I didn't choose this path. At first, it was simply a matter of survival.
My wake-up call came in my late 40s: a diagnosis of MS.
Until that point, I was a master of the rules. I equated resilience with output. I believed staying busy meant I was coping. I thought that if I planned everything carefully enough, I could control the outcome. I was living as though a woman's value is her productivity.
My health told a different story.
The diagnosis forced me to see the rules I had been following without question. Rules from my workplace, my culture, and my own history. Learning to say no to those expectations wasn't a lifestyle choice. It was how I found the space to heal.
What looked like a breakdown became a doorway. I stopped trying to fix myself to fit the old rules and started building a life that actually fit me.
That shift didn't happen by reinventing myself. It happened by returning to myself.
Today I work within the same professional and personal pressures you do, and I move through them differently. Not because I discovered some formula, but because I stopped overriding what I already knew to be true.
That is the work I do with the women I work with. Not rebuilding from scratch. Returning to what is already there