Jordan Lee Dooley, the mastermind behind the hit Instagram and blog Soul Scripts, started out as an Etsy shop owner and then grew her blog into a full, successful business.
“Soul Scripts was the very first name God ever put on my heart,” said Dooley in a recent Heroes for Her podcast with Erin Weidemann. “It really just started out as arts and crafts. Soul Scripts originally meant calligraphy and I was calligraphing bible verses. I started doodling on canvases and mugs and just kind of doing it as a hobby, it was kind of my creative outlet. And then God kind of gave me a challenge.”
Deciding to cut out the middle man, Dooley closed the shop and chose to focus on the message.
“I didn’t even understand what a blog was at the time, I just knew everyone had them on their website, so I thought I had to have one.” She said. “It makes perfect sense because I’ve always been a writer. When I was five years old other girls played with barbie dolls, I wrote short stories. So, it kind of slowly revealed itself over time.”
Growing up in Indiana, Dooley says she had a really close relationship with her mom, which she has come to realize is key to so much of what she’s doing now.
“It was a very open, very vulnerable relationship where I never had to hide anything or questions that I had,” Dooley said. “She was just really great with having those discussion that needed to be had.”
When she went away to college it was a time of self-discovery and growing. Going to a big state school, Dooley was exposed to many different perspectives and had decide to make her faith her own through some soul searching.
“College was a major time of growth in my life,” she said. “I got involved in a sorority, which is somewhere I never said I would go.”
During her time in the sorority, she gained a lot of insight into women and girls and what she says sisterhood can mask itself to look like, as well as what friendship means on a deeper level.
Being very intentional with her friendships at that time, Dooley made friends with many people on a surface level, but really learned the value of what it takes to have strong female friendships.
