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