The room was already beautiful when I walked in.

White roses on black tablecloths. Quote cards in wooden stands. Branded tote bags at every seat. The kind of care in the setup that tells you immediately this is not a standard professional development session. The ERG leaders had built something before I ever arrived, and I walked into it carrying my workbooks, my slide deck, my handouts, and twenty-five years of accumulated experience that I was about to find out still knew exactly what to do.

I had been invited to lead this workshop by a woman I met through the Women Thrive Summit. We had both spoken there, connected across the virtual space the way you do when you recognize someone doing work that resonates with yours, and eventually she reached out. Her ERG was planning a gathering called Rooted and Rising. They were looking for someone to lead a session. Would I be interested?

I sent a proposal with three options. They chose the one that became Leading From the Inside Out: Strengthening Mindset, Boundaries and Self-Trust. Then came a few months of email exchanges, one planning call, and then June 18th.

This was our first time meeting in person.

I want to hold that detail for a moment because it matters to what this post is actually about. The door to that room opened because of Mission ENSPIRE. Because I had been doing the visibility work, showing up on stages, building a platform, saying yes to rooms that stretched me. But the person who walked through that door and knew what to do once she got inside, that person was built by twenty-five years of nonprofit leadership, facilitation training, and the particular kind of confidence that only comes from having held a lot of rooms over a long time.

Both callings got me there. Neither one could have done it alone.

Before 2020, in-person facilitation was woven into my professional life so regularly I rarely stopped to think about it. The world shifting inside changed that, and a promotion in 2024 shifted it further. I had been back in an in-person room just six weeks earlier. But there is something about walking into a new room, with a new audience, built around work that is entirely yours, that asks you to show up differently. The familiarity of the format and the newness of the moment were both true at the same time.

And still, the body remembers. The instincts came back before I finished my first sentence.

I told the room at the start that I was not there to lecture them. That this was not a session where I would talk at them for an hour while they took notes and waited to leave. We were going to reflect. We were going to write. We were going to share with the woman sitting beside us. I said it because I meant it, and because I have learned over a long career that a room does not open until the people in it believe they are actually safe to be honest. You cannot create that with a slide. You earn it with how you enter.

We started with short introductions, just enough for everyone to hear their own voice in the room. Then we went to work.

The workshop moved through three roots: mindset, boundaries, and self-trust. Not as a list of concepts to memorize but as an invitation to look inward, to ask which one was asking for their attention right now, and to name one practice small enough to actually keep. There were workbook prompts and four full minutes of writing in silence. There were partner shares with specific instructions: listen, do not advise, say thank you, then switch. There was a moment where I asked everyone to hold one of the gardening tools from their tote bag and think about what it means to tend soil before you expect anything to rise from it.

None of that structure came from a facilitation playbook. It came from years of coaching work, from the belief I have carried through Mission ENSPIRE that women already hold more than they give themselves credit for, and that what they need most is not more information but more space to see themselves clearly. That sensibility shaped the design of the entire workshop.

And the facilitation training, the pacing, the silence, the instinct for when to push and when to pull back, gave the coaching content a container strong enough to hold it. One without the other would have produced something thinner. A coaching session without the facilitation structure might have felt unmoored. A facilitation workshop without the coaching underneath would have been information delivery with good activities. What happened in that room on June 18 was neither of those things.

The feedback forms told me what I could not fully see from the front of the room. People named validation. Self-reflection. Being asked to look at themselves. One person wrote that they do not normally do things like this. That is the sentence I keep returning to, because that is exactly what the workshop was designed to do. To take a professional development moment and make it personal. To invite the woman, not just the leader, into the room.

When it was over, I walked to my car and sat with the quiet for a minute.

I felt good. I also felt drained in that particular way that only happens when you have given a room everything you brought with you. It is not the tired of depletion. It is the tired of full effort, the kind that tells you something real happened, that you did not hold back, that the work cost something because it was worth something.

That is what the and produces when both callings are allowed to show up fully. Not a divided self trying to serve two masters. A whole person, drawing from everything she has built, in a room that needed exactly that.

What does it look like when everything you have learned, across every season and every role, shows up at the same time? Have you stopped long enough to let that be something you claim?

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?

And on March 17 at 9am CST, I was the one leading the conversation.

That still feels significant to say out loud, not because it was a single moment, but because of everything that led up to it. This did not start with the summit. It started months earlier in smaller rooms, shorter talks and spaces where I was still learning how to use my voice in a different way. Through the Women Thrive Speaker Showcases, I had the opportunity to share pieces of my message in shorter segments and continue developing my voice in this space. Those rooms gave me space to practice, to stretch and to get more comfortable being seen and heard in a different way.

I was also showing up more consistently in visible ways through my posts, through my reels and through choosing to share my voice before everything felt fully formed. Before I felt completely ready. Before I had it all figured out. Looking back, I can see that I was building something long before this moment arrived. Last year, I had the opportunity to contribute an article to the Women Thrive Magazine, which allowed me to be part of the space through writing and reflection. This year, I returned as a speaker and was included on the March 2026 magazine cover alongside the other speakers. I am not going to downplay that. I am a cover girl!

And more than anything, it felt like a full circle moment connected to the work I had already been doing behind the scenes.

The week leading up to the summit felt different. There was excitement, there was gratitude, and if I am honest, there was also pressure. This was my first time delivering a full 45-minute speaking session, and my first time speaking to a global audience in this way. I wanted to do it well. And that is where I had to be honest with myself, because I know what it looks like when preparation starts to shift into something else. Perfectionism has a way of disguising itself as preparation. It sounds responsible and it feels productive, but if I am not careful, it can keep me adjusting, editing, and refining long after I am already ready. I could feel that tension in the days leading up to the talk. Wanting to make sure every point was clear, every transition was smooth, and every word landed the way I intended. But at some point, I had to make a decision. Not about whether I was ready, but about whether I was willing to show up. On the morning of the session, everything became very real. Logging on, seeing the space, knowing that women from around the world were in the room. And in that moment, I realized I did not need more preparation. I needed presence.

As I began the session, I asked my first question, and immediately the chat came alive. Women responding in real time, naming what they were feeling. Calm. Inspired. Confident. Brave. As we moved deeper into the conversation, the responses became more personal and more honest.

Perfectionism is my problem.
This is me.
I am in this slide.
Being ready is a myth.

There were moments where I intentionally invited participation, and each time, the response was immediate. You could see the recognition happening in real time as women named themselves in the conversation and connected their own experiences to what was being shared. And what stood out to me was not just the volume of the chat, but the depth of it. This was not surface-level engagement. This was reflection, honesty and awareness happening live in the room. There were moments where I found myself leaning all the way in, fully engaged in what I was saying and how it was landing. I even had to adjust my positioning because I was so into the message and the delivery. I was not thinking about what was next. I was in it. And I did not fall apart the way I had feared. I did not lose my place. I did not forget everything I wanted to say. I did not need perfection to carry me through. Instead, I found my rhythm. I trusted the structure I had built, and I stayed grounded in the message I came to share.

After the session, during a brief conversation, the co-host said something that stayed with me. “Thank you for coaching us.” That moment brought something full circle. Because when I was preparing for my first speaking engagement representing my brand, someone told me to approach my talk as if I were facilitating. At the time, I did not fully understand what that meant. Now I do. I did not deliver a presentation. I held a coaching conversation in a larger room. That is why the chat was active. That is why people were responding in real time. That is why the engagement felt different. It was not about delivering information. It was about creating space for reflection, honesty, and movement.

When it was over, there was a moment to pause. To exhale. To sit with what had just happened. And what stood out to me most was not whether every word was exactly right. It was the realization that I had done it. Not because I felt fully ready, but because I showed up anyway. The very framework I shared during my talk, that courage leads to action, action creates evidence, and evidence builds confidence, was not just something I taught. It was something I lived in that moment.

What this experience reminded me is that confidence does not come before the moment. It is built in the moment. It is built through the decision to move forward even when there is still uncertainty. This is something I see often in the women I work with. Brilliant, capable, thoughtful women who are doing meaningful work, and yet they are waiting. Waiting to feel more ready, waiting to have more clarity, waiting to feel more certain before they take the next step. Not because they lack ability, but because perfectionism is quietly asking them to hold back just a little longer.To adjust one more thing. To review one more time. To wait until it feels just right.

But there are moments where waiting no longer serves you. Moments where the next step is not more preparation. It is movement. I did not just prepare for this moment. I practiced showing up long before it arrived. In smaller rooms, in visible ways, and in moments that felt uncertain. And when the opportunity came, I was able to step into it not because everything was perfect, but because I had built the willingness to move forward anyway. That is what creates momentum. That is what builds confidence. Not perfection. Not certainty. But action.

So, if you find yourself in a season where you are thinking, planning, preparing, and still not moving, I want to leave you with this. Where might preparation be keeping you in place when it is actually time to move forward? And what would it look like to take one step, not when everything feels perfect, but when you know you are ready enough.