Pick Up the Pen

June 9, 2026

On Gumption and Writing Yourself Back Into Your Own Story.

Tobia Bradley, CDC   |   Certified Divorce Coach

There is a moment in this season when you realize you have stopped being the author of your own life.

You are not making decisions anymore. You are running every choice through other people first. What will he say. What will her mother do. What will the kids think. What will my attorney advise. What will the judge see. By the time the actual decision gets made, you are no longer the one making it. Five other voices have weighed in, and your own voice is faint underneath them all.

You used to know what you wanted. Somewhere along the way, you traded knowing for asking.

Sweet friend, I want to give you something today. A word my grandmother used to use.

My Grandmother Had a Word for This

She called it gumption.

Gumption is not a word you hear much anymore, which is a shame, because there is no other word that captures the exact thing she meant. It is not confidence, because confidence can be faked, and gumption cannot. It is not courage, because courage requires fear, and gumption does not always. It is not grit, because grit is about enduring, and gumption is about acting.

Gumption is the resourceful nerve to do the thing on your own behalf without asking permission. My grandmother had it when she opened her own checking account in 1962, the year she decided she was done waiting for her husband to give her money for groceries. She had it when she planted the tomatoes in the backyard the spring after he died, even though everyone told her she was too old to keep up the garden. She had it when she told the church ladies, kindly but firmly, that she would be sitting in the back pew on Sundays now, thank you, and they could save the casseroles.

She was not a loud woman. She was not a fighter. She did not announce her gumption. She just used it, quietly, on the small decisions that were hers to make, every day, in her own life.

And in this season, sweet friend, you need it more than ever.

What Picking Up the Pen Looks Like

You have heard me say it before. Some people are still trying to write you out of your own story. Pick up the pen. Today I want to be specific about what that actually means.

Picking up the pen is not loud. It is not a dramatic announcement. It is not a Facebook post about your new chapter. It is not a speech to your ex about who you are becoming. Picking up the pen is quiet, daily, and almost always unwitnessed. It is the small act of saying, with your own hand, I am still becoming someone. I am not finished. The story is mine.

It looks like this.

Opening your own bank account. One in your own name, separate, with money that no one else can see or touch. Even if it starts with twenty dollars. The account is the point, not the balance.

Hiring a divorce coach. Going to therapy. Yes, I know what that sounds like coming from me. Hear me out. The decision to ask for help in this season is one of the bravest, most authored decisions you will make. The therapist. A coach. The lawyer. The friend you have been avoiding because you did not want to admit how bad it had gotten. Picking up the phone and asking is gumption. It is not weakness. It is one of the clearest signs that you are the one running your life now, on purpose.

Booking the trip. Signing up for the class. Starting the thing. The weekend at the beach you keep telling yourself you cannot afford. The pottery class, or the Spanish class, or the welding class you have been putting off for ten years. The small business, the blog, the garden, the recipe project you used to talk about doing someday. Each of these is a small act of authorship. You are not just surviving. You are still becoming someone.

Writing your list down. Not a goal list. Not a vision board. A list, in your own handwriting, of who you are choosing to be in this next chapter. I am the kind of mother who reads bedtime stories. I am the kind of father who shows up. I am the kind of person who keeps my word to myself. Put it where you can see it. That list is your pen on the page, made visible.

None of these are revolutionary. All of them are gumption. Together, over weeks and months, they are how you pick up the pen.

Why This Matters More Than It Looks Like It Should

I know how small these examples might sound to someone in the middle of a hard custody case. You are reading this and thinking, Tobia, I am fighting for my children. A pottery class is not going to fix what is happening. And you are right. A pottery class will not fix the case. That is not what the pottery class is for.

The class is for you. It is for the part of you that has forgotten what it feels like to choose something on your own behalf without asking anyone. It is for the muscle memory of being the one who decides. That muscle has atrophied in this season, sweet friend, because every big decision in your life is being made in a room with lawyers and judges and people who used to love you but no longer do. You need somewhere to remember what your own hand on the pen feels like.

The big decisions in this season may not be entirely yours. The small ones are. Take them back, one at a time. That is where gumption lives. Not in the courtroom. In the parking lot, in the grocery store, in the moment you sign your name.

A Word for the Person Reading This

You do not need permission. You did not need it at 22 and you do not need it now. The asking was a habit, not a requirement. The pen has been yours the whole time. You just put it down somewhere along the way, and now you are looking around the kitchen for it.

Here it is. Pick it up.

Write the next line yourself. It does not have to be a beautiful sentence. It can be a grocery list. It can be one small no. It can be one small yes. It can be the act of opening an account, or making an appointment, or signing up for the class you have been putting off. The handwriting does not have to be pretty. The handwriting just has to be yours.

And every day you pick up the pen and write the smallest line, even when no one is watching, you are doing the most important work of this whole season. You are remembering that the story is yours. That is gumption. That is your power. That is the whole thing.

Some people are still trying to write you out of your own story.

Pick up the pen. Write the next line yourself.

That is gumption. That is the whole thing.

With love,

Tobia

A NOTE

I am a Certified Divorce Coach, not an attorney. Nothing in this blog is legal advice. For questions about your case, please speak with your lawyer. I am here to walk alongside you as a coach.

ASHBY JONES & ASSOCIATES, LLC

Lexington   •   Charleston   •   Columbia

tobia@ashbyjoneslaw.com   •   803.965.9977