Raising Truth Tellers

It kept me small and contained.

There wasn't a specific incident. No single moment I could point to. Just a sentence I had believed about myself for so long that I thought it was my personality.

Come sit with this
A sunlit living room with mismatched wooden chairs arranged in a loose circle, waiting for people to arrive.

Where this started

For years I quit things before anyone could see me fail at them. I took the easier road so I would not have to be seen trying. I thought that was just how I was made.

My dad said one thing after I sang a solo. I never sang on a stage again. There wasn't a mean-spiritedness in that. It's just how I internalized it, and I carried it for a long time without ever saying it out loud.

The sentence underneath was that I was an embarrassment and a disappointment. I did not know that was what I believed until someone asked me to name it.

Then I asked the Holy Spirit what was true instead. What I heard back was not something I could have thought up about myself. It was kind.

Always loving, always encouraging, never shaming, never condemning.

How I learned to tell His voice from the other one

The practice

Three things, over and over

This is not positive thinking, and it is not talking yourself into feeling better. Truth is received, and it gets confirmed in the company of other people.

  1. One

    Name the lie

    Most of us cannot say it out loud yet. Most of us also assume we need something dramatic in our history to justify the work. We don't.

  2. Two

    Ask the Holy Spirit what is true

    Not self-talk. Not an affirmation you wrote for yourself. Something given to you, that you probably would not have come up with on your own.

  3. Three

    Return to truth when it comes back

    The old pathway is deep, so the lie will surface again. That is not failure. It is the reason this is a practice and not a single moment.

A worn round wooden table in afternoon light with four mugs of tea and two open notebooks.

What I keep seeing

All relational conflict begins with lies

One person believes something about themselves they have never named. The other says or does something that makes it feel true. The pain is real, so it gets handed to the person standing closest.

Then both of them are triggered, both of them are blaming, and neither one knows what the lie actually is.

Most of the time neither person knows. They only know how it feels when the other one gets close to it.

Who is in the room

All people need to be mothered

I asked God about the people I care for who are not mothers. He said they could be mothers, and really all people need to be mothered. So I am not going to narrow this room. Come as you are, in the season you are actually in.

An open doorway in an old plaster wall with afternoon light spilling across the floor beyond it.

What we do together

Eight weeks, in person

We meet once a week for eight weeks and walk through Becoming What You Believe, the experience created by Jamie and Donna Winship at Identity Exchange. I am a trained facilitator of it and an Identity Impact certified teacher, and it is their work, not mine.

Each week there is a short teaching, listening prayer together, and then truth telling and discussion. My whole job in the first ten minutes is that you feel safe and calm, because nobody names a lie honestly in a room that does not feel safe.

When
Eight weeks in the fall, eight weeks in the spring
Where
In person, Orange County
Cost
$300 for the eight weeks
Also available
One on one, if you want it

Through Identity Exchange directly, the same experience is $995. Part of what you pay here goes back to them, which is how it should be. See their work.

Who I am

Melissa Awad

I found Jamie Winship's book Living Fearless in 2022 and it undid something in me that I had stopped expecting to be undone. I went through the work myself, then went back and got trained to lead it.

I have four children and I homeschool them. I have had four babies at home. For years the moms around here have come to me for the ordinary questions about caring for their kids, and somewhere in there I realized almost every one of those conversations was really about identity.

I am not a counselor and I am not a clinician. I am a woman who has done this work in her own life and has been given something to hand to other people.

The name He gave me
I am His free gift of kindness that blossoms into seeds of truth.

Trained through Identity Exchange

  • Trained Catalyst
  • Identity Collective member
  • Trained facilitator, Becoming What You Believe Experience
  • Identity Impact certified teacher

If you want to be in the room

We start in the fall.

There is no cart and no form with twelve questions. Tell me a little about the season you are in and we will figure out together whether this is the right room for you right now.

Write to Melissa

melissa@raisingtruthtellers.com