June 2025 was supposed to be a win.
I closed on my first home. My name was on the deed. Something I had prayed for and worked toward finally became tangible.
Three weeks later, I was laid off.
And in the middle of that month — with pride, panic, provision, and loss sitting right next to each other — God started reaching for everything I had been avoiding.
The childhood wound I had never named.
The abandonment I carried without language.
The stability I built that looked like discipline from the outside but felt like survival on the inside.
The hidden pain.
The old patterns.
The things I had learned how to hide instead of heal.
He did not wait for me to feel ready.
He started pulling threads.
This episode is the one I was not sure I had the courage to record.
I talk about:
→ Growing up as a “barrel pickney” — a child whose parent was overseas sending support while physically absent
→ How my mother’s absence shaped abandonment wounds I did not know how to name
→ Becoming the overachiever with degrees, titles, jobs, and even an office with my name on the door
→ The friend I kept resisting, and how God used her to invite me to church
→ The prayer meeting that changed everything
→ The prophetic word I did not know how to receive
→ The hidden things God brought into the light
→ Starting therapy at 27
→ Nine months unemployed and what God was building in me while I was looking at what I had lost
→ Add Reach, trust, provision, and the loaf of bread already under my arm
What I had to release this year:
Years-long friendships.
Old versions of myself.
Coping mechanisms.
The illusion that I was fine.
The belief that stability was found in a paycheck, title, plan, or structure.
The version of me that knew how to achieve but did not know how to be whole.
The release was painful.
I am still in it.
But this is what surrender looks like when God starts asking for the whole truth.
I was unemployed for nine months — a whole pregnancy.
And at the end of it, this podcast was born.
I was crying with a loaf of bread under my arm the whole time.
That loaf of bread was Add Reach.
I had something in my hands, and I was still afraid. I was looking at bills, uncertainty, and the stability I had lost. God was teaching me to trust Him with the seed He had already given me.
This episode is about the middle.
The part where you are healing and still figuring it out.
The part where the promise and the pressure exist in the same season.
The part where God is rebuilding the person who has to carry what He placed in her hands.
This is part of the story of how God is adding reach to my life.
🎙️ Episode 2 — “The Year God Interrupted Everything” is out now.
Listen/read on Substack: REACHREQUIRED.SUBSTACK.COM
If this episode meets you in your own middle, send it to one person who may need it too.
Then come back and tell me: what has God been interrupting in your life that you have been ready to talk about?
Reach Required
with Ren-Nessa Clarke
@reachrequired
@addreach
