There’s something about spring that reminds me of a lesson I learned a long time ago. Sitting on the back of a bucking Shetland pony on my grandfather’s farm in southern Illinois.
Pop didn’t let me quit when I hit the ground. He stood over me, brushed the dirt off his hands, and said, “Now, get back on that pony, girl, and show them who’s boss.”
So I did. Over and over again.
I didn’t know then that I’d spend the next four decades doing the same thing. Getting back up in grief, in failure, in self-doubt, in boardrooms full of men who didn’t always want me there.
I didn’t know that lesson would become the backbone of a forty-four-year career, a bestselling book, Wake-up Calls, and a mission I am only beginning to fully understand.
But it took root. It grew.
And here we are — one full year into Funeral Women Lead, the Non For- Profit Foundation I founded for the women of my profession — and I am watching you get back on the pony, too.
That is everything.
One Year In. And I’m in Awe of You.
A year ago, I founded Funeral Women Lead because I had been listening.
For years, women in this profession had been telling me they needed more. More support, development and resources. Someone to advocate for them in a profession where, as of this writing, 75 percent of mortuary science graduates are women, yet ownership and leadership remain overwhelmingly male.
I heard them. And I answered.
But here’s what I couldn’t have predicted:
How fiercely you would answer back.
You showed up for yourselves in ways I only dreamed of when we launched. You came carrying your hearts, your hunger, and your hard-won grit. You refused to be small. That is something, especially in a profession that has too often told women to wait their turn, to stay quiet, to be grateful for whatever role they were given, you chose to grow instead.
What Spring Is Teaching Me This Year
In Wake Up Calls, I write about the concept of head, heart, and grit, the three forces I had to learn to use together before I could truly lead.
For much of my early career, I was heavy on grit. I pushed through and endured. I got back on the pony. But I hadn’t yet learned to lead with my heart first or to trust my head enough to stop second-guessing myself at every turn.
The wake-up calls came anyway. The 360-degree evaluation told me my staff didn’t feel I truly cared for them. The union votes revealed a culture problem I had been too busy to see. The quiet retreat in the Colorado mountains where I finally cried in front of a room full of people and realized I wasn’t alone.
Each of those moments cracked something open in me.
And spring, I’ve come to believe, is the season of cracking open.
Not gently. Not without effort. But with the kind of force that signals something real is about to grow.
This spring, I want to ask you:
What has been waiting to crack open in you?
Not the polished version of your career goals. The real one. The leadership role you’ve been circling, or the conversation with your employer you’ve been avoiding. The business plan you’ve been writing and deleting for two years.
That one. That’s what I’m asking about.
What Year One Taught Me About Us
Looking back on this first year, I keep returning to something I wrote in Wake Up Calls — a lesson from my time building the culture at Baue Funeral Homes, Crematory and Cemetery in St Charles, MO:
“I finally discovered the key to becoming a better leader. I found myself in a place of love, joy, and personal job satisfaction.”
It took me decades to get there in my own career. Decades of wake-up calls, of trusting the wrong people and learning from it, of leading with ego when I should have led with heart, of putting the business before my people and then rebuilding the trust I’d broken.
What I see in this community is something I didn’t have access to when I was coming up in this profession:
Women learning faster because they are learning together.
You are not making every mistake alone. You are sharing what you know and asking for help without shame and you are becoming the kind of leaders who will transform this profession, not someday, but right now.
That is Year One of Funeral Women Lead. And it is extraordinary.
A Personal Note From Me to You
I want to be honest with you about something.
When I founded this organization, I wasn’t entirely sure what it would become. I knew what the profession needed. I knew what the research was showing. I knew the stories women were telling me, of being overlooked, underdeveloped, underpaid, and underestimated.
But I also knew what I needed to hear at 30 years old, sitting in my father’s office the morning after he died, not knowing if I could become the leader his legacy required.
I needed someone to say: You are more ready than you think, and you don’t have to do this alone. And the hardest parts of this road are going to make you extraordinary.
That is what I want Funeral Women Lead to say to every woman who finds us.
You walked into this profession because something called you here. Not by accident but by design.
The families you serve in some of the most tender moments of their lives deserve a funeral profession that is led by people who bring their whole hearts to the work. That is you. That has always been you.
You just needed a community that could see it. Now you have one. 🌱
Your Spring Challenge
Here is what I want to leave you with this season, the same challenge I give myself whenever I’ve let self-doubt plant its feet too firmly in my path:
Use your head. Use your heart. And find your grit.
Pick one thing you’ve been postponing. One conversation. One application. One step toward the leader you already are but haven’t fully claimed yet.
And do it this spring.
Not when you feel ready.
Not when the conditions are perfect.
Not when someone tells you it’s your turn.
Do it because spring doesn’t ask permission to bloom. And neither should you.
My grandfather that taught me my grit told me: The rider is always in charge.
This season, I want you to be in charge of you and ride that pony. 🌸
