As my life began changing, reading about relationships, leadership, and personal growth gave me direction. I wasn’t just looking for answers, I wanted to grow. I wanted to create the kind of life I wanted, one my girls deserved and become an example they could look up to.

This is what self-leadership came to mean for me.

I was raised around it, but it wasn’t until I started doing the deeper inner work that I truly began to understand it. Reading gave me something to hold onto. It gave me hope, challenged the way I thought, and gave me something to work toward in every area of my life. Slowly, it changed me. Maybe leadership looks different for you. Maybe it’s a coach, a book, someone you admire, or simply a moment that makes you realize you want more from your life. Something that keeps calling you forward when it would be easier to stay where you are.

Because eventually, I had to make a decision.

I’ll never forget sitting on my oldest daughter’s bedroom floor with my laptop beside me, applying for jobs and uncertain about the future. In that moment, I decided what I was going to do next. I could have waited to see how everything unfolded. Instead, I chose to act. I knew I would be starting over, even with a college degree. Around that same time, I started planning for a different life. I took a job opportunity in Omaha at the end of 2020, sold my house in 2021 and after a year of searching for a house in a difficult housing market I put it on hold.

That season of transition became an unexpected detour into deeper work around leadership and personal growth. What I didn’t realize then was that the deepest work wasn’t external, it was internal. Therapy, reading, and self-reflection were changing me long before my circumstances did.

My girls deserved more than what I was able to give them at the time, and I could see that clearly. I knew that if anything was going to change, I had to change first. I needed to heal. I needed to become the example I hoped they would follow someday. As a parent, I’ve learned we don't tell our children how to live. We show them. I fall short every day, but I keep striving.

To my girls, this work has always been for you.

Four years later, my life hasn’t unfolded the way I planned. But I’m still here. Still working toward my goals. Still learning who I’m becoming through all of this. And if my girls learn anything from my journey, I hope it’s this: you do not have to have everything figured out to begin changing your life.

Self-leadership isn’t about having all the answers. Sometimes it’s simply choosing to keep growing, even through uncertainty.