I spent years building, losing, surviving, starting over, and fighting for more money. I was really fighting for the freedom to be there when it mattered.

June 28, 2026

Author Robyn Lynn Tanner

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Friday, I drove my son to Daytona Beach to meet up with his friend from Missouri, who was visiting the area. It’s only two and a half hours from us, so when my son asked, I said of course.

Then my brain caught on.

Can’t get much past her.

She immediately began a dissertation against this spontaneous road trip. “We have to do this and that. We need to get this done and that is on the table too, and we’re behind here, and I really wish that was already happening so we could just…”

I cut her off.

We should totally give her a name. I’m open to ideas.

I looked at my son when he questioned me, “Are you sure, Mom?”

“Yes. Absolutely. We make things happen here. Pick a day.”

We put it on the calendar and locked it in.

I didn’t get anything done I wanted to do beforehand.  At least not to the level or degree of standards I set for myself. I set crazy, wild standards that are not delusional, just what I know I can accomplish because I’m phenomenal at what I do and I have goals.

My son doesn’t care about that, though.

My son cares about seeing his friend on any day of the week with last-minute notice.

And I get to do that for him because I created a life where I live around myself.

Life wasn’t always like this, though.

Even when I had the dream job and dream gym and dream money pouring in, I was a prisoner to all of it, carrying a cage of overcommitted promises and plans I no longer wanted to keep.

Working 17-hour days, 12-hour days, six days a week. And on the seventh, I would go to church only to get a message for my clients instead of letting God pour into me.

I was hurting inside.

I was fighting against my past.

What I survived.

What I was left with.

What was taken from me.

What I had to fight my way out of.

Why what happened to me happened.

What to do with it all.

Why I was acting out the way I was or did.

Why I couldn’t save my marriage.

Why I didn’t try harder.

Where were my communication skills then?

All I could do was think about saving other people.

Making sure no one got left behind.

Everyone had to feel powerful and capable and able and inspired and filled up.

Making sure no one made the same mistakes I did.

Making sure they didn’t settle or hide in plain sight or live double lives.

I didn’t want them to be sitting in their pity.

I would go home and collapse into loneliness.

Into food.

Into the arms of men who would never commit to me.

Into wine.

Into more work.

Into self-help.

Into exercise.

Into dreaming of a way out.

Into anger against the people who raised me.

I was captive to the inner war going on. Meanwhile, my external world was a light for others to transform the worst versions of themselves into their best.

My kids missed out on kid stuff. They didn’t get to do sports or school activities like the other kids. We always had to be at the gym. At work, working. We didn’t know how to access the time or money or energy. We were freedom poor. 

So they became independent young. Resilient fast. They picked up on my stress. My pressure. My internal and external wars against myself. They learned to cook. Helped with grocery shopping. Did chores. Did schoolwork on their own. Became resourceful. Creative. Made do with what they had.

And they still do.

I felt guilt.

I felt pride.

I felt shame and embarrassment.

I still do sometimes.

People who say otherwise are liars.

I try really hard to not lie. It’s exhausting living two versions of yourself. It’s much easier to be yourself and let everyone who disagrees fall off the edge of who you are.

I fought the duality of being a single mom living her American dream while the dream kept making her and her children live in poverty. Ignoring the voices to quit and get “a real job.”

I would get us out and then stuck again, turning my pain and guilt and pride into fuel to get us out of the merry go round of Hail Mary miracles. 

Out of survival.

Out of debt.

Out of homelessness.

Out of being trapped by a dream.

Then I cycled right back into it again.

Because it is who I was.

A survivor.

A fighter.

An overcomer.

I needed a struggle to perform and produce. I needed a war to win. If there wasn’t one, I’d create one.

Physically.

In my body.

Financially, with money.

Emotionally.

Verbally.

However I could create a tornado in my life to destroy the possibility of me not having to constantly struggle, I would create it.

It took years to clean that shit up. Not wash it away or off. There is residue that lingers.

But I decided to put it down.

I decided to walk away.

I decided to burn it all down.

From being left for dead, to being single, moving states with no money and no job and a dream in my back pocket. 

To the death of my stepmom and wondering why God took her and saved me for a few more rounds of living and giving whatever light was left in me to others. 

From building a business from an idea in my head to a dirt field to a brick-and-mortar building, to walking away from it all, to canceling all my clients by raising prices, changing courses, becoming someone new they either couldn’t keep up with, no longer resonated with, or hated.

People quit.

People resisted.

People judged.

People said they'd ride or die.

They aren’t.

To becoming an author and speaker and high-performance coach and working with top coaches in the industry, to losing it all financially, to using every financial resource I have and had to build and create and research and live off of, to never settle or give up in the gap of whatever this.

ALL so I can take my son to the beach on any given day.

To see him and his friend light up like Christmas morning when they saw each other. See them hug and smile like giddy, long-lost brothers.

After a year of video chats, gaming, “bro,” “dude,” and whatever else teenage boys say instead of admitting they miss each other, they were standing face to face in real life. Grinning. Trying to act normal. Laughing. Slapping backs. Looking at each other like, “You’re really here.”

That was a six-figure paycheck. That was success.

His friend had cleared the day for my son like I had cleared the day for my son.

They spent a full 8.5 hours together. Beach. Pool. Hotel room. Ice cream. Candy shop. Wandering around doing what normal teenagers should do without a phone glued to their hands.

I watched my son stand in front of another young man and receive the full evidence of his own presence in someone else’s life.

He was wanted there.

Not invited out of politeness.

Not squeezed in.

Not tolerated.

Wanted.

You could see the mutual love and light and awe and respect. 

This is what I struggled for.

To be here now.

To be paid in the abundance of watching my son know his presence matters in someone else’s life.

To be paid in the knowing, I am there on any given day for the two humans I created. 

My son has nearly 20k fans. He’s a filmmaker, editor, creative, and a phenomenal self-made visionary who will one day walk the red carpet. He’s witty, a pioneer with grit and hustle with my machete mentality.  My daughter is a successful student, employee, and the leader of her friend group who watches out for everyone and speaks her mind with her body language and not giving a F who gets their panties in a wad because of it.

Imagine that.

I failed so many times, so that I could break the chain that my parents could not. I failed so many times and suffered and fought and reinvented and rebuilt so they could become what I wasn’t and will never be.

I went through shame and humiliation and the survival of trauma and illness and rejection and abandonment and all the never-enoughness so I could raise children who would get to have a mom who could be there for them on any given day.

Some things happened once. Some things happened twice. Some became seasons of WTF, and seriously and I can’t go through this again.

But there I was… 

Car repossessed.

Evicted.

Homeless.

Broke up with.

Cheated on.

Sexually assaulted.

Credit in the 500s. Sometimes it wasn’t even on the scale.

So many surgeries. So much adversity. So much grief and rage and hurting under all the armor. 

Battling unseen forces as a high-performing rebel in a low-performing environment. 

A strong-willed, ornery, fierce, independent line leader with a loud mouth and a short fuse who made shit happen. 

No matter the cost. No matter the price I would pay.

I would not settle.

I would fight.

Body aching and painful on the inside like lightning and thunder raging inside me.

Chronic fatigue and pain debilitating me to stay stuck in place.

Yet this hunger inside to live, to identify with who I’m helping, who I’m serving, what this blessing of being saved really means.

Last night in the shower after the beach, I had the epiphany.

I can put it down.

I can put down the blessing and burden.

What if I have already lived enough, done enough, repented enough, given back enough to pay my dues for being alive still?

I can put my survivor’s guilt down.

I can end my survivor’s journey.

I can put down the burden of being alive and being saved and being used for more.

I can put down the sword and the assignment and decide that taking my son to the beach on any given day is the success.

Is the mountaintop.

Is the financial status quo because you couldn’t pay me enough to take that away from us.

You could not offer me money to take away that permission to live freely by my terms and my conditions.

 

I don’t struggle with these things anymore. They are past events. Blips that probably won't even make the next book. I am not who I am or was back then because I did the inner and outer work to return to who I've always been.

The one thing I’ve learned, is that IT IS a daily fight until it’s not.

Honoring those fights are not cheap or easy or free.

Until you put in enough reps.

Then it’s a day at the beach with your son.

 

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I Changed the Sheets Today: For High Performing Rebel Women in the Ugly Middle when Survival is no longer your full-time Job. Weekly real time raw footage essays on usefulness, identity, faith, and the strange space between who you are and who you are returning to.

By: Robyn Lynn Tanner, Author of The Machete Mentality and Founder of The Edit and 500 by 50 Mission.

Follow me on Instagram: @robynlynntanner

JOIN the 500 by 50 Mission: www.robyntanner.com/theedit

Book me to speak: [email protected]