I Don’t Have a Story Worth Telling” Are You Sure?

After 34 years in sales, working with more than 3,000 clients, publishing 40 collaborative books, and hosting more than 400 interviews with incredible women, I’ve learned something I believe with my whole heart:

We all have a story worth telling.

Yet when I invite a woman to share hers, I often hear, “Oh, my life isn’t that interesting,” or “Other people have been through much more than I have.”

I understand the hesitation. Women are so used to carrying their experiences that we can forget how much we’ve learned from them. We downplay the hard-won wisdom, the decisions that changed us, and the moments we found a way forward. What feels ordinary to us may be exactly what another woman needs to hear.

Someone Else May Have Lived It. She Hasn’t Lived Your Version.

Perhaps someone else has written about raising children alone, starting over, losing someone, building a business, or learning to trust herself again.

But she didn’t stand in your shoes. She didn’t feel it with your heart or see it through your eyes.

You bring your own memories, emotions, questions, and understanding to the page. That perspective makes the story yours. And sometimes it’s the way you tell it that helps a reader finally put words to something in her own life.

I’ve received messages from women around the world who read a story in one of our books and felt moved to reach out. They tell me they found it at a moment when they needed it. I can’t promise every story will reach the person we hope it will. I can tell you those messages have taught me never to decide, on a writer’s behalf, that her experience is too small to matter.

Readers Are Looking for Real Experiences

There is room for women’s voices on the page. Research on the U.S. book market found that women wrote 18% of new books in 1960 and the majority by 2020. That change happened because women kept writing and publishing. NBER

Closer to home, BookNet Canada found that biography and memoir accounted for 20% of nonfiction books purchased by the Canadian book buyers it surveyed in 2024. It also found that 22% searched for books about a group or culture written by someone from that group or culture. Those numbers don’t tell us which individual story will connect, but they do show an interest in lived experience and firsthand perspectives. Booknet Canada

You Don’t Have to Tell Everything

Having a story worth telling does not mean putting every private detail on the page. You get to decide what you’re ready to share, what belongs only to you, and what might help someone else.

Start smaller than “my whole life.” Think of one moment that changed how you see yourself. One lesson you learned the hard way. One thing you wish another woman had told you sooner.

Then ask yourself: What do I know now that I didn’t know then?

That may be where your story begins.

So, if you’ve been dismissing your experience because it seems too ordinary, I hope you’ll look at it again. There may be a woman out there waiting to read the words only you can write.

Your story has worth. Give yourself the chance to discover what it holds.