2017: The Call to Possibility

2017 was a pivotal year in my life.

By then, I had spent nearly a decade reshaping my world from the inside out—parenting, performing, volunteering, and carrying the weight of a fourth-generation family business.

After transforming our workplace culture, managing a $3 million remodel, and celebrating our 100-year anniversary, I was being recognized nationally for success I no longer felt connected to.

I was exhausted.

Physically.

Mentally.

Spiritually.

I had undergone two back surgeries after herniating discs in my lower spine, followed by IV antibiotics for an infection that wouldn’t heal. I had lived with and loved an alcoholic through cycles of sobriety and relapse, calm and rage, hope and disappointment. I felt isolated in leadership—surrounded by people, but starved for true peers.

And beneath it all, I had come to a truth I could no longer avoid:

I hated the daily grind of running a grocery store.

In February 2017, I stood on a large stage in Las Vegas alongside the other IGA Retailer of the Year finalists.

The lights were blinding. The applause loud. The room full of people who wanted exactly what I was being offered.

And all I could think was:

Please don’t let me win.

Not because I wasn’t proud of the work.

Not because we weren’t worthy.

But because winning would have cemented a life I knew, at my core, I was miserable inside of.

The lie wasn’t success—it was identity.

The story of the happy, fulfilled fourth-generation retailer who loved this industry.

When they announced someone else as the winner, relief washed through me—quiet, unmistakable, undeniable.

Standing on that stage, I realized I had outgrown the life I had worked so hard to build.

I left Las Vegas knowing something had to change.

I just didn’t know who I could be on the other side of it.

Old voices rushed in.

The words my grandmother spoke when I chose not to go to college at eighteen: Drain on society.

The message—spoken and unspoken—that without a degree, I should be grateful anyone wanted me at all.

Those beliefs had shaped decades of decision-making.

But by then, I had done enough inner work to recognize them for what they were: old wiring, designed to keep me small and safe.

And I knew this:

If I had built this life through discipline, maybe I could rebuild it through curiosity.

So I began.

When I returned home, I created a Possibility Vision Board. I researched anything that sparked interest—acting workshops in New York City, leadership programs, motivational speaking, executive women’s training. I printed what lit me up and taped it where I could see it every day.

John Maxwell Team materials.

An executive women’s leadership program at Yale.

Acting workshops at The Barrow Group in NYC.

Not answers—possibilities.

Around that same time, I found a business coach, Lisa. Her belief in me—and her insistence that my worth was not tied to a degree—changed everything. She gave me tools for life and business that surpassed much of what I’d gained in therapy.

I signed up for a multi-day acting workshop in New York City.

It was electric.

I didn’t want to dabble—I wanted to train, to hone, to create. I remember thinking I was made for Disney. The instructor wasn’t quite sure what to do with my energy. I was just finally letting it out.

Weeks later, I flew to Florida for my first John Maxwell Team conference.

I wasn’t impressed—yet.

I assumed it would be another leadership event filled with recycled ideas. I had been to too many conferences that promised transformation and delivered inspiration without application.

Then I attended an invite-only lunch with John Maxwell and a small group of attendees.

During Q&A, a man from Venezuela stood and said,

“I run a leadership academy, and my government is trying to shut us down because they don’t want people to know what we’re teaching.”

I froze.

I had never once feared my government stopping my work. In that moment, I understood the global stakes of leadership—and the scale of impact possible.

I was all in.

The rest of the conference delivered. Not just ideas, but tools. Not just motivation, but community and purpose.

When I returned home, my coach and I began shaping something that was mine—rooted in my strengths and aligned with my values. It had to be expansive enough to hold who I was becoming.

That became my first leadership consulting company.

I learned as I went. I found clients. I made real money.

Over the following years, I trained across the country and internationally—traveling with the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation to Costa Rica and Paraguay to deliver transformational leadership education to adults and students, with the goal of lifting communities out of poverty.

I went from believing I had nothing to offer without a degree

to building a consulting agency

to teaching leadership on an international stage.

2017 wasn’t the year everything changed overnight.

There is much more to my story.

It was the year I told myself the truth.

The year I stopped performing a life that no longer fit.

The year possibility cracked open—and I stepped through with focused intention.

Author’s Note

I wasn’t sure why I felt pulled to tell this story today.

But as I wrote it—

reliving that pivotal season—

I felt a quiet recognition of all that I am capable of.

A knowing settled in:

I have done this before.

I know how to take care of myself.

I know how to take care of my future.