You Don’t Lose Yourself. You Hand Yourself Over in Pieces.

You don’t wake up one day and realize you’re gone.

You don’t collapse.

You comply.

The first time I remember handing over a piece of myself, it looked responsible.

People I respected told me to choose something safe.
A degree that would travel well.
A career that would always have a job attached to it.

It made sense.

Security. Stability. Approval.

So I said yes.

Not because it felt right.
Because it felt smart.

There’s a difference.

I got almost all the way through it before I allowed myself to admit the truth.

I hated it.

Not dramatically.
Not rebelliously.

Quietly.

I finished assignments.
I showed up.
I performed well enough.

From the outside, it looked disciplined.

On the inside, I was shrinking.

That choice didn’t ruin my life.
It reshaped me.

I became quieter.
More introverted.
Less certain.

Not because introversion is weakness.
Because I didn’t feel like myself.

That’s how it happens.

You don’t lose yourself in a catastrophic decision.

You hand yourself over in reasonable ones.

You call it maturity.
You call it compromise.
You call it finishing what you started.

What it really is… is negotiation.

I didn’t leave immediately because I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

I didn’t want them to know I had chosen wrong for the wrong reasons.

I didn’t want to look foolish.

So I stayed.

Competence is dangerous when you’re misaligned.
You can succeed in something that doesn’t fit you for a very long time.

Long enough to forget what fit felt like.

That’s the real cost.

Not the years.
Not the money.

The internal shift.

The slow distribution of self.

Here’s what I know now:

Disappointing other people expires.
They adjust.
They move on.
They forget.

Disappointing yourself compounds.

You carry it.
You feel it.
You negotiate again to avoid feeling it.

That’s how pieces go missing.

Not stolen.

Offered.

If you’re honest, you already know the first piece you handed over.

The question is whether you’re still negotiating.

Your grit is gorgeous.
– Maven

You Don’t Trust Yourself

You don’t lose trust in yourself all at once.

There’s no single moment you can point to.

No dramatic failure.

No obvious mistake.

It starts smaller than that.

It starts the first time you move forward while something in you hesitates…

and you decide not to listen.

Not because you don’t hear it.

Because you do.

You just don’t pause long enough to respect it.

Most people think self-trust disappears when things go wrong.

That’s not how it happens.

Self-trust erodes when things keep working ,

but you’re not fully present for the decisions that make them work.

You answer the question in front of you.

You ignore the one underneath it.

You act quickly because slowing down feels irresponsible.

You move because movement looks like maturity.

You decide because deciding feels cleaner than sitting with uncertainty.

Nothing breaks right away.

That’s why it’s easy to miss.

The outcome might even be fine.

But internally, something registers.

Not regret.

Not panic.

Just a quiet awareness that you weren’t fully with yourself when you chose.

That’s the beginning.

Self-trust isn’t about intuition.

It’s about credibility.

Do you take yourself seriously when something in you resists…

or do you override it because you’re capable and accustomed to handling things?

Over time, those overrides accumulate.

You stop checking in because you already know what the answer will be ,

and you’re not prepared to act on it yet.

So you delay.

You call it timing.

You call it patience.

You tell yourself you’ll deal with it later.

Later feels reasonable.

Later feels responsible.

Later is where self-trust thins.

Because every time you delay what you already know,

you teach yourself something quietly dangerous:

Your internal signals are negotiable.

Life often rewards that negotiation.

You stay functional.

You stay productive.

You stay relied upon.

But something else begins to shift.

Decisions feel heavier than they should.

You second-guess …not because the choice was wrong,

but because you don’t respect how you arrived there.

You replay moments.

Not for content…

for tone.

You feel the distance between what you’re capable of

and what you’re actually honoring.

Function keeps you moving.

Alignment tells you where you’re going.

When function replaces alignment, motion replaces direction…

and movement starts to feel strangely stagnant.

This isn’t fear.

It’s the unknown you avoided by acting too quickly the last time.

Alignment asks you to slow down enough to notice yourself.

That pause can feel unsafe when you’re used to being in motion.

But avoiding it doesn’t protect you.

It just postpones clarity.

You don’t stop trusting yourself because you’re incapable.

You stop trusting yourself because you keep acting without internal respect…

and calling it maturity.

This isn’t about becoming more intuitive.

It’s about stopping the habit of overriding yourself when the answer is inconvenient.

Nothing is wrong with you.

And if you’re honest,

you already know when this started.
Your grit is gorgeous.

-Maven

Why Carrying Everything Makes You Untrustworthy to Yourself

Carrying doesn’t usually start as a choice.
It becomes a default.

It happens quietly, every day.

You wake up and immediately begin accounting for everyone else…
a spouse, a child, a parent, a coworker, a boss, a client, a deadline, a pressure point you didn’t create but somehow inherited.

You don’t decide to carry it.
You just do.

That’s why nothing ever feels “wrong.”

Weight accumulates the way dust does… gradually, invisibly, without permission. And unless you have the skill to stop and adjust it, you keep adding more because that’s what capable people do.

“I’ve got it” sounds confident.
What it really means is complicated.

It protects others from discomfort.
It protects you from having to name what you don’t yet understand.
It preserves the illusion that things are fine… even when they aren’t.

And for a while, it works.

You’re praised for composure.
For getting things done.
For staying calm under pressure.

Early on, that praise feels earned. It feels like proof that you’re doing something right.

Until it stops working.

The first thing I stopped trusting wasn’t my instincts. I’ve always trusted those.
It was my limits.

I assumed capacity meant availability.
That strength meant absorption.
That being able to carry something meant it belonged to me.

It doesn’t.

When you carry what isn’t yours, clarity erodes first. Decisions get rushed or endlessly delayed. You operate on partial information and call it enough because slowing down feels irresponsible.

The cost of being “the strong one” is that you begin slipping away.

Not dramatically.
Incrementally.

Energy thins.
Rest loses its restorative quality.
You stay functional, but no longer grounded.

Relationships shift, not because you don’t care, but because people begin deciding for you.
“You look busy.”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”

Authority erodes quietly when you look tired instead of steady.

The moment I realized carrying wasn’t making me stronger… just quieter… wasn’t dramatic.

It was ordinary.

I missed a hair appointment.

That shouldn’t have happened. I live by a calendar. But it did… not because I forgot, but because I had drifted far enough from myself that tending to me no longer registered as essential.

That’s when I saw the truth clearly:
misalignment doesn’t announce itself.
It accumulates.

The truth I postponed the longest was boundaries.

Not understanding them internally,
expressing them externally.

I had to learn how to say no without justification.
How to stop explaining.
How to trust that clarity doesn’t require defense.

That was hard. Because I am capable. I can handle many things… as long as those things are the right ones.

When I stopped absorbing and started acknowledging, the shift wasn’t clean.

There was relief… because I could breathe again.
There was grief… because I couldn’t say yes to everyone anymore.

My relationships changed.
My time changed.
My identity adjusted.

And that’s when I learned the most important thing about alignment:

This isn’t a realization.
It’s a skill.

Life will keep adding weight. That doesn’t stop. What changes is whether you notice it… and whether you adjust before it costs you your clarity, your energy, or yourself.

If I could offer one honest sentence to the woman still carrying everything because she can, it would be this:

It can be simpler.
It doesn’t have to feel this quietly heavy.
There is a way to learn how to hold yourself differently… and the return on that skill is worth far more than what endurance is costing you right now.

Nothing is wrong with you.
And that’s the problem.

Never forget…
Your grit is gorgeous.

-Maven

The Cost of Being Fine

“I’m fine.”

It’s the safest answer when you don’t have the language for what’s actually wrong.
It’s the answer you give when everything feels heavy… not emotionally heavy… soul heavy.

When I said I was fine, what I meant was this:
Everything was wrong.
Sometimes life felt like it was actively falling apart.
Other times, it was quieter than that.
I had drifted so far from myself that I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

“Fine” became a placeholder.
A script.
A way to keep moving without stopping long enough to feel the weight of what I was carrying.

What made it harder was that, from the outside, I looked functional.
Reliable.
Capable.
I was getting things done.
I was being everything to everyone.
I was praised for it.

That praise cost me more than I realized.

The first thing to go was my energy.
Not tired… depleted.
The kind of exhaustion sleep doesn’t touch.

Then my relationships started to suffer.
At home.
At work.
In my marriage.
With my kids.
With my family.
With friends.

Not because I didn’t care.
But because there was nothing left to give that wasn’t already spent.

What I lost internally before anything fell apart externally was softness.
I couldn’t afford it.
I couldn’t afford rest.
I couldn’t afford care.
Self-care wasn’t indulgent… it felt irresponsible.

Being composed stopped feeling like strength and started feeling like a cage.
I couldn’t move outside of it.
I couldn’t show up as myself.
I felt guilty for happiness because there was always more to do.
More to manage.
More to hold together.

The moment that changed everything wasn’t dramatic.
It was sobering.

I was angry all the time.
And the people around me were angry too.

I was making rooms heavier.
Conversations sharper.
Energy toxic.

I had to face a truth I didn’t want to admit:
Functioning is not the same as being grounded.

I wasn’t leading myself.
I was managing survival.

Staying “fine” protected me from change.
From looking in the mirror.
From acknowledging the part no one else could fix.

No one was responsible for changing my life but me.
Not my friends.
Not my husband.
Not my family.
Not work.
Not circumstances.

That realization didn’t feel empowering.
It felt sobering.
And freeing.

What became possible once I stopped pretending I was okay wasn’t instant clarity.
It was permission.

Internal permission came first.
Then behavior.
Then tone.

Boundaries returned slowly.
Regulation came back in pieces.
Standards were rebuilt… not invented… reclaimed.

And here’s the part I wish someone had told me earlier:
This isn’t a one-time moment.

Life doesn’t stop because you look in the mirror once.
Pressure doesn’t disappear because you name the truth.
Self-command is a skill.
It requires realignment.
Again and again.

Waiting hurts you more than beginning ever will.

Not because beginning is easy.
But because waiting keeps charging interest.

If any part of this feels familiar…
not emotionally, but quietly…
that’s not coincidence.

The Mirror isn’t asking you to fix yourself.
It’s asking you to stop avoiding yourself.

And that’s where everything actually begins.

Never forget…
Your Grit is Gorgeous.

-Maven

When Beauty Isn’t Enough ... Lessons from Cracked Mirrors

The mirror was cracked.

Not in some poetic, symbolic way. It was damaged. A sharp line ran through the glass, splitting my reflection just enough to distort it. I noticed it while standing there with eyeliner in one hand and coffee in the other, already late in my own head before the day had even started.

My schedule was full. My mind was fuller. Work demanded precision. Life demanded patience. Family needed attention. Friends needed space. Every role I play was asking for something at the same time, and I wasn’t fully present for any of them.

I wasn’t grounded.
I wasn’t focused.
And I could feel it.

There was a moment where I considered waiting. Waiting for a different mirror. Waiting for a calmer morning. Waiting until I felt more steady, more collected, more like the version of myself I needed to be that day.

But life doesn’t work like that.

Life doesn’t pause until you’re ready. It doesn’t smooth itself out because you’re overwhelmed. It doesn’t delay the meeting, the conversation, the responsibility, or the moment that requires you to show up.

So I drew the line anyway. Imperfect. Slightly crooked. Smudged at the edge. It wasn’t the look I wanted, but it was done.

That cracked mirror stayed with me.

Because most people are walking around with fractured reflections. We see ourselves through old criticism, missed opportunities, other people’s expectations, and narratives that were never ours to begin with. Over time, we stop questioning the distortion and start calling it truth.

Beauty has a way of becoming armor when life feels heavy.

I used it that way for years. At work, it helped me carry chaos without letting anyone see the weight of it. In relationships, it kept the smile in place even when the ground underneath me was shifting. In leadership roles, it allowed me to celebrate others while quietly struggling to find my own footing. In performance, it covered the moments when direction was missing but output was still required.

It was a masterful illusion.
But it wasn’t discipline.

Armor works until it becomes a substitute for grounding. And eventually, that trade catches up with you.

There was a moment ... not dramatic, not loud ... but defining. A room where pressure was high and expectations were higher. I wasn’t unprepared intellectually. I wasn’t unqualified. But I wasn’t anchored.

Emotion surfaced before structure. Reaction moved faster than restraint. And the shift in the room was immediate. Tone changed. Authority narrowed. Something unspoken settled in.

It wasn’t about being emotional.
It was about being uncontained.

That moment cost me more than credibility. It taught me the difference between polish and presence.

We’re taught early that being polished is safer than being honest. That composure equals control. That perfection is protection. Especially for women. Especially in professional spaces where authority is fragile and judgment is quick.

But polish doesn’t hold pressure.
Presence does.

Perfection doesn’t command respect.
Grounding does.

You can be beautiful and still be unsteady. You can be impressive and still be unclear. You can look powerful and still be negotiating with yourself internally.

That’s where cracks matter.

Cracked mirrors force you to see what you’ve been avoiding. They interrupt the illusion. They expose the difference between who you appear to be and who you actually are when conditions aren’t ideal.

I respect a different kind of beauty now. The kind that’s intentional, not performative. Clean, not curated. A woman who took the time to know herself before presenting herself. Someone disciplined enough to be imperfect without unraveling.

Here’s the truth that offends perfection:

Let it go.

Being flawless will never save you. Being grounded might.

There is humility in admitting you’re human. And when humility is paired with structure, it becomes authority. Not the kind that demands attention, but the kind that holds it.

When you look in the mirror ... really look ... the question isn’t whether you like what you see.

The question is whether you recognize yourself.

Avoidance is quiet. It hides behind productivity. Behind competence. Behind being “fine.” It convinces you that as long as things look good, they are good. That as long as you can perform, you don’t have to stabilize. That if you keep moving, you won’t have to stand still long enough to notice what’s missing.

But unaddressed instability always collects interest.

It shows up when pressure increases. When the room gets quieter. When the stakes rise. When your usual armor no longer holds and something inside you starts negotiating for safety instead of standing in truth.

That’s the moment most people retreat. They blame timing. They blame the room. They blame the mirror. They tell themselves they’ll deal with it later, once things calm down, once they’re more prepared, once life gives them better conditions.

It won’t.

The work you keep postponing doesn’t disappear. It waits. And it waits until the cost is higher.

Grounding is not glamorous. It doesn’t announce itself. It requires discipline when no one is watching. Honesty when no one is asking. Structure before confidence. Presence before performance.

If you haven’t done that work, you already know it. And if this piece unsettles you, that’s not coincidence. That’s recognition.

The mirror isn’t asking you to fix yourself.
It’s asking you to stop avoiding yourself.

And when you finally do, you’ll realize something uncomfortable and freeing at the same time ...

your grit is gorgeous.
— Maven

The Road Exposes Every Lie You Tell Yourself

The road doesn’t care who you think you are.
It doesn’t negotiate.
It doesn’t flatter.
It doesn’t adjust itself to your confidence, your story, or your mood.

The first lie it exposes shows up before you even settle into the ride: fear.
Not caution. Not respect.
Fear.

Fear tightens your body. Pulls your shoulders up. Locks your jaw. Shortens your breath. You feel it immediately. And once it’s there, everything becomes harder than it needs to be. Fear is a fucking killer on a bike... not because danger exists, but because fear steals presence.

The moment you’re moving, something else disappears too: aloneness.

You aren’t performing.
You aren’t posturing.
You aren’t explaining yourself.

You’re just there. One with the bike. One with the road. One with whatever truth you’ve been hauling around but couldn’t hear until everything else went quiet.

That’s why the road doesn’t tolerate bullshit.

If you’re lying to yourself, it shows up as tension. Not metaphorical tension... physical. Your posture is wrong. Your grip is off. Your body knows before your mind catches up. And there’s no talking your way out of it. You can’t charm a motorcycle into cooperating. You either acknowledge where you’re at, or you don’t move forward.

If you don’t know how to shift, the bike doesn’t go.

I’ve seen people do this in leadership too... tighten, over-correct, and call it control while everything underneath starts to wobble.

And then the road takes over again.

Because control is another lie that doesn’t survive long at speed.

On a bike, the harder you try to control everything, the faster you lose it. Over-correcting doesn’t make you safer. It makes you unstable. The road demands response, not domination. It asks you to read conditions, not impose will. And the second you forget that, it reminds you... immediately.

Instinct sounds different than fear at sixty miles an hour.

Fear is loud. Urgent. Tight.
Instinct is calm. Focused. Quiet.

When instinct is leading, pressure drops. Your body settles. You know where you are. You know what you’re doing. You’re present enough to adjust without panicking. That’s not recklessness. That’s earned awareness.

People love to call riding “freedom,” but that’s not quite right.

It feels free because no one is telling you what to do, but that’s not the absence of rules. That’s self-governance. You are the rule. You guide yourself. You decide when to push and when to pull back. There’s no one to blame if you misread the moment.

That’s why movement makes truth unavoidable.

When you’re moving honestly, you know exactly what you’re carrying.
When you’re avoiding yourself, you pick up more weight along the way.

Stillness without honesty doesn’t make you lighter. It makes you heavier. And eventually, the load shows up... in your body, your decisions, your patience, your clarity.

The road demands attention. Full attention.
Not partial presence. Not distraction. Attention.

Because without it, you’re dead.

That’s the part people tolerate too easily in life... distraction. Half-awareness. Performing competence instead of embodying it. The road strips all of that away. There’s no room for pretending you didn’t notice the conditions. There’s no buffer between choice and consequence.

If the road were watching how I live, it wouldn’t tell me anything I don’t already know.

It would just remind me that I know.
That I can’t lie here.
That I’ve always known when something was off.
That the next correction is mine to make... and always has been.

The road doesn’t expose you to punish you.
It exposes you to keep you alive.

And once you’ve felt that kind of truth at speed, it’s hard to tolerate the lies anywhere else.

Your grit isn’t found in how hard you push.
It’s found in how honestly you ride.

Your grit is gorgeous.
— Maven

January Isn’t a Beginning. It’s an Excuse.

January is when people hand their authority to a calendar and call it discipline.

The month didn’t earn that power.
We just keep giving it away.

And every year, the cost looks the same: louder promises, weaker self-trust, and a performance of change that collapses by February.

I feel the pressure every January. Not inspiration. Pressure.
The kind that comes from everywhere but inside. Society’s obsession with reinvention. The noise around resolutions. The quiet implication that if you don’t radically change right now, you’re already behind.

It takes mental fortitude not to give in to that.

Because January doesn’t actually ask you to change.
It asks you to perform change.

I’ve given in before. I’ve tried to flip the switch. I’ve chased the version of myself that looked better on paper and felt wrong in my body. I’ve dressed the way people thought I should. Fixed my hair the way it was supposed to be fixed. Wore makeup that didn’t belong to me. None of it worked, because it wasn’t me.

That’s what January sells if you’re not careful: impersonation.

The lie that irritates me most is the “fresh start.”
It pisses me off because it assumes you get to leave yourself behind. As if your habits, your patterns, your integrity, your unfinished work just disappear because a calendar turned over.

January isn’t a fresh start.
It’s a continuation of whatever you allowed yourself to carry.

If it helps people who need an external marker to pause and re-orient, good. But disciplined women don’t need permission slips. Women who practice self-reflection don’t outsource authority to a month.

January benefits people who need hand-holding.
It benefits industries that sell urgency.
It benefits narratives that make growth cosmetic instead of structural.

What January really lets people avoid admitting is this:
flaws aren’t obstacles.
baggage isn’t optional.
grit is gorgeous.

You don’t move forward by shoving everything you’re dragging into a corner and calling it “new.” If you won’t look at where you actually are, the thoughts you allow, the patterns you repeat, the things you keep avoiding, you don’t get momentum. You get motion sickness.

Discipline and performance get confused this time of year.

Performance is emotional. Reactive. Adaptable.
Discipline is structural. Quiet. Repetitive.

Real discipline isn’t flashy. No one claps for it. It looks like waking up every morning knowing who you are, what your boundaries are, and what you’re not willing to compromise, even when it would be easier to bend. It’s boring. It’s steady. It’s honest.

Performance, on the other hand, needs an audience.

That’s why New Year motivation weakens self-trust so often. You see it at work when leadership announces a brand-new focus instead of committing to the hard, unfinished work already on the table. You see it in gyms packed in January and empty by spring. The message is always the same: look different, feel different, move on, instead of stay and do the work.

Waiting is another trick January plays well.

I learned early to “wait until it made sense.” Wait until things were more comfortable. Wait until there was more money. Wait until life was settled. I waited on trips. I waited on experiences. I waited on moments that would’ve taught me more than comfort ever could.

Waiting dresses itself up as responsibility. As maturity.
But when the reason you’re waiting is fear, it’s not wisdom, it’s avoidance with better branding.

When a woman keeps postponing her instincts, she doesn’t stay still. The world moves around her. She stagnates while everything else keeps evolving. Joy shrinks. Curiosity dulls. Life keeps happening without her full participation.

Real change doesn’t announce itself.

It happens in ordinary moments. Becoming a wife. Taking on responsibility you didn’t plan for. Waking up one day and realizing you feel empty, not lonely, just misaligned. Those moments don’t come with fireworks. They come with honesty.

And here’s the part people don’t want to hear:
everything is the same in January unless you choose differently.

Let’s agree on this…

You still wake up in the same body.
You still put on the same clothes.
You still return to the same life.

Honesty doesn’t start on January 1st. It starts when you open your eyes and ask yourself who you are today, what your integrity requires, and where your boundaries actually are. Some days you’ll miss it. Some days you’ll nail it. Both count, if you’re paying attention.

If you’re panicking right now because you feel behind, here’s the blunt truth:
stop staring in the fucking rearview mirror.

That mirror is smaller for a reason.
Your windshield is bigger because that’s where you’re supposed to be looking.

January is cold. Convincing. Manipulative.
It whispers that you’re late. That you need to catch up. That reinvention is urgent.

It’s lying.

If you don’t do the work, you get exactly what you deserve.
That’s not cruelty. That’s consequence.

Grit isn’t inspiration. It’s survival.
It’s choosing structure over spectacle.
Truth over performance.
Integrity over illusion.

And if that feels uncomfortable, good. That means you’re paying attention.

You don’t need a fresh start.
You need self-command.

Your grit isn’t something to outgrow.
It’s something to respect.
To protect.
To live by.

Because grit is what carries you through the days no one sees.
Grit is what survives the shedding.
Grit is what makes the journey gorgeous.

You are not behind.
You are not broken.
You are responsible.

Real performance based on discipline is revolutionary.

And your grit is gorgeous.

-Maven

The January Reckoning

January has a reputation it doesn’t deserve.

It shows up every year dressed like a miracle, pretending it’s a doorway instead of what it really is. Another morning. Another breath. Another chance to choose yourself or abandon yourself all over again.

We’ve been taught to treat January like salvation. Like a clean slate. Like some cosmic reset that suddenly makes unfinished business disappear and transforms effort into ease. But January doesn’t finish what you left undone. It doesn’t absolve you of the work you avoided. It doesn’t magically make discipline feel lighter or clarity arrive on demand.

You still wake up in the same body.
You still shower in the same bathroom.
You still lace up the same shoes.

And the truth is quieter than the hype. January doesn’t change your life. You do.

That realization hits me hard every time. Not because I don’t want a fresh start, but because I have to admit how often I used to wait for permission to begin. How many times I told myself I would start when the timing felt official. How often I let a future date delay a present truth.

January isn’t a beginning. It’s a perception. And if you’re not careful, that perception becomes a trap. A shiny excuse that convinces you change only counts if it starts on the first of something.

Waiting sets you up to fail. It creates pressure instead of clarity. It turns growth into performance. And it invites comparison into a space that should be deeply personal.

I make resolutions that aren’t mine when I listen to noise instead of instinct. Gym memberships bought out of guilt. Routines borrowed from people whose lives didn’t resemble mine. Goals that sounded impressive but felt hollow the moment real life pushed back.

Those resolutions cost me time.
They cost me money.
But more than that, they cost me trust in myself.

When you make commitments from pressure instead of truth, you don’t fail the goal. The goal fails you. And then we internalize that failure like it means something about our worth.

Here’s what no one tells you. Growth doesn’t require a dramatic overhaul. It requires honesty. And honesty starts small. Painfully small sometimes.

It starts with asking yourself where you actually are, not where you wish you were or where someone else told you you should be by now. It starts with noticing how you wake up, what you’re thinking about before your feet hit the floor, and how often you silence your own needs because someone else’s urgency feels louder.

This season strips a lot away from me, and I am proud of that. Relationships shifted. Some friendships ended. Priorities rearranged themselves whether I was ready or not. I learned the cost of overextending and the quiet damage of saying yes when my body was begging for no.

I love my work. I’m proud of it. But I'm guilty of letting it consume me now and then. I’ve let it bleed into spaces it didn’t belong. I didn’t say anything until the weight started showing up in places I couldn’t ignore. That’s on me. And owning that changed everything.

Here’s what I know. Integrity is the one thing I have complete control over. I can’t control how I’m perceived. I can’t control who understands me or who doesn’t. Some people won’t like me. Some people won’t respect me. That’s fine. I don’t need to demand respect. I need to live in a way that earns my own.

Every year forces me to reckon with who I’m performing for. At work. In my marriage. In my daily life. It reminds me unapologetically how easily stillness disappears when ambition goes unchecked. How quickly rest becomes optional. How fast you can lose yourself when every moment is filled.

Balance is a lie we sell women to keep them exhausted. Boundaries are real. Boundaries are what keep your integrity intact without making you hardened or cruel. Boundaries are how you protect what actually matters.

Coming back to myself is slow work. It’s strategic. Through reflection. Through stillness. Through writing myself back into alignment. Through mornings that weren’t productive but were grounding. Through admitting that being busy isn’t the same thing as being fulfilled.

January has never fixed anything.

Honesty has.

What I choose again and again isn’t resolution. It’s intention. It’s discipline that supports my life instead of swallowing it. It’s trusting my instincts because they have never betrayed me. It’s letting go of people who drain more than they give without turning it into drama or guilt.

I’m choosing quality.
Quality friendships.
Quality time.
Quality effort.

I’m choosing softness where it matters and sharpness where it’s required. My softness belongs with people who are worthy of it. My sharpness protects my boundaries. Empathy stays, but it no longer overrides self-respect.

And here’s the thing. This isn’t a once-a-year decision. Resurrection doesn’t happen on a calendar. It happens daily.

The version of me that survives in perpetuity is my core. The parts that never leave. The morals. The values. The integrity. You don’t lose those. You forget them sometimes, but they survive. They always do.

Resurrection is remembering you get to choose again. Every morning. Every conversation. Every decision.

That gift belongs to you too.

If you’re standing at the edge of January feeling pressure instead of possibility, let me tell you something quietly. You’re not behind. You’re not late. You’re not broken. You don’t need a reinvention. You need reconnection.

Start where you are. Start with one honest question. One small commitment that actually fits your life. One daily act that reminds you who you are instead of who you think you should be.

And if you’re stuck, ask for help. Reach out. There are lifelines everywhere if you’re willing to see them. You don’t have to do this alone. You were never meant to.

I see you. I don’t know your story, but I recognize your grit. I recognize the way you keep showing up even when it’s hard. I recognize the quiet bravery of choosing yourself without applause.

This won’t be perfect.
It will be honest.
And that’s where the power is.

Your grit isn’t something to outgrow.
It’s something to love.
To protect.
To fight for daily.

Because grit is what carries you through the days no one sees.
Grit is what survives the shedding.
Grit is what makes the journey gorgeous.

You are not alone.
You are seen.
And your grit is gorgeous.

— Maven

EQ > IQ. Leading With Heart, Humor, and a Little Hellfire

There’s a moment every leader hits where you realize intellect can only take you so far. You can have the credentials, the strategy, the airtight logic and still lose the room in six seconds flat.

Ask me how I know.

I once walked into a boardroom armed with data, confidence, and the kind of righteous certainty only an overprepared woman can bring. I won the argument. Brilliantly. Cleanly. Thoroughly.

And the room died.
Silent. Resentful. Done.

That’s when I learned something they don’t put in leadership textbooks: IQ gives you the microphone. EQ decides whether anyone stays long enough to listen.

No MBA teaches you how to feel the temperature drop when someone shuts down. No certification covers what to do when someone’s two seconds from tears or rage or both. No course teaches you how to read the room from the inside out.

That part, the emotional part, is learned in private moments where you realize you weren’t wrong… you were abrasive. Or detached. Or too sharp for the moment.

I’ve cried after meetings. Not out of failure, but out of clarity.
I nailed the facts and fumbled the humanity.
I’ve rewritten emails fourteen times to avoid sounding like a passive-aggressive threat with mascara.
Sometimes I still sounded like one.

That’s when EQ became my real leadership muscle.
Checking ego before stepping into a room.
Pausing instead of popping off.
Choosing curiosity over assuming I have everyone figured out.
Asking “How’s your heart?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?”

One unlocks a person.
The other shuts them down.

This isn’t a sermon. It’s a confession.
People aren’t projects.
Teams aren’t machinery.
Trust isn’t automatic.
Emotions don’t disappear because you pretend you don’t have any.

The bravest leaders aren’t the ones who know the most.
They’re the ones who can hold space when everything feels like it's about to blow.
They’re the ones who can say “I was wrong” without swallowing their pride whole.
They’re the ones who understand that levity can save a room faster than logic ever could.

I once watched a team member cry during a performance review. Not because she was failing, but because she’d gone a year without feeling seen.
A year.
Do you know how much damage can hide inside a year?
That moment rewired me.
It reminded me that emotional intelligence isn’t soft. It’s sharp. It’s the quiet blade that cuts through ego and reveals the truth underneath.

EQ looks like knowing when to speak and when to breathe.
Knowing when to push and when to pause.
Knowing when humor will break the tension and when it will break someone’s trust.

Strategy matters. Intelligence matters.
But emotional intelligence?
That’s the flex.

And if you can do all that while wearing great lipstick?
Congratulations. You’re dangerous.

Your grit is gorgeous.
— The Maven

Pack Loyalty. Rottweiler’s and Real Leadership.

There’s a particular kind of truth that lives in a Rottweiler’s gaze. Not the loud kind. Not the showy kind. The grounded kind. The kind that sees straight through you and quietly decides whether you’re someone worth following.

People’s faces when I say we own Rottweilers are always a mix of admiration and mild panic. I get it. They look like they could drag a truck across a field and still have energy left to judge your life choices. But strength isn’t their headline. Presence is. Intention is. And intention is something I’ve had to learn the hard way, both in leadership and in life.

I didn’t choose this breed to prove anything. I chose them because I recognized something familiar in their eyes. A quiet authority I hadn’t claimed yet. A kind of strength that never needs to yell. A confidence that doesn’t posture. A loyalty that doesn’t bend for convenience. They mirrored a version of me I hadn’t met yet.

Raising Rottweilers teaches you something leadership seminars never touch. You cannot fake presence with a dog who reads your energy before you open your mouth. You can’t be inconsistent, frantic, or unclear. You can’t rely on tone to make up for lack of conviction. They won’t respect noise. They respect truth.

I learned that the hard way during one training session. I was frustrated. Unfocused. More reactive than intentional. I wanted compliance without having built connection. My Rotties stared at me with a look that translated perfectly into, get your shit together. It was humbling. It was deserved, and it shifted everything.

From that moment forward, I stopped trying to lead from performance. I started leading from presence. I started noticing how my energy walked into rooms before I did. I started paying attention to the tone beneath my words, not just the words. I treated leadership like a relationship instead of a role, and everything changed.

Rottweilers will show you every inconsistency you think you’ve hidden. They feel the crack before anyone hears it. They sense hesitation like scent. They know when your boundaries are firm and when they’re performative. They know if your authority is rooted or brittle. And the truth is, most leaders crumble under the same scrutiny.

A Rottie doesn’t follow commands.
They follow clarity.
They follow intention.
They follow the energy that makes them feel safe.
and they’ll walk away from anything that feels unsteady.

The more time I spent with them, the more I realized how many teams operate the same way. People don’t commit to titles. They commit to trust. They commit to consistency. They commit to leaders who understand the weight of influence and the responsibility that comes with it.

When I walk into boardrooms now, I think of that gaze. Not because I’m afraid of it, but because it keeps me honest. Am I grounded or leaking nerves? Am I leading from truth or from fear? Am I asking for loyalty I haven’t earned? It’s a check-in with the version of me who refuses to lead from ego.

These dogs have reshaped me. They’ve sharpened my intuition. They’ve humbled my assumptions. They’ve taught me that boundaries aren’t barriers, they’re offerings. That calm is a higher form of power than volume. That leadership is never about control, but about trust earned through consistency.

The woman I am now walks differently because of them.
Straighter.
Quieter.
More deliberate.
More aligned.
More protective of my energy and more intentional with my influence.

If you want to know what kind of leader you are, don’t ask your title. Ask your presence. Ask your energy. Ask yourself whether someone who senses everything would trust you enough to follow.

Rottweilers don’t lie.
They don’t flatter.
They don’t tolerate instability.
They reveal the truth you carry.
and they demand you rise into the version of yourself that can lead without noise.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re leading from fear or from grounded authority, ask yourself one question:

Would a Rottweiler follow you?

Your grit is gorgeous.

— Maven

Riding High. Lessons from the open road.

There’s a certain kind of clarity you only earn at 60 mph with nothing but wind, instinct, and whatever truth you’ve been avoiding.

Some people meditate.
Some people journal.
I go to the garage.

There’s a stillness that lives inside the roar of a motorcycle , a holy kind of contradiction. The second I throw my leg over the bike, the noise in my head goes quiet. It’s just me, the road, my playlist, and whatever lesson life is about to carve into me.

I didn’t start riding to chase adrenaline.
I started because I needed connection …. to my husband, to myself, to freedom.
But I stay riding because the road is the only place I can’t lie to myself.

On two wheels, you can’t perform.
You can’t posture.
You can’t hide behind roles or titles or the version of you other people need.

It’s just truth.
Raw. Immediate. Unavoidable.

I’ve cried inside and out of my helmet more times than I’ll ever admit. Tears have pooled, blurred, dried, and restarted… and every one of them has washed off a layer of pressure I didn’t realize I was carrying.

The road doesn’t care about your bravado.
It reads your fear like a pulse.
It knows when you’re gripping too tight.
It knows when you’re pretending you’re fine.

It teaches you … quickly, brutally, beautifully , that control is an illusion and presence is survival.

There was one ride that split something open in me.

I was exhausted. Burnt out. Past burnt out, honestly … already ashes pretending to be a flame. I didn’t have a destination; I just needed a direction. Somewhere around mile 37, something shifted. My shoulders dropped. My breath synced with the rhythm of the road. My mind stopped sprinting.

And the truth hit me in one clean strike:
Sometimes you don’t need to control the ride , you just need to stay upright.

That day the sky snapped open and it poured — a straight baptism.

No helmet.
No jacket.
Just me in a soaked shirt, soaked jeans, soaked everything, getting pelted by needles of rain at 60+ mph.

It stung like hell.
And still, I rode.

I could’ve pulled over.
Sat on the roadside.
Wallowed.
Waited.
Broken.

But no.
I took every drop Mother Nature hurled at me and kept moving because stopping felt more dangerous than the storm.

And when I finally made it home shivering, drenched, laughing like a feral woman — I realized something:

I wasn’t running from anything.
I was riding through it.

That ride taught me more about emotional intelligence than any leadership book ever could.

It taught me to:

Respect the rhythm of the moment
Respond instead of react
Breathe instead of spiral
Embrace discomfort as data
Trust my instinct over my fear

The bike has become my mirror.
It shows me where I’m forcing.
Where I’m avoiding.
Where I’m out of alignment.
Where I’m holding on too tight.

Riding isn’t therapy.
It’s transformation — with windburn.

And I’ll keep sharing these stories because the road has a way of speaking to women like us. The kind who lead. The kind who feel deeply. The kind who carry more than they admit. The kind who don’t crumble — we recalibrate.

So here’s to the rides that break us open
and the ones that stitch us back together.

Kickstand up.
Playlist set.
Soul ready.

Your grit is gorgeous.

— Maven

The Glow-up is only half the story…

There’s a moment right before the lights hit your face that tells the truth. Not the polished kind. The real kind. The kind where your eyeliner is already smudged, your coffee tastes like defeat, and your pulse is doing that cocktail of exhaustion and adrenaline no one admits to.

No applause in sight. Just you and the grind. That’s where the magic actually happens. The mirror was cracked. The lighting was an insult. The lipstick was too bold for the room and perfect for my mood. I put it on anyway—not to impress, but to anchor. A reminder. A warning. A quiet declaration that even in the wreckage, I still know exactly who I am.

That’s the moment The Maven Chronicles was born. Not in a studio. Not in a brainstorm. In the chaos. In mascara streaks and underestimated glances and nights where instinct was the only tool I had left. Maven is for the women who fix their eyeliner in rearview mirrors before walking into rooms that weren’t built for them. For the ones who don’t wait to be invited. For the ones who know resilience isn’t graceful—but it damn sure is gorgeous.

If you’re soft, good.

If you’re sharp, even better.

If you’re both, you’re dangerous—and I want you here.

Beauty isn’t being put together. Beauty is showing up when everything is falling apart. Showing up when your voice shakes. Showing up when your boots are muddy. Showing up when no one even knows you’re fighting.

My mission is simple: pull back the curtain. Show the real work. The quiet doubts. The instinctive choices that saved us. The judgment we feel before anyone speaks. The thoughts we carry while still walking into the room like we own the place.

I built this because I needed a space where ambition and vulnerability don’t fight for the same seat. A place where women can fall apart and rise in the same breath. A place where mistakes get recycled into leadership.

I’ve stood on plenty of stages. Some had lights. Most didn’t. The important ones are always the ones no one sees. And that’s what you’ll find here: Motorcycles and meaning. Rottweilers and relationships. Lipstick and leadership. Raw reflection and the kind of honesty that ruins your excuses.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit the mold, congratulations.

You’re mine.

You’re Maven.

I’ll show up as I am.

I’ll tell the truth even when it’s messy.

I’ll ask you to do the same.

You belong here.

Your grit is gorgeous.

— Maven