ICONIC March 2016 | Page 10

Seneca: Moving a little bit further, how did this cancer inspire the Bible Belles Heroes for Her? Erin: I think it comes in two parts. First part is as a young girl, and a lot of your female listeners can attest to this. If they are grown up girls, they probably went through something like this. When you’re a young girl, you really struggle with insecurity and self doubt, and not feeling like you’re worth very much. It has to do with girls constantly comparing themselves, there’s this competition that exists between girls, and I really struggled with that growing up, which is why I lost faith and I got confused, and I started looking for my worth all over the world, and not finding it. It has to come from that, and then after my cancer diagnosis, I got this new found hope in the Lord, and what he wanted me to do as far as redirecting my life. I went back to school, I became a teacher and a coach, and I just immersed myself into the culture of kids, and hanging out with kids, and talking with them, and listening to them, and learning about how this struggle is just plaguing girls today. Amidst all that I got married, and found out we were pregnant and having a girl, and just had this moment of terror, of, “How am I going to help my own daughter navigate all of these negative feelings she’s about to have about herself, about the world around her, about real beauty, and that’s really where this series came from. Seneca : Who are the five characters? Erin: Oh, oh, in the series, so we chose five women from the Bible that we thought really exemplified the qualities that make up an inwardly beautiful woman. We chose Hannah, Esther, Abigail, Ruth, and Deborah. The qualities that we wanted to focus on were prayer, patience, bravery, loyalty, and leadership, and these five women really represent the journey that today’s girl can take if she wants to discover God’s love, if she is looking for her purpose, she can find it through our main character. She’s going to watch our character go on a series of adventures where she gets to learn about all these women, but as it relates to a real world problem that the character has. It’s meant for a girl to really connect with the character and each of the Bible Belles in a very meaningful way so that she can apply biblical truth to her own life, no matter how old she is. 10 PAGE | ICONIC