Episode: Trust Your Path — Loving the Journey, Episode 4

Guest: Heather Morgan, Host of Wandering the Wild Mess

Podcast Link: https://pod.co/loving-the-journey-with-donna-kunde/christian-hammer-you-don-t-have-to-fit-the-mold-to-build-something-worth-listening-to

YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/dfCNcGaI4Xo?si=4Y1BYdXUt4q-0jp4

Heather was sitting in the audience at a TEDx event when it happened. Not on stage. Not pitching anything. Just sitting there, in the middle of her unraveling, when she felt what she can only describe as a sign: start a podcast.

She had never been to Nashville. She moved there alone. She booked a recording studio. She hit record.

Not because she had a niche. Not because she had a plan or a launch sequence or a monetization strategy. She hit record because she was so alone in what she was feeling that she thought: I cannot be the only one feeling this way.

That show became Wandering the Wild Mess, now more than 80 episodes in.

One of the most honest things Heather says in this conversation is also the simplest: we know the direction. We just don't know the how. And she says that's okay. The path builds when you commit.

This is not a motivational platitude. For Heather, it was a survival strategy. She didn't know how to podcast. She didn't know how to build an audience. She didn't know if anyone would listen. But she knew the direction, and she moved toward it before she had any of the answers.

Most people wait for the how before they say yes. Heather's story is an argument for doing it in the other order.

Heather thought she was making a show for women. Divorced women. Women rebuilding their lives after loss.

Then she got a five-paragraph review from a divorced man she had never met. He told her her podcast was helping him through one of the hardest seasons of his life.

Today, Wandering the Wild Mess has an audience that is roughly 50% men and 50% women. For a show about divorce, identity, and emotional reinvention, that number tells you something important: authenticity reaches people. It reaches them whether or not they expected to be reached. It reaches them whether or not the show was built for them.

You cannot always know who needs what you are making. That is not a reason to wait.

If you are in a season of starting over, rebuilding, or questioning who you are without the things that used to define you, this episode is for you.

Heather did not start Wandering the Wild Mess because she had it figured out. She started it because she didn't, and she couldn't find anyone else willing to say so out loud. As she puts it: you have been through every hard thing you have ever faced. And that is why you are here.

Listen to Loving the Journey wherever you get your podcasts, and connect with Heather at her website.