Tiny Brave Steps: Real Women. Real Fear. Real Courage Stories.
She was told by her own team that if she got into trouble, they wouldn’t come to save her. She showed up anyway—every single day for fourteen years. She walked into literal fires while fighting one inside her own chest. And one day, she decided surviving wasn’t enough anymore. That’s one story. There are so many more. Tiny Brave Steps is where real women tell the truth about the hardest things they’ve ever walked through—and how they found their way to the other side. Not with some dramatic, made-for-TV moment. But with what I call Tiny Brave Steps - the kind of courage that happens one terrified, trembling choice at a time. These are women who’ve faced the fire. A surgery that stole everything and gave her more than she ever imagined. A caregiving journey with no finish line. A fourteen-year silence finally broken. These aren’t superhero stories. They’re your-neighbor, your-sister, your-friend stories. The kind where you listen and think, That could be me. I’m Bernice McDonald, Creator of the Tiny Brave Steps method and author of The Little Books of Courage. Each episode, I walk you through one woman’s journey using the Courage Map - a path from feeling “not enough” to becoming “brave enough.” You’ll hear her real voice. Her real fear. And the real moment she decided to take that next step - even though her hands were shaking. Because here’s the truth I want you to know: Courage is never the absence of fear. It’s the judgment that something matters more than the fear. If you’ve ever whispered I’m not brave enough for this—this podcast was made for you. New episodes weekly. Bring your heart. Leave with courage.
Episodes
When addiction entered her home, Jen McCutcheon did what mothers do.
She fixed.
She researched treatment centres.
She planned interventions.
Held the family together with whatever she could find.
And she kept going until her body shut down.
Then came a night on the living room couch, crying in front of a blank wall, when something inside her said: you are the common denominator.
This is ...
Mirna knew what burnout looked like. She’s a psychologist. She had helped other women recognize unhealthy workplaces, trust what they were feeling, and find their way through.
Then it happened to her.
She stepped into the biggest leadership role of her career, excited and ready. But within the first month, her body was already telling her something wasn’t right.
Then came the questioning. The labels. Too ag...
For years, two things ran Sarka’s life without her seeing them: she didn’t believe in herself, and she thought she had to be perfect.
It took a hard question — where will you be in 20 years? — before she turned around and looked to see what her life was becoming.
She became an entrepreneur with no savings and no plan, learned to answer her own fear instead of fighting it, and said yes to ...
Lonna found the answer to her prayers — a faithful man, a fresh start in a new state — and still ended up more alone than she’d ever been.
Two wounded people with no tools, ten hard years, and a marriage on life support.
What turned it around wasn’t willpower.
It was a care pastor who told her she’d never even had words for what she’d survived, a counseling room whe...
Sharon could do anything. Give her a job nobody knew how to do, a problem no one could crack — she’d figure it out.
Then she adopted a little girl whose early wounds no amount of trying could reach, and the woman who could do hard things came apart.
This is the story of what happens after the control runs out: the guilt, the melt, the radical choice, and a rainy night when a frightened girl fin...
Erica had just walked back through a door she thought was closed for good — teaching, after seven years away.
It was the fall of 2020. Twelve-hour days. New everything.
And then, in the space of a few weeks... her brother was diagnosed with cancer, she caught COVID, her mom got COVID and her dad went into the hospital alone and came home on hospice.
Days later, her mom had a breakdown of her own...
Some women learn early that the safest thing to do is disappear.
Kylyna learned it in a house where her father’s drinking was the weather — always there, never her fault, impossible to fix.
So she got the good grades. She kept the peace. She stayed in her room. She made herself easy to overlook.
And then she grew up and had a baby. And something in her said no.
This is the story of a woman who he...
Nadine spent decades helping other women find themselves — as a relationship counselor, NLP trainer, and self-esteem facilitator.
But for 19 years inside her own marriage, she was quietly losing track of who she was.
It wasn't dramatic. It was the slow accumulation of small surrenders: preferences set aside, choices made around someone else's moods, a voice that used to sing falling silent somewhere she co...
At 44, Cheryl Ilov walked into a doctor's office and walked out changed.
When the people she trusted most refused to believe her, she buried it. For a year and a half, she held herself together.
And then she didn't.
What pulled her back wasn't therapy or time. It was an acupuncturist who wouldn't stop talking about ninjas.
This is the story of a fussy girl in pointe shoes who became her teacher's...
In January 2019, Mary Beth went in for a routine appointment and came out with a cancer diagnosis. Ten days after her own surgery, her husband received a diagnosis with a five percent survival rate.
What followed was a year that asked everything of her — and she showed up for all of it.
This is a story about what you do when the weight is too heavy to carry alone. About the song you put on repeat. About th...
For twenty years, Kelly Schuknecht was the woman behind the vision.
Two CEOs. Two decades. She made everything happen — the platforms, the books, the speaking events, the brand.
She was exceptional at it. And she was invisible doing it.
Then, a company acquisition decided she wasn't needed anymore. The layoff hit her harder than she expected. Not just professionally. Deep down, in the place wher...
She called herself a cliché. A woman in her mid-40s who needed to find herself.
But there is nothing clichéd about what Saoirse Temple actually did.
She left a relationship that had been slowly shrinking her — not with drama, but with years of quiet courage, one small step at a time. She packed one box. She asked the hard question. She walked through a door she had chosen for herself for the very fir...
Kristin was 33 years old when a routine doctor's appointment changed everything.
The diagnosis: colon cancer.
The prognosis: unknown.
She drove home alone, in the rain, through Orlando traffic, trying to figure out how to say the word out loud to the people she loved.
What happened in the two to three days that followed is not what you'd expect.
This is a story about choosing peace before you have the a...
She had built a thirty-year marriage on commitment, love, and the belief that if she just tried hard enough, things would get better.
They didn't.
What Julie Lamphear couldn't have known — not yet — was that the hardest thing she would ever do wasn't leaving. It was learning that she couldn't fix what she couldn't control. That needing a sober environment wasn't weakness. That her emotions weren't broken. ...
What do you do when the life you dreamed of — the one constant picture you held in your heart since you were a little girl — just doesn't happen?
Jill wanted to be a mom to a house full of kids. That was the dream. Simple. Pure. The kind that settles into a little girl's heart and never leaves.
Then she lost three babies, and with each loss, something darker than grief took root — blame. The vo...
On her very first day as a firefighter, the men on her team pulled her aside and told her: If you get into trouble, we’re not coming to save you.
For fourteen years, Lynnette walked into burning buildings carrying that weight. She fought literal fires while a fire-breathing Fear-Fred raged inside her head, whispering Don’t mess up. Make sure you’ve got an out. You’re on your own.
She was functi...
September 23rd, 2021. Stacey Ansley walked into what should have been a simple outpatient knee surgery. A few hours, some discomfort, home by dinner.
She woke up in intensive care.
A severed artery. Emergency surgery that destroyed the nerves from her knee down. Months of heavy medication that stole her vision, her clarity, and nearly her will to keep going. Her husband got two phone calls that day—first, that s...
What does courage look like when the hard thing doesn’t end?
When there’s no dramatic finish line, no moment where you dust yourself off and say “I did it” - just today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, carrying a weight you never asked to carry?
When Bari’s husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, her entire future shifted without her permission. The life they’d p...
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