Something happened this weekend that I have to share with you.

I was at the Together We Rise Expo when a woman stopped by my table. She had attended the very first A Weekend For Me retreat back in 2023. Over three years ago.

She thanked me for being a blessing to her life. And then she said something that left me speechless.

"You spoke to a version of me I didn’t know existed.”

I stood there and let that land.

Because honestly — I don’t always know the impact this work is having. The retreats are spaced months apart. Life moves fast for all of us. There are moments when I wonder if what I’m building is reaching anyone at all.

She found me at an expo three years later and reminded me.

Then she told me what had happened after that first retreat.

A significant life event brought her to a full stop. She took an extended leave from work — the kind of pause most of us never allow ourselves. And in that space, something shifted.

When she returned to work, it no longer fit.

Not because the job had changed.

Because she had.

She was a completely different person. And the life she had stepped away from no longer reflected the woman who came back.

So she made a decision.

She quit her job. She is going all in on her real estate business. She chose herself — fully, unapologetically, without looking back.

Her employer begged her to stay. They offered part time. They offered contractual. They showed her, in that moment, exactly how much she was valued.

And she told me something else that has stayed with me:

“I never realized I had options. I never realized I was valued that much.”

Read that again.

A brilliant, capable, accomplished woman — and she had no idea how much she mattered. No idea that other possibilities existed. No idea that she had the power to choose differently.

Not because the options weren’t there.

Because she had been buried for so long she couldn’t believe they were available to her.

This is a real world example of what I mean when I talk about your inner woman.

She is the woman underneath all the obligations and expectations. The one who existed before the roles. Before you learned that your needs were negotiable and everyone else’s were not. Before you stopped believing that a different life was actually possible for you.

She has always known who you are.

She has always known what you want.

She has always known what you are capable of.

But she gets buried.

One quiet sacrifice at a time. One yes when you meant no. One need pushed down “just for now”. Until the distance between who you are showing up as and who she knows you to be becomes so wide that you stop feeling her at all.

That woman at the expo didn’t know a different version of herself existed — until a weekend created enough space for her to hear her own voice again. And once she heard her, she couldn’t unhear her.

Three years later, she is living proof of what becomes possible when you finally make room for the woman you have always been.

Last week I told you the work is not addition. It is excavation.

This is what excavation looks like in a real woman’s life.

A pause that created space. A return that revealed the truth. A decision that changed everything.

The version of you that is ready to quit what no longer fits. To go all in on what lights you up. To finally realize the options that have been available to you all along.

She is not someone you have to become.

She is someone you have to uncover.

You only get one life.

She was never lost. She was buried.

Let’s find her together.