Years ago, a coach at a leadership retreat handed me a blank piece of paper and asked me to draw my life. Every high year climbing up, every hard year dropping low, one long line from where I started to where I stood that day.
I thought I would sail through it. Present my line, sit down, move on.
Instead, as I traced my own zigzag in front of a room of professional friends, I saw a life with far more drops than climbs. My father’s death. A marriage unraveling. A financial mistake that nearly cost me everything. A staff who still didn’t feel loved, even after everything I had tried.
I was raised to be tough. Baues didn’t cry, and Baues got back on the pony no matter how hard they hit the ground. So when I felt the tears coming in that room, I fought them with everything I had.
And I lost. I cried, in front of people I had known for exactly one day.
Every person in that room had a line full of losses too. Business mistakes. Regrets. Disasters that happened on their watch while they were doing their honest best. My story felt heavier to me because it was mine, but it was not more broken than theirs.
That is the post I wrote for you this month, and it is one of the most personal things I have shared in a long while.
In Wake-Up Calls, I write about head, heart, and grit, the three forces I had to learn to use together before I could lead well.
For most of my career, I led with grit alone. I pushed through. I endured. I got back on the pony. What I hadn’t learned yet was how to trust my head enough to stop second-guessing every decision, or how to lead with my heart before anything else.
This month, I sat with that lesson from a different angle, the moment I nearly turned down an opportunity because I didn’t feel qualified enough yet, and what it cost me to say yes anyway. I wrote about it for Literary Titan, and I brought that same story to this community because I know I am not the only one who has stood at a door, hand on the handle, waiting to feel ready before walking through.
You are more ready than you think.
I also spent July saying something out loud that I have believed for a long time and rarely mentioned publicly: your empathy is not a liability. It is your edge.
I hear it constantly in coaching conversations, women who have been told that caring too much makes them soft, that a good leader keeps distance from the pain in the room. I do not believe that, and 44 years in this profession has shown me the opposite is true. The leaders solving our retention crisis right now are the ones who lead with their whole hearts, not the ones who learned to armor up.
I sat down with Mary Barnett for the premiere episode of the Death Care Marketing Show, where we talked about employee retention, workplace culture, and the burnout so many of us have quietly carried. If you have not listened yet, it is a conversation I hope reaches every owner and manager who might still be treating culture as a soft skill instead of a survival strategy.
This is the part of the letter I have been waiting to write.
The Unleashed Leadership + Wellness Summit is coming, and I want you there. It is where everything in this newsletter becomes something you can feel in a room, leadership grounded in head, heart, and grit, wellness built for women who give so much they forget to check their own reserves, and a community that already understands your week because they have lived one just like it.
You do not have to feel like a finished leader to belong there. You just have to show up. (And scholarships are available, see below.)
→ Apply for a Summit Scholarship
→ Register for the Unleashed Leadership + Wellness Summit
Years ago at the leadership retreat where I broke down, I was certain my experiences were worse than everyone else’s. I’ve since learned that was not true, that we internalize and isolate our struggles more than we ought to. You are not carrying more failure than the leader across from you. You are simply the only one who can see the underside of your own stories. The trick is realizing that despite setbacks, brutal failures and hard lessons, you remain ready and able to lead. Here is the challenge I return to whenever I feel unready for what’s next.
Use your head. Use your heart. And find your grit.
Name one thing you have been waiting to feel ready for. One application. One conversation. One yes you keep almost saying. Or one seat at the Summit you keep telling yourself you’ll register for later.
Say it this month, not when you feel prepared, not when the timing is perfect, and not when someone hands you permission.
My grandfather told me the rider is always in charge. This season, be in charge of you.
We’ll let you know as soon as the book goes live!
