Watch The Episode

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In This Episode

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Topics Covered in This Episode:
Rhonda’s early struggles with reading and the emotional impact of being “the girl at the back of the classroom.”
The role of fear, anxiety, and self-doubt in shaping her journey—and how she learned to push through.
The power of mentorship: pivotal teachers, family support, and the importance of having someone believe in you.
How setbacks and rejection—including losing her first publisher—became fuel for resilience and growth.
The real-life inspiration behind her suspense novel, “Crossroads,” and the mental health themes woven throughout.
Why every character in “Crossroads” is out of balance, and what that reveals about the human experience.
The influence of emotional intelligence and lessons from Proverbs on her writing and life philosophy.
Honest conversation about imposter syndrome, vulnerability, and learning to trust your voice
The necessity of self-awareness, boundaries, and self-care for lasting resilience.
Rhonda’s family mottos and the wisdom of “If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me.”
Navigating criticism, peer review, and the importance of supportive community.
The biggest lesson she hopes readers take away: the courage to be your own unique self, regardless of outside expectations.
What’s next for Rhonda—including her upcoming self-help book on resilience and her ongoing creative journey.

Unedited Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:10.478)
For years, she was the girl who sat at the back of the classroom struggling to make sense of words that seemed to dance off the page. In the small town of Noblesville, Indiana, no one imagined she’d one day write a suspense novel that would catch the eye of a Golden Globe-nominated actress. But grit runs deep in steel town families, and for Rhonda Parker Taylor, the road from academic struggles to published author was paved with setbacks.

second chances and a relentless belief that every story, no matter how unlikely, deserves to be sold. Tonight, you’ll hear how a young woman who once feared the written word found her voice, her courage, and a place on bookshelves across the country. I’m Scott Allen, and you’re listening to the Enlighten Life Podcast, where we explore the mysteries of the soul’s journey, healing, and transformation. Let’s begin.

Thank you. to the show. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

I am so happy to be here and thank you for the lovely introduction. can’t, I’m sitting there thinking, who’s he talking about?

And I know I know right my God that’s funny you you described though your early relationship with reading and writing as a struggle so what kept you coming back to books and how did you end up finding your voice.

Speaker 1 (01:27.99)
I think maybe I always had a love of books because I never really realized how strong that was until after I wrote the crossroads I was going back looking for pictures of me when I was younger they you know the publishers said send pictures you know different ones and all the books when all the pictures of when I was younger had a coloring book another.

Encyclopedia something that I was carrying around a music book around and I was like, well it was always there but my fear my Believing that the role of a woman was to shrink themselves Rather than to embrace themselves and shine I allowed so many things to take power over me including my own fear

You know, my fear of the written word, of success, of almost anything that you could put your finger on it. It can be easily translated into a story we can all relate. You remember having to read in front of the classroom? And you had to prove to the teacher that you knew the words and that you could read? Well, I would be petrified of doing that.

And so the teacher would try to tell me to pull my hair out of my face, do this, trying to help me. But instead that even instilled more fear of not being successful. And I had already in kindergarten been held back as a kindergartner, them saying, you know, she’s just not thriving where she’ll keep up with the class and she’s gonna, you she should stay back. And when,

I got the, when I allowed the fear to take over, well, every time I found out that the teacher was going to have us read in front of the class, I got sick. My nerves would take over the nurse’s office and I would completely avoid what I was fearful of. And so what ended up happening is then I found out that if the thermometer at the nurse’s office had a temperature,

Speaker 1 (03:48.502)
I got sent home for the day. So then they reported the anxiety, the not wanting to do the fear by sending me home and I got to see what leave it to Beaver, father’s knows best everything. And it was like, this is better than having to face those fears. So it started at a very young age of a buying into the fact that

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:16.232)
I was not worthy of the space. And I think everybody out there at some point in their lives, all you listeners out there, think about how many times you had fear and that fear prevented you from being the best version of you, no matter what age it was. Back then, it was obviously elementary school, but it didn’t, that particular character didn’t go away.

away. It followed me all the way through publishing.

Is Crossroads your first book?

Crossroads is the debut novel. I wrote five of them before I even published. It’s a series, so they’re all coming. My model or what I want to be known for as a writer, because I still feel like I have imposter syndromes sometimes.

God, yes, I get that, yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:10.574)
Oh my goodness, I’m a best selling author, but how? You know, how did that happen? And what I want to be known as written words and fiction that make you make the reader think about their own lives. And then I have self-help books. So right now we’re getting ready to release resilience, which is a self-help to building, thriving and repairing your own resilience.

Then there’s a life balance book because in Crossroads, every character is out of balance. So you have the workaholic, which is the main character, Paris Pennington. She’d rather be at work than on that jury duty, doing that jury duty, but you can’t get out of it because that’s our civic duty, right? And then you have the law and order guy, which is the prosecutor, and he’s dedicated to law and order and making sure it gets justice and expenses.

life eating out of cardboard boxes in his office at night and you know he’s too overwhelmed with the political system to really dedicate what he needs to to his own life. Then you have Billy Knuckles who’s one of the co-defendants and he is dedicated to his friends more than himself or anybody else and now he’s facing murder charges.

And so you have all these characters, every one of them imbalanced in some way, but seems almost perfect for them, of course, because we all buy into something that sometimes is a falsehood of who we really are and what our purpose is.

Can you just share a moment and tell the listeners, I mean, obviously don’t give away too much, but what is the story about?

Speaker 1 (06:58.83)
Okay, so the story is about, well, I kind of said with the life balance, the story is based out of Indianapolis. So all the sites are real, the crime is fiction, and it starts out with the, and it’s, there’s no horror or gore for those of you that like that thing, horror or gore, it’s all clue-based. So it starts out with the police getting a call that there’s been a body found. And it’s the death of a 15-year-old girl.

And it follows the police officers at first as they try to deal with this tragedy, one being a senior officer, one being a rookie officer, and then it follows it through the jury trial. But meanwhile, there’s little tidbits of three emotions in every single character. One is anger, one is fury, and one is envy. All three of them could cause a crime. So you have to try to figure out

who did it with what and why. But meanwhile, things start happening to the jury. And you have to figure out who is doing these events. And meanwhile, you’re seeing one person explode, one person get upset, and you’re seeing these undesirable characters, but you kind of like them because they could be one of your friends or your neighbors that you knew it. Sometimes they make some terrible mistakes. And you go through

and you start evaluating your own life because you’re seeing all these people loyal to all the wrong things that have no benefit to their lives. And that is one of the reasons why Meryl Hemingway picked it up for her book club because she read it, my publisher, Menster Media, delivered it to her. She read it and she’s all about mental health and balance and resilience.

She saw that I’d use the DSM-5, which is how we diagnose mental health disorders to make the characters real. so, because we all have something that we’re on the scale of, whether we want to admit it or not. And she loved the fact that it made you reflect. she said in the end of her YouTube video, if anybody wants to look at it, it’s out there on the web called, Meryl Hemingway praises Rhonda Parker Taylor’s crossroads. said,

Speaker 2 (09:26.488)
Great.

We all have a choice and we all have a moment in our lives where we reach that crossroads, where we have to decide right from wrong for us. And even chocolate has an expiration date. And you know, she’s right, chocolate does.

Yeah, yeah, does. It does. It took you over 20 years to publish this. I mean, tell me, was it not like the best feeling in the world when you actually held that book, the physical book for the first time?

Yes, because first of all, I had a publisher and they backed out after two years. It’s devastated. then you could imagine that that little girl, that little child inside me that’s fear that was fearful. Didn’t one didn’t do anything else with it after that. It sat on my desk. It sat on my desk. I’m no

that must be why everybody’s I, know, they figured me out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:24.886)
It all came out and I went to get a file off of a disk. That’s how old it was. And the file that I wanted to get was corrupted.

And I was telling my sister about it. I hope I haven’t lost all my books because they’re all on that disk. And then I was looking where I printed them and they were sitting in the corner of my office. And she says, why haven’t you done anything with those things? And, know, of course I made every excuse, you know, and she said, no, that’s not why you’re fearful. You’re fearful of making yourself vulnerable again.

Yeah.

She says, it was somebody else’s project you were out there working on, because I do consulting for people, it would already be done. It would already be on the shelves and it would already be successful.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:22.286)
Do it because it’s your success. You’re holding yourself back. And you know what? I argued and I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about. She’d only been my big sister almost 60 years at that point, right? Yeah. She didn’t know anything about me. She didn’t know anything about what what my journey was was. But guess what? After I sat with it over the evening, I knew she was right.

We all are our worst enemies. All those that negative self-talk inside of us sometimes holds us back from our God-given talent.

Sure it does. Yeah.

and holds us back from even taking the steps to be successful.

Yeah. And you know, you know, my book came out in January. is, it is not a fiction. it’s a, it’s a, it’s a more of a autobiography of the, you know, the journey that I took to get where I am. But your book, you’ve created each and every one of these characters in depth. You know, their emotions, you know, their thoughts, you know, their feelings. I would imagine to a certain degree, they’re almost like people, real people that you know, intimately. So did you ever feel as though it was a rejection?

Speaker 2 (12:36.542)
Those people of your family of the people that you created or are they still are you able to make that separation completely?

can make a separation but of course we all want don’t what rejection of ourselves and family and so it’s offensive when someone says you know that was a realistic enough or this was something that left me hanging that didn’t result get resolved and you know the new eat all of those things create a vulnerability that you’re being not only yourself being rejected but your characters are being rejected but what I found is with each

comment each review each positive and negative helps me grow as an individual because then I’m like, you know, I really could have done that or you know, I you know, that would be great to put in the next book or you know, so it’s kind of like I think that at least academics prepared me for.

that peer reviewed process, because you’re being basically peer reviewed. We don’t like her. Do we like the criminals in the book? Do we not like them? And I found that most people, as they start reading it, they realize there’s such a fine line between justice and injustice. And there is no winner in the legal system.

when they get in those doors because they’re losing something. It could be their innocence. It could be their time. It could be, you know, their work and they can’t take a vacation or whatever it might be that they’re losing. And so I think that by redefining each character through what I call it a soap note, which is the medical community’s way of evaluating us, it tells them everything from our

Speaker 1 (14:38.58)
medical history to our family’s history to and to our psychological history that that really brought a closeness between me and my characters. So you’re right. They’re hard to let go. And that’s why I on them.

So Paris Pennington, who is the jury foreman in your book, how much of her story is informed by your own experiences with vulnerability and public scrutiny?

think that all of them all the characters have piece of me because as I wrote it you know I had to put myself in that space to understand them and so I would say that all of them like even Billy knuckles no I’ve never you know stabbed anybody but you know maybe I got in a car with a friend when I should never they’ve been drinking and it could have become very tragic you know that had something.

something happened in my youth, and it went a different direction. Or maybe, know, Jenny, which is the best friend of Paris Pennington, you know, she dedicated herself to family. I have that proponent of dedicating myself to others, so I’m sure they all have a piece of me. Paris, I would say, is modeled after many of the business women that I worked with in downtown Indianapolis that just were so

perfect. You saw this young person and they they were they were they’d been promoted by then they you know they were thriving and they had a certain no nonsense let’s get it done but yet fairness and humanity about him that I just really adored.

Speaker 2 (16:22.336)
nice. So in your book, you’ve woven lessons from proverbs, you know, about anger, fury, envy. Why did you choose those themes? And, and, you know, how did, how does that resonate with you personally?

Well, first of all, Proverbs is very, if you read Proverbs line by line, you find that there are many lessons and wise words that we could use. So that’s why Proverbs ended up. But I studied emotional intelligence extensively. And emotional intelligence is your ability to control your own emotions and the emotions of others. And what normally causes a crime? Emotions.

So I wanted to pick three emotions that we see daily in society that possibly could cause a crime, but also diminishes every individual, no matter who you are out there. We’ve all been angry. How many times could anger have gone too far? And Proverbs says anger is cruel. And it is, it’s almost like it takes over you and you become a person and you,

try to degrade, diminish whatever, whoever’s in the room with you when you’re angry. Fury, the proverb says fury is overwhelming. If anybody’s ever been furious, I can remember when I was getting married and my ring hadn’t gotten sized. They said they sized it, I went to pick it up and I was traveling and I could picture myself, because I was so furious as a new bride, right? That they hadn’t.

gotten the ring to be even fakeable for pictures that I could picture myself grabbing the guy, the salesperson by the tie and strangling him. Now, did I do it? No, of course not. But you get that anger and that fury and it’s overwhelming and you want to do all kinds of things. Well, same thing with, you know, the characters in the book when they’re when they’re furious. But then it goes one step further in Proverbs and says envy makes the bones rot.

Speaker 1 (18:34.006)
And I had to put some reflection on that. Envy makes the bones rot. Think about what it does to both the individual that is experiencing the envy and the one that it’s towards. It does, it deteriorates the core of you, almost like a cancer taking over. And all of a sudden you want their house, you want their wife, you went there, you know, whatever it might be. And it takes over.

Proverbs tells us that we have to be careful of these three emotions. Because they will destroy you. And we see it in society every day.

Yeah. You had mentioned that your first publisher backed out after a couple of years. What did that teach you about the publishing industry or even about yourself? What did you learn during that period?

Well, one, was, I was young and I was naive and I thought, this is the easiest piece of cake. You know, I can find another publisher, time. And it’s not that easy. two, it taught me to trust myself because by the time I got, came back to the publishing aspect of things again, after I had that come to Jesus meeting with my sister, I’ve realized I don’t have another two years.

to go through the process for someone to read. Do I want to self-publish? my goodness. That means I might have to give up a few clients and not pay a few bills and skip a few meals because if I did it myself, I’d be locked in my office trying to find out what barcodes are. And so I ended up going in the middle and having trust in finding a professional, a hybrid approach to publishing where they helped me put

Speaker 1 (20:23.316)
my plan together. Did they go out and sell the book? No, that’s not what they’re there for. They’re there to create a brand for you to create a concept for you and to help you create a product that’s professional and something that the industry will want to read.

Yeah. Yeah. You have credited your high school teacher, Mrs. Donnelly with helping overcome academic hurdles. How important is mentorship in your journey? And do you see yourself as a mentor?

I’ve been, yes. I found out early, like you said, that mentorship was what I needed. I didn’t have the confidence, I didn’t have the thoughts that were positive about my academic ability, any social ability. I thought I was the queen, right? But for the academic, my brother was the smart one I always said.

I found through her eyes that I could do it. There was other teachers too. I had a very good math teacher that helped me also, Mr. Fleetwood. And I realized the importance of those networks. I went to a very small private school, high school. And to this day, I went there from pre-kindergarten to my senior year, to this day, if there is a major life-changing event,

I know somewhere in the audience, not only would the people that were my peers would be there, but there’s most likely going to be one or two academic administrators that were there. I can’t help but think that that support has a lot to do with pushing me to be the best version of myself. Does that mean I always agree with every policy? No, of course not.

Speaker 1 (22:26.99)
But it means that I realize and it gives me the value of people stepping behind you and saying you can do this. So yes, it definitely has shaped my attitude towards others and people that are less vulnerable, know, that are more vulnerable even in the arts communities than me. But it also has shown me the importance of keeping and protecting those.

those people that have been in my life all those years, because how many people can go to a friend’s family, like maybe a mother’s funeral, and have another friend that you’ve known since pre-kindergarten elbow you and say, you see Mr. Leimbach out there? And you’re like, no, where is he? And they say, he’s four seats behind you. And you can say for 60 years, these people.

have supported me and helped me up. So you can’t get any better than that. So I need to it forward.

I love that and you know, let’s play devil’s advocate for a minute. You know, some might say that if you struggle with Struggle with writing then maybe you’re not supposed to be an author, you know, what do you say to that? How do you respond to this kind of self-doubt that a lot of us have?

Yeah, in us that could be told and could be a best seller. If that’s your desire. And then to find out how your brain works to this day, every time I text a friend, especially if I don’t have my glasses on, I would never have thought that I would ever be a person that have to wear glasses. But because I had perfect vision when my in my youth. But if I don’t have my glasses on, especially I will type something

Speaker 1 (24:16.63)
And then I’ll hit send and I will read it and say, that’s right. Hit send. And then there’ll be three typos in it. Right. Right. And edit if it allowed me, allows me to, or if sometimes it won’t because they may not be on the same network or whatever. And those that know me know that that’s just the way my brain works. It’s like, doesn’t see my eyes and my brain don’t see what’s accurate. They think it’s there. You know, maybe it’s a

I used the wrong there, but I know the difference. But when I look at it, I don’t see it. think it’s there, literally. And so then I have to laugh at myself. it all of us somewhere has some kind of disability, some kind of learning challenge, some kind of mental health challenge, some kind of some point in our lives. We may

Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1 (25:14.658)
think we don’t, but we’re human. Our bodies don’t and our minds don’t always work perfectly every single time. So I had to learn, just like anybody out there, that to be the best version of yourself means that you have to take time and have grace. So if I send a memo, I need to edit it. I may need to spend more time than others. And for me, what I do is I have my computer read to me what I

Because sometimes I don’t like I said, I don’t see it, but then I hear it and I’m like, whoa, wait a minute. Where’d that come from? You know, so I’m I’m both an auditory and a visual and a kinesthetic learner. So that means I have to put all of them in practice when I’m writing.

Yeah. And you know, I can, I can understand that too, because when I, I had a fantastic editor for my book, thank God, because I knew the story, but I wasn’t a writer. I wasn’t what I’d gone to school for. didn’t, you know, I just knew the story and somehow I was able to put it on paper and she’d look at it and just say, well, I, this is great, but I don’t understand this. Right. Where did you get from that to this? What happened in between? Well, it’s in here, right?

right.

but you gotta get it out and put it there. You have to put it on the paper. And I think, you know, understanding what you’re able to do and what you’re not able to do is important, and using other people in a way that they help bring your vision forward. We all need each other, I think, you know, as we go through this life.

Speaker 1 (26:50.35)
Anybody matter of fact, I just quoted this morning a young lady that’s do it working on a book for a doctor that they work for and I had helped consult on the manuscript before but anybody needs a content editor and a line editor so people that are thinking about writing Realize you get too close

manuscript aside, let somebody else read it, but also make sure it’s someone you can trust that it’s not going to run off with your manuscript. But you know, you need what they call beta readers, which reading for content and say, I got lost here. I didn’t get this just like you’re saying. And then you need a line editor, line editor, who looks for the grammatical imperfect in the book. And there is no such thing as a perfect document. Even after we release

crossroads I’ve heard I’m on Revision 2 where I you know and it was it was a valid some something valid that I reader said said you know I loved it I just wished at the very beginning of the book I wish I knew what year it was how easy is that to fix you know

Right? Never gave it a thought.

context. He was writing out his report and put the date, you know, there you go. That’s it’s it’s an edit that’s easy, but that’s content in it. And it really helps the reader move forward in the story. those content people are the ones that say, okay, your brain’s working too fast. Here, down and put more detail or they can say, like I had a section that got completely cut out.

Speaker 1 (28:37.068)
And it was the police officer when he got his call to go that the body had been found, he was in the Golden Corral and anybody that’s gone to the Golden Corral knows it’s a big spread buffet and you can eat all you can eat. And I was describing the food and someone said, nobody likes food that much.

And it’s because I had described and spent so much time describing the food and what he picked and how he felt and this and that. Okay, they’re done with the food now, where’s the body?

Right, right, right, my God. You know, it’s funny, I don’t know, I must have read it somewhere, I don’t think you said it, but you had said something about your family having two mottos. If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me, and every day is great. And that’s kind of it though, right? mean, you know, no one’s gonna do it for you. Every day it’s up to me, and you move forward and keep pushing in that direction towards your goal. I’m sure that’s helped shape your approach to.

setbacks and success.

I hated it every time my father would say those two or Never compare yourself. I would be furious because that always meant the answer was no and I had to do it myself But it does our mottoes that are important because if you don’t have a family Motto story or whatever what you stand what your values are how you’re gonna proceed you don’t move forward and

Speaker 2 (29:52.92)
Right, right.

Speaker 1 (30:09.974)
It’s meant to be, it’s up to me. I went back and I was looking, I’m big into genealogy and ancestry and writing the story of the family. I was going through some documents that was left at my dad’s house and I found an old report card. I think it’s first grade somewhere around there. And it said at the bottom, Rhonda needs to learn to work more independently.

challenge. Most people don’t even realize that the teacher defined intellectual intellectual disorder for me. I was incapable of working on my own. I could do it, but I wouldn’t do it by my own. I hadn’t learned, you know, or gathered those important characteristics as I wanted to do it groups. I wanted to do it with somebody. I wanted to do it. And so the

motto, if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me, even into my adulthood was a challenge for me. I wanted to bring everybody along with me. And number one thing for entrepreneurs, you can’t hire family members and you can’t hire friends that don’t have the same mission and the same goal, because what’s going to happen is you’re going to be dragging them along to get the work done rather than if it’s meant to be, it’s up to you. You have to put the team in place.

that’s going to be successful. You have to do the work to be successful. You have to define your values to be successful.

very, very true. You said that writing Crossroads was about telling a story with a lesson learned. What’s the biggest lesson you hope readers walk away with from your story?

Speaker 1 (32:00.034)
Be your own unique self. Don’t buy into that society tells you who you’re going to be. know, in this, in the case of the main character, her family had a say in what she was going to do. Her friends had a say, her mentors had something to say. And she’s sitting there wondering, who am I? At the end of the book, as she’s going through, she’s in this trial, she has

She’s not dated seriously anybody in years and there’s this opportunity in front of her and she has to step through the change, the crossroads to become her whole unique self. And that’s what everybody has to do in the book. They have to decide who am I going to be? Am I going to turn state on my friend from life and not become a murderer or get and be let out?

Am I going to stop working every night into the middle of the night and listen to the politicians and never end up with a family? Am I gonna be the real estate agent that has always got ahead by making others small or am I going to pick it up and do what I’m supposed to do to be successful again?

Amen. Good for you. Before we wrap up, Rhonda, is there any final thoughts, story or message you’d like to share? Maybe something about resilience or creativity or even what’s next for you.

would like to say everybody be self aware of who you are make sure you embody your own boundaries in your own values and fatality is important which means you have to care for all aspects of yourself so in resilience you you need to make sure that you’re following everything that makes your mind body and soul and resilient for the next thing I have a you know a lot of people out there might say she you know she sounds like she’s had a just a real charmed life.

Speaker 1 (34:03.064)
But really it’s been battle just like everybody else. You know, so you have to have the self-awareness, your purpose, put mindfulness in your day to make sure you’re taking care of you, protect your relationships. Those that are good, get rid of the toxic ones and practice self-care. You know, and when you do that, you’re going to make sure every day is great because you’re going to feel good. Not only about yourself.

Beautiful. Thanks so much for joining us, Rhonda, and thanks for sharing your journey along with us listeners. you’d like to learn more about Rhonda Parker Taylor, her book, Crossroads, or her work in business and academia, head to Rhonda Parker Taylor.com. There you’ll find links to purchase Crossroads on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as more about her story. And as always, you could find me, Scott Allen at mediumscottallen.com.

to book a reading, see upcoming live events, or catch other episodes of the Enlighten Life podcast, or whatever you would like to learn about your spiritual journey, check it out. Thanks for tuning in today, and until next time, keep seeking, keep growing, and keep your heart open to the journey. We’ll see you next time.

Bye everybody.