The more I sat with everything that had surfaced that night, the more one thought refused to leave me.
The things that are meant for my life should not ask me to abandon myself in order to build them.
I kept reading that sentence over and over again.
Because if I’m honest, that’s exactly what I had been doing.
Not just with social media. With work. With relationships. With proving myself. With constantly becoming the dependable one. The strong one. The reliable one.
Somewhere along the way, I had started believing that the more I gave away, the more worthy I became. That if enough people needed me, then maybe I would finally feel enough.
But that’s a dangerous way to build a life.
Because eventually you wake up and realize you’ve become everything everyone else needed...
...except yourself.
Maybe that’s why leaving my job felt so much bigger than changing careers.
I wasn’t just walking away from a workplace.
I was walking away from an identity.
The woman who carried everyone. The woman who believed that being indispensable was the same thing as being valuable. The woman who measured her worth by how much she could hold.
For the first time in my life, I found myself asking a question I had never really considered before.
What would happen if I stopped carrying everything?
Would I still know who I was?
I think that’s why this season has felt so disorienting.
Not because I don’t have dreams. I’ve never stopped dreaming.
I still dream about waking up and seeing the ocean outside my window. Going for a trail run before the world wakes up. Walking to a small café. Cooking with fresh food from a local market. Coaching people in a way that leaves enough of me to still have a life of my own. Writing in the afternoons. Living slowly. Living honestly.
That dream never disappeared.
I just forgot something important.
I thought Root to Rise was the destination.
Tonight I realized, Root to Rise has always been the way.
Because Root to Rise was never about fitness. It was never about building the perfect morning routine. It was never about discipline for discipline’s sake.
It has always been about courage.
The courage to become aware of yourself. The courage to look honestly at the places you’ve been surviving instead of living. The courage to leave what no longer aligns. The courage to begin again before you know exactly where you’re going. The courage to move your body when your confidence hasn’t caught up yet. The courage to rest after believing your worth came from exhaustion. The courage to keep showing up for yourself when nobody is watching.
For years, I’ve said that confidence comes through bravery.
Tonight, I finally understood what I meant.
Confidence isn’t something you find. It’s something you build.
Every time you tell yourself the truth. Every time you choose authenticity over performance. Every time you keep a promise to yourself. Every time you return to yourself instead of abandoning yourself.
Those moments become roots.
And roots are what allow us to rise.
Then another realization quietly found me.
My podcast has been called Speak From the Root.
I always loved the name. But I don’t think I fully understood it.
Now I do.
Because before you can speak from the root, you have to grow roots.
You have to become honest enough to hear your own voice again. You have to sit with your grief instead of outrunning it. You have to allow yourself to be changed by your experiences instead of pretending they never happened.
Only then do your words begin to sound like you.
Not like who you think people want you to be. Not like who the algorithm rewards. Not like the version of yourself that performs.
The real you.
Maybe that’s why writing has always felt different.
The page has never asked me to perform. It has never asked me to become louder. Or faster. Or more polished.
It has only ever asked me one thing.
Tell the truth.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to it.
Not because I’m trying to become a writer.
Because writing has always been the place where I remember who I already am.
I don’t know exactly what this next year is going to look like.
Maybe the café becomes a peaceful bridge between who I’ve been and who I’m becoming. Maybe these essays quietly become the heartbeat of Root to Rise. Maybe one day the podcast returns, slower and more rooted than it has ever been before. Maybe coaching grows in ways I can’t even imagine yet.
I honestly don’t know.
For so long, I thought certainty was what I needed before taking the next step.
Now I think what I really needed was alignment.
Because tonight, for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t trying to become someone.
I wasn’t trying to become a better entrepreneur. A better creator. A better coach. I wasn’t trying to build a version of myself that fit into someone else’s definition of success.
I was remembering the person I had always been.
The little girl with the notebook. The teenager writing poems that no one else understood. The woman standing under stage lights sharing spoken word. The coach who believes movement can heal. The writer who believes words can too.
They’re not different people.
They never were.
They’ve been holding hands this whole time.
I just couldn’t see it.
People often ask what Root to Rise means.
For a long time, I answered that question by talking about coaching. About movement. About confidence. About wellness.
But if someone asked me today...
I think my answer would be much simpler.
Root to Rise is the belief that healing begins the moment you stop abandoning yourself.
It is the belief that courage is practiced long before confidence arrives. It is the belief that awareness creates choice. That discipline built from self-respect outlasts discipline built from shame. That movement reminds us that things move. That grief deserves to be felt. That rest is not something we earn.
And that the strongest roots are often grown in the seasons when nothing above the surface appears to be happening at all.
Maybe that’s why this feels less like the beginning of a business...
...and more like the remembering of a life.
I used to think I was building Root to Rise.
Now I wonder if Root to Rise has quietly been building me.
Maybe every loss... Every poem... Every classroom... Every client... Every mile I ever ran... Every conversation that made me question who I was... Every heartbreak... Every page...
Has simply been another root.
Preparing me for the moment I would finally stop asking, “Who am I supposed to become?”
...and start asking, “Who have I been all along?”
I don’t think this journey is about becoming someone new anymore.
I think it’s about returning to the woman I was before I believed I had to earn my worth. Before I believed I had to carry everyone else. Before I believed I had to perform in order to be seen.
If this season has taught me anything, it’s this:
The life that is meant for me will never ask me to abandon myself in order to build it.
And maybe that’s the bravest thing I’ve ever learned.
Because for the first time...
I’m not chasing a future version of myself.
I’m walking home.
One honest word at a time. One courageous choice at a time. One root at a time.