"I was addicted to helping people." Mishala Lewis says it out loud about halfway through this conversation, and once she does, her whole life reads differently.

In this episode of Barefoot Conversations, I sit down with Mishala Lewis, an event planner, community builder, and the oldest daughter of a single parent household. She cooked, she cleaned, she raised her siblings, and when there was not enough food she let them eat and took whatever was left. Sometimes that was nothing. Nobody called it leadership training at the time. It was just what the oldest girl did.

We talk about what that becomes in a grown woman. The gym bathroom where a stranger was just venting and Mishala was already texting people about car parts with money she did not have. The jobs with the title and the salary and the benefits that still left her empty. The relationships she stayed in because she could see the potential and thought she could fix it.

And then there is the moment that stopped her. Freshman year of college, in the back seat without her seatbelt, the driver loses control, and she is looking over an elevated interstate bridge thinking, well God, this looks like the end. What she said to Him in that second is the most honest prayer I have heard on this show. She woke up on the road a few feet from the car, and the first thing she did was get up and go check on everybody else.

She is different now. She has a word for this year, she has a brunch she is building for women who are healing, and she has a challenge she is two days into. If you have been everybody's fixer, everybody's backbone, the one who always has it handled, pull up a chair. Mishala has a word for you.

CHAPTERS (optional, supported by Apple Podcasts and Spotify)

00:00 "I was addicted to helping people"

00:53 Why she started 75 Hard: "I'm shedding"

02:08 How the two of us found each other

03:05 The oldest daughter in a single parent house

04:07 Telling the story with grace for her mom

05:04 The leadership it was quietly building

05:40 Giving up a full scholarship to go serve

06:26 Choosing happiness over the money

07:38 Sacrificing her health for everybody else's peace

08:50 The woman in the gym bathroom

09:40 The moment she admitted she had a problem

10:33 Believing she had to do the most to be known

11:04 When you just want to vent, not be fixed

12:30 Boundaries, and the friction of a new you

14:52 The night she was ejected from the car

16:26 Getting up to check on everyone else

17:05 Brain swelling, and telling jokes in the hospital

18:24 What she said to God on that bridge

19:58 What changed in her afterward

20:09 Starting Resilient Women of Color

22:16 Building something with no experience

23:09 Letting go of what was never meant for her

25:47 Walking away from safe and predictable

26:42 What the layoff taught her about her worth

27:54 Staying in relationships she knew to leave

31:56 Did she ever bury the creator in her

33:32 Her exit cue, and how she stopped shrinking

35:23 When helping someone becomes a project

36:39 To the woman still chasing the paycheck

38:50 Your purpose can get you paid

41:13 Finding God without growing up in church

44:32 We are the church, not the building

46:13 Nerves, and why the real you is the point

48:14 Her word for this year: living

49:38 The Resilience Brunch

52:35 Healing with community, music, and movement

54:52 Her message to the woman who gives it all away

55:28 Going barefoot