🖋️ The Lioness Journals | December 29, 2025
Last week was a busy one as the holiday season reached its peak. I realized I needed to pause, rather than completely drain myself by burning the candle at both ends. So I took a brief break — and I’m truly happy to be back here in this blog space.
And it’s time to pick back up where we left off. I want to continue to explore with you how to Awaken Curiosity within ourselves. Let’s recap where we have been during December, and how we will wrap up this month’s theme:
- Inquisitive — We started asking deeper questions.
- Curious — We allowed ourselves to explore without certainty.
- Insightful — We began to notice patterns, truths, and inner nudges.
This leads me to the word for this week: Inspirational. Now it’s time to take everything we have discovered so far and begin to apply those learnings to our lives. This is when change happens — and that change from within begins to quietly ripple outwards to those around us.
The word Inspirational has its roots in the Latin verb inspirare — which means “to breathe into.”
- When was the last time you were inspired by someone or something?
- When did you last feel that subtle shift inside — that tiny nudge that pushed you into recognizing an “a-ha” moment?
It is those moments of realization that make us feel alive, give us hope, breathe new energy into us, and fuel our curiosity so that we keep searching for more.
I have been “writing” for years, but it has been one day here, or one day there. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to carry a writing project through to completion. I’ve struggled for a long time to get past that “writer’s block” and truly unleash my thoughts on paper.
Until this year.
After some challenging situations and conversations at work earlier in the year, I realized that as women, we continue to be diminished in some work environments. It’s usually not with ill intentions, but rather due to naivete and lack of self-awareness of those around us.
And that’s when the inspiration bug hit me.
When I look back on my entire career, I’ve always had to fight back against that normalcy of women in the workplace, and more importantly, in technical/STEM fields. It’s still an uneven playing field. And until we break down the barriers that hold women back in STEM — until we remind women that we breathe the same, bleed the same, walk and move the same — we will continue to be told to stay quiet and be small.
That insight is what unlocked inspiration inside of me. I could help other women find their courage to speak up and diffuse the continued mansplaining and “be small and quiet” treatment.
So I started writing again.
And the result was the Roar Like A Woman book.
My point to all this: When we take stock of our own lives, dig deep into our lived experiences, we often find truths and lived experiences that can have a profound impact on our future selves. But we have to be willing to listen.
So I will leave you with this closing thought:
“Sometimes the most inspirational thing we can do is live our questions out loud.”
This week, may you find inspiration in your own experiences through deliberate questions and introspective insight. I’m walking that path alongside you, and cannot wait to hear about what you discover.
— With Gratitude,
Ronda 💛
📖 Want More?
Did this week’s reflection spark inspiration within you? If so, I invite you to explore the full Inspirational chapter in my book Roar Like A Woman. It expands on this idea of listening to your inner voice, gleaning inspiration from within, and sharing the resulting ripples with those around you.
👉 If you are interested in diving further into your own self-discovery, order your signed copy of Roar Like A Woman here.