A few months ago I shared the second half of my Be Lively Campaign, something called “Push Projects.” Brides who choose to participate in a push project get discounts on their wedding investment in exchange for finding time to push themselves outside of their comfort zones.

To do something.

To do the thing they’ve been putting off, to take that flight to France if given the chance, to get back in touch with a friend they’ve lost contact with, or to wake up for sunrise and read a good book.

I quickly realized that I couldn’t ask my clients to make these leaps, and not do it myself, right? Just like my girls, I sat down and thought about things I wanted to do, that I’d been putting off – like anyone, a million things come to mind. Finally, I decided on something that I certainly needed a little push to do – get a tattoo. I ask each of you who complete a Push Project to make sure to send in photos and tell me the story, so now it’s my turn:

I sat down in Wade’s chair at Victory Blvd Tattoo in Asheville and in only 20 minutes, I was able to check one more item off my bucket list.

It wasn’t a big tattoo, or particularly eye-catching for a stranger to see, but it meant the world. 10 years ago, when I was in highschool and my dad passed away, he left a letter in his personal safe addressed just to me. In the letter, he wrote his advice on living life to his only child. What I love about that letter are the parts that were distinctly him. The reflections of a tough man trying to fit in enough words to protect his daughter when she grew up without him., things like “don’t be manipulated,” and not to be too hard on myself, but “be hard enough.”

He signed the letter with a phrase I’ve always loved: “Drive on.”

One day, while I contemplated getting the tattoo, I took to Google to find out the origins of “drive on” – where did it come from exactly? It seemed like a rather uncommon way to conclude a letter after all.

And it was then, 10 years after I’d last talked to my father that what I saw staring back at me from the computer screen felt like he was standing right in front of me, telling me the story himself.

The first link I clicked on was a Youtube video by Johnny Cash for his song “Drive on.” The clip opened with Johnny Cash himself explaining the origin of the saying, and it gripped me to my soul.

My father was a Vietnam veteran, and both Johnny Cash’s explanation of the song and the lyrics that went along with it were so powerful I could barely believe what I was listening to as I sat enraptured with the screen, soaking up my own personal concert as I sat at my desk.

The line “I gotta little limp now when I walk, and got a little tremble when I talk, but I finally found out who I am, I’m a walkin talkin miracle from Vietnam” hit me in the face as I could picture my dad’s crooked grin and the hitch in his gate that made him limp, a result of his crashed helicopter. He would always tell me I was the reason he was saved in the war – that his life was protected so he could create ME. This song almost felt like a diary entry I had stumbled upon and gave me answers when he couldn’t give them himself.

Realizing that these simple words “drive on” were so much heavier and more powerful than I could have ever imagined – I knew they were exactly what I wanted to look down at and be reminded of as I went through the rest of my life.

And so, in his handwriting – I made my Push Project permanent and I couldn’t be happier.