dream big kid!
on creating bigger than my vision board
“in second place, from the diocese of…” i hold my breath, waiting for him to say winona, the diocese our school belongs to. but he doesn’t. he calls the other school’s name. he calls the other student’s name. and just like that, i’ve helped to coach a national champion. maab takes first place.
my heart is pounding, and i’m shaking as i run up to the side of the stage wooing and cheering like i promised her i’d do if she won. i’m certain i’ve made too much of a spectacle but i don’t care. we are jumping up and down and squealing as she comes off the stage holding a trophy for her, and a trophy for her coaches.
a few minutes later another one of our students is named the original oratory national champion for a second year in a row. the section with our students is wooing, dancing, screaming, with tears flowing. earlier in the ceremony we’d also had students place top 48, 19th, 10th, 7th, two 3rd place performances, and now two national champions.
coming from the land of minnesota sports, i’m still not accustomed to being a part of something that garners so much success, let alone actually helping to coach it! this wasn’t a dream i thought i’d achieve this early in my coaching career in my wildest dreams. but it made me realize i haven’t been dreaming big enough.
at the very beginning of the regular speech season last november i did a small workshop with some of other students about mindset. if i’ve learned anything from spiritual teachers, it’s that action without proper mindset is like trying to put the cart before the horse. having a proper foundation of belief and being a co-conspirator with the divine leads to the inspiration of inspired action.
i had each student choose a word for the season and write that in big letters on their page. then they filled in the white space around it with affirmations and pictures to help support their belief in their word.
for myself i chose the word alignment. i had affirmations like let go and let god, and i am an amazing coach! across one of the words, i put what felt like the loftiest goal i could… coach a 2026 state champion.
that felt huge. while i believed i had talented enough students, i also knew that i needed to separate my hopes and my dreams from student results after that attachment devastated me in 2025 (see past article footnote if you need the dirty deets). one of my students WAS a state finalist this year but she didn’t win. i wasn’t disappointed, i was so happy for her. and she’s a junior, so she’s got room to grow next year!
fast forward a few weeks and i’m continuing to help maab prepare for oral interpretation along with her other coach. for the category of OI, students have both a prose piece and a poetry program. they swap back and fourth between them for each round. the performances are 10 minutes long, and performed stationary, using a black book as a script. the blocking is minimal, and primarily the performance is colored by vocal delivery, gestures, facial expression, and potentially some prop work with the black book.
i helped cut a 2075 word short story down to 1225. her and her prose coach cut another 100 words to keep the performance under time. i coached her poetry piece that another student had used during the invitational season. her prose was about asylum seeking immigrants in america, and her poetry was about the persecution and danger that women who wear the hijab in america face. both were so beautiful and important. she moved me to tears with her prose in the semifinals, despite the fact that i’ve heard the story performed 100 times. when i watched her perform her poetry for the final round my jaw was on the floor. it was such a spectacular performance. i knew that no matter what place she got from 1-6 after that final round that i would be proud because i watched her give it everything she had.
back in november when i was making that vision board, i never would have put 2026 national champion coach onto that piece of paper. not because i didn’t want it. of course i wanted it! of course i want the accolades and the success for my students that not only highlight their talent but also say “look at that liv, she really knows what she’s doing!” and of course i want all of us to win! who wouldn’t want that?!
six months ago i would have had a hard time believing so much of what has happened since then would have happened. yes that moment of success for maab (and me) was so exciting but there have been a hundred exciting and successful moments that led up to that. each little thing strengthened my belief in who i was and what i was doing and why it matters to build things bit by bit, brick by brick, with god in my ear the whole time.
all this to say is that it’s time for me to start dreaming bigger than i thought i knew how to do. i never could have told you before how this would happen, and a big part of that is how much help i had from other people. i never could have predicted all of the factors outside of me that contributed to this success, but taking the step that was lit up right in front of me moment by moment and day by day helped me slowly but surely climb a mountain.
you don’t have to know how you’re going to do it. you just have to believe that it’s possible and let the universe guide you to the action that gets you there.
😷 famesick by lena dunham - i totally cracked and bought it, despite being 13th in line for it on the library waiting list. actually what happened was that i decided i would buy it if i saw it at the airport on my way to dc last week. and as soon as the lady at the msp bookstore told me that no where in the airport would have it as it was backordered at the publishers my need for it was insatiable. the quickest way to render me obsessed is tell me i can’t have something. i am 17 pages in and loving it so far. as always, i promise to report back
🎤 hacks season 5 - with the series finale coming up this week i decided it was finally time to get caught up. i’ve actually watched most of this through twice (except the penultimate episode which i only got 5 minutes into before my plane’s descent yesterday…) because i watched it on my trip and again since i’ve been home with collin. it’s worth two watches because this season has been so dang funny and endearing. i feel like they are really trying to give all of these characters the beautiful endings they deserve and i cannot wait to see what they pull out in the final two episodes. i really hope that we get a 6 feet under style finale (except not sad!) where we find out what happened with everyone after the end. idk maybe asking for a parks and rec finale would have been better?
🇺🇸 ncfl nationals in dc baby! - while i already talked a lot about the tournament aspect of our trip in my opening essay, i haven’t said much about dc! what a cool city. it’s so walkable and there is so much to see and do. way too many memorials if you ask me. one of the days we took the students on a walking tour where we saw the washington monument, the vietnam memorial, the lincoln memorial, the mlk memorial, and the korean war memorial. we ended the tour at the smithsonian’s african american history museum. it was a difficult look at our nation’s contemptible history and treatment of black people. it was also extremely powerful and i am glad that our student’s had a chance to see it. we had a long talk at the end of the day about what was most impactful and the biggest takeaways and it was beautiful hearing all of their insights. this was as a whole an unforgettable weekend.
🌊 the o.c. rewatch - alright this was my favorite show while it was airing, and i own the first two seasons on dvd so i’ve seen them many many times. that being said, i have only seen the third season once, while it was on in 2005-2006, and i never watched the 4th season because (SPOILERS) i was mad they killed marissa off. 20 years later and this moment still gutted me, i was in bed just sobbing like my best friend had been driven off the road by fuckin volcheck. let me just say, season 4 is a wild ride. honestly that whole show is a wild ride. but season 4 i feel like did the same thing to me that the final season of how i met your mother did where i get really vested in this relationship (ryan and taylor) only for them to do a flash forward in the finale where the relationship has ended off screen. the whole thing felt lazy. the bullet storyline was crazy. julie accidentally starting a male escort service was crazy. ryan and taylor having a shared coma/it’s a wonderful life dream was crazy. chris pratt and everything he did was CRAZY. all in all i’m glad it’s over, and i think moving forward if i rewatch, the show is going to end with trey getting shot and kirsten going to rehab.
how i love taking you all along with me on the journey that is my life. i am so happy to have you here, reading my words, and seeing my heart. i love and appreciate you more than you could know 🫶🏼
The photo of you and Maab! 🥹😍 congrats to you both!