I have a confession: After all this talking about not apologizing for existing…I spent a good chunk of the holiday season doing exactly that.

I hope as you open and read this blog, you are still beaming from holiday festivities, or end-of-year reflection, and that this blog helps you to move into some self-reflection as we draw close to the new year. When you build a TEDx talk, at some point you have to answer a scary question: How honest am I willing to be? It’s one thing to share your ideas. It’s another to share your stories —the ones that come with side eyes, gossip, or your own internal shame. Me and one of my beautiful nieces...

Confession: I am not short on ideas. If anything, my brain is a group chat with no moderator. I could give a talk on leadership, introversion, Black women at work, career pivots, parenting, grief, rest, authenticity…and those are only my 'before I go to sleep' thoughts. So when it came time to decide what I wanted to say on a TEDx stage, I did what many of us do: I tried to carry everything  at once. It did not go well. I had pages of notes. Half-formed titles. Random phrases. I kept asking...