We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dr. Heather Hetheru Miller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dr. Heather Hetheru below.
Dr. Heather Hetheru, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you ever experienced a times when your entire field felt like it was taking a U-Turn?
The Post-Covid environment has caused a wide U-turn in the lives of working and everyday people. In fact, we have made a significant pivot from a singularly defined “work-force” into a new set of options of “work-choice”. During covid, the mindset of what was of value to working people beyond making money shifted to more meaningful contributions for family, community, and the world. This mind-set included a new awareness of our mortality, the stressful aspects of our quality of life especially in work-life balance and the legacy of purpose and meaning we want to bring to the world. Today, we are embracing our work; away from “force” and more toward “choice.”
This is the environment that has elevated wellness businesses of all types and catapulted the need for my unique services as a Personal Change Coaching and a Facilitator in work “choice” development. With Your Inspired Journey, as we “Guide Ordinary People into Extraordinary Lives, we help corporations become more “person-centered” and employees see the outcomes of their efforts impacting “real” people not just the corporations. We also work with individuals in 1-on-1 coaching. The term “ordinary” is loosely used to describe people who may not yet see how important they are to the ecosystems that they actively or passively engage. This community of people may have already defined or re-defined how they see themselves, others and the work they choose to do and/or want to do but are unsure how to gracefully pivot. This is where I enter as a Personal Change Coach and Facilitator.
About 85% of my clients are seeking to embrace a new paradigm in their lives free from the bonds of past stressors, past behaviors, and self-sabotaging beliefs. Together, we embrace the 5-step process of change based on our YIJ methodology – New information, appreciation, application, transformation and elevation. During this process, there are deepening levels of self-exploration that we probe, unpack, release and then reimagine our desires, expectations and create strategies that are personal to the individual’s inspired journey.
Dr. Heather Hetheru, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am Dr. Heather Hetheru Miller, Personal Change Coach, Facilitator, Director, Activist, Author and Village Elder. Through Your Inspired Journey, LLC; Encourage Me I’m Young, Inc. and in my purpose and passion; I have found that the restoration of family is at the core of the vision for my life. In working with women, mothers and grandmothers; especially those raising sons, I have mended the threads woven throughout my life’s journey. My career pathways have embodied every living generation from birth to elders; from early childhood to eldercare; and the important corners and sharp edges of life. Over the span of 4 decades, I have engaged most of our social determinants of health including work in education to the workforce, the workplace to places of worship, from recreation to economics and entertainment to agriculture. At each turn, I sought a person-centered contribution, approach and/or solution to my deeper question; how do we mend our communities and produce healthy happy families?
When I speak to “person-centered” approaches it is because I have spent more than 4 decades understanding what builds a meaningful ecosystem for a person, a family and a community. In the broad sense of my journey, I have deeply engaged in the workforce, community, economic, business and personal development in the exploration, empowerment and elevation of people from birth to 95. I was never just showing up for a job, I was contributing to new and meaningful pathways for myself and others. It was this journey of reflection that shaped me as a leader, activist, personal change coach and ultimately elevated as a village elder. On this journey, I have uncovered how our expectations are deeply rooted in our past childhood experiences and how necessary it is to revisit, reflect restore and reimagine these intimate spaces to find and refine our pain, passion and purpose. It is on these very narrow reflective paths that I uncovered my own expectations, limiting beliefs, distractions and solutions; it was also in these moments where the tools, methodologies, programs and practical applications were tested and aligned.
Overtime, I shared these revelations, insights and life lessons through programs, articles, one-on-one coaching, classroom instruction, blogs, podcasts, activism, policies, mediation, books, interviews, panel discussions, conferences, workshops and seminars. Ultimately, Your Inspired Journey (YIJ) emerged as a system to help corporations, organizations, special interest groups, centers of learning, families and individuals continue their exploration with YIJ as we “…guide ordinary people into extraordinary lives.” What sets us apart from others is how we engage and why what we do matters. Our shared path leads others to life-changing behaviors that strengthen our individual and often collective ecosystems. We become the change we want to see in the world.
I am most proud of the many ways the path of my life has crossed and impacted others. I am proud that so many of them have left an indelible imprint in my life that simply being thankful doesn’t seem like nearly enough. There is real value in being in the world but not of it. Meaning that I do not have to accept that the world has the final say on who I and others decide to be and do; we can rewrite healthy narratives, create meaningful engagement and build ecosystems that feed and heal the mind, body and spirit composite continuously recreating a future shaped by the extra ordinary. I believe empowering people to be and become their best self through self-exploration over time can solve many of our social problems of hopelessness and limiting beliefs, and elevate feelings of value, gratitude, belonging, and purpose.
I would like each reader to know that you are part of an intricate and interconnected story where you are the hero on a quest to find and become your best self. While some days may feel very ordinary, you are yet an extraordinary character in many other stories known and unknown called the journey. The journey encourages us to revisit, reflect, restore and reimagine the intimate spaces we have shared to find and refine our pain, passion and purpose. Your story is often translated as your journey because it is always moving forward. You are always growing and getting older whether you do it intentionally or not. Growing older and crossing paths with others is often out of your control. But what you do as a result of crossing paths with others and getting older is up to you. These experiences become important parts of the core engagement systems that shape your ecosystems and the narratives of your life.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
On the journey to my many career pathways, I have gained valuable life experiences that have tested my resolve, belief in myself, and resourcefulness. But they have also helped to shape my leadership, strategic planning processes and resilience. One significant challenge that I encountered was a triple promotion on the first day of a new job. I was interviewed and hired for the position of manager of a business incubator. The day I arrived to start my new manager position, I was called into the office of the Executive Director who congratulated me on my new job and asked me if I would accept, instead, the role of the Director of Business and Economic Development (B.E.D.) for the organization.
This role would require me to build an entirely new division in the organization that would include multiple departments and programs that included a business center department (that would include a business incubator), community economic pathways for businesses in a 3 mile radius, an existing youth entrepreneurship program, a new job placement and training program for returning citizens, and an entrepreneurship training program and the design, management and renovation of a building for the business incubator. The new division would require a strategic plan, funding, and staffing. I was both excited and overwhelmed as the level of responsibility for day one had tripled 3 levels and I did not have a true grasp of what the journey ahead would entail; personally or professionally.
After a quick call to my husband, who told me that he believed in me and they had to also or they would not have promoted me on my first day! I gathered my courage, accepted the challenge and never looked back. In 5 years, I transformed the B.E.D. division into a team of 35; a renovated fully occupied business incubator and office center, served more than 2,000 businesses, supported the expansion of our youth entrepreneurship programs, placed more than half of the men and women in the returning citizens program in full-time employment or skills training programs while decreasing recidivism, established an entrepreneurship training partnership in 6 communities, and so much more. After the first year, the ED that hired me took another job with a different company promoting the second in command to the new ED.
By year 3 my husband was tired of my long days, late nights, and so much time away from home and my absence from the business he was building for us. He also knew that I wanted to open my own training and coaching business but was preoccupied with building the B.E.D. division. After years of pouring time, resources, and countless achievements into this new division, at the start of my 6th year, I was unexpectedly terminated, just before Christmas. It was a day I’d never forget. On an early mid December morning, I was called into the office by the Executive Director (accompanied by a consultant hired to help expand the organization). I came in, as I always did, ready to take notes and get the newest assignment. I was invited in to have a seat and it was then that I was told the news— simply and without any emotion, I was told that my services were no longer needed, and I would not be returning after Christmas break. I was handed a letter that stated much the same, short and to the point, giving no reason and no acknowledgement of my almost 6 years of tireless service. I was in complete shock; taken totally by surprise.
To make matters worse, as I walked back to my office, the Director was calling my phone and reminded me that I needed to pack my things and leave the premises by the end of the day with no exceptions. I was devastated and in shock. I quickly met with members of my team also shocked and enraged. I encouraged them to complete the job and tasks we started because the people trusted us to do and deliver what we had promised. At first, I wanted to appeal the decision to the board of directors, as I thought how could they do this to me? I felt desperately betrayed, used, embarrassed and unappreciated. When January arrived, I had decided that maybe this was a sign. It was time for me to start my own business. It was part of the process that I stopped and started for the past 4 years. I poured so much into building the B.E.D. division that I delayed my dream of owning my own business and suddenly, I needed my own business to survive.
My remaining resources, including my savings, funded the first year of my business and carried me and my son (I was a divorcee then) through one of the most difficult and exciting times in my career. I took the loss of my marriage, my job (and my very first termination in my life) one day at a time as I planned, poured time and resources into my business as I had done for so many years for others. I knew that by getting through that year, I would be stronger for all the lessons learned and all of the hard work I invested but this time, I invested and poured into my own dream.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Grief is a killer. Or at least, that’s how I felt after I lost my best friend to Toxemia and complications of childbirth. She died young; not reaching 30 years old. Her passing left behind a husband, an 8-year-old daughter and a newborn son. At the same time, I was separated from my first husband (yes, I’ve been married 3 times) who I believed to be my soulmate. He left me just days before her sudden passing. In fact, prior to her painful transition, she was instrumental in helping us work out some of our marital difficulties encouraging us not to sweat the small stuff and to remember that we were truly soul mates. I was grieving the pending loss of my marriage when she passed away. I couldn’t believe it. Between losing him and her, my life would never be the same. They were my anchors holding me and my world in place.
I didn’t know one person could feel so much grief that it could become physical. For months, I carried my grief like a fully packed suitcase strapped to my chest. The weight was often unbearable. In spite of the mask I wore and my massive cover up in my daily life, I kept making adjustments for my pain to get through the day. It was early in my career, in my late 20’s, when I decided to take my own life. Because of God’s mercy and grace, I am a thriver and here to help others navigate away from suicide, grief and heartache, the silent killers. The details of this incredible journey is written in my book “Cardinal in Red Dress” My Journey Through the Valley of Death.
This walk on my journey was before I had any children, before the idea of my own business had germinated, before I became committed to self-reflection, self-care and self-exploration. I had hit the ground so hard in my fall, that I was below zero; buried in grief and unable to resurrect the shell that the months of deep intimacy with grief and heartache would shape. I kept my ménage à trois with grief and heartache a secret for as long as I could before it started to affect my job and change the landscape of my world.
In hindsight, I didn’t have to die for my resurrection to take place or my intimate affair with grief and heartache to end. I did need new information. I needed the appreciation for the information; the desire for application of the information, time to be transformed by the application and elevated to a new level of understanding that knowing the stages of grief would deliver to me. This was the birth of the process of change; a YIJ methodology and my personal theory of change; a strategy that has supported over 20,000 clients, seekers, and followers over the last 3 decades. It was this process that refined me, restored me and gave me permission to reimagine my life empowered and empowering others. I learned just how important each one of us is. How important we are to family and how important family is to community. I kept the lessons, remained person-centered but I surrendered the baggage; broke the mask and wrote the inspired books. I also shared the inspiring messages in high places and walked others across the thresholds of their low spaces as we uncovered and created together the “what’s next”. For every heavy heart, there is a light guiding you toward an inspired journey.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yourinspiredjourney.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspired_journey1/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourinspiredjourneywithHeatherHetheruMiller/?checkpoint_src=any
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-heather-hetheru-miller-176b5b113/
Image Credits
Photographs made available by Kahn Santori Photography; Ashley Nicole Allen Photography