That’s how most of us were taught. Kimberly Gilgeours says we have it backwards.

Kimberly has spent more than 30 years in financial services. She grew up watching her mother work three jobs on a high school diploma. Her mom retired without a 401(k), and when she passed, her Social Security and pension disappeared with her.

I felt that one. I lost both of my parents, and there was no nest egg to pass on either. So much of what we call generational wealth starts with the conversations nobody had with us.

Kimberly was honest about all of it, the noise, the shame, her own season of credit card debt as a single mom of twins. And she was honest about AI, too. Her answer when I asked: “I hate it.”

In this episode:

- Why 10% savings still means paycheck to paycheck, and what to aim for instead

- How to tell a licensed advisor from someone who just calls themselves a coach

- Weekly budgets, annual reviews, and why consistency beats prediction

- What entrepreneurs need to separate and protect early

- Generational wealth as education, not just money

Find Kimberly at TheWorldChangers.com.

And if no one told you they loved you today…I love you. — Sandy

Nothing may look wrong from the outside. You are still succeeding. Still functioning. Still meeting expectations. Still doing everything you worked so hard to be able to do.

But somewhere inside, you know.

The future you once worked toward no longer feels like the future you want.

That kind of knowing can be difficult because recognizing what you have outgrown does not automatically show you what comes next. You may know that you cannot remain where you are, but you still cannot see where you are going.

That is the messy middle.

My guest, Renee Maxine Haas, calls it the fog.

When the Secure Path No Longer Feels Secure

At 13 years old, Renee took a career-week aptitude test and saw computers listed among the careers she might be good at.

Computers also offered something Renee valued deeply, even at that young age: job security.

That decision became the foundation of the life she built. She studied computer science, became a software engineer and web developer, and eventually rose to a senior position.

For many years, that path worked.

Renee enjoyed the work and felt fortunate that the plan she made so early in life had led somewhere meaningful. But eventually, she reached the mountaintop she had spent nearly twenty years climbing toward and realized she no longer wanted to remain there.

The career had not suddenly become bad. She had simply completed that chapter.

She could feel herself being called toward something else, even though she could not yet identify what that something was.

Renee explained that sometimes a path serves us for one season of our lives. The difficulty comes when we remain there because it is comfortable, familiar, or because we have invested so much time becoming that version of ourselves.

Recognizing that a chapter is complete does not make the next chapter immediately visible.

Sometimes we have to move before the entire path appears.

The Question That Changed Everything

Renee spent almost two years trying to negotiate with the feeling that something was no longer right.

Then, during an ordinary dog-sitting walk along a stream in Colorado, a half-joking question entered her mind:

“What if I just quit my job and traveled the world?”

At first, she was not serious.

Then something clicked.

Renee sat with the idea for two days. The planner in her researched the cost, the logistics, and what it would take to make the journey possible. When the practical pieces began to make sense, she had to confront the deeper question.

Could she release the identity, structure, and security she had spent her entire life building?

Renee imagined two versions of her future. One stayed on the predictable path. The other said yes to the unknown.

When she pictured herself looking back, she knew she would deeply regret not taking the opportunity.

So she said yes.

She left her career and spent the next two years traveling solo through nearly 50 countries.

When Travel Stops Being a Distraction

At first, the journey was filled with excitement.

There were new places, new foods, unfamiliar streets, and people from around the world. Renee felt the stress and anxiety she had carried from work begin to loosen. Her shoulders dropped. Her days were no longer shaped by productivity or everything she was expected to accomplish.

But eventually, travel stopped being enough of a distraction.

Around six months into the journey, the questions she had not answered began finding her in the quiet moments. They found her alone in a hostel bunk bed and during a rainy day in a chalet in Italy.

Without the familiar roles of colleague, coworker, friend, daughter, or the person who followed a carefully planned routine, Renee had to sit with a more difficult question:

Who am I without the roles I have used to define myself?

The uncertainty she thought she had left behind was still there.

The difference was that she could no longer use work, routines, productivity, or planning to avoid it.

Renee began learning that she did not have to know exactly what came next to trust herself. She could move one step at a time, follow the quieter voice of her intuition, and allow life to unfold without trying to control every outcome.

Instead of forcing her way through the fog, she began learning how to flow with it.

Coming Home Was Another Journey

Leaving was not the end of Renee’s reinvention.

Coming home required her to live what she had learned.

Could she remain connected to gratitude when she returned to ordinary life?

Could she resist falling back into productivity and hustle culture?

Could she follow her intuition while still handling the practical responsibilities of building a life?

Could she trust herself when family and friends asked the question she feared most?

“So, what are you going to do now?”

It was a reasonable question from people who loved her, but it touched the uncertainty she was still learning to hold.

For women who have built their identities around being capable, prepared, and successful, saying “I do not know yet” can feel terrifying.

We want an answer that makes sense at the dinner table. We want our decisions to appear responsible. We want the people we love to feel confident in us, especially when we are still trying to feel confident in ourselves.

Renee had to deepen her self-trust, not because she had finally found every answer, but because she was learning that she could be okay without them.

Redefining Success

Traveling through nearly 50 countries also exposed Renee to ways of living that challenged the definition of success she had inherited.

She saw cultures where community, connection, and freedom of time were valued more than possessions, large careers, or impressive homes.

In Copenhagen, she saw businesses close at five so people could go home and live their lives.

In Uruguay, she witnessed a culture that placed greater value on time and human connection.

Renee began recognizing that there is no single definition of success and no one-size-fits-all way to build a meaningful life.

Success can be security.

It can also be freedom.

It can be ambition, purpose, community, rest, creativity, time, connection, or the ability to live in a way that feels authentic to you.

The question is not whether your life looks successful to everyone else.

The question is whether it feels like your life.

The Fog Is Not Proof That You Are Failing

Renee eventually turned her journey into her debut memoir, The Fog and the Flow.

Writing it required her to share the fears, anxiety, mistakes, resentment, uncertainty, and private thoughts she experienced along the way. She described the book as deeply vulnerable, almost like allowing the world to read her personal diary.

That vulnerability is also what makes her story so human.

Renee does not present herself as someone who has completed reinvention and now holds every answer. She is honest that the lessons must sometimes be relearned and that self-trust does not remove uncertainty.

When I asked what she would tell the version of herself who was still afraid in the fog, Renee said:

“I’m still in the fog, and I’m doing wonderful.”

That may be one of the greatest lessons in this conversation.

You do not have to escape the fog before you can build a meaningful life.

You do not need the entire path before taking the next step.

You do not need to become fearless before trusting yourself.

The proof is already behind you.

You have shown up for yourself before. You have survived chapters you did not know how to navigate. You have adapted, learned, changed, and continued moving.

You can trust that you will continue doing so, even when you cannot predict what is waiting down the road.

The fog is not proof that you are failing.

The messy middle is not the end of your story.

It is the space between the life you have outgrown and the life you are still learning to trust yourself enough to create.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why Renee chose a career in computers at 13 and what twenty years inside that decision taught her

• Recognizing when a life that still looks successful no longer feels right

• The dog walk in Colorado where quitting her job and traveling the world stopped being a joke

• Why the greatest fear was not traveling alone, but what would happen after the journey ended

• What six months of solitude forced Renee to finally confront

• Learning the difference between intuition, fear, ego, and control

• What Croatia’s Museum of Broken Relationships helped Renee understand about resentment and trust

• Why coming home was harder than leaving

• How the question “What are you going to do now?” became one of Renee’s greatest triggers

• What Uruguay and Copenhagen taught her about community, time, and redefining success

• Moving through the fear of being seen while writing a deeply personal memoir

• Trusting yourself when the next chapter is not fully defined

CONNECT WITH RENEE MAXINE HAAS

Website: ReneeMaxineHaas.com

Book: The Fog and the Flow, available now on Amazon in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle

Podcast: Effing and Audacity

ABOUT ELEVATE WITHIN

Elevate Within is a podcast and conversation platform for high-achieving women navigating burnout, anxiety, grief, identity changes, leadership, and reinvention.

We connect what women are experiencing personally with how it affects their wellbeing, work, relationships, and leadership.

CONNECT WITH ELEVATE WITHIN

Substack: https://substack.com/@elevatewithin

Website:

https://elevateopsadvisory.com

Leadership Advisory by Elevate Within: sandy@elevateopsadvisory.com

LinkedIn: Sandra Davis

If this conversation resonated, please follow, subscribe, and share it with another woman who may need it today.

Here I’ve been thinking I feel down because of everything I’m going through right now. Some of it probably is. There are real things I’m trying to navigate.

But then I remembered the anniversary.

And I paused.

I guess my spirit knew before my mind did.

Around this time of year, I think about my parents more. Talk about them more. Find myself trying to understand things I thought I had already worked through.

Three years have passed.

But I look at something my mother made, or think about my father’s laugh, and I still want them here.

My dad passed first. Before I could begin to understand how to grieve him, my mom was gone too.

Thirty-seven days.

I was still trying to comprehend losing one parent when I had to figure out how to live without both.

And I want you to know a little about them.

My father was an Army and National Guard veteran. His nickname was Sarge.

He was charismatic, with a contagious laugh. He spoke in rehab centers and churches, encouraging people to hang in there and believe there was more ahead for them.

He could make anyone feel special.

Especially the women…the women in his family, who he worked with…not just his daughters. He called all of them “baby girl.”

All of them.

And I thought I was the only one. Imagine that. I’m going to assume I was somewhere near the top. lol

That was my dad.

He taught me how to play chess. How to navigate life, understand people, read the room, and think through a decision.

After losing him, I struggled with some of the very things he taught me. I questioned myself. Decisions I would normally know how to approach became difficult.

I couldn’t find my footing.

And the person who had helped teach me how to navigate was gone.

My mother was strong and sophisticated, with beautiful eyes and a gorgeous smile.

She was a paralegal and worked for the NYPD transcribing wiretaps. She helped neighbors with landlord issues. If she knew something that could help, she put it to use.

And she could create.

Blankets. Sweaters. Doll clothes. Summer dresses. Hats and scarves.

When she couldn’t afford to go clothes shopping, she sewed her own clothes. Beautiful dresses, skirts, and blouses she wore to work.

Women would ask, “Where did you buy that?”

That was her brand!

I love remembering that about her. She had talent, and she knew it.

She also made incredible needlepoint artwork. Those pieces now hang on the walls of my home.

I look at the stitches and think about her hands making them. The patience. The work. And I remember her talking about poking herself with the needle and bleeding a little.

So when I say a piece of her is in that artwork, well, she really did put herself into it.

Some of the most beautiful things I own were made by my mother.

I wish I could tell her that again.

I can stand in my home and look at something she made, but I can’t have another conversation with her about it.

Her work is here.

I want her here too.

At the heart of it were these words:

She gave me what she could. I became what she couldn’t.

For a long time, I saw what was missing in our relationship. What I needed and didn’t receive. The parts of me that had been hurt.

Those things were real.

But as I reflected, I started seeing her more fully. A young woman navigating her own trauma, fears, and limitations, without all the tools or support she needed.

Understanding her didn’t erase what happened.

It gave me room to love her, acknowledge the pain, and still have questions.

I’m grieving my mother, and I’m also grieving the time I wish we had to understand each other better.

Sometimes, though, I don’t want to work through anything.

I just want to see her smile.

After my parents died, other things transpired that made an already painful time harder. I’m not going to unpack all of them here.

But I was carrying a lot.

And I rushed back to work.

I tried to function. Be strong. Be available. Make decisions. Keep moving.

I knew I missed my parents. But I didn’t know how to navigate grief or recognize how much it was affecting my work, my relationships, and my decisions.

People were asking things of me, and I kept trying to answer.

Meanwhile, I had questions of my own.

Why am I so angry?

Why can’t I make a decision?

Why do I feel so far from the person I used to be?

What am I supposed to do now?

Some people around me became frustrated. I wasn’t there for them the way they wanted. They questioned my anger and my decisions.

I kept trying to give more. Then I became angry because I had nothing left.

I heard:

“You’ll get over it.”

“They’re in a better place.”

“You have to pay attention to the living, not the dead.”

I still think about that one.

Because I was living.

I was right there, struggling.

I needed attention too.

I needed someone to say, “Sandy, hey…you’re grieving. You need some time. Maybe you need to talk to someone. You don’t have to keep pushing yourself like this.”

People said they were there. I acknowledge that.

But I still felt alone.

Sometimes I couldn’t explain what I needed. Sometimes I didn’t know. I wanted someone to ask how I was doing and have room for the answer.

Even when the answer wasn’t easy to hear.

Because I miss my father’s laugh. Because my mother’s artwork is here, and she isn’t. Because there are things I understand today that I couldn’t put into words three years ago, two years ago, a few weeks ago.

I don’t need to make someone else comfortable by pretending I’m done talking about it.

You don’t have to experience my exact loss to care about me. You can listen. Ask. Admit you don’t understand or don’t know what to say.

I don’t expect perfect words.

But please don’t decide how long my grief should last, or how quickly I should become easier to be around.

I know I didn’t handle everything well. I can acknowledge my anger, hear healthy feedback, and take responsibility for things I wish I had done differently.

I can also recognize that I was grieving and needed help.

I’m not embarrassed to say I was lost.

Writing about my mother helped me see her with more compassion. Now I’m trying to offer some of that compassion to myself.

Recognizing this anniversary helps me make room for what I’m feeling. My mother’s passing is approaching its third year, and my father’s loss, just 37 days before hers, is right there with it.

I’m still building a life. Working. Creating. Looking for joy, purpose, and genuine connection.

And I’m still grieving.

I want a community where we can say that honestly. Where someone can admit they’re struggling without having to make it sound better before anyone will listen.

I’m still learning. Still persevering. Still finding my way.

And sometimes, while I’m doing that, I’m going to talk about my mom and dad.

I want you to know how beautiful her work was.

I want you to know how much he made people laugh.

Madeline Maldonado grew up in her father’s bodega in Washington Heights. He gave credit with a register receipt and a signature. He asked people how their surgery went and how their family was doing.

She calls her parents “social workers in action without degrees.”

Twenty-six years later, Madeline is a bilingual licensed clinical social worker and Co-Founder of the Minette Foundation, and she is still operating from those same lessons about dignity, trust, and community care.

This one brought me home.

Madeline and I were raised in the same New York City. Rent parties. Paper food stamps. Subways at fourteen. Parents who taught us who we were before the rest of the world had an opportunity to decide for us.

We talked about why emergency mental health funding disappears after every crisis, why stigma and mistrust still live in our communities, what it costs to become a therapist of color, and why the people holding everyone else’s pain are burning out too.

Madeline also shared the philosophy behind the Minette Foundation:

“If this single mom is struggling and she just needs diapers, can we just get her the diapers?”

Sometimes the first step in supporting someone’s mental health is helping them address what is driving the crisis today, so healing has room to begin.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The bodega lessons that shaped Madeline as a therapist
• The salary she was told not to request
• Why waitlists, deductibles, and mistrust keep families from care
• The barriers facing future therapists of color
• Therapist burnout and the growing shortage of accessible care
• The mission trip that inspired the Minette Foundation
• What the Foundation needs now and how we can help

Learn more about Madeline’s work:

Minette Foundation:

https://www.minettefoundation.org

Minette LCSW Psychotherapy Services: https://www.minettepsychotherapy.com

This episode includes brief discussion of suicide, self-harm, substance use, and trauma. If you or someone you know needs immediate emotional support in the United States, call or text 988.

Listen to the full conversation and let us know what part of Madeline’s message connected with you.

And if no one told you they loved you today, I love you.

The worry does not disappear, but you do not have to carry it every second.

In Part 1, we talked honestly about how anxiety showed up in our bodies through chest tightness, shaking hands, stomach issues, brain fog, sleeplessness, unexpected tears, and feeling unable to make one more decision.

In Part 2, Building Your Anxiety Toolkit, Claudia J. Cuevas, LMFT, Taína Galarza, LMSW, and I move from recognizing anxiety to discussing what we can do when it begins taking over our thoughts, bodies, and decisions.

Anxiety can make everything feel urgent.

Quit the job. End the relationship. Cancel the plan. Stop answering the phone. Make the decision right now so you can finally stop thinking about it.

But before we make a major decision from that place, our nervous systems may need help returning to a grounded baseline.

The goal of these tools is not to pretend the problem has disappeared. The job, relationship, financial concern, family responsibility, grief, or uncertainty may still be there.

The goal is to create enough space to interrupt the spiral, reconnect with the present, and respond from a grounded place instead of survival mode.

Claudia walks us through the personal self-care toolkit she carries with her. We talk about strong mint, aromatherapy, hydration, cold packs, and using temperature to reconnect with the body.

I share how cold water, familiar scents, speaking reassurance out loud, humor, and old movies that remind me of New York help me feel grounded.

Taína discusses sound, community, intentional touch, somatic practices, and becoming curious about where anxiety lives in the body. She also reminds us that sometimes we can know intellectually that we are safe while our bodies still do not feel safe.

That does not make us failures. It means we may need a different form of support.

We also discuss Claudia’s worry box, a small box filled with figures that can symbolically hold the worries she cannot resolve before bed. The problems are not being denied or discarded. They are being given somewhere to rest until tomorrow.

Sometimes we do not need another answer. We need permission to stop carrying everything for one night.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Building a personal anxiety and self-care toolkit
• Using the senses to return to the present
• Cold water, scent, music, laughter, touch, and nostalgia
• Speaking reassurance out loud
• Grounding before making major decisions
• The difference between knowing you are safe and feeling safe
• Somatic practices and intentional touch
• Giving nighttime worries somewhere to rest
• Reaching out instead of isolating
• Allowing strong women to admit when they need support

Anxiety can make us feel ashamed, isolated, or convinced that we should be able to handle everything alone. I do not want that for us.

Being honest about what you are experiencing does not erase your strength. Asking someone to sit beside you does not erase your strength. Needing support does not erase your strength.

Sometimes you do not need someone to solve the problem. You just need another human being nearby while you find your way back to yourself.

What belongs in your anxiety toolkit? Tell us in the comments. Your answer may help another woman discover something that works for her.

BRING ELEVATE WITHIN TO YOUR COMMUNITY

Sandy Davis and Claudia J. Cuevas bring these conversations to women’s networks, professional organizations, employee communities, and local groups through workshops, webinars, facilitated conversations, and custom series.

Programs are available virtually nationwide and in person throughout Greater Los Angeles region, Orange County, Inland Empire and San Diego.

LEADERSHIP ADVISORY

Sandy Davis also provides private Leadership Advisory for leaders, owners, and decision-makers navigating underperformance, accountability, delegation, conflict, burnout, difficult client relationships, or a decision they are struggling to make.

She helps them understand what is driving the situation, determine what needs to change, and decide what to do next. A complimentary initial conversation is available.

CONNECT WITH ELEVATE WITHIN

Website Sandy Davis: https://elevateopsadvisory.com

LinkedIn: Sandra Davis [sandra-davis-abb21236]

Website Claudia Cuevas, LMFT: https://claudiacuevas.com/

Connect with Taína Galarza: https://www.modernalchemix.com/

Please note: This episode shares personal experiences and general educational information. It is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, psychotherapy, or mental health treatment. Follow product instructions and consult a qualified professional regarding your individual health needs.

And if no one told you they loved you today, I love you.

Sandy

But inside, I was saying, “No, I’m not. Help me.”

Last Friday, that feeling became a full-body experience. My dog Rocco’s cyst burst, and suddenly I was dealing with a tight chest, heart palpitations, brain fog, shaking hands, guilt, fear, and the inability to think clearly enough to form a plan.

By the following morning, I called Taína while I was still brushing my teeth. I told her I probably should have waited until I finished. She told me not to worry about it.

Then I cried.

It was not a quiet cry. It was the kind of release that happens when your body has been carrying far more than you realized and finally cannot hold it in any longer.

In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, I am joined by my co-host, Claudia J. Cuevas, LMFT, and returning guest Taína Galarza, LMSW, to talk honestly about what anxiety feels like when it begins showing up in the body.

Claudia shares her own week of accumulating pressure: work, family responsibilities, travel, car trouble, and concern for her dog. Eventually, a simple question about picking up milk became the final drop in an already overflowing glass.

Taína reflects on her chronic health concerns, the loss of her cat of more than 18 years, and the fear she experienced when an earthquake affected people she loves in Colombia.

It is rarely one thing. It is an accumulation.

For high-achieving women, anxiety can build underneath caregiving, work demands, financial concerns, grief, responsibility, and the constant decisions we continue making every day. Then one more thing happens, and our bodies respond to the weight of everything that came before it.

Claudia calls this “the burden of awareness.” As we become more self-aware, we begin recognizing the weight we once carried without questioning it. We can finally see the rocks inside the backpack, but then we must decide what we can keep carrying and what we are ready to put down.

We also discuss the pressure women, particularly women of color, may feel to remain strong, keep personal struggles behind closed doors, and continue showing up with a calm face while privately overwhelmed.

In this episode:

• How anxiety can appear as chest tightness, shaking, heart palpitations, stomach issues, sleeplessness, brain fog, crying, and decision fatigue
• Why the final trigger is rarely the only cause
• How grief, caregiving, financial pressure, work, and uncertainty accumulate in the body
• Why asking for help can feel so difficult
• The pressure to remain strong while privately struggling
• The burden of awareness
• How social media and constant exposure to fear can add to an already overloaded nervous system

Part 2, Building Your Anxiety Toolkit, will be released Friday. We will share practical tools we use when anxiety begins taking over our thoughts, bodies, and decisions.

If this episode resonated with you, tell us in the comments: How does anxiety show up in your body?

Please note: This episode shares personal experiences and general educational information. It is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or mental health treatment.

Subscribe to Elevate Within and turn on notifications so you do not miss the continuation.

🎙️ ABOUT ELEVATE WITHIN Elevate Within is a podcast and conversation platform for high-achieving women navigating burnout, anxiety, grief, identity changes, leadership, and reinvention. We connect what women are experiencing personally with how it affects their wellbeing, work, relationships, and leadership.

CONNECT WITH ELEVATE WITHIN:

💼 CONNECT WITH SANDY

🌐 https://elevateopsadvisory.com

📎 LinkedIn: sandra-davis-abb21236/

💼 CONNECT WITH CLAUDIA CUEVAS, LMFT

🌐 https://claudiacuevas.com/ OR

https://www.therapyforlatinx.com/united-states/mission-viejo/therapist/claudia-cuevas-146

💼 CONNECT WITH TAINA GALARZA, LMSW

🌐 https://www.modernalchemix.com/

And if no one told you they loved you today, I love you.

Sandy

We grieve people, but we also grieve careers, relationships, homes, communities, opportunities, and the versions of ourselves we had to leave behind.

In this final conversation of The Architecture of Reinvention: The Art of Unbecoming, Claudia and I talk about the many forms grief can take and why healing is never a straight line.

I share what it was like to lose both of my parents within 37 days, walk away from family relationships, burn out at work, and lose the career and community that had defined so much of my life.

Claudia reminds us that we do not simply “get over” grief. It becomes part of who we are. Some days it feels like a boulder we can barely carry. Other days it becomes a small marble we can place in our pocket. Then an anniversary, a song, or a memory can make it heavy again.

We also explore how culture shapes our relationship with death, when therapy or additional support may be needed, and why chosen family matters.

Sometimes community is not a thousand people. Sometimes it is two or three people who will sit with you, have coffee with you, or answer when you text, “I’m spiraling.”

As we close this series, I keep returning to three words:

Grief. Love. Community.

They have been present in every story we shared and every woman who gathered around this table.

If you are still in the messy middle, please remember: You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not starting over.

You are becoming.

And if no one told you they loved you today, I love you.

In this final episode:

• The different forms grief can take

• Losing both parents within 37 days

• Why grief and love go hand in hand

• How culture shapes our understanding of death

• Why grief is not linear

• Therapy, support, and learning to carry loss

• Chosen family and the importance of community

• Saying goodbye to The Architecture of Reinvention

I don’t think I fully understood how much grief would be part of that story. In our final conversation, Claudia Cuevas, LMFT, described grief as a roller coaster.

Confusion. Loneliness. Anxiety. A little acceptance. A little peace.

Then the sadness comes back. Or anger. Or longing.

Because grief isn’t a straight line. And it isn’t something we simply check off a list and move beyond. As Claudia reminded me, we don’t really “get over” grief. We learn how to carry it.

And grief isn’t only about the people we bury.

Sometimes we grieve the title we no longer have.

The friendship that quietly ended.

The place that used to feel like home.

The life we thought we’d have.

Or the version of ourselves we have to let go of in order to become someone new.

Maybe that’s why this feels like the right conversation to close The Art of Unbecoming.

Because reinvention requires grief.

There are pieces of ourselves we don’t take into the next chapter. There are others we absolutely do.

My mom and my dad are two of them.

My mom, she’s woven through every episode of this series.

I said during this conversations that I believe my mom, my dad, my grandmother and my ancestors had something to do with the urgency I felt to create it.

Almost as if they were saying:

Gather everyone around the table who needs to hear this.

So I did.

My mom loved Frank Sinatra. Even now, when one of his songs comes on, I stop.

Some days I sing along and smile. Other days I cry.

Neither means I’ve moving backwards. Both mean she was here. Both mean I love her.

And both are part of who I am becoming.

Maybe that' is what this entire summer has really been about. Not erasing who we were. Not rushing toward wo comes next. But learning what to release, what to carry with us, and what deserves to be honored along the way.

20 episodes of women telling the truth about the messy middle.

Grief. Burnout. Identity. Leadership. Loss. Healing. Reinvention. Unbecoming. Returning.

To every woman who sat at this table and trusted us with her story, thank you.

And to everyone who listened, watched, read, shared, or quietly recognized a piece of yourself in someone else’s story, thank you for sitting at the table with us.

The Elevate Within with Sandy Davis Summer Series ends here…but the conversations don’t.

The final episode of The architecture of Reinvention: The Art of Unbecoming is out Friday, September 4th.

And if no one told you that they loved you today, I love you. - Sandy

That is what my friend Nicole Silverman told me the day I admitted I was spiraling. And she meant it.

Nicole is an Army veteran and former intelligence analyst who served with the 82nd Airborne Division. She deployed to Afghanistan on a tour that was supposed to last 12 months but stretched to 15, a change she learned about from the news before hearing it from her own chain of command.

Leaving the military did not immediately give Nicole her identity back. As a military spouse married to an active-duty service member, she has also had to start over every few years and convince employers to invest in someone who may have to move again.

Eventually, Nicole became tired of being told no. She and her husband created Heritage Engravings, and when an overseas move made running that business more complicated, she built A&F Automation to help small businesses create systems that work behind the scenes.

In this final one-on-one conversation of The Architecture of Reinvention, I asked Nicole a question I ask myself more than I would like to admit: When you are spiraling, what actually helps you find your way out?

Her answer was not a five-step framework. It was smaller and more honest: recognize it, take a breath, call someone, spend time with your child, go for a walk, or give yourself permission to go to bed early.

Sometimes resilience is not about pushing harder. Sometimes it is knowing who you can call when you cannot find your way out alone.

In this episode:

• Life as an Army intelligence analyst and military spouse

• Rebuilding your identity after leaving the military

• Marriage across two military careers

• Turning repeated job rejection into entrepreneurship

• Building Heritage Engravings and A&F Automation

• Recognizing a spiral before it takes over

• Why having one person you can call matters

CONNECT WITH NICOLE:

A&F Automation: https://www.afautomation.tech

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-h-silverman

⭐ If this resonated, please leave a rating or review, it helps reach more women who need this conversation.

🎙️ ABOUT ELEVATE WITHIN Elevate Within is a podcast and community for high-achieving women navigating the messy middle — the space between who you were and who you’re becoming.

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💼 CONNECT WITH CLAUDIA CUEVAS, LMFT

🌐 https://claudiacuevas.com/ OR

https://www.therapyforlatinx.com/united-states/mission-viejo/therapist/claudia-cuevas-146

And they've been working together for years.
They have history.
Relationships.
Inside jokes.
Their own way of doing things.

They may have loved the person who had your job before you.
They may have wanted someone else to get the position.
And now you're walking in with ideas about what needs to change.

That's a very different leadership challenge.
Because you're trying to establish authority without becoming controlling.
Build trust without trying too hard to be liked.
Make changes without communicating that everything they were doing before you arrived was wrong.

And underneath all of that, there may be another conversation happening that nobody else can hear:

Can I actually do this?
So you hesitate.
You over-explain decisions.
You avoid the difficult conversation.
You change something and then second-guess yourself when the team pushes back.
Or you go in the opposite direction.
You change too much, too quickly, because you feel like you have something to prove.

Neither necessarily means you're a bad leader.
You may simply be leading from uncertainty instead of intention.

And AI can help you draft the announcement.
It can give you questions for your first team meeting.
It can even help you prepare for a difficult conversation.

But it can't tell you what's making you doubt yourself in the first place.
A new title doesn't automatically give you a new leadership operating system.

Sometimes the first thing a new leader needs isn't another management book or leadership framework.

It's a private place to figure out:
Who am I going to be as the leader of this team?

That's part of the work I'm doing through Leadership Advisory by Elevate Within.

We look at what's happening on the surface and the patterns underneath it, then start redesigning how you lead with greater clarity, confidence, and intention.

🎧 I go deeper into this work in this week's Elevate Within episode.

And if you're stepping into a new leadership role and recognizing yourself in this:

Book a free 30 min Leadership Fit Conversation. Let's talk about what you're navigating and whether Leadership Advisory is the right support for you.

Book a Leadership Fit Conversation

That shaped how many of us learned to work.
And eventually, it shaped how we learned to lead.
But we're now leading people who may expect context, transparency, autonomy, feedback, flexibility, and a very different relationship with work.

And here's why the relationship matters:
63% of workers say they feel a stronger connection to their manager than to their company.

Think about that.
The relationship you're building with your people may matter more than the logo on their paycheck.

That doesn't mean abandoning accountability.
It doesn't mean lowering expectations.
And it certainly doesn't mean letting everybody do whatever they want.

It means learning how to lead the team you actually have instead of waiting for them to become the employees you remember being.
And that can be uncomfortable.

Because sometimes we're asking our teams to change while protecting our own leadership habits from changing with them.
That's the work.
Leadership isn't only about getting other people to change.

Sometimes leadership requires asking:
What needs to change in me?
That's part of what I'm talking about in this week's Elevate Within episode and why I created Leadership Advisory.

🎧 The full episode is HERE

If you're trying to lead a changing workforce without lowering your standards, but the way you've always led isn't connecting anymore:

📅 Book a Leadership Fit Conversation. Let's talk about what's happening and whether Leadership Advisory is the right next step.

You don't have to lower the standard.
You may need to change how you lead people toward it.

Book a Leadership Fit Conversation

Last week, I promised you a cliffhanger. This week, Claudia delivers.

If you’ve ever tried to figure out what kind of therapy you actually need, and gotten lost somewhere between CBT and EMDR and a dozen acronyms nobody explains, this episode is the one to save. Claudia walks through cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, EMDR, and somatic therapy, in plain language, with real examples of who each one actually helps.

She also clears up something I got wrong for years: the difference between bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. They get confused constantly, and the difference matters, for how you understand the people in your life, and how you understand yourself.

We also talk about the other lane of healing, the one Tristan Stawicki leaned on in her own journey: reiki, shamanic practice, sage, astrology. Claudia’s take surprised me. It’s not about picking a side. It’s about knowing what you’re actually seeking, and finding a therapist trained broadly enough to meet you there.

Tristan’s episode centered on a moment in the financial district in New York, looking out at the Statue of Liberty after a major win, and feeling nothing at all. That feeling is where her healing journey began. This episode is the map of the many roads available once you decide to take that journey too.

And if no one told you they loved you today…I love you. — Sandy

She was in the financial district of New York. The presentation had been a smashing success. The Statue of Liberty was visible through the window. And she sat down and felt absolutely nothing.

That numbness not exhaustion, not grief, just a complete absence of feeling was the signal. And what she chose to do with it changed everything.

In this episode, Tristen Stawicki, executive coach, Reiki master, certified shaman, and fractional product executive walks us through the four years of EMDR therapy (every week, no days off), the acupuncture, the energy work, and the shamanism practice she eventually studied under a master who had never taken another student. She approached every single practice like a scientist: testing, noting, discerning.

She did not find herself through surrender. She found herself through rigor.

In this episode:

• Why numbness — not exhaustion — is often the real burnout signal

• The layered approach to healing (and why one modality is never enough)

• How to bring discernment to spiritual practice

• What it means to stop outsourcing your power

• The one practice to reconnect with your inner knowing today

And if no one told you they loved you today…I love you. — Sandy

“Sometimes what looks like a time problem isn’t a time problem. It’s a leadership pattern.”

You hired good people. You built the team. You earned the title. So why does everything still find its way back to you?

Reach me directly at Sandy@elevateopsadvisory.com to ask a question or book a private Leadership Fit Conversation.

Four-session Leadership Advisory engagement $1,800.
(That’s $450 per sessions.)

In this bonus episode, I’m officially introducing Leadership Advisory by Elevate Within, a private advisory work for founders and senior leaders who are ready to look at what’s actually underneath the way they lead. Not another productivity system. Not generic advice about boundaries and delegation. The real pattern underneath it.

I walk through the Founder Within Framework: Identify, Map, Redesign, Reinforce

The four-session process behind this work, and what you leave with:
your own Leadership Operating Blueprint, built around how you actually make decisions, not somebody else’s leadership template.

In this episode:

– Why a time problem is usually a leadership pattern in disguise

– The Founder Within Framework: Identify, Map, Redesign, Reinforce

– What a Leadership Operating Blueprint is

– Who this work is for

Reach me directly at Sandy@elevateopsadvisory.com to ask a question or book a private Leadership Fit Conversation

Leadership Fit Conversation

Callie Greenberg described that cycle to open her episode, and she named the mechanism inside it with a precision that stopped me: love bombing. Not spontaneous affection. Calculated. Timed to land exactly when she was most likely to stay.

It’s one part of a story that also includes a delayed endometriosis diagnosis, infertility, chronic pain her own doctors dismissed for years, and a hysterectomy she grieved in a body that had already been fighting to be believed for most of her life. By the time Claudia and I sat down to talk about her episode on this week’s roundtable, one thread kept surfacing: Callie was gaslit by the people who studied the body for a living, and gaslit by the person who was supposed to protect her. At the same time.

Why Talk Therapy Isn’t Always the First Door

Claudia, who is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, explained something I hadn’t fully understood before: chronic exposure to trauma changes brain chemistry. It makes the emotional brain override the logical one. The nervous system settles into survival mode as a baseline, not an exception, and it stays there scanning for danger long after the danger has technically passed.

That’s part of why some trauma survivors reach for somatic work, or work with ketamine or psychedelics under medical supervision, before they reach for a couch and a fifty-minute hour. Not because talk therapy doesn’t work. Because a nervous system that has spent years protecting itself will resist going anywhere near the wound directly, and for some people, other modalities lower that resistance enough to let the real work begin.

Claudia was careful about that distinction, and I want to be careful about it here too. Alternative modalities aren’t a shortcut around therapy. They’re sometimes the on-ramp to it.

When Trauma Has No Language

I told Claudia something on this recording I don’t say often. Years ago, before I could stand on a stage in front of a thousand people without a flicker of nerves, I was a guest on a podcast that asked me to talk about my early childhood. I hadn’t spoken about it in years, not really, not to anyone in California.

My voice started trembling before I understood why. I had to have a drink of water. I have never once been afraid to speak publicly, to a room, to a CEO, to anyone. But that day, my body knew something my mind hadn’t caught up to yet.

Claudia named it immediately: a trauma response. Your nervous system asking, are you sure you want to go there? Remember what happened last time?

When trauma has no language, and mine didn’t for a long time, the body finds other ways to speak. For me it was a scream I couldn’t voice. For Callie, it was a body that kept insisting something was wrong long before anyone would believe her.

The Wisdom That Was Actually a Wound

Here’s the part of this conversation I keep coming back to. So many of us carry decades of pain underneath a version of ourselves that looks, from the outside, entirely put together. People assume we grew up easy. They assume the composure is confidence, that the insight is just wisdom we were born with.

I used to wear that as a badge of honor. Look how much I know, I’d think, because I’m wise. The truer version is that I know because I lived through things I had to make sense of alone, and I’ve had to build the language for it one hard year of therapy at a time.

Callie shared her story on our show for the first time anywhere. Not because the pain was new, but because, she told us, it finally felt like a safe place to say it out loud. That’s the whole point of this series. Not to perform healing. To make room for the parts of the story that are still finding their words.

If any part of this is landing for you, and you don’t know where to start, Claudia’s advice was simple: ask someone who loves you what they think you’re avoiding. Sometimes the people closest to us can see the blind spot before we’re ready to name it ourselves.

And if no one told you they loved you today, I love you. — Sandy

What followed was twenty-two years of being shuffled between doctors…gastroenterologists, OBs, physical therapists, each one offering a different explanation, none of them correct. IBS. Anxiety. Normal pain. She was offered birth control and opioids. She was never offered the truth.

She was diagnosed with endometriosis at 37. By then, the disease had been spreading, unchecked, for twenty-four years. It had already shaped the course of her fertility, her relationships, and her sense of what she was allowed to ask for from the people responsible for her care.

In this conversation which Callie has told me is the first time she has spoken publicly about several chapters of her story, she shares what it actually cost her to spend nearly two decades inside a system that dismissed her pain. The IVF. The hysterectomy at 39. The relationship she stayed in for ten years. And the piece-by-piece process of building a life she loves entirely on her own terms.

In this episode:

• 22 years of endometriosis misdiagnosed as something else entirely

• Medical dismissal, self-advocacy, and the doctor who finally said “I’m sorry”

• Four rounds of IVF and a hysterectomy at 39

• Somatic therapy and psilocybin the modalities that reached her when others couldn’t

• What she built from the wreckage and her message to women still in the middle of it

And if no one told you they loved you today…I love you. — Sandy

Jennifer Jayne called it death by a thousand paper cuts.

That’s how she described the narcissistic relationship she spent years inside of not one dramatic blow, but thousands of small ones, each one small enough to explain away. This week, Claudia and I sat with that phrase and asked the question underneath it: why are so many high-achieving women vulnerable to exactly this?

The answer isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature turned against us. The same strategic thinking, self-sufficiency, and instinct to solve problems that built our careers is precisely what a manipulator looks for. You’re not attracting them, Claudia said. They’re honing in on you.

We talk through what an actual healthy relationship sounds like (someone asking how can I show up for you, not just what are you giving me), why compartmentalizing emotion at work becomes a weapon against you at home, and the one diagnostic question Claudia gives her clients: when something feels off, is my instinct to fix myself, or to ask whether the relationship is the problem?

We also talk about the shame. The women who divorce after 20 or 25 years and feel like they failed, when really, they just outgrew something that no longer fit.

And if no one told you they loved you today…I love you. — Sandy

So Jennifer Jayne went into the bedroom, locked the door, called her mom in Canada, and said four words she’d been building toward for a decade: “Mom, I’m coming home.”

What came before that moment was a decade of what Jennifer calls death by a thousand cuts, the quiet, invisible kind of narcissistic abuse. Financial control over money she earned. Medical decisions made without her. Little comments, accumulated over years, that slowly dismantled who she was.

And what came after was one of the most deliberately planned, logistically precise escapes I’ve ever heard described. A secret office. A personal assistant running bags to storage. A relay of friends driving her from Texas to the Canadian border. A 3AM confrontation where she finally said it out loud.

This conversation is one of the most honest in the entire series. Jennifer didn’t just survive…she built something. The Fempreneur Collective. Flourish Circles. A movement around the idea that done is data. And she left me with a line I haven’t stopped thinking about:

In this episode:

• What narcissistic abuse looks like when it’s quiet and invisible from the outside

• How she planned and executed her escape during COVID

• Why done is data and what that means for women who never finish what they start

• How to become a generous receiver when you’ve spent a lifetime only giving

• Her message to every woman sitting in her own locked bedroom right now

And if no one told you they loved you today…I love you. — Sandy

Survival is just an attitude.

Deb said that to me weeks ago, and it came up again on this week’s roundtable because Claudia and I kept circling back to it. So many of us treat survival mode like a fact of life instead of a lens we’ve chosen. It isn’t. You can put it down.

This week, Claudia and I go deeper into Deb’s story and into a distinction that reframed something for me live on air: the difference between having self-worth and earning it. Claudia traces that pattern back to childhood, a critical parent, a teacher’s gold star, whatever system first taught us that being loved was conditional on what we produced.

She also gave us a journal prompt I haven’t stopped sitting with: who am I beyond what I produce? And a nugget that actually landed…swap your affirmations for questions, and always end them with today.

I tried it. Why am I good enough today? At 51 years old, hearing myself ask that instead of just declaring it, something shifted. Claudia called it training new neural pathways. I called it a mic drop.

“Why am I good enough today? That question alone will tell you everything.”

In this episode:

- Self-worth vs. earned self-worth and why the difference matters

- Where limiting beliefs really come from

- The journal prompt: who am I beyond what I produce?

- Why affirmations backfire, and the positive-question reframe that works instead

- The moving-goalpost trap, and learning to celebrate a win as a win

And if no one told you they loved you today…I love you. — Sandy

There’s a conversation I find myself having over and over again.

A founder tells me the business has plateaued.

Growth has slowed.

The team isn’t moving fast enough.

Sales feel harder than they used to.

Then comes the question.

“Do you think it’s the market?”

Sometimes it is.

Most of the time...

it isn’t.

I’ve learned that when a business stops growing, founders almost instinctively look outward.

The economy.

Competition.

Pricing.

Marketing.

Hiring.

Those things matter.

But they’re rarely the first place I look.

I start somewhere else.

I start with the leader.

Not because I assume they’re doing something wrong.

Because I want to understand whether the business has quietly outgrown the version of leadership that built it.

Book Your Pattern Discovery Call

The First Room

I often picture the early days of a business as a single room.

You built every wall.

You knew where everything was because you put it there.

You answered every phone call.

Closed every client.

Solved every problem.

That wasn’t micromanagement.

It was survival.

You were the operating system.

And for that version of the business...

it worked beautifully.

Then something happened.

The room became a hallway.

The hallway became a floor.

The floor became a building.

People joined.

Leaders emerged.

Departments formed.

The business evolved.

But many founders never leave the first room.

Not physically.

Mentally.

They’re still leading a growing organization as though it depends on one person standing in the middle of everything.

Growth Doesn’t Always Feel Like Growth

Here’s what makes this difficult to recognize.

From the inside...

it doesn’t feel like a leadership problem.

It sounds like:

“Our sales process needs work.”

“We need stronger managers.”

“Maybe the market has changed.”

Those explanations make sense.

Sometimes they’re even true.

But I always wonder something.

If I gave you twice as many leads...

Twice the budget...

Twice the talent...

Would the business move differently?

Or would it eventually find the same ceiling?

That’s an important question.

Because if the ceiling keeps showing up...

it probably isn’t the market.

It’s a leadership pattern.

The Ceiling Beneath the Ceiling

After twenty-five years in operations and leadership, I’ve learned that businesses almost always tell us where to look.

Not through spreadsheets.

Through behavior.

The leader who still insists on closing every major deal.

The CEO who hires talented leaders and then quietly overrides their decisions.

The executive who says they trust their team but still feels the need to approve everything before it moves.

None of those behaviors are mistakes.

They’re evidence.

Evidence that the business has grown faster than the leadership model supporting it.

And here’s the part I think leaders rarely hear.

Those habits weren’t weaknesses.

They were strengths.

They’re what built the company.

That’s exactly why they’re so hard to let go.

Leadership Has Seasons

One of the biggest misconceptions about leadership is that once you’ve found your style, you’re done.

I don’t believe that’s true.

I think leadership has seasons.

The version of you who builds a company from your kitchen table shouldn’t be expected to lead the same way when there are forty people depending on your decisions.

Growth asks something different of us.

Not because we’ve failed.

Because the business now requires something the earlier version of us never had to become.

That’s not an operations problem.

It’s an identity shift.

And identity shifts are rarely solved by another strategic plan.

The Question Beneath the Strategy

People often assume Leadership Advisory is about improving leadership.

I see it differently.

It’s about creating enough space to ask questions that are difficult to ask from inside your own business.

Questions like...

Has my business outgrown the way I still see myself?

That’s a very different question than:

“How do we grow revenue?”

Because sometimes revenue follows naturally once leadership catches up to the business that’s already been built.

Before You Blame the Market...

Before you redesign the sales process.

Before you hire another consultant.

Before you convince yourself demand has disappeared...

Pause for a moment.

Ask yourself this:

If nothing about the market changed...but I changed the way I lead...would this ceiling still exist?

If the answer is no...

The market was never your biggest obstacle.

The business wasn’t asking you to work harder.

It was asking you to become a different kind of leader.

And that’s a very different invitation.

If this resonates and you’d like to explore whether your business has outgrown your current leadership patterns, I’d love to continue the conversation.

Book a Leadership Fit Conversation:

About the Author

Sandy Davis is the founder of Elevate Operations Advisory, creator of Leadership Advisory by Elevate Within, and host of the Elevate Within podcast—a space for honest conversations about burnout, identity, leadership, grief, reinvention, and the messy middle between who we were and who we’re becoming.

With more than 25 years of experience in operations and leadership, Sandy helps founders and executives navigate the intersection of business growth and personal evolution. Through advisory work, essays, and conversations, she explores the leadership patterns, inherited conditioning, and operating systems that shape how we live, lead, and build.