you end up pitching for a show, showing this renovation cycle that you’ve done, the incredible work you’ve done, and this is out of nowhere. So what happens in your mind when you’ve been in a particular season and you were coming into a season of sobriety and you were still loving doing things in the health and wellness space, but now you’ve got a season that’s just taking off in this other direction. What was that like as you were trying to keep a hand in all of these seasons that seem to be happening concurrently?
Melinda Hardin: Right. That happened so fast. You know, we had someone come stay in our Airbnb, and we had done some local TV things, but we had someone come stay in our Airbnb, connected us with this, you know, production company, and all of a sudden, we’re filming a sizzle and then a pilot for HGTV. It felt exciting, of course. I mean, it’s just like, Whoa. I never would’ve imagined this. We renovated a whole nother building for that project. That was fascinating and fun. But always in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, Am I about to put on the wrong shoes again? Like this feels like these are really, these are Jimmy Choo shoes. But they still look good, you know what I mean? It just felt like, Wow. And the idea of going in that direction for me was always, People would, they, they, they would say, this may never take, like it’s playing the lottery. Like this might not take off at all, but if it does, it would be an on-ramp to other opportunities and platforms for you to write or you to do other things that you love. So for me, it always was, It would’ve just set the stage for me to really walk, do the things that I wanted to do because of maybe, possibly, you know, open doors for influence or whatever. And so it was just all of that, it was like, felt like a swirl in my mind. It never felt like, oh, I would just do, pick out wallpaper for television. It was like, Oh, that could, that could give me the opportunity to do something I really wanna do. So it was just really, it was, it was just a, it was a swirly feeling. It was dizzying really.
Julie Lyles Carr: Right. And then I think what is fascinating in this part of the story is, this is the part where for a lot of us listening, we’re ready for the Cinderella moment. You go to the ball and the shoe drops, and then the prince comes and finds you, which in this case would be interpreted as, and then you got the show and you got featured and you got all the things. Instead, and this is wild to me, and I know that this, when we talk about home renovation and everything, we can get our brains going in one direction. But I’m looking at the theme here that I think a lot of us have experienced when we really think something’s going to happen, maybe something that we didn’t even see coming. It seems super exciting, it’s something that everyone around us is very excited for. Yes, and then it doesn’t happen. Friends who got engaged and then the fiance breaks the engagement and the marriage isn’t gonna happen. The job offer that you got, that you were so excited about, or your partner got, and then it’s rescinded. The house, you thought that you really had, that everything had been signed and buttoned up, and then something falls through. This show didn’t actually ever launch after all of these, all this great reception and all of this great feedback, and then it didn’t happen. How did you navigate that? Because it wasn’t something you’d asked for, but then there was this imagining I would guess, of like, oh, here’s what our lives could be. What was that like?
Melinda Hardin: Well, honestly, we just had time to catch our breath before the second opportunity came, and so this actually happened to us twice. Where it’s nothing we ever sought out. People came and asked twice, could you try to produce this for a show? And so, we our, the wind got knocked out of our sails and we thought, wow, that was crazy. And then it was like, could you, could you give it a try again? And so that whole thing, you know, that’s like, could you go out for the job again? Could you put another contract on the house? Could you try out for that baby again? You know, all that. It’s same thing, not that that’s all, at all the same, but it just felt like, Wait a minute. I didn’t ask for this, to your point, but it felt really exciting that it could happen and then it didn’t. So you just feel like a heavy sack of potatoes just fall, you just fall. You’re just, and then we did it all over again and it was another, No. It’s like when you go to Target to get toothpaste, but you end up with a cart full of things you never went for, but suddenly can’t live without. It was like, it was like someone rolled out of cart and said, here are all the things you never came for, but now look how great they are. Can’t you, you can’t live without ’em. And they just roll the cart right by you and you think, Wait, but I wanted for all of that. And you look down at what you actually came for and you thought that is so dissatisfying. All of the sudden I kept me wanting for more. It was like a lure, like a, like fool’s gold really. Right? And so it was, of taunting almost.
Julie Lyles Carr: What I love is that I know sort of the, at least to this point, a little bit more of the rest of the story. And what’s powerful to me in that, is when we come through seasons that can be so confusing. I agree with you, sometimes we throw out there too quickly, you know, oh you know, it’s all just gonna work out in this certain way, or it’s all for this purpose. Or I, I still have things in that I’m like, I don’t see how that’s played out. I don’t know what that was about. And I have other things that certainly, it feels like God taught me through, and I hope there’s an ability to give the gift of that experience to someone else. And so, you know, it’s, it’s a mixed bag. But what I love is that through it all, God continued to have within you, through all these seasons, you still wanted to write. And that’s where our paths converged and our friendship was forged, was when you came into a season of writing and you have this beautiful new book called Uneclipsed, which is just fantastic, about shadows emerging, finding the light. You talk a lot about your sobriety journey and that experience. You talk about these different seasons of your life and how there were seasons that you felt overshadowed. There are seasons that you felt like you were starting to step into what God had for you. When you began to emerge into the season where all of a sudden, this love for writing, for the creativity, having now watched this wide variety of seasons up to this point. How did that feel? Did you, were you, did you feel like you were able to step out there and was it, did it feel like there was solid ground or was this, was this stepping outta the boat like Peter and walking on some water as you started to walk into some unknown territory?
Melinda Hardin: You know, it’s so interesting that you bring up the the piece about, you know, I, I never really looked for God thinking that if I just did a certain thing, I would, we would’ve gotten the show, for example. I’m so glad that I was in a season in my faith where, when those things didn’t work out, I didn’t think, I wasn’t disappointed by God or with God or in God or in myself. And, and so I’ve always sort of was like, Okay, God, what do you have to teach me in this? And so the lesson that I felt like kept rising in my spirit was, Was emerged. Like I kept waiting for someone else to gimme an on-ramp, the outdoor and pharma, the show so that I could write. And so then finally it was just like, Okay, enough is enough. Like this still-small voice that I keep hearing is now roaring saying for the love, just write. I mean, that’s what I’m put inside here. So it felt like the most natural next step. Even though it should have, could have and would’ve maybe been able to be taken a long time ago. So when I finally did it, it was liberating because I wasn’t waiting for someone else to roll out the red carpet for me and say, or make a way or open a door or give me an opportunity. It was just like, wait. I will break my own heart if I don’t write this book. And so in that way, I felt on fire in the most liberating, amazing way and always held by God. And I loved that when I wrote it I didn’t expect anything. It’s like write it, and then it was just, you know, the joy of writing it, the process of writing it enlivened my spirit. And I feel like you know when, when God deposits something in you and you allow that to be, I mean, that’s such, that’s worship. . . And so for me it wasn’t like, well, and then at the end of the worship, this is what’s gonna happen. It was just the process of it that I was finally able to enjoy versus the previous season of life where it was the work and then the prize. The prize was the work in this. And so that’s, that was what was beautiful.
Julie Lyles Carr: Ah, you say it so, so beautifully. Well, Mel, I am just honored to have been able to tag along in some of the seasons of your life. I love that reminder to the listener, to me that, you know, I think it’s Seth Gordon who says, sometimes you gotta pick yourself. And what I mean by that, not stepping outside of God’s providence and God’s timing, but sometimes God has been saying, this can be your season. Just do it. And, and we keep waiting. And so what a beautiful reminder that, yeah, there are seasons that we need to wait for the green light, but sometimes God has green lit stuff for us and we just need to be ready to walk through. So I love that reminder from you, Mel. Where can people go to learn more about all the things. We’re gonna have Rebecca put it in the show notes, but I know I’m gonna have a listener who’s just got to see the incredible stuff you and Ben have done with these buildings in Shelbyville, Kentucky. I know we’ve got listeners who are going to want to know more about your sobriety journey, about your book, about all the different things you’ve done. So where’s a great place that we can send listeners to find more about you.
Melinda Hardin: Okay, well I have a website, melindamhardin.com. I’m the same person on Instagram, melindamhardin, and then Melinda Hardin 502 on Facebook. I can send you the links, we’re on Airbnb in Shelbyville, Kentucky. We have Urban Loft on Maine, Bottled in Bond, and all of those. I can give you links to those for the show notes, so you can see the Airbnb’s. Order the book on Amazon, barnesandnoble.com. And here I am.
Julie Lyles Carr: I love it. I love it. Well, Melinda Harden, I just adore you. Thank you so much for being on and talking to the listener about these crazy seasons of life you’ve had, . I know it’s gonna be an encouragement in the seasons that we’re all in. Love your friend. Thanks so much. Love you.
Melinda Hardin: So good to see you. Thanks Julie.
