Meet Emily French

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily French a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Emily, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I was fresh out of college with a Degree in Church Music and thought that was the path for my life. I was a singer and the daughter of a pastor and was ready to land a job in a church and continue with what I thought was the path for me.

After graduation, I ended up in a small town in Colorado and I had no place to use my music or my degree. I ended up getting a job working with the city as a Youth Recreational Coordinator and I coached Soccer for the high school. I began working with girls from 5th grade to 12th grade. During this year in Colorado, the mission and purpose of my life was transformed.

What I saw and experienced in these girls from approx 11 rys old- 18 yrs old broke my heart. I saw the deep-rooted issues and insecurities that if we do not deal with when we are young, we just become bigger with the mentality of a middle school girl.

It was during this year I saw my own issues and how I had formed my identity and worth around music, performance and being “good”. And I saw how I had deep-seeded insecurities and needs that I carried like the young girls I was working with. I became passionate about development, self-awareness, and growth. I dreamt up a program that could be used in schools to teach girls about their self-worth and to help them form a healthy self-concept from a young age.

The vision for the program was placed in me through my own struggle and pain and being able to see so vividly these same needs in others. I became passionate about studying, reading, and learning to help discover what girls and women need to develop into Whole Flourishing Beings.

This year in Colorado in 2005 became a life-changing year, where I felt the purpose of my life was given to me. My life mission and purpose would be to go after the heart of girls and women and I would use every piece of me to accomplish this.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am the Founder and Creator of The Priceless Project. The mission of Priceless is “Inspiring every woman and every girl to embrace their infinite value and unrivaled uniqueness, and to discover the gift they are to the world.” I have written 3 curricula that help girls discover and identify who they are, their gifts, talents, and unique skill sets that may be connected to their purpose and contribution to the world.

The Priceless Project is a program developed to teach girls about self-worth. It was designed to be used in the public school system and run with the school calendar year. Each curriculum has 14 sessions to be used bi-weekly. Because the content is so needed in our current social climate, the program and resources are accessible to anyone with the desire to help girls in their development. The curriculum can be used for youth groups, bible study groups, counseling groups, mentoring, girls programs or anywhere a girl needs to be reminded she is Priceless. There are 3 Curricula “I Am Priceless”, “Love Thy Selfie” and “I Am A Masterpiece” Each has two versions a principles-based version that was created to be used in schools and a Bible Study/Small Group version that uses scripture. The student workbooks can be used for any version. www.iampriceless.me

In the development and implementation of the program over the last 20 years, I have also become committed to helping women in their development. What I have seen happen over and over again, is a woman would decide she would like to be a facilitator of The Priceless Project for a group of girls, and the woman would come back to me and say, “I know this is supposed to be for girls, but I needed this. I was changed by teaching this.”

I also have walked out my own personal journey of pain and crisis that forced me to wrestle through my becoming over the last 20 years. Through my journey, I had to work out my issues, become more self-aware, and face different patterns of behavior in my life that kept me stuck.

All of this has made me a passionate people developer. I have sat with countless women as they have shared their stories of pain, relationship issues, walking through a divorce, or trying to make hard decisions in their lives, and I have become familiar and acquainted with the needs of women. I have a deep desire to help women navigate life and the obstacles we face daily and create a life we want to live. The Priceless Project is an extension of this and I also have a website emilyjfrench.com where I have my blog, some other books I have written, and my original music, I use all these tools to help contribute to the health and healing of the woman’s soul.

The Priceless Project is now becoming a growing organism! All it needs is a passionate facilitator and it grows!! We have seen exponential growth in Kenya in the last 5 years with 6000 girls being touched by the program just this last year and in the last two years we have had Priceless groups launch in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sudan, Zanzibar, and Nagaland. The Curriculum “Love Thy Selfie” has been translated into Swahili the national language in Kenya and is currently being translated into Spanish. In December we introduced The Priceless Project in Peru and hope to see groups forming there in the next year. You can follow me Emily French and The Priceless Project on Facebook and Instagram. There is also a free app on OS and Android for facilitators and students/groups that is free. All the curricula are accessible on the app for free as well.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three qualities that have been the most impactful on my journey started with my spiritual upbringing. I was instilled with a deep desire to seek, to study, to reflect, to have spiritual disciplines or practices. My parents modeled and continue to live out a deeply devoted faith that seeks truth and continued growth. If we are not growing we are dying. We were created to grow, multiply, change, prune things off, and bloom again. Learning the lifelong lesson of being enthralled with and in awe of truth and the discovery of it, is a must.

I also believe the ability to create and build something from nothing, is a quality that is unique and I use it constantly. My father has been in construction my whole life and so I grew up on the job site with my 5 brothers and sisters as we watched and participated in the process of taking an idea, conceptualizing it, and then bringing it into reality with lots of hard work. I consider myself a builder and have a natural ability to create things from nothing.

The area of knowledge that brought about the most change in my life was experiencing deep self-awareness. Acquiring new language for emotions and being in tune with my internal world. Without this attunement, it is very hard to see changes in our lives. If I was going to help anyone on their journey of becoming, this is where I start, where we go inside and begin to look carefully at what is there, to become acquainted with all the pieces so we can then decide what is serving us well and what is not.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

As I began my journey of becoming more self-aware and wanting to see changes in my life, I read the book “The Gifts of Imperfection” by Dr. Brene Brown. This was life-changing for me. After reading this book, I wanted to take everyone through it! I continued my Brene romance and read anything I could of hers and took her courses as well.

Her work gave me language I did not have before. It helped me see myself more clearly. There is scripture that says “I pray that the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened.” When we have an “I once was blind but now I see moment.” You can never go back. It is like the experience when you buy a new Red SUV and you never noticed this car before, but now you see it everywhere! Your eyes have been enlightened.

Dr. Brene Brown’s work did this for me. It opened my eyes to myself. It showed me places that I needed to address, it showed me unhealthy patterns, it exposed ugly beliefs I held, it helped me wrestle with my humanity in new ways, and ultimately it changed my life. It helped aid me in the transformation process of becoming a woman that I like, and helped me create a life I love living.

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Eric Haschke
Jacko Oscanoa

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