1 True Talks
1 True Talks
Choose A Life You Love, Then Share It with Stephanie May Wilson
The years between 25 and 35 can feel like a tidal wave: career moves, marriage questions, fertility timelines, money pressures, and the constant hum of outside opinions. We invited best-selling author and mentor Stephanie Mae Wilson to help us quiet the noise, listen for God’s voice, and make choices that create a life we actually want to live, long before the ring, the job title, or the baby arrives.
Stephanie shares the moment she stopped living by borrowed deadlines and started trusting God with outcomes, a shift that led her to say yes to adventure, service, and ultimately meeting her husband. We unpack what healthy pursuit really looks like, mutual interest, reliability, and shared effort, while dismantling the myth that a woman must sit on her hands to be “chosen.” If you’re tired of keeping a relationship from hitting the floor, you’ll find language, boundaries, and confidence to move toward certainty and care.
Prayer and presence thread through our talk. Stephanie’s 100-day prayer journal, Every Single Moment, guides women to pray for a future partner without idolizing an imagined person or abandoning their own growth. We explore why one of the most transformative prayers is for a best friend, and how female friendships lower stress, build courage, and make the steep hills of life feel climbable. Stephanie also offers a beautiful parenting picture: don’t cram God into a tidy jewelry box; invite your kids into a wide, living relationship with Him.
If you’ve felt the squeeze of the “everything era,” this conversation brings relief, practical tools, and hope. Tune in to learn how to curate your inputs, invest in real friendship, participate in your love story, and trust God while taking bold, grounded action. If it resonated, share it with a friend, subscribe for more conversations like this, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.
More about Stephanie: https://stephaniemaywilson.com/
Follow Stephanie Here: https://www.instagram.com/smaywilson/
Check Out Stephanie's Podcast: https://stephaniemaywilson.com/girlsnight
Stephanie's Prayer Journal Every Single Moment: https://stephaniemaywilsonshop.com/products/every-single-moment
Hi, I'm Renee Richel, the founder and president of 1 True Match. I'm here to help you find and cultivate the love of your life. For over a decade, I've dedicated my life to the importance, purpose, and dynamic of human relationships. My team and I are disciplined by faith, love, and integrity to help our clients find the quality relationships they've always dreamt of. Each week, I will be sharing the tools and tips I've learned that have rooted my success as a matchmaker with other leaders around the world. Hello, loves. Welcome back. I am so excited to be here with a very special guest today that helps women particularly prepare for what we need with One True Match to be ready and whole as a person for true love and everything that God brings in their life. So please welcome Stephanie May Wilson, who is a best-selling author, podcast, TEDx speaker, and go-to guide for women as they navigate the murky waters of what she calls the everything era through her books, courses, and chart-topping podcast, Girls Night with Stephanie May Wilson. Stephanie has mentored more than a million women as they make decisions and go through life's translation transitions surrounding career, marriage, and motherhood and more. When she's not writing, speaking, or recording a podcast episode, you can find Stephanie eating uh tapas in um Spain, where her and her husband, Carl, and her two twin toddlers just moved. Welcome, Stephanie.
Stephanie May Wilson:Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here.
Renee Richel:And we were just chatting before we started this how much you are loving Spain and teaching your little ones Spanish right from the gate.
Stephanie May Wilson:Yes. Yes. It's it's eight o'clock at night here, which is always funny because you know, I know it's the time change is wild for things like podcast interviews, but basically everything else is wonderful. We are loving it.
Renee Richel:Okay, and how old are your girls? Tell me.
Stephanie May Wilson:They just turned five like last week.
Renee Richel:So which is a fun phase, but I know a very active phase. So it's great that you guys can divide and conquer, right? To do it all.
Stephanie May Wilson:Yes, yes, dividing and conquering. We switched off in the office. And so my husband's doing uh bedtime duty right now. He was just on a call and we're making it work.
Renee Richel:I love it. Well, I feel like I'm gonna start off with some great questions we want to know to share with our audience that I hope encourages our audience to not only tune into you as another incredible resource, because I feel like between our men and our women, they're needing every resource out there in today's crazy world of just self-worth and uh guidance as well as direction and purpose. Um, so I want to start off and tell me a little bit about the heartbeat behind your mission to meet women inside of their transformative decade between, I would say, the ages of 25 and 35.
Stephanie May Wilson:Yeah, so um I have been walking with women for 14 years now, 15 years now. I mean, my whole life because I I am one. Um, but one of the things, you know, throughout my work, one of the things that I noticed first through walking through it and then through really studying it, was that there is a really formative time that happens in our lives, specifically as women, that people don't really talk about. We talk about adolescence, we talk about, you know, the college years, we talk about, you know, becoming an adult and what that looks like. But there really is kind of this transformational period between about 25 and 35, where all of a sudden the training wheels fall off and you're not you're not in college anymore, and you're not a young 20 necessarily. Like your actions really have consequences and your the things that you are planting are the things that will actually grow up and be the bones, the foundation, the walls of your life. Um, and so many things happen for us as women in this 25 to 35 phase. Statistically, that's when a lot of us get married. That's when we lay the foundation for our careers, when our earning potential over our life is really established. Um, we all are more aware than I wish we had to be about our biological clock, and that is ticking loudly during that time. Um, it's it's this I had a friend call it the cosmic double booking of these years of our lives. And that's oh, I love that. Yeah. Why is it that these years when we are it is prime time for this one area, how is it fair that it's also prime time for these other areas of our lives? And we have to figure out what to do with our lives all within this period. Um, and to make matters infinitely more complicated, this decade, these reproductive years, these um, I call them like the shower years, because these are the years where like you're having a housewarming party, you're having a baby shower, you're having a wedding shower, you're having an engagement shower. Like it's this is the there's an announcement decade of your life. Yes. Um that's kind of that's what we're hoping for. Um, but to make it infinitely more complicated, we have a whole audience watching us and critiquing us in backseat driving as we're trying to figure out what to do with our lives uh in this season. And that can be everybody from your mom, it could be your um, you know, siblings and what they did, it could be your faith community, it could be Instagram, it could be culture as a whole, it can be politics. Like everybody has an opinion about what a woman specifically should be doing during this season of life. It's a little bit different for men because they don't have the biological clock thing as much as we do. Um, but it's really overwhelming. And so my heart for for years now has been to help women turn down the volume and get um just tune out some of the outside voices that may think they have they have um the right to speak into our lives, but but really don't tune out those outside voices so that we can hear what's really true and correct and best for us. So we can hear our inner voice, so we can hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, so we can hear God's voice and what he's saying specifically for us. Uh and it's just really hard to hear those things when we have so many people telling us, well, this is the exact right way to do things. And, you know, by the time I was your age, dot-da-da. And, you know, good women should da-da-da. We just need some help turning down the volume on those um, those things so we can figure out where we're going in this crazy season of our lives.
Renee Richel:Which I love that perspective because of course we work with clients of all different ages, and it's a generational thing that's pathed down, right? And the expectations are from our wiser to our younger, even down to like we're fascinated by the 15 to 21 year old market because now we're getting younger and younger clients are like 25, 27, 30 years old, and they just don't know their own who they are really, and that's such a tricky phase in life. So I love that you're such a good resource to remind them who God designed them to be and find that first and foremost and own that, be proud of it. So I love that. So, did you struggle more with yourself or others questioning what your life should look like by a certain age in your personal walk is what then created your um testimony to share with other people?
Stephanie May Wilson:You know, I think it was more myself. I had this moment. Um, the first wedding I remember being invited to was my I had an older cousin, uh, and I got to go to his wedding. I was, I think I was in high school. Um, and it was so fun and romantic. And I remember just being like, oh, like swept up in the magic of the weekend. And um just as I think we all, we all are, but it was my very first time. And as I'm watching him swirl around the dance floor with his brand new bride, I had this thought where I said, okay, they I knew that they were 25. That's when they were getting married. They were 25. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna get married when I'm 25. Well, like I'm what, 18, standing on the edge of this dance floor. I know nothing. I don't know any details of my own life or like I don't know any of the ingredients that are gonna go into this cake. I just know when this cake needs to be done. And I've decided it based on something someone else had built that has nothing to do with me. And so those were the kinds of things, you know, I'm a I'm a goal-oriented, um, like focused hard worker type A oldest sibling, you know, and like I like to have goals. I like to have a plan. I like to have a plan. Um so that was the moment that I made that plan. And um, it became this ticking clock. Like, and I mean it wasn't, it wasn't just that. It was, it's been all kinds of things of, you know, this is how I think I'm supposed to do this. Well, where did I get that idea? I honestly, most of the time I'm not even sure. I just, I just sort of did. But just because I don't have a super specific source, sometimes we do, sometimes it's apparent or someone else's example. But for me, it's usually just like kind of a mess of all of the above. And even like it doesn't make it any less weighty.
Renee Richel:Sure. No, I totally understand. Um, what season of life felt the shakiest for you? I would say age or just in general, season? How did you come to find a firm footing?
Stephanie May Wilson:Um, you know, the the years, there were a handful of years in between when I uh met Jesus and became a Christian and when I met my husband. And I think those years in between were pretty tricky. Um it also happened that, you know, that was kind of the time when I was becoming an adult. And so I was sort of stepping into the age where marriage was something that could conceivably happen in my life without me being like a true child bride, you know, it was like all these, all these things kind of converged.
Renee Richel:Um and how old were you then?
Stephanie May Wilson:Uh it was a span of years, but probably I would say it probably started when I was about 24 and it was like a handful of years after that that I felt this pressure or this this expectation. I think that was that was when it settled in. It was like I could conceivably meet someone now and I wouldn't be 12 and have to wait, you know, however many years to be a grown-up in order to get married. Um, but that was the first time that I remember being like, okay, uh, this could this could happen. And then this idea that I could talk to God about it too. I was like, okay, hey God, hello, nice to meet you. It was like the more I got to know God, the more I the more fervent my prayers became for, oh, if I can ask you for something, I know the very first thing that I'm gonna ask you for. And that was that I wanted to to meet my person.
Renee Richel:Yeah, which is all the preparation uh seasons.
Stephanie May Wilson:Totally, totally. But I think that, you know, there were a lot of seasons throughout my life when I was more focused than I should have been on on relationships. I mean, I would say like basically my entire life, I was more focused on on finding relationships and being in relationships than I maybe should have been. Um, but it was in it was in that time um when I feel like God kind of stepped in and and said, you need to trust me with this. And really, I was I was brushing my teeth one day and this question just popped into my head. And it was if I told you that you would uh be married to the best person you can imagine and happy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, in four years. And it was, I mean, it was arbitrary in four years. If I if I just told you that no matter what, you're gonna be fine, you're gonna get what you want, how would you live today? And that was so jarring to me because it was a really specific way to frame what it looks like to to actually trust him with something. Like if you trusted me, then what then how would you live?
Renee Richel:Right.
Stephanie May Wilson:And I was like, I mean, well, I would live big, I would I would travel for one. What one of the things that happened right around that time is I had the opportunity to do a pretty extensive uh mission trip. Okay and I was really excited about it. And traveling around the world is absolutely my heartbeat, as is evidenced by the fact that I live in Spain. Um, but so I I really wanted to do it, but I thought, you know, these are the years when I'm supposed to be here, kind of waiting for this relationship to fall in my lap. And I had I was born and raised in Colorado, I'd grown, I'd lived there my whole life. And so I thought surely my future husband lives in Colorado. So if I leave, I am like indefinitely delaying my love story. And that moment in the bathroom was like, you're really not, you're really not. If you, if you really believed that I had this covered, what would you do? Like, well, then I would get on a plane yesterday. And I mean, it just of course so happens that it's because I got on that plane that I did meet my husband. And so I think that that's been a lot of, you know, in in the years after I ended up um leading women's ministry and I started a blog, and I just the most amazing thing happened. Like people started reading it and sending me emails and asking me questions and talking, like allowing me to speak into their lives, which was so beautiful. And and what I do today is just a much larger version of what it's been all along. But I one of the things that people asked me about the most was relationships, was love, was singleness, was that season's season of waiting. And as someone who didn't grow up in the church, I noticed that a lot of the advice that people were coming to me with was really bad, like really unhelpful, really confusing, really uh hyper spiritual. That like, what does that even what does that even mean? How does that, what does that look like lived out? And then also like, where in the Bible is that? Um, and I I feel like I I came to this um uh this topic from kind of an interesting place because I I uh you know have spent so much time in the world of faith, but I also spent so much time outside of it. And so I get to sort of marry these these perspectives. And um, there there really are some things that I saw repeatedly saw people doing and advice that they were given that just was so unhelpful. And it was keeping them stuck and keeping them feeling forgotten and keeping them feeling like um, keeping them from doing the things that would actually help them move forward into being the kind of person they want to be, and then also into a place where they could conceivably meet someone they would want to spend their lives with. Um, and so that really it was, you know, my own experience, but then also being like, wait, you guys have been told what all these years? This is crazy. Like, okay, whoever let your your youth pastor give you relationship advice, okay, we we have some undoing to do. Um, and so that's right, that's really the work that I've spent the last, you know, 10 years doing.
Renee Richel:Well, in all fairness to pastors, like they tell us that we talk to all day long. They went to school to be in seminary and preach the word of the Lord. And the entire Bible is not about romantic relationships and marriage. There's a small chunk of it in there.
Stephanie May Wilson:Yeah. Well, and a lot of, you know, I think a lot of um, you know, I mean, this is this is painting with a broad brush, but a lot of the pastors in in my life got married really young.
Renee Richel:And so they did Well, and talk about expectations. That's kind of their expectation that you're married, right?
Stephanie May Wilson:Truly, yeah. So they so I think a lot of times churches don't know what to do with single people, and so they don't treat them the way that they should be treated, which is as valuable and um equal members of the growth of the church.
Renee Richel:Families come in and they grow the church, right?
Stephanie May Wilson:Well, and single people have so much value to offer, just like anybody does. Oh, I know. So yeah, I think I, you know, it's it's not their fault necessarily that some of the advice is bad, but it's a lot just a lot of them haven't walked, haven't walked the road. If you haven't dated, you don't know how to give dating advice. And you're exactly right. The Bible isn't exactly a dating manual as much as you need to.
Renee Richel:That's true. That is true. And I love it that you open up your horizons, I guess I would say, to distance with where your future husband was. Because I think that's the one thing that people get stuck on. They assume, well, I live here, I'm gonna stay in this area. And I'm like, if the door doesn't open, try something new because God will make sure wherever you are in this world, He will cross paths at the perfect timing for the two of you, and he can put you in a whole new area you would have never imagined or thought of, right? So I love that. So, what catalyzed you into preparing resources and putting yourself out there to such a large, large audience that you have now?
Stephanie May Wilson:Um, you know, I think I have always said that if I can help one person, that that's that's enough. And so I love that. That's really I really what I think about the most is just who's the one person that's reading this? Who's the one friend that I haven't met yet that is going through something right now that just really needs to hear what I needed to hear, you know, in different seasons of life. My favorite, my favorite um quote, and honestly, I I don't know who first said it, but it's become like my mission in life, uh, is be who you needed when you were younger. And that's a hundred percent what what I try to do. It's I know how lonely I felt, I know how forgotten I felt, I know how like desperate I felt in a lot of seasons. Um, I know how much I missed because I was so focused on who's my person, where's my person, how do I find them as fast as possible. I know what I really could have missed if I didn't, you know, start living when I did. Um, and you know, I mean, that extends into all these other seasons of life, into, you know, dating and getting engaged and getting married and, you know, talking about having kids and all these different things. Like there are so many things that I just really needed to hear or or really wish I could have had someone walk me through. And so I if I'm if I'm going to walk through something and learn something. I'm gonna gather it up, put it in a bag, and turn it around and hand it to the person behind me because life is just so much better when we don't do it by ourselves. And I hate that I love that having to do it by themselves.
Renee Richel:Sure. And I couldn't agree more. I think that's so important that we pass along our pearls of wisdom to the ones that need it most too. So now that you're married and you've made it through the waiting phase and you're also a mother of two little toddlers. It's funny how in the moments when we feel lonely and we have all the time in the world and we're like, why? Now there's not enough time for you anymore, probably, right? And you try to just find a little bit of lone time. And so I always say, don't wish for what you don't have, because when you do have it, then you sometimes want a little of what we had before, right? Too. Um, but what would you what would you say is like how God is showing up now in your life, being married and as a mom?
Stephanie May Wilson:Gosh, in all kinds of ways. I feel like the last handful of years have been learning that God is just so big. He's just is just so big. And any box that we can try to shove him in is just absolutely laughably small. Um I think I've been learning an open heart. I've been learning um to have an open mind. I've been learning how to love his people, um, and how to share the love that he's shared with me, with with my kids in a way that is really an invitation into a relationship and um and not like a small, a small box. Uh my girls for their birthday, they each wanted a jewelry box. And so I got them a jewelry box, and the kinds of things they've put in it since they received it are just wild that one of them is full of a lot of balloons at the moment, like unblown up balloons. But like I I have been learning how to share what I know about God with them without trying to fit him into the jewelry box and without going like, hey, this is this is everything you need to know. This is exactly how you do it, this is exactly who God is. Um, these are all the rules, these are all the yeses and all the no's. It's just, I feel like God has shown me over and over again that He's so much bigger than that. Um, and so trying to open up a relationship to my kids without trying to hand them this little jewelry box that I've tried to shove God into neatly has been one of the things that that we've been working on.
Renee Richel:That's awesome. I love your analogies. It just helps us visualize what you're talking about too. Um, okay, so what is the most asked question your followers and readers toss your way regularly?
Stephanie May Wilson:One of the most common misconceptions I hear is has to do with being pursued. And I don't know if this is I hope that this is changed. I hope that this is changing. Um when uh I first heard of this idea of pursuit and relationship, uh, it was like the very it was very specific, um, very rule oriented and um and pretty old-fashioned, that like women are basically just supposed to exist and the man is supposed to somehow find you and you do nothing, you just exist and look pretty and be pure, and then he will find you and butt you on a horse and carry you off into the sunset, something like that. And so, as women who are used to being active participants in the rest of our life, we're like, what is this supposed to, what does it look like to be pursued? And now I I love the idea of pursuit because um I, you know, some of the the almost um, as I call them in my life, the you know, relationships that I really wanted to work out but didn't for a million different reasons. But in a couple of them, it was uh for various reasons, I was more into the relationship than they were. Um, I was more sure, I was more confident, I was more uh committed, I was um more active. So, you know, there were there were just kind of a variety of different circumstances. And it felt like if I wasn't holding up the relationship, if I wasn't so sure that that we were a good fit for each other, that like I would, if I dropped it, it would hit the ground because he wasn't totally holding it as as much as I was. If I didn't make sure to put myself out there, like he probably wouldn't call me or something like that. Um and that's a terrible way to live. And that's a terrible way to be in relationship. And if that's the kind of relationship, like I wish I could go back to myself in all of those moments and be like, run, run. If someone can't call you when they say they're gonna call you, like you do not want this to be the father of your child.
Renee Richel:Right.
Stephanie May Wilson:If someone cannot, like if someone isn't sure that they want to be with you, I had someone tell me one time that they were 95% sure about me, but not the full 100. And I'm like, if you're not 100% sure you want to date me, I'm gonna go find somebody who is.
Renee Richel:Yes, like my father has always said, find the one that's chasing you. Don't be the one chasing them. Well, truly. And you have to chase each other back, but in the beginning, right? It's like it's important. Like, who's chasing who in the beginning? Is it both of you or is it just what?
Stephanie May Wilson:Right. And I think it's I think that the exactly that, I think it gets confusing when you're like, am I allowed to do any chasing, or do I just sit here? Or if I call him, is that chasing? And I think, like, no, it's it's not. You get to be a participant in your love story. You get to use a phone because you know how to use a phone. You get to put yourself in positions to meet other humans so you can maybe meet a human you'd like to spend your life with. I think the the idea of like letting yourself be pursued has gotten taken way too far and has sort of cut women off at the knees. And like we we're not participating because we because we don't think we're supposed to. Right. No, you get to you get to participate, you get to show up and and do your part. Um, you don't have to just sit there and and do absolutely nothing. Right. So that's what does pursuit mean? And what am I sort of allowed to do is one of the questions that I get a lot.
Renee Richel:Yeah, I love that. And which is a huge question on I feel like so many people's minds trying to find true love. Um, where did the idea of writing every single moment come from?
Stephanie May Wilson:Uh, one of the questions I so every single moment is a 100-day prayer journal. And it came from how many people I had had ask me about how to pray for their future husband. Again, I talk to, you know, my my career is mostly women. Um, but yeah, that's because that's another piece of advice that people have gotten forever is well, you should pray for your future husband. And I think that sometimes, just like everything else, without some explanation or without some thoughtfulness, I guess, behind it, um, that behind that advice, um, we can take that to sort of a weird degree. Uh, and I I feel like I did that in some seasons. I was praying for for someone that I was interested in. And um the connection I was creating between me and this person was like far beyond what but what the relationship um dictated or deserved, or far more than he was putting into the relationship. Um, I also think there are a lot of people who have really faithfully written letters to their future husband, like for years and years and years. And now every person is different. Every person's appreciation for um gestures like that is is different, but like that's not going to be everybody's love language. And so I think I would have been pretty heartbroken if I had spent like 15 years writing 15 years of letters to my future husband and have him like not super stoked to read all of the thoughts of a 13-year-old girl writing dead. Like, I mean, I I can I can I can write in a journal. And so if I would have done that, I would have handed my husband like stacks and stacks and stacks, and I just don't know that he would have gotten through it, which I think would have really hurt my feelings. So I think that in while it's a wonderful prayer is incredibly powerful and praying for your future and praying for the person you're gonna spend your life with, yes, absolutely. But I think that sometimes we can start idolizing the person. Um, we can start praying to them instead of praying for them. We can start sort of checking out of being present in our lives because in this act of journaling and praying, we're so focused on the future. Um, and then sometimes we can like, you know, I think maybe set our person up for failure if we're like, truly, I've written like four boxes full of letters to you, and they're like, we watch them like not read them, all of them uh in their entirety, which I think is also very fair on their part. Um, and so in response to this advice to pray for your future person, I sat down and was like, okay, but what does that mean? What does it mean to ask God to be part of our love lives? What does it mean to prepare through prayer? Um, what does it mean to pray for our future person? And so that's what this prayer journal is. It's a combination of praying through the various parts of your life and the things that you really need to do as an individual to be ready for the kind of relationship that you want to have. Um, and then also praying for that person and the journey that they're on, but making sure that you're not forsaking your journey because you're so focused on praying for theirs.
Renee Richel:I love that. We do a prayer exercise and asking our clients to also pray for their future mate. And if they feel the will to write a love letter to their future, send it to us, we'll keep it in the file. And when we know it's the one, that'll be the day you release it to that person. So I love that you're already preparing so many women to do that because I'm like, those are the moments that when you know it's almost like your accountability. If you go back and you're dating somebody and you read your love letter and they don't match, not entirely, but a good chunk of the morals, values, belief, and foundation of what you're looking for, then move on, right? Instead, like you said, we idolize those relationships and we forget and we're thinking we're so in it because we're on lust, but we forget we have our journal, we have our toolbox that literally is spelling it out in front of us. We just need to read it, right? Go back and read it.
Stephanie May Wilson:Yeah, yeah. I love, I love the idea of doing that. And I mean, I think there's there's a significant difference between a letter and the boxes of letters that I think some of us were given advice to.
Renee Richel:Right, right. I love that. Okay, why do you value female friendships so deeply?
Stephanie May Wilson:I absolutely am the person that I am because the women in my life, I just they are, I think that we sometimes treat there's there's a quote um by one of my favorite authors, Shauna Nequist, and she talks about friendships like breakfast. Um she says, you know, sometimes you skip breakfast, but then you know, halfway through the day you're cranky and you're miserable, and um like you realize, okay, this wasn't something to skip over. This was something that was actually really essential. And she says that, you know, female friendships are the same way. And I would so agree with that. They're really easy to put on the back burner, but they are the thing that keeps us on track, the thing that keeps us going, the thing that makes us the that makes the journey fun. They're the people that pick us up and take care of us. And and, you know, in a lot of ways, our female friendships can and and do statistically outlast our our romantic relationships. Um my my best friend and I had been best friends for gosh, 15 years when I met my husband. And like, say he will never catch up. He will never catch up to knowing me as long as she does. Having people in your life who truly know you and love you, it just makes everything better. It makes life so much more fun.
Renee Richel:It makes life so much more. Sure, through motherhood and all the things you can't talk to the guys about or your husband, right? Too helps.
Stephanie May Wilson:My my husband's pretty, we're pretty, he's he's right there with me in everything. But it is so nice to know, you know, you're not alone in the things that you're feeling or going through. It's, you know, I learned so much from my friends. It's that's why I started my podcast, Girls Night, is because I was sitting at tables with women who were so wise, like so profoundly wise. I was learning so much about myself and about God. And in so many, over so many dinners, I was like, God is speaking to me through this friend. Like, this is this is I'm having just major revelations and epiphanies, and you know, my whole life is changing at this dinner, listening to my friend talk. Um, and I knew that not every woman has that in all seasons. Uh, and so that's why I started the podcast. I was like, we need to start recording these conversations so that more women can have access to the wisdom of other women. Yeah. So that's what girls' night's all about. But yeah, my friendships are just absolutely my lifeblood in awesome.
Renee Richel:I love that. So, what's the most transformative prayer you believe young women should be praying?
Stephanie May Wilson:There are obviously a ton of answers to this question, but because we were just talking about friendship, um, I think one of the very best things that we can pray for is a best friend.
Renee Richel:That's awesome. I love that. It's true. Whether it's a romantic best friend or it's a best friend of a friend in the season, that that's awesome.
Stephanie May Wilson:Well, and I think, you know, it's because your friendships do they are such an undercurrent to so many different life seasons. Having uh having support and companionship and wisdom to help you through all the different things that your life that you're going to go through in your life, when you have someone to hold your hand through all of it, um, no matter what happens, no matter how a first date goes, no matter, you know, whether pregnancy test is positive or negative, obviously your partner is going to be there too. But um just having a best friend through it all, like we are, there are there are amazing studies that have that have been done about how profoundly friendship impacts our health. Um, and the like our cortisol and um just all the different stress hormones that are raging in our bodies at different times. There's a study where um someone was put at the bottom of a hill and asked to rank how difficult the hill looked when they were standing by themselves and they ranked it like this looks pretty steep and pretty difficult to climb. Um, and then when they had a friend standing next to them, they ranked it as looking easier and more doable. Like truly, we life is easier and more doable when we have a friend to go through it with. And so I think that's absolutely true of our love lives. Uh, and so having like a true um someone who really loves you and really knows you and is really in your corner through all of the ups and downs of dating and relationships and everything else they're gonna bring, I think that that's a really transformative prayer to pray.
Renee Richel:That's awesome. And I, you know, to build God's kingdom, it takes a village. So you have to have your your your crew, as you call it, or tribes around you. Um, what faith-based figure has encouraged you the most in in what ways?
Stephanie May Wilson:Gosh, so many. I mean, you just there, um, I have a best friend named Kelsey who is uh now actually my business partner. She and I teach a course called Becoming Mama Together. Um, but she is she's a little bit ahead of me in life, not very, not very far, but just a little bit ahead of me in life. And I have gotten to follow in her footsteps in so many amazing ways. Um, she's just incredibly wise. Um, and then a handful of years ago, she went back to school and got her master's uh to become a therapist. And so I get to just absolutely glean so much wisdom off of this best friend of mine. Um and so I it's really it's been really special to teach this course with her and to have her sort of in a more public mentorship role, in addition to seeing her clients, because she really is so wise. And so Kelsey Bennett, if anyone needs a therapist in Colorado, she is your girl.
Renee Richel:I love it. We do have, we do have a Colorado audience of followers. So I am just so blessed and excited that you have been able to like join our audience and share your pearls of wisdom. So anybody out there listening and wants to check out all of the books and courses and things that Stephanie May Wilson offers, please check in our show notes, obviously. They'll have more details about her and listen to her podcast to help you through the season in waiting or share this with any of your girlfriends or friends because she is definitely a light to so many women, and you can just see all that God has planned in her heart and spirit to continue to pour out to so many people she walks. So thank you for joining us today and sharing all that you have inside and all the love that you share throughout your walk.
Stephanie May Wilson:Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Renee. I really appreciate it.
Renee Richel:It's been another great talk on this episode of 1 True Talks by Renee Richel. I look forward to our next chat. Please write in your questions and comments so I can be sure to talk about whatever it is you want to discuss in our next upcoming episode. Lots of Love. God Bless. XOXO.