08/05/2026
You’re looking at a woman who willingly spends her evenings studying.
Tea beside her.
Dinner at her desk.
Another certification open in front of her.
Ten-year-old Brittany would’ve thought you were looking at the wrong person.
Because school and I didn’t get along.
Homework felt like torture.
I’d already spent an entire day sitting in class trying to understand lessons that never seemed to click. By the time I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was sit back down at the dinner table and struggle through more of it.
I cried through math.
Truthfully… I cried through a lot of school.
Then, in fifth grade, I discovered what felt like the greatest secret in the world.
The back of my math book had all the answers.
It was my golden ticket.
I never told anyone because I was terrified someone would find out and take it away.
And eventually… they did.
My teacher noticed I was turning in all the right answers without any of the work to show how I got there.
My little secret disappeared.
For a long time, I carried a story about myself.
That I wasn’t good at learning.
That maybe I just wasn’t smart enough.
Even now, when my husband starts talking about numbers or the monthly budget, I can still feel a little bit of that girl show up.
But here’s what’s changed.
This isn’t homework.
No one assigned it.
No one is grading me.
This is me choosing to learn.
Night after night.
Not because I have to.
Because I can’t seem to stop wanting to.
It turns out…
I never hated learning.
I hated believing I wasn’t capable.
And I wonder how many parts of ourselves we’ve written off…
How many times we’ve said, “That’s just who I am.”
When really, we’re living inside a story that was written years ago.
Maybe healing isn’t about becoming someone new.
Maybe it’s about discovering that the story you’ve believed about yourself was never the whole truth.
From inherited…
…to intentional.
