I spent my life as a top-tier perfectionist and high-achiever.
I got the grades, the jobs, the promotions. I won the equivalent of Employee of the Year at a company of 10,000 people. I was, by every external measure, fucking crushing it. And I thought being the "super high-performing rockstar" was my identity. I didn't know how to be anyone different. Until I realized showing up this way had a shelf-life, and I was expiring fast.
In 2014, I blew up my life.
I had an extramarital affair with a coworker that quickly became public at our very small Christian university. I lost my job, my marriage, my community, and the carefully polished version of myself I'd been performing for years.
Underneath all this wreckage was the first real glimpse of myself I'd ever had. For the first time as an adult, I had an opportunity to choose who I wanted to be and what I wanted my life to look like.
Personally I got some of it right. But professionally, I walked straight back into the high-performer identity that drained me.
It worked for a time.
I won praise and awards, made more money than I'd ever imagined. But underneath, I was increasingly more depressed, anxious, and sick while pretending like I was fine. I had chronic fatigue, headaches, stomach issues, rashes, full body vigilance, all day, every day.
I spent over $10k trying to fix what was wrong with me before I finally accepted that it was the way I was prioritizing work that was making me sick.
The problem was never just the job. It was the identity I tied to the job.
Until I confronted that, I was just going to keep recreating the same results with different titles.
With nothing left to give, I walked away from the six-figure salary, the title, the version of success I'd spent 20 years chasing.
I didn't walk away because I had it all figured out.
I walked away because I finally couldn't afford not to.
I had a chance to fully choose myself back in 2014, but it took me ten more years to bring the rest of me along.
What I know from doing this work myself and then with other women is that the hardest part isn't knowing something needs to change. It's understanding how to make the change.
When you're inside it, life feels like a Jenga tower.
Like pulling one wrong block will make everything fall apart. So instead, you optimize or look for outside fixes: better morning routine, stronger boundaries, exercise, or a healthier diet. Small moves that make you feel like you're doing something to fix it, but don't get to the root.
I don't want the women I work with to spend another year (or ten) trying to optimize their existing life to hit someone else's expectations.
I want to walk them toward full, audacious ownership. To help them stop waiting for permission and claim what's already theirs.
Because when women stop performing and start living truthfully, everything changes for them, for the people they love, for the world around them.
A woman living audaciously sets her world on fire in the best way possible.