Seventeen years ago, I began having the overwhelming feeling that the life I was living wasn’t the one I was meant to be living. I had this underlying restlessness to do something different but I had no idea what that might be. As the mom of four daughters, I had all kinds of dreams for my girls but I had forgotten what my own were. Although I was only 44 years old, I worried that it was too late to reinvent myself. And even if I could go back to college, what would I study? All I knew was that I wanted to do something that felt more meaningful than my current career in advertising and graphic design.
As it turned out my next step wasn’t something I could have planned or picked. It didn’t begin with a degree program or a trip to India. It began so quietly and so unexpectedly that I almost missed it.
It began with a whisper, one of those little voices inside you telling you to do something that feels inconvenient, unexpected, and uncomfortable. We can try to ignore them but these small voices from our soul can be persistent.
My whisper began in the soup kitchen where I was volunteering one Sunday a month. For over 10 years, I had served soup with a smile, understanding that those free meals provided kindness but not a solution. In 2007, a formerly homeless man and NYTimes bestselling author, Denver Moore, personally challenged me to do something about people experiencing homelessness by helping build the one thing people really needed: a home. Denver made me see homelessness in a way that I could never unsee and I had to decide if I was willing to do something about it or keep turning a blind eye. That meeting with Denver is what incited the whisper that would not let me go.
After two months of wrestling with that whisper, I closed my graphic design business to begin working at the soup kitchen full-time. I wasn’t serving meals but instead, developing a housing program. Immersing myself in this new service world, I began to figure out what doing something about it even meant.
That whisper led me to help raise over $10 million to build Moore Place, Charlotte’s first permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless men and women and named in part, for the man who inspired it. (The full story of meeting Denver Moore and building Moore Place is told in my 2018 memoir The Hundred Story Home.)
Since that unplanned career change in 2007, everything in my life has transformed, from how I spend my time to what I think is important. My professional title has shifted from graphic designer to program director to development director, and finally, to author.
To be clear, none of this was my plan. Each of these new chapters has been the result of following some new whisper that felt inconvenient, unexpected, and uncomfortable — yet at the same time was insistent. Each whisper seemed to connect me to another piece of my story and help me finally blossom into exactly who I was meant to be.
As I tried to understand this idea of a whisper, I began to discover some very famous people believing in whispers. In her Lifeclass, Listening to Life’s Whispers, Oprah Winfrey says, “Listen to your life as it whispers first so it doesn’t have to hit you upside the head with a brick or come crashing down on you like a brick wall.”
In 2016, Steven Spielberg gave the Harvard University commencement address as well as a talk with art students. In both speeches, he inspired the audience by discussing the concept of a whisper. “Sometimes a dream almost whispers. And I’ve always said to my kids, the hardest thing to listen to — your instincts, your human personal intuition — always whispers; it never shouts.”
Over the past seven years, I’ve met plenty of non-celebrities who were listening to their own whispers. Every day people are pushed out of their comfort zone by unexpected quiet callings. Caroline Hart in Crossnore, NC followed her whisper to adopt a sibling set of four children. Caroline Bundy in Birmingham, AL listened to her whisper and raised almost $5 million to build The Way Station for runaway and homeless teens. And Molly Painter in Raleigh, NC said her whisper felt more like a “sledgehammer.” Molly has helped raise over $27 million to build King’s Ridge housing, which opens later this year for 100 families experiencing homelessness. Each amazing story began with a whisper and became an extraordinary story of ordinary grace.
I’ve finally come to understand there was nothing special or chosen about me, Oprah, Steven, Caroline, or Molly. We all have whispers but we don’t always listen. What whispers to me won’t be the same whisper for you. I believe there’s something imprinted on each of our hearts that we were born to do. We waste too much time trying to control our life plans when really, we need to be open to listening for our life path.
Maybe you’ve already heard a whisper that feels inconvenient, unexpected, or uncomfortable. You might have dismissed it as a silly thought or an impossible dream because you felt unqualified. Yet at the same time, that whisper has been insistent. What should you do?
Trust the whisper.
Take the first step and the next. Stay on the path to see where it might take you. There will never be a neon sign to follow, just small hints that you’re going in the right direction. When you keep following those small signs and whispers, you’ll be able to look back and see how far you’ve come, while at the same time understanding how far you have to go.
You’ll begin connecting to your true life path and believing you’re part of a divine weave that ties you to other people’s whispers. You’ll be led to a life you never thought possible.
This new life — the one you were always meant to live — is found by listening.
It begins with a whisper.
Kathy Izard is an award-winning author, a national speaker retreat leader, and an advocate for housing and mental health services in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her new book Trust the Whisper: How Answering Quiet Callings Inspires Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Grace (Baker Books, June 2024) tells the full stories of Caroline Hart, Caroline Bundy, and Molly Painter as well as over 20 others who listened to their whispers. Learn more at KathyIzard.com.
