What does it feel like to come back to yourself?
Hi there! I really worked hard on this post to convey my ideas that have been percolating for a while. I know I don’t always write in brief (lol), but I do write with intentionality. The goal being to give you something to ponder on, and hopefully help. ☺️
Anyway, let me know what you think!
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I’m starting to notice a pattern with the clients that find their way to me. They’re highly intelligent feelers, who are often ambitious, but feel like they’ve been slowly losing parts of themselves over time.
I want to introduce you to a client whose story is based on real experiences from actual clients that I’ve worked with in the past couple of years. To protect their privacy, I combined their experiences into one. There might be nuances and differences in their outer world, but their inner monologue sounded largely the same.
MEET “JAMIE”
Jamie is first generation. Her family migrated to the United States from Puerto Rico back in the ‘50s. And since childhood, she’s traveled there with her family to visit relatives almost every year.
She’s rooted in her values and her culture.
Her identity is tied to those precious childhood memories of visiting her family’s land, and she’s proud of where she comes from, of what family stands for and means to her.
She wants to make them proud.
But Jamie also feels the obligation that comes from being in a tight-knit family that demands respect, honor, compliance, and working hard. In fact, she’s felt for a long time like she needs to prove to her family that she’s “made it”.
So she worked her way into the corporate world. The “american dream” so to speak.
She was raised believing you go to school, land a good job, and say yes to the first offer that promises more stability, better pay, and the perks that come with it.
For her, landing a corporate job wasn’t just a milestone, it felt like entering a world her parents had only dreamed about.
Here she was, rubbing shoulders with C-Suite executives who seemed to have it all, who were confident, and she felt lucky to be part of that club.
And she was happy with that for a long time. She felt honored to get to learn, to observe, and get paid a good salary that afforded her the opportunity to travel.
But man…..something inside her felt like it was dying for a long time.
She felt stagnant, disconnected, and like her soul was drying up.
She craved more magic, art, and meaning in her everyday. And she would tell me how she felt this creative force inside of her that just wanted to experiment, but felt stifled. She recounted memories of how in her youth she would dance, vision board, and let her artistic side come out.
And the thing was, she was good at her job. Highly capable, and competent. Of course, at the beginning it was a challenge, but eventually it became easier.
She got to a place where she could do her job in her sleep. It didn’t light her up inside, but it was solid.
Her 10 year old self didn’t necessarily imagine she’d be doing this, but her childhood self would be SO impressed. She might have a confused expression on her face, like - what kind of job is THAT? But still impressed.
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GRATITUDE SHOULDN'T REPLACE GROWTH
And the thing is, she felt GRATEFUL for the role. She only secretly wondered if she’d settled. But when she thought about the next level, or let herself dream about what’s next, she felt so-called “imposter syndrome”.
She could hear that voice inside her brain saying she had to PROVE she deserved to be there in the first place, but the more she did so, the more she felt like she didn’t belong.
She began to dread Mondays. She wanted to stop living on autopilot, and didn't just want to “survive” the workweek.
She became tired of performing for others and feeling like she was contorting herself into someone she no longer recognized.
And she carried that exhaustion at home too, because she was a mom that had all the demands of a growing family. She felt depleted and stretched thin.
And while she was feeling rising frustration and boredom, knowing she was ready for a change, she also craved wanting to feel valued, aligned, passionate, and fulfilled by her work.
Most importantly, she wanted to feel like HERSELF while doing it.
But her desire warred with this idea in her head that she couldn’t just “burn it all down”. She wondered if it was too late to start over.
She had a family to take care of, a mortgage to pay, and couldn’t dream of a world where she could give up what she’d worked so hard for. And she asked herself if she could create a shift that was both emotionally and financially safe.
But fear had her frozen. She felt stuck.
She didn’t think she could have a job that she could creatively sink her teeth into, putting her ideas to the test, and watching as those ideas evolved into something larger.
A little reminder about ideas
(Have you read the book What to Do With an Idea? I used to read it to Nina (my 9 year old). It’s about how sometimes we’re afraid to share our ideas for fear they’ll be criticized or judged. But eventually they become constant companions that we just can’t help but feed and build a relationship with until they take over a life of their own and flourish into something bigger and incredible. It always reminds me of what becomes possible when we let ourselves play, vision, and trust our creativity without the mental barriers.)
Essentially, she felt like she just wanted her life to feel like hers again. In her work, relationships, and in her body.
That guilt she felt for wanting more felt really stifling, and likely came from her “good girl” conditioning. She kept thinking about what her family would say.
She wanted permission to have more than just security, to her that was bare minimum.
She wanted to prioritize rest, say no more often, and protect her time and energy. She felt like she just wanted her spark back, to feel alive again and make decisions with confidence. To trust herself, and feel less alone.
And that alone feeling felt particularly present at work where she had no community. She craved the safety community brings - a place to process her feelings, goals, and aspirations.
Throughout this swirl of internal frustrations, she was doing a lot:
She had conversations with her manager about how to get promoted.
She was saying yes to extra projects.
She even considered going back to school. She researched certification programs, grad schools, and sat in on info sessions.
She networked, joined internal resource groups, and attended a few Toastmaster sessions.
Took online self-assessments to find out where she fit; read self-help books.
She applied to the occasional job posting.
And she followed leaders in her industry on LinkedIn.
All while hiding her assertiveness, and at times her honesty, in order to stay “professional” at work.
She wondered if she needed more mentors. And at home she would journal to express her frustrations.
All while thinking: I just want to reconnect with the part of me that used to feel free.
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MY REALIZATION
And I empathized deeply with her.
Because that was me, ten years ago, maybe more. I know what it feels like to overperform, to tie my worth to my output (while still feeling creatively stifled), to chase success only to realize the ladder I’d climbed was leaning against the wrong wall.
Which made me realize: Ambition without alignment is a recipe for depletion.
When we root into who we really are, our work becomes a meaningful offering, not just a performance.
That’s the thing about modern ambition - it's an effort that feels exhausting, because it isn’t coming from a place of curiosity. It’s coming from a place of fear.
We chase status, recognition, and security, because we’ve been taught to prove instead of trust.
But here’s what tends to happen:
You overextend your energy without getting the recognition you’d hoped for
-or-
You get better at succeeding in environments you don’t really want to stay in
You start losing touch with your own compass, slowly and quietly
You begin to doubt your gifts, your timing and even your voice
And eventually, you get to a place where you can’t tell if the dream you’re chasing is even yours
And Jamie realized that was the real issue. Not just misalignment, but disconnection. Not just exhaustion, but amnesia. She forgot who she was.
“I’m clear that I don’t want to abandon myself anymore - and I’m curious what staying true to me will look like.”
That’s the wisdom that comes through when you slow down enough to start listening.
We’re told a story that we need to earn our worth. Prove our value. That rest is lazy, creativity is indulgent, and ambition only counts when it looks like what’s been modeled to us in today’s hustle culture.
But honestly, the problem isn’t just you - and it’s not just the system. It’s more nuanced than that.
Truthfully, they both play a role.
Because the system sometimes teaches us to abandon ourselves in the name of achievement AND we internalize that message to the point that we let our habits, beliefs and roles play out in a way that denies ourselves in order to survive it.
But the real shift happens not by doing more to prove your worth, but by remembering who you were before the world told you who to be. Remembering who we are might mean to unlearn what we were taughtto want.
It’s doing from a place of clarity and curiosity, not fear. It means redefining ambition - not as self-sacrifice, but as self-connection.
Let your ambition serve your aliveness — not the other way around.
Ambition without abandonment.
Presence over perfection.
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HOW THINGS SHIFTED
It was a lot of work to get Jamie to a place where she could feel safe enough to make a jump. It wasn’t something that happened overnight. It was months of working together to get clear not just on what she wanted, but believing that she was capable of getting it.
Our work became a refuge. Not another place where she needed to perform, but a space where she could come home to herself.
And I recall at first she was hesitant to do coaching with me. She said she didn’t have the time, but I told her this isn’t just time she’s spending. It’s time she’d be reclaiming. Time that would let her show up for her life in a way that actually felt like hers again.
To actually slow down.
Eventually, she got to a place (with planning and more importantly, falling in love with and trusting herself) that she made the leap to a new external role with more responsibility, more pay, and expanded opportunity. It was a stretch for her, but she was finally at home in herself to be up for the task in a role that felt more true.
If Jamie’s story resonates with you, and you also feel tired of shaping yourself around roles and rules, what can you do instead?
You’ve been taught to try harder when things don’t feel aligned — but what if the deeper truth is that you’ve been trying to shape yourself around things that your heart doesn’t even really want.
Wanting ease isn’t laziness. It’s wisdom. And choosing ease — in a world that glorifies struggle — is a radical act of self-trust.
Start by challenging the lie that success demands you leave yourself behind. You don’t need to grind your way to the top just to feel empty when you get there.
That path leaves us depleted, disconnected, and constantly questioning ourselves.
It ignores this nuance: that performing or trying can coexist with knowing and honoring yourself.
You don’t have to abandon yourself to be successful.
You don’t have to trade your wellbeing, your voice, or your creativity just to be seen as capable. You don’t have to earn your right to rest, creativity, or a life that feels like yours. You can give yourself permission to have it at any time.
What if the most powerful thing you could do was stay rooted in who you are—even as you stretch toward your biggest dreams?
That’s the thing about success and external validation, they mean nothing if you abandon yourself to achieve them.
Let your curiosity lead you, not your fear.
That’s what I help women remember and reclaim.
Ambition without abandonment.
Presence over perfection.
Learning not performing.
I help you reconnect to what’s real—your values, your vision, your energy—and start building from that place.
Because when you stop outsourcing your worth and start honoring your inner wisdom, everything changes:
💡 Decisions get easier.
🌱 Boundaries feel natural.
🔥 Your work begins to feel like it’s actually yours.
