It was a weekday in September.
I was sitting on the opening plenary of the Financial Opportunity Center 20th Anniversary Convening in Chicago. We had just finished our portion of the panel. I was settled into my seat, fully expecting the conversation to move on to the next part of the program. Then the CEO of Jane Addams Resource Corporation, who was sitting on the plenary with me, paused to thank me for the years of work I had given to this model. And before I could fully take in what she was saying, the room rose.
A standing ovation.
I do not remember a lot of details about my body in that moment. I think I may have looked down. I do remember the surprise. And I remember this very clearly. I cried. A few moments later, I was handed a welded plaque that one of JARC’s instructors had created by hand. The weight of it. The craftsmanship of it. The symbolism of it. It was almost more than I could carry standing up. I wrote about that day at the time in Honoring Legacy, Living Purpose, but I was not yet ready to write about what came after.
I have thought about that moment many times since. Not as a trophy. Not as a milestone. But as a question I have been quietly sitting with.
What does it mean to be seen, and what do we do when we are?
Because here is what I have noticed about myself. When recognition like that comes, I do not always know what to do with it. And much more often than I would like to admit, what I do with it is move past it. I share these reflections today because I do not think I am alone in this. I think there are many of you reading this who have been quietly building something meaningful for years, and when the recognition finally comes, something in you wants to set it down quickly and get back to the work. I want us to look at that pattern together. Because I do not believe it is serving any of us.
The Quiet Disappearance
Here is what the rushing past looks like for me. Sometimes I do not share the moment at all. The recognition happens, and I let it stay in the room where it happened. I do not post about it. I do not bring it up in conversation. I do not include it in the next email or the next update or the next reflection. It happens, and then it just lives in my own memory. Other times, someone else shares it. A colleague brings it up. A friend mentions it in a group. And in those moments, I say thank you, and very quickly I move us to the next topic.
I have done this for years. If I am honest with myself, I have not done it because I am afraid of being seen. I have done it because being seen has felt almost beside the point. The work was the thing. I did not do the work to be recognized for it. I did it because it mattered. And when the recognition comes, it can feel like a small detour from what actually matters, which is the work itself.
There is also another piece I want to name honestly. Sometimes pausing to share recognition feels self-promotional. And even though I know that is not what it would actually be, the thought of it still keeps me quiet. I share this not because I think I have it figured out, but because I am still learning this. And I suspect some of you are too.
Why We Shrink
When I have sat with this pattern long enough to be honest about it, I have come to recognize a few things that are true for me. They may be true for you too.
Visibility feels exposing when you have done quiet work for years. When you have spent a long time in the behind-the-scenes work of building, supporting, mentoring, advocating and serving, the spotlight feels foreign. Not because you do not deserve it, but because you are not used to it. The body remembers the shape of the work it has been doing. And quiet, faithful work has a particular shape. Stepping into recognition asks you to take on a different shape, even just for a moment, and that takes some adjustment. This is something I have been slowly learning to navigate, including in the lead-up to my first global speaking moment, which I wrote about in Ready Enough: What Happens When You Stop Waiting.
Receiving is harder than giving. Most women I know are practiced givers. We pour into our families, our teams, our communities, our clients, our missions. We know how to hold space for other people’s growth, other people’s celebration, other people’s wins. We are far less practiced at being on the receiving end. And being seen is a form of receiving. So when it comes, we sometimes do not know what to do with it because we have not built the muscle.
There is a fear of being seen as proud or as taking too much space. This one is real, and it is especially real for women in leadership. We have absorbed messages our whole lives about how much room we are allowed to take. And even when we know intellectually that being recognized is not the same as being prideful, the residue of those messages can still make us shrink. We can find ourselves softening our wins, qualifying our accomplishments or simply not naming them at all so we do not appear to be taking more than our share.
None of these reasons make us weak. They make us human. And they make us women who have been navigating a world that has not always known what to do with us when we step into the fullness of what we have built.
The Faith Layer
There is one more thing I want to name carefully, because it is true for me and I suspect it is true for some of you.
As women of faith, we have been taught well to give God the glory. And that is right and good. The work I do, the words I write, the moments I have been honored in, none of that exists apart from the One who called me to it. I know that, and I want to live that. But here is something I have noticed in myself, and I want to be honest about it. Sometimes I use giving God the glory as a way to skip past the moment instead of letting it land in me. The recognition comes, and I hand it off so quickly that it never has a chance to settle. I do not pause. I do not feel it. I do not let it shape me. I just route it past myself and keep moving. I am not sure that is what God is actually asking of me.
Giving God the glory and letting yourself be seen are not in conflict. You can do both. You were meant to do both. You can receive the moment fully, feel the weight of it in your body, let it reshape how you understand your own work and still know exactly who gave you the capacity to do that work in the first place. The deflection is not humility. The deflection is sometimes just another way of not receiving. And I am learning that receiving is part of the work, not a detour from it.
What We Miss When We Rush Past
When we rush past being seen, something is lost. And it took me a long time to be honest about what.
We miss the integration. Recognition has a way of reshaping our understanding of our own work. It tells us something we cannot tell ourselves from the inside. When someone reflects back to us what they have witnessed, we get to see ourselves through their eyes. That is not vanity. That is data. And when we rush past it, we lose access to it.
We miss the witness. The people who took the time to honor us did something meaningful. They paid attention. They chose to name it out loud. When we deflect too quickly, we are not just protecting ourselves from the discomfort of being seen. We are also unintentionally dismissing the gift they offered. Their seeing of us is worth honoring.
We miss the modeling. The women coming behind us, the team members watching us, the daughters and mentees and colleagues in our orbit, they are learning from how we receive. When we shrink, we teach them to shrink. When we receive with grace, we teach them they can too.
And here is the one that has been sitting with me most. We miss the chance to let God show us something through it. Sometimes the recognition is not just a nice moment. Sometimes it is God’s way of telling us something we have not been able to hear from ourselves. This matters. I see you. Keep going. When we rush past, we miss the message too.
What Sustainable Visibility Actually Looks Like
This year my word has been sustainable visibility. I have written about it as my intention for 2026, and it has shaped how I am showing up in every part of my work. But I want to be clearer about what it actually means in practice, because I think we sometimes confuse visibility with performance.
Sustainable visibility is not about posting more. It is not about being everywhere. It is not about claiming credit for everything or making sure your name is on the front of everything you touch. None of that is what I am talking about. Sustainable visibility is the practice of being seen and whole at the same time. It is letting the moment land when it comes. It is saying thank you and meaning it. It is staying in your body when someone is honoring your work. It is sharing the moment with the people in your life, not because you need them to validate it, but because part of what you are building is allowed to be witnessed. It is letting the recognition reshape how you understand yourself, not so that you can become arrogant, but so that you can become accurate. Receiving is its own practice, and like all sustaining practices, it has to be tended. I have written before about why we cannot pour from an empty cup and the same principle applies here. You cannot integrate what you do not let in.
You were not meant to do this work in the dark forever. The quiet seasons matter. The behind-the-scenes seasons matter. But there are also seasons of being witnessed, and those matter too. And when those seasons come, the invitation is not to shrink. The invitation is to receive.
A Word About the Next Time
I want to close with this, because I think it is the most useful thing I can leave you with. There will be a next time.
Maybe it is a small one. A colleague who says something kind in a meeting. A reader who emails you to tell you a post found them at the right moment. A friend who notices what you have been carrying. A coaching client who reflects back what you helped them see. Maybe it is a big one. A stage. A title. A piece of recognition you have been working toward for years that finally arrives.
When it comes, I want you to try something different this time. Do not rush past it. Do not deflect it. Do not change the subject. Do not move us to the next topic. Just for a moment, let it land. Say thank you, and mean it. Feel the weight of it in your body. Let yourself be seen. And then, if you want to, tell someone. Not to perform. Not to promote. But because part of what you are building is allowed to be witnessed, and you are allowed to honor what is being honored in you.
You were never invisible. The world is just slowly catching up to what God already saw.
So here is my question for you. What is one moment of recognition you have rushed past, and what would it look like to go back and let yourself receive it now, even quietly, even in your own heart, before the next one comes?