She wasn’t looking for anything in particular.
She had stopped at the grocery store on her way home because she was out of coffee and needed a few things for dinner. It was the same store she had visited for years. She knew exactly where everything was. Without thinking, she pushed her cart down the familiar aisles, reached for the same brands, and followed the same path she always had.
The she found herself standing in front of an entire wall of pasta sauce.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard a woman say, “I just want to get back to myself.”
Sometimes she says it quietly, almost as if she’s admitting something she hasn’t even allowed herself to think before. Other times she laughs when she says it, trying to soften the weight of the words. But no matter how it’s expressed, the feeling underneath is remarkably similar.
Somewhere along the way, she believes she lost herself.
One of the most confusing things about growth is that other people often become attached to versions of us that no longer exist. Not because they are trying to hold us back, and not because they want something bad for us. But because those versions worked.
You know…the dependable one, the strong one, the achiever, the caretaker, the woman who always said yes, the woman who could handle anything…and the woman everyone counted on.
Women lived inside that equation for decades. But something has shifted.
The shift was quiet, powerful and irreversible.
Women leaders are no longer willing to sacrifice themselves in order to succeed. And in doing so, they are setting an entirely new standard for the next generation of leadership.
In the early 1990s, I found myself as a single mom with two amazing children, I had just lost my mom and was recently divorced. It was a lot to handle and I had to figure out my next steps. I answered an ad in the newspaper…yes, a real newspaper with a classified section. I […]
Think about this… I was planning on putting on a telesummit with 25 other women. I had hand-selected them, had the email invitation to them and was excited to be organizing and facilitating it….until that word creeped into my brain….I’m not big enough or famous enough or smart enough…I even threw in tall enough and […]
In 2009, I knew I wasn’t in the right place. I tried to make myself fit in. Since I’ve always felt like a square peg in a round hole for most of my life, this wasn’t a new sensation. But something was different. I was looking for a sign or an opportunity or someone to […]
If you are old enough to remember floppy disks, syntax errors, bits and bytes and Dos, you will also remember thinking and wondering why you didn’t get every piece of information that you needed pouring out at your request. Unfortunately, we were reminded that what you put in, is what you get out. That is […]
Other than 2 years of my career, I have always been an entrepreneur working from home. Yes, I’ve gone to an office, facilitated training in an office, recruited in an office and had team meetings in an office…but the majority of my time, was working from home. I don’t remember if anyone gave me a […]
I always have interesting conversations and incredible people watching episodes when I’m at the airport. I listen and observe, I engage and I observe some more. At one airport, I was waiting for a flight and we were delayed so many times that it was almost a game to see when the app and the […]
When I started my company in 2009, one of the first things I did was to understand what I didn’t know how to do. I loved people, I could sell, I wanted to make a difference and always wanted to bring value. All sounds great so far right? What I didn’t really know how to […]
Here’s the scenario…you decide you have something that will solve a solution for others. You’ve researched the market through surveys, focus groups and lots of connections. This is what you’ve been put here to do and so now you do as Nike as reminded you for decades and you “Just Do It” and voila […]