By: Sandra Williams
Many people who curate anthologies about purpose do it from a position of having found theirs. M Teresa Lawrence did it from a different place, one that may make her a credible guide through the terrain the book covers.
She arrived at the theme not from a mountaintop, as she puts it, but from the valley. As a Cuban immigrant who built a path through Columbia Law School, founded a Wyoming-based nonprofit now operating across multiple continents, and has spent years working in rooms where she was not expected to belong, she carries the kind of earned understanding of purpose that is difficult to acquire from reading about it.
That lived experience is central to Wings of Purpose: How Vision and Intention Propel Success, the global anthology she curated and co-authored alongside 21 contributors from around the world.
The Tension That Runs Through the Book
M Teresa Lawrence describes a specific tension that runs through her personal story and through every chapter in the book. The tension between the life the world expects of you and the life you are called to live.
She knows what it can feel like to follow a path that makes sense to your soul and little sense to anyone watching. She knows what it can feel like to decide you belong in a room that was not designed with you in mind. That tension, she says, is not unique to her. Every contributor in Wings of Purpose has their own version of it.
The details differ. The geography differs. The inner terrain can feel similar. And that similarity, she believes, is why the book may connect across cultures and countries. Purpose is not only an American concept or a Western concept. It is a human one.
Three Traits That Carried Her Through
When M Teresa Lawrence reflects on the character traits that have been significant in what she has built, she names three. Resilience. Discernment. And a steady commitment to purpose.
Resilience carried her through the moments that could have disrupted the mission, donations delayed, partnerships that fell through, resources falling short while needs continued to grow. Discernment protected the integrity of the work, learning to read beyond words and observe actions, patterns, and consistency, especially when people’s stated intentions did not match their behavior. And the commitment to purpose became her anchor when the how evolved in ways she had not planned for.
What began with a simple goal of sharing a book revealed deeper needs in communities. The mission expanded into mentorship, food and clothing support, youth empowerment across continents. Staying committed to the why, even as the how kept changing, is what helped her lead through those changes.
The Chapter That Stopped Her
Among the 21 contributors in the anthology, each surprised her in some way. But one chapter especially stayed with her. His Eminence Shyalpa Rinpoche’s writing on inner peace arrived with a quality of stillness she describes as not announcing itself, it simply arrived. She found herself reading it more slowly than anything else in the manuscript, almost as a practice rather than as editorial review.
And then there were the chapters she did not expect to affect her so strongly. The ones from contributors who had never written anything like this before, who came to the page uncertain and left something meaningful there. Those, she says, are the ones that remind her why she does this work.
What She Hopes Shifts in the Reader
M Teresa Lawrence hopes that what happens when the last reader closes the final page of the book is precise in a way that says something about how carefully she has thought about it.
She hopes something loosens. Some long-held story about who a person is allowed to be, or what they are allowed to want. She hopes the reader thinks of one person they need to call. Looks at their own life with a little more tenderness and a little less judgment.
And if the book becomes someone’s turning point, the way many contributors described their own, she will consider the work done.
Not because she wrote a perfect book. But because she gathered people she believed were right for the project, got out of the way, and trusted that truth, when 21 people tell it at once, can have power.
She believes readers may find something in it that stays with them.
Readers interested in M Teresa Lawrence’s journey from Cuban immigrant to global philanthropist and the 21 voices she gathered around her can find Wings of Purpose on Amazon. The book invites readers to consider what their own wings of purpose might look like.
