Coming Back to Myself as a Leader

Photo by Megan Alcock

After all these years, I still come back here, to this blog, to come back to myself.

There have been many days I have told myself: just let this blog go. You are not consistent enough. You don’t have enough time. You aren’t engaging enough to make it worthwhile.

Enough. Enough. Enough. This story is core to me.

Likely because of this, something always prevents me from pulling the plug. Year after year I pay the domain and hosting fees for this site. Year after year I find myself coming back to write.

To you.

For me.

Maybe for you, too.

This past year my life has been in a time of rapid expansion. It has been, and still is, a lot.

The thing that keeps me choosing it (all of it) and going for it (all of it) is that the expansion feels aligned with my soul. It is constantly asking me to access parts of myself I have neglected or discarded long ago.

Which brings me to this:

When I was little I was bossy.

I know it’s hard to believe. Anyone who has known me as a adult would say I am quite the opposite of bossy. I am a quiet peacemaker. Passive. Submissive, even.

Yet. There is a part of me that is a leader. In charge. Decisive.

At 8 years old I was all of those things. The club leader. Miss popular. Perhaps even a bit of a dictator on the play ground and the snow banks outside our school.

That all changed by the time I was 9. By the end of Grade 3 I was ousted from the popular seat, I fell from stardom, and honestly, I felt like I’d never get back up.

It’s taken me decades to rebuild my self worth. For real. Childhood rejection and exclusion has a big impact on a girl.

But I have come a long way since that feeling of defeat. I have grown stronger in myself more and more every year.

As I have done so, I have also learned that the child version of me that was bossy, was just that - bossy.

I was not a true leader back then. I did not have self worth, or I would not have crumpled at the first rejection.

Why do I reminisce on all this now? Why go back to that place?

This past year has made me realize that I left a part of my soul back in Grade 3. A vital part of who I am. Though I may not have been ready to be an authentic grounded leader at the age of eight, I did have that spark within me; I had vision, and I had the urge to lead.

What I have realized this past year more than any other year is that leadership goes hand in hand with responsibility. Just as any commitment does. And the more I say yes to myself as a leader, the more I must say yes to myself each morning, and the more I must show up as the woman I know I can be, though that woman feels awkward and uncomfortable and often just out of my reach.

So I challenge myself to tap into that bossy side of me. To permit myself enough grace to blunder in my own authority. I know that this time I will be different. How could it not be? For I am different, now that I am grounded in compassion from my own rejection and decades long rebuilding of my own self-esteem.

I believe allowing this part of me to emerge fully will result in powerful wholeness, and not the brute force of a bully I so did not want to be. I know there is another way to be a leader. I know there is another way to access that dominant part of me.

I see it more each day. It is coming to be. I am becoming the woman who is brining it to be.

I believe in words as a power and I declare: I am a leader.

I am not just an owl in the night with visions that make your soul stir, I am a lioness prowling mid-day, making her kingdom hers.

xo,

Danielle