The story behind Rethink Possible

I didn’t create this work from theory. I created it from a life that broke open—and what I found on the other side.

I grew up in a trailer home, with a big family surrounded by quiet corn fields and tight margins. There was lots of love in my family. My parents poured themselves out for us. And still, there were cracks where the stress of "not enough" seeped through.   A pressure that could boil over and cast a shadow on our home.  

I learned early that it was safest to read the room. Stay quiet. Be the good kid. Find ways to make things easier on everyone else. I learned to make myself useful so I wouldn't have to be known - because I was terrified of what someone might find if they looked too closely. That I was, at the core, not enough. 

That belief followed me everywhere. In middle school, when my best friend started pulling away and left for the cool group, I told myself: she finally saw it. On the soccer field - where I was, by any measure, an elite player - I still kept myself small. I worked hard. I played hard. And I neve quite let myself believe that I belonged there. 

Yet, there was another version of me. The girl who danced to The Lion King in the backyard, her movements wild and uncalculated. She felt, in her whole body, that she could become anything. She didn’t read the room; she led it. She challenged the rules and pushed boundaries, not to stay safe, but because she was free.

As I got older, I made a decision, not a conscious one, but a deep one, that if I achieved enough, proved myself enough, worked hard enough, I could outrun "not enough." I could earn my way to safe. Until then that little girl would have to stay behind the armor. 

So I pushed.

I built a career in public policy. I moved across the country. I became the leader people relied on to solve the hardest problems, connect the dots, and hold things together. On the outside, it looked like success. On the inside, I had simply perfected the art of "making it work," proving I was enough while quietly losing my grip on myself. 

Then, life got bigger.

I became a mother to twins under the most terrifying circumstances. We faced a rare, life-threatening condition in utero. Even as I lay in a hospital bed on weeks of bed rest, balancing the needs of my older son from afar and petrified for the lives of the babies I was carrying, I was still facilitating complex policy negotiations on my laptop. I told myself I’d be bored if I stopped, but the truth was deeper: Managing was the only way I knew how to survive. 

When my twins were born at 27 weeks, my hyper-vigilance moved to the NICU. For 70 days, and for months at home afterward, I lived by the beep of the monitors. I became an expert in oxygen levels and treatment protocols, still trying to stay one step ahead of a crisis I couldn't control.

I kept pushing because pushing was my language. I returned to work, took on a leadership role, and navigated a global pandemic with toddlers at home—still trying to be everything to everyone.

Until the weight of it finally crushed me.

It wasn’t a dramatic explosion; it was a quiet Tuesday at my desk. I was looking at a set of last-minute edits on an book chapter I had poured myself into. This was a project no one had asked me to do, but I had done anyway. As I stared at the edits on the screen, my heart began to race. A physical weight settled into my chest. And that old feeling crept in that no matter what I did it was "not enough." 

Everything I was carrying flooded in and I felt alone and crushed by the weight of it all. I started to realize I had drifted so far from that joyful, free girl in the backyard that I didn't recognize her anymore and the path I was on was unsustainable. I was living my life behind a suit of armor that was becoming too heavy to carry and was letting my life pass me by. 

I didn’t need to become someone new; I needed to come home to the person I already was.

Dropping the armor was terrifying. I was afraid that if I stopped managing and fixing, everything—including me—would fall apart. But as I did the inner work - learning to finally listen to my body, settle the 'high-alert' stress I had lived in for years, and started taking care of myself I found her waiting for me.

The girl from the backyard wasn't gone; she was just buried under the weight of "not enough."

I realized that the joy she felt dancing to The Lion King wasn't a childhood phase—it was my natural state. Her boundary-pushing spirit wasn't a "problem" to be managed; it was my greatest leadership strength. Reclaiming her didn't make me "less than" or "lazy." It made me whole. It allowed me to lead from my soul, not just my stress.

Rethink Possible Coaching was born from that reclamation.

I work with women who are living this story—capable, successful, and profoundly exhausted from carrying it all alone. I help them set down the armor so they can find their own "backyard"—that place where they don't have to solve, fix, or manage to be worthy.

I believe that when a woman finally comes home to herself, the ripple is seismic:

• A grounded mother changes the emotional legacy of her home.
• A present leader transforms the potential of her team.
• A woman who belongs to herself quietly makes the world more human.

Reconnecting with yourself isn’t an indulgence. It is how you finally, truly, belong.

I see you because I was you.

You are the one who holds it all together. You are the leader people rely on, the mother who anticipates every need, and the "fixer" who never lets a ball drop. But lately, the armor is feeling heavy.

If you yourself:

• Exhausted, even after a full night's sleep.
• Living from the neck up, ignoring the physical signals of stress until they become a crisis or an illness.
• Successful on paper, but feeling increasingly disconnected from your own joy.
• Afraid that if you stop "managing," everything will fall apart.

...then it’s time to rethink what’s possible.