Lately, I’ve been paying closer attention to the women around me—women my age who have spent decades building careers, raising families, nurturing friendships, and showing up for others. I’ve been thinking about how we use our voices, what gives us the courage to speak, and what still causes us to hold back.

And I’ve begun to wonder whether finding our voices is really the issue at this stage of life.

How many of our disappointments come from expectations we never actually shared?

A recent weekend with friends reminded me just how often we create detailed stories in our minds about how an experience, conversation, or relationship should unfold. When reality doesn't match that invisible script, frustration can quietly take over—even when no one has done anything wrong.

Human connection accelerates transformation.

I recently completed something that felt almost like the opposite of AI:

An in-person Leadership Academy.

Forty-five people. One room. Four weeks in a row.

Not avatars. Not Zoom squares. Not Slack messages.

Humans.

Gathering, learning, sharing meals, solving problems, laughing, discussing leadership, and getting to know one another in real life.

And after four weeks together, I was reminded of something important.

I’ve noticed something over years of leading trips, retreats, and my own life experiments:

Adventure doesn’t just change where you go.

It changes who you trust yourself to be.

And awe—real awe—is the quiet engine behind that change.

When I made a list of everything I worried about last year that never actually happened—the illnesses that didn’t come, the conversations that never blew up, the losses that stayed hypothetical—I realized something startling: I had already spent enormous amounts of energy living inside imagined futures. Worry felt like preparation, but it was really just rehearsal for realities that never arrived, quietly pulling me away from the life that was actually happening.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why some conversations go deep—naturally, easily—while others remain careful, surface-level, or oddly guarded.

It isn’t about the questions being asked.

And it certainly isn’t about demanding vulnerability.

It’s about whether people feel safe.