November 2026
What I’m reading
The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon
What's Inspiring Me: Grace held true to the pull of her true calling when a world kept trying to push her into the constraints of societal expectations.
What's Inspiring Me:
What’s Inspiring ME: The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon
I found Ariel’s book The Frozen River captivating historical fiction so when I learned she had another adventure for me, I pre-ordered the book The Pirate Queen.
Grace O’Malley knew as a child that the sea was hers. Her father was chief of Clan O’Malley. He had a ship, and she wanted on it. The answer was always no. She was a noble daughter in sixteenth-century Ireland, and her job was not to be a captain of a ship, it was to marry well.
So she cut off her own braid for the chance to set foot on the ship. If looking like a girl was the problem, she’d fix it.
It didn’t work. Her father married her to the wrong man. She raised children and ran her husband’s lands, but she never let go of the water. When he died and she was forced off his land, she went home and became exactly who she had always known she was. A captain. A chieftain. The Pirate Queen of Ireland. She was born with a gift of truly knowing the sea.
She held true to the pull of her true calling when a world kept trying to push her into the constraints of societal expectations.
Pull versus push. That’s where self-expression lives. The pull comes from inside. It’s quiet, and it doesn’t go away. The push comes from everywhere else: family, culture, your industry, and the well-meaning people who know exactly who you should be.
Grace didn’t win every round. She took years of detours. But the pull never left, and she never pretended it had.
Creative Entrepreneurship pulls at as against the security of the financial security of working for someone else. We feel the business we’re meant to build. Then someone tells us how it’s supposed to look.
What’s the pull you’ve known since you were a kid? And who’s still telling you to cut it out?
What's Inspiring Me: Grace held true to the pull of her true calling when a world kept trying to push her into the constraints of societal expectations.
