What got me here

Standing in the foyer of 2026, I got to thinking… what got me to this exact place? In true “work-mode me” fashion, I documented with bullet points. (I know y’all appreciate them in our teeny attention span reality)

• Laughing. (especially at myself)

• Hustling.

• Relentlessly showing up.

• Saying yes before I knew how (I have played expert when I was a novice more times than I can count).

• Networking until my cheeks hurt. I am ALWAYS in the room.

• Attracting incredible humans to build beside me.

• Connecting people with no expectation of a favor in return.

• Doing.

• Doing more.

• Learning how to juggle a thousand pieces of the business and not completely lose my mind.

• Believing deeply that I could make a real impact.

• Meeting the people who showed me I was making that real impact.

• Helping people.

• Helping people more.

• Always helping people.

Even when I didn’t know how to help myself.

And oh yeah….motherhood.

Motherhood cracked me open.

It taught me grit, with no sleep and no ops manual.

It made me a master problem solver with no experience, just gut instinct, love, and a deadline called “now… or the tantrum starts in the middle of aisle 6 at CVS.”

It softened me in the best ways, and has made my heart ache in ways I’d never experienced before.

And it showed me that my inner circle ( my family, my ride-or-dies, my team, the neighbors I couldn’t live without) deserves to be treated like gold, because they are. How the hell else can we all get through this insane ride of life? We need each other. And in that need is beauty, humility, and lots of fun.

So, that’s what got me here.

And now, I’m curious what gets me to the next version of me.

The next version of me that takes all the lessons, leads with confidence, tries softer (as Andrea Gibson would say), writes a hell of a lot more, and laughs. Then laughs some more.