The Website Is the Work

For most of my life, like so, so many of us, especially women conditioned by this culture, I treated my appearance as a WAY over-weighted measure of my value.

I have always had a healthy dose of confidence in who I am, alongside all the regular insecurities, of course. But no matter what I accomplished, how much love surrounded me, or how often people told me that I was awesome and had profoundly impacted them, my size remained central to how I saw myself. 

It entered rooms before I did. It interrupted creative thought. It screamed over everything I knew to be true, even when I understood that the voice belonged to a toxic, fatphobic culture, not to me.

Which is particularly funny because I have always been loud, dramatic, gregarious, and BIG in ways that have served me and others beautifully. And still, the familiar questions kept tugging: Am I enough? Am I an imposter? Am I too much? AND How can I be badass and fat? Turns out - I JUST AM both!

When I began creating this website, those old instincts came right along for the ride. I even contacted an image consultant. I considered making a significant investment and traveling across the country to be shaped by someone else's vision of how I should look and present myself.

There is nothing wrong with seeking support. But beneath that impulse was a deeply familiar belief: Someone else might know how to make me more acceptable, compelling, beautiful, or worthy of being seen.

And then, after years and years of work, something shifted.

At the largest size I had ever been, I stopped waiting for my body to change before allowing myself to belong to myself.

I let go.

Not all at once. Not perfectly. Not forever. But profoundly.

I began putting down the external measures of my worth: my appearance, other people's approval, how impressive I seemed, whether I was too loud, emotional, intense, or much.

I decided to be me.

Fully. Unapologetically. Tenderly. Loudly. Messily. Sometimes profanely. Without constantly checking the room to find out whether I was doing ME correctly.

This is epic, ongoing work. It takes forever. I suspect it will continue taking forever.

And it is happening.

The more fully I inhabit myself, the more the world reflects something different back to me. I receive evidence all the time that I am cherished, valued, appreciated, and recognized precisely because of the particular, unusual, deeply specific person I am.

Not despite who I am. Because of who I am.

That does not mean everyone will like me. It means I no longer need everyone to.

This website is part of that story.

It sounds like me, feels like me, looks like me, and tells the truth about how I move through the world. It is warm, tender, bold, touchy-feely, and occasionally full of curse words.

It also has new, unfiltered pictures of me. At this size. In midlife. Right now.

It does not try to prove my value or persuade anyone that I am worth choosing.

It lets me be seen.

That is the work I do with other people.

I help people stop outsourcing their worth. I help them return to themselves, trust what they know, put down the endless performance, and turn self-love into a baseline rather than something they must earn.

This website is not neutral packaging for that work.

The website is the work.

It is me practicing what I ask of my clients:

Choose alignment over approval.

Tap into what your true voice really has to say AND then how to let it be heard. Let your real voice be heard.

Stop abandoning pieces of yourself to make other people more comfortable.

Trust that being fully yourself is not a liability to manage. It is the ground from which everything meaningful gets built. From that place - all the external "stuff" you envision, desire, crave, think you need .... it emerges (in its time) or the need softens, even falls away. And it'll shift tangibly in your work, leadership, marriage, parenting, friendships.... but most of all in your relationship with you!

I took a leap with this website. Not by making it louder or edgier for effect, but by stopping the endless sanding down. I let it be soft where I am soft, fierce where I am fierce, irreverent where I am irreverent, and deeply loving throughout.

And from that foundation, I am opening new ways for us to do this work together: six months of Lead From the Center coaching, half-day and full-day immersion experiences, and coaching and consulting for teams ready to work, lead, and relate differently.

I am also taking the leap into IN-PERSON OFFICE SPACE, where I can be fully present with clients and create both safety and a playground for them to tap in fully. SAN DIEGO - come on down!!

To my brave and committed clients who have been meeting with me in cafés for two years: THANK YOU.

You can now cry in private with me. :)