There’s nothing quite like listening to people talk about their passions—you can almost see the sparks. It’s actually one of my favorite things about podcasting. It’s so fascinating to see how everyone gets lit up by different things, and how those passions evolve and develop in different stages of life. Brooke Romney, one of my favorite writers, published a beautiful blog post last week, entitled God Loves Variety. She says:

We are all so different.

One woman feels change is happening too fast while another is sure it is not fast enough.

One is giving her all to a cause she believes in while another is navigating her own personal wilderness.

One is gathering and mobilizing while another is quietly, steadily serving.

One reads, researches, and studies while another acts quickly and boldly on feeling.

One changes the world on a big stage while another barely holds her own little world together.

There is divine reason for this. God loves variety. God needs variety. He created each one of us differently so every gap could be filled.

To Brooke’s beautiful words, I would add:

One woman chooses a passion or two early and cultivates it her whole life. One pursues many different passions at different times in their lives. And one struggles to find something that really lights her up.

I talk to women who fit into all of these categories all the time, especially as circumstances change.

My friend Molly Liggett currently fits into the struggle category, as she approaches a new stage with all six of her kids in school.

I was definitely passionate about taking care of my little kids, I loved being home with them. If I was going to be a stay at home mom, I was going to be a great stay at home mom. So we did park dates, we did play dates. I was always doing interactive things with my kids and taking my kids to all the places, like story times and museums and zoos.

I really did love that stage of life. I loved being home with my little kids. I very much enjoyed that stage for about 10 years. It was not as enjoyable after about the 10 year mark of still doing the same things with those small kids. So I started thinking about the next stage, probably when my youngest was about one. It was the first time I didn’t have another baby in my horizon. And I knew this was the end. And it finally hit me that there was going to be a light at the end of the tunnel of what I was going to do after motherhood.

And now that she’s in preschool, and I do have time to myself, I’ve really been exploring. It was actually very hard for me to not know what I wanted to do next. I had always been very goal oriented, and so to not have a goal that I was working towards, or to feel like other goals had passed me by, that was a hard point for me.

And also, it sounds great to have the world be your oyster. But it’s also overwhelming to not know what you want to do. So once I realized, “Okay, I do want to go back to work. I want to do something,” I started talking to everyone I knew who had a career that they liked. I pretty much asked everyone.

But I also decided, this is a unique opportunity for me where I have this extra time. So I’m going to see what hobbies I like and what kind of things I want to do. So I have been playing the piano a lot. And my mother in law is an artist and I try to paint with her. So I’ve been exploring options that aren’t necessarily career related, just to see if I would be passionate about them.

For this episode, I decided to follow Molly’s lead and talked to lots of different moms to figure out how they discovered what lights their fire—from painting to teaching to flamenco. Some of these women have pursued their passions through their careers, some through hobbies, some through volunteer work. Others weave their passions through everything they do. I’m hoping that this will be especially helpful if you are not quite sure what you’re passionate about right now, if you can’t figure out how to fit your passions into your current circumstances, or if you’ve lost sight of what excites you and brings you joy and fulfillment.

 I discussed this topic with my friend Rachel Nielson, who hosts the 3 in 30 Podcast. We’ve both noticed that many of our listeners have struggled to identify their passions.

I hear from a lot of women in the 3 in 30 community that are feeling pulled, they want to invest their gifts in something, but they don’t know what. And figuring out the “what” is what is difficult for a lot of us.

I did an interview on my show with Brooke Snow about finding your life’s purpose, and she talked about looking back at your life, and analyzing all of the times when you felt the most fulfilled, kind of those milestone events in your life. When you look back on your life, what stands out to you as key memories from elementary school, middle school, high school? Write them all down and then see if there’s a thread that goes through them all. Because that can be a clue.

So my older sister did it. Her kids are all in school now, and she wants to invest and find more fulfillment. She noticed that all of her most precious memories had to do with either music, or really close friendships or both. And so she thought, “Okay, now I’m going into my 40s. What can I do to bring more music back into my life and more friendship. So she’s been auditioning for shows in her local community, and she’s been reaching out to more of her friends and making that more of a priority now that they don’t all have young children anymore.

Lubna Jamal, whom you might remember from episode 58, is all about experimentation.

Be ready to be confused by my career. Maybe it’s my midlife crisis, I don’t know. I got married young. So when I came to the United States from Pakistan, I was at that crossroads of “What I what do I want to do?” I knew I wanted to have a family and, of course, starting off on a career that wouldn’t support that didn’t seem feasible in terms of time and effort and investment. But I had started working at a school and I enjoyed it. So I went down the path of getting my teaching license. And I taught for almost 15 years, maybe more. And it gave me the flexibility to match my schedule with the kids schedule. When they were born, I could take some time off. So I was able to balance it fairly well, with with that career choice.

After 15 years, now the kids are a little older, I figured, I’ve come to that point where I want to do something different. I’ve explored everything I could with teaching. So I went down the path of photography. So it was a very life-changing decision to go into something you’ve never done before. And it’s risky, and you can fail. And you have to take a leap of faith and see where it takes you.

So I learned those things about myself, just by deciding I want a career change. And I think that has been the most amazing decision that I have made. Because even though there were many days where I was unsure, “Am I doing the right thing?” It was still something that challenged me. aSo I taught myself a lot of things. I taught myself some business aspects of things and then that led me to my MBA degree. So I’m currently enrolled full time in an MBA degree.

Lubna is also a writer, who very appropriately blogs at themeaderingpath.com. I love how she’s not afraid to try new things.

If you’re trying to figure out what to even experiment with, Jen Brewer has a great exercise for you.

It’s funny because I just put my 18-year-old daughter through this little system today, because she was just trying to pick a major in college. So I draw two circles on a paper to make a Venn diagram. One of them you label talents, skills, or gifts. And you just fill it in. It’s not a time to be humble. It’s not a time to pretend you can’t sing even though you’ve got the voice of angels. Write down the things you know you’re good at naturally good or that you’ve built skills in. No filter, just let it go.

The other circle, you label passions. So my daughter’s comeback this morning was “I don’t have any passions.” So if you feel like that, like “I’ve been changing diapers for the past five years, I don’t have any passions,” ask yourself the question, “If time and money were no obstacle, what would I do?” The number one thing people say is travel. Okay, fine, put that down. But then go to your next one.

Seriously, if you were given an entire day to do whatever you wanted to do, what would you do? That goes in your passion circle. Or if you find yourself really looking forward to an activity, that’s your passion. Or if you’ve done something and lost track of time, that’s your passion.

It’s those little things that you love. And again, it’s not what you’re supposed to love. It’s not what you tell people you love. Just things that you love to do.

And then you step back and you look at those two circles. And you see things either that fit into both circles, or things that are complementary between the circles. Look at that. And that gets you centered on what your core is.

I went through a time where I would do everything. I taught aerobics once. I would teach classes. I got involved in everything. And I found myself just getting tired, because I wanted to do these things, but I didn’t know what to hone in on.

I finally realized I love writing, I love speaking, and I love malnutrition work. So I decided to look at how those three things work together what I can do with that.

And she pursues these passions whole-heartedly. She’s published several books, and she travels to a small village in Guatemala several times a year, often with her husband and all seven of her children, to help educate the local population about nutrition and gardening and to help them set up sustainable systems.

I feel the most alive when I am digging a garden in a completely forgotten remote area, that’s not even a blip on a map somewhere so that some family can have food to feed their kids. That to me is my total Zen. And that’s part of why I truly feel like I was put on this earth. It doesn’t mean that I don’t focus on my kids. But it means that I definitely carve out time that I can do that. When I’m home writing is my oxygen. I will let my house go to pot if I’m truly honest, to get some writing time in. And it’s okay. I used to feel guilty about that. And I’m like, “Yeah, they can all clean. It’s okay.” Because they can either come home to a clean house and a bitter mom, or a dirty house and a mom who welcomes them because I got my writing time in for the day.

You can find Jen at jenbrewer.com.

If Jen’s list-making approach is hard for you, and you have trouble filling that Venn diagram, one great way to get those lists rolling is to ask your close friends and family to help you fill them up. They’ve probably noticed many of your strengths, talents, and interests that you may take for granted. Mary Reckmeyer and Jennifer Robison talk about this is their fabulous book, Strengths Based Parenting. They say, “talents are so innate, so ever-present, that you might not even realize you have them. In fact, people typically think that whatever talents they have, everybody has. That’s how closely intertwined your talents are with your behaviors and your perception of the world.”

I experienced this recently with a friend of mine who said she really didn’t have any passions. But I know her. I know that she’s fascinated by nutrition. She’s one of the only women I know who is disciplined enough to work out alone, every morning, with only herself to be accountable to. She’s also efficient and detail oriented, which led her to start her own cleaning business. She’s a master gift giver, good at discerning just the right thing for the right person. She anticipates people’s needs and delights in filling them. She finds great fulfillment and joy in helping others in this way. When I pointed these things out to her she thought about it for a minute and said, “I guess you’re right, I never really considered those things my passions, but I do really love them.”

This was the case for Rebecca Brown Wright, whose passion for writing was under her nose the whole time, it just took her a while to identify it.

Even before I knew how to like write stories, I would write lists. I’d write the name and ages of everyone in my family and just type that on the typewriter because I was a child of the 80s and 90s. Then when we got a computer, I started writing little stories. And I never realized that that could be my career.

Even through high school and college, I thought I hated writing because it was research papers and just lots of different types of writing. I got good grades, but I didn’t necessarily enjoy it.

Then when my daughter was a baby, I wanted to share about her. So I had a little blogspot blog, and I was just putting up pictures. And then I thought this is boring with just pictures. So I started writing little things about her. It was just so fun, and I started to put my personality into it. And then I realized I do like writing. I I love writing in this form. I love memoir writing, I love storytelling.

Then I started to pursue that as a career. And even when I haven’t had writing jobs, I continue to write as a passion.

Like many of us, Rebecca got sidetracked by something she thought she was passionate about, but which didn’t turn out to be the right fit.

Somebody told me you should major in the thing that you spend your free time doing. And at the time I really liked looking at art. And so I thought well, that’s what I want to do. And I still do love looking at art, but it was just something that I like to do on the side. It wasn’t something that was driving me. I didn’t feel this driving force to always be looking at art and studying art.

So I picked the wrong direction with a good question. It was a good thought for someone to say, but it wasn’t complete enough for me. If I had asked myself why I kept feeling drawn to art, I think I would have figured out that story is what I love. And I think I would have understood that being a writer and telling stories is more interesting to me.

But this art history sidetrack was not a fail or a waste of time. Sometimes the best way to discover what we like is to figure out what we don’t like. That’s what happened to Nancy Maldonado as well.

Isn’t it wild that we expect teenagers, 18-year-olds, to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives? It’s so much pressure that we put on people. I was 100% set on being an athletic trainer. Then I went to college and that was my major. I got the opportunity to go volunteer at the Olympics as an athletic trainer. And I hated it.

So I came back and I had to rethink what I wanted to do. I still wanted to do something with physical fitness and wellness, so my undergrad is in kinesiology, and then my Master’s is in exercise physiology.

She worked in the health and fitness industry for a while, which included starting her own business to help corporations develop wellness programs, and then eventually working for a non-profit organization. This is where she discovered her true passion—challenging and changing systems for under-resourced communities. And really, the seeds for that passion had been planted long before—she had just pursued it in a volunteer capacity up to that point.

Now she pursues this passion professionally as well, as the CEO of the Chicano Federation of San Diego. If you can imagine, she started this role right before COVID hit, and has been doing amazing things. I’ll be featuring Nancy’s story in her own episode this month, so you’ll be able to learn more about her and her passions.

I love stories like Nancy’s—really a tale of self-discovery. She keeps moving forward and fine-tuning her passions.

I also started out in a major that was quite the right fit for me. By the end of my sophomore year in college, I was well into my coursework as a biology teaching major, and I had really enjoyed my classes. I grabbed a course catalog (back when they were made of paper) and headed to my favorite grassy hill to pick my classes for the next year. Usually, shopping for classes was a treat for me, like visiting a candy shop. I loved figuring out what I wanted to learn next. But suddenly I realized I had taken all the classes in my current major that I was really excited about—like biology, chemistry, anatomy and physiology. I loved those classes, but when

I looked at the rest of the classes I had left, I realized I just wasn’t that interested. What did interest me were classes in Contemporary British Literature, Linguistics, and Shakespeare, creative writing. Basically anything and everything in the English department.

So I switched. I realized that I liked biology, but I loved writing and literature. I always had. I directed this passion to a career as a magazine writer and editor. I also knew I was passionate about motherhood, so when that finally happened for me, I put the writing aside for a bit. Within my career as a stay-at-home mom and home manager, I found a perfect opportunity to pursue my love for learning new things, from cooking to home remodeling to child development. Then as my kids got older, I was able to put my two careers together and create How She Moms. I’ve also been able to cultivate passions for music and outdoor adventure along the way.

And now more than ever, I’ve been able to learn new things with the abundance of information that has become so very accessible—through online courses and podcasts, documentaries that we can access on-demand, and books in so many different formats. We live in an educational wonderland. You don’t have to be in college to have that course catalog experience that I had—browsing through an e-learning site can be a great way to identify what sparks your interest. I subscribe to MasterClass, which I adore, and I’ve taken classes from some of my favorite people on writing, creating documentaries, songwriting, and business.

All of these resources can function for you like that course catalog did for me. You can browse the courses offered from an e-learning platform, or look at the courses a local college offers and see which ones spark your curiosity. Then experiment! Sign up for a few that interest you and see if you were right. You don’t have to be actively pursuing a degree to continue your education.

And then there are some people, like Rachel who figure out their passions early and emphatically. Two women who fit in this category, Alexandra Rozo and Castellanos-Wolf found each other through their shared passion for Flamenco. Here’s Wendy.

I always knew I wanted to dance. It’s one of the things that just came naturally to me. In fact, when I was a child, my parents would put me in the living room and say, “Dance Wendy, dance!” I loved it at first, and then I hated it and didn’t want to dance for the people in the living room. But I did still want to go to the studio. And I was really fortunate that my parents were supportive in that regard.

So I grew up doing ballet and jazz and hip hop and modern and all that stuff. In college, I actually was a dance major. I went to UCLA. And my degree is called World Arts and Cultures, but really, it’s dance with some cultural anthropology. So it was a really cool degree to pursue. And while I was there, I was able to engage in other passions.

My other passion has always been reading and writing. I was able to take some writing classes, some bilingual writing classes, a lot of literature and film. So it was really neat, to be able to pursue all of those things, and then come out of college and have that be my life. I’ve always had a day job, because artists need to stitch their income together. Unless you have a really awesome gig that pays all the bills, that doesn’t always happen. It comes around every once in a while, but not every day. And so I’ve always had a day job in education. And then my real life happens at night, when I do my dance shows or other personal projects.

And here’s Alex.

From probably the age of three, or maybe before, I’ve always just been an entertainer. I love to dance and sing. I wanted to be a superstar.

Then as I got older, I actually got really interested in other things. For a minute there, I was, like, “Oh, I’m gonna be an astronaut.” And then I really love animals. So I was all intoJane Goodall and research. But my mom supported me in the dancing and the acting and all that. So that’s just kind of what I did growing up. I worked a lot as a child actor, until my teenage years. And then I stopped, took a step back, and got married, I had my daughter, got divorced…. Life happened.

And now I’m starting to get back into what my passion is—acting and dancing, the entertainment industry. Now I realized, I had let a part of me kind of just die, and I wasn’t happy. It’s part of who I am. I love it. I’m a creative person I love working on projects and coming up with things. So I’m so happy that I’m coming back to it.

These two talented women also host a really great podcast, Mamá Cita, with a clever name, because cita means date in Spanish. Oh how I love a good play on words. You’ll definitely want to take them up on the offer of a mom date and listen. They’re a lot of fun and they choose fascinating topics to discuss.

Sometimes, a new passion finds you. Raj Petersson also knew pretty early that she wanted to be a surgeon. She started shadowing her dad, also a surgeon, as early as high school, and found it fascinating and fulfilling. She talks about this in episode 57, How She Transitions to Motherhood: Work. But she also fell into another lifelong passion in college, totally unexpectedly–rowing.

It was totally by accident. When I went to boarding school, I had to pick a sport for the fall. I wanted to do club tennis, but it was full by the time I went to the signup and so the only options left for my that would fit my class schedule was rowing and aerobics class. I didn’t want to do aerobics class because I wasn’t the most coordinated at doing stuff like that. So I just fell into rowing. I didn’t really know much about it.

So I tried it, and at first I was really nervous. They made me a coxswain, because I was small, instead of a rower. I was really nervous about that because I didn’t like talking to people and I was super shy. I was just like, “You want me to grab a megaphone and yell at people on the boat?” But after doing it for like a week, I was just hooked on the sport. It was so fun. And I ended up really liking the coxing as well. I got to steer the boat and kind of got to be the coach of the boat and the team coordinator. Then I sort of accidentally fell into the team at Brown that ended up winning national championships, which then led to the next step too.

By next step, she means that she actually went to the 2000 Olympic Games for the U.S. Women’s Rowing team. She still gets together with teammates for an annual rowing competition, she’s coached teams several times, and now volunteers on the board of her community rowing team, making rowing more accessible to underserved youth.

Leslie Graff is a woman of many talents and passions, which you’ll find out more about later this month, but today, we’ll just talk about how she discovered her passion for painting.

We moved to Virginia, I had my first child. I wasn’t really even painting. I had painted a couple things. I was like, “I’m gonna plot my paints from high school, we need something on the walls of my house.” And I probably did two or three paintings.

Then I started painting just a little bit more. And a woman came over to her house, and she saw a painting hanging on the wall. And she was like, “I love this painting. Where did you get it? Can I buy it?” And I said, “Oh, sure.”

Then she said, “Well, actually, I have this gallery shop, would you do a show?” I’m always the type to take on a little challenge, so I painted a bunch of paintings, which was really good for me. I was using, nap times, and I would pull out my pants in the kitchen and paint. And then an hour or two later, I’d clean it up, put it all away.

So I did pieces, and I had the show, and I really didn’t think like anyone was going to buy my work. I was like, “Who buys art?” And then I ended up selling half the show. And then it just kind of kept going and going.

I love that story of how Leslie was discovered so much! And I’m so grateful, because now her art hangs on my walls, and I love it so much. You can check out her amazing art at lesliegraff.com. You’ll hear more of her interview later this month.

Ashley Brown pursued a nursing career mostly for practical reasons, and discovered a new passion along the way.

I feel like I discovered my passion once I became a nurse. I decided to go into nursing because my mom was a CNA for the longest time. She’s always been a CNA, taking care of the elderly. I used to go to work with her often. I love the geriatric population. I love older adults, they are my heart. I love them. So I knew I would go into nursing, and I knew it would be able to provide for me. I love helping people. I’m a caring person—a nurturer at heart. And my strength is like execution and nurses have to execute. I’m also heartfelt, so that just was a good combination.

But I didn’t discover my passion, which is really education, and teaching and helping people go from where they are to where they want to be, until I started to train new nurses and students. That’s when I was like, “Oh, this feels good. I’m helping them. I’m learning more myself.” Because when you’re educating and teaching others, you have to constantly be learning as well. I love that.

So that’s when I discovered that I had a love for education, which is so funny, because I remember vividly being in nursing school and saying I would never be a teacher like them. But God was like, “I’ve got something for you.”

Sometimes we feel like we have to go outside of what we’re doing. But sometimes it can just be, what are you doing currently they brings you pleasure makes you happy? What is that? What is that currently in your life?

In addition to being a nurse educator, Ashley educates moms too, through her podcast and business, Routine and Things. Ashley’s advice about looking inside what you’re already doing, to discover your passions applies so much to motherhood as well. I did a whole episode about writing our own job descriptions as moms (episode 30, a Mom’s Job), focusing our time and effort on our personal interests and specialties and letting some of the other things go. Motherhood and home management are such broad categories, that we can really discover and pursue our passions within them.

Sarah Brinton started her career as an English teacher, and then decided to go back to school to get her law degree.

I went to law school thinking that I was going to fix public schools. But once I started, I realized that I liked the law in general, because it turns out it’s a profession of stories and rules. And I love stories! I love rules! I loved the textbooks—the most fascinating I’ve ever had. They are literally all stories. It’s like reading Encyclopedia Brown. Criminal Law, even contract law, all these things like that I never would have considered at all were all really, really interesting.

But making laws is a conversation about about rules and about stories too. I realized I was probably going to need to start talking out loud to other people about what I think should happen. That pretty quickly gets you into talking about legislators. Then I started thinking “I’ve been talking with all these people who are powerful and smart and cool about laws.”

I knew women that I went to college with that are so smart and so sane. Why weren’t they part of these conversations? Where were they? How would the world be different if the women I knew weren’t just out there trying to operate underneath other people’s laws, but were, in fact, part of the creation of laws. I saw the need for them to be there. And the opportunity it just kept getting bigger and bigger.

So Sarah started an organization called Elect Women Utah that encourages and assists women to enter politics. I love how one thing just led to another, and every step kind of facilitated the next.

I wanted to end this beautiful parade of passionate women with a reminder: You are also amazing. One of the biggest obstacles getting in the way of identifying our own talents and passions is that old thief, comparison. We see other moms, like many of the women featured in this episode, who are living big dreams, and think there’s something wrong with us if we’re not hustling after a side gig or getting verified on Instagram. But there’s nothing wrong with you if you have no interest in becoming Instafamous or moving up a corporate ladder or filling an art gallery. The world would be pretty weird, not to mention really competitive, if we all followed the same dreams.