I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to outgrow a version of yourself that was successful. We talk all the time about letting go of things that didn’t work. Bad relationships, habits, environments that no longer fit. Patterns we know we need to break. And while releasing those things isn’t necessarily easy, at least we understand why they need to go.
But what happens when the thing you’re outgrowing worked and when you’re really good at it? That’s where I’ve found myself lately. I am good at details. I love a detailed story. Give me the who, what, when, where and why. And let me understand how all the pieces work - organize it, find the gaps, solve the problem and figure out what needs to happen next.
And Baby, I will get into those details… It’s a promise. 😂
And there’s nothing wrong with that. Being able to get close to the work, understand it, and solve problems has served me incredibly well. It has helped me build a career, lead teams, navigate complicated situations, and become someone people know they can depend on. The details are also comfortable for me, and that’s the part I’ve been paying attention to. Because lately I’ve been asking myself a different question:
“What am I still doing because I’m excellent at it, even though it may belong to the version of me I’m outgrowing?”
I caught myself recently at work.
My team has a regular cycle of updates we prepare for leadership. They’ve been operating in this rhythm for four or five months now. They know the work. They know the expectations. They know what needs to happen. We were coming back around to the next cycle, and my natural inclination was to open the PowerPoint and start organizing.
Of course it was.
“Give me the deck. Let me just fix these three little things. Let me move this over here. Let me make sure this story flows. And before you know it, I’m back in the middle of work I already taught capable people how to do.”
I caught myself. Baby, back away from the PowerPoint. 😂
Instead, I told my team we were back on cycle, and it was time to start preparing the next leadership update, and then I let them do it. Something similar happened with the Namic Next board chapter I lead. We had just returned from a large national event, and it was time to get ourselves moving again on our local programming. Instead of immediately jumping in and organizing everything, I asked my team one question:
What do you need from me?
And you know what? They knew. They told me what was next. They told me what they needed. I provided it, then gave it back to them to execute. That may not sound revolutionary, but something about it stayed with me. Because I’m realizing there is a difference between knowing how to do something and needing to be the person who does it. There is a difference between building capability and becoming the capability. And I have spent a lot of my life being the woman who can carry things.
I can step into the gap. I can figure it out. I can make sense of the details. I can organize the chaos. I can get the thing across the finish line. And if I’m being truthful, there is comfort in being that woman. Because being needed has been tied, in some ways, to how I understood my value. So underneath all this talk about leadership and growth was a much more personal question:
If I stop carrying everything, will I still be needed?
There it is.
Not the polished leadership answer. Not the answer I know intellectually. The human answer, and yes, I know I will still be needed. But knowing something and releasing the pattern attached to it are two different things. So I’ve been sitting with that. And one phrase keeps coming back to me:
Look up.
I think I’ve spent a significant part of my life looking closely. Now I’m being asked to look broadly. I’m less interested in knowing every detail of the story and more interested in understanding how the stories connect. Where are we going and what are we building? What is trying to emerge and who needs room to grow? Where does my leadership actually add value? And what can I finally stop touching because somebody else is perfectly capable of touching it?
That last one is apparently going to require some practice. 😂
Looking up is also asking me to become more visible. That is uncomfortable for me in a completely different way. It is much easier to stand behind good work than to step out from behind it. It’s easier to make sure everything works than to allow myself to be seen leading, creating, and building. But I’m learning that my next season may require me to loosen my grip on one comfort while stepping into another place that stretches me.
And Sacred After is part of that. I realized something this week. I had allowed Sacred After to go on autopilot. Not because it stopped mattering. Not because I lost faith in what I was building. And certainly not because it became an afterthought. Sacred After is, after all, part of how I got here. This work grew out of my own healing, grief, becoming, and learning how to live again after life changed me. I built Sacred After because I had something to say about that experience and because I believed there might be another woman somewhere trying to figure out how to live after life changed her too.
But I had done what I knew how to do. I built the structure. I created the systems. I got things moving. And then I let them run. Meanwhile, my attention started moving in a hundred other directions because, well, I have a hundred other ideas.
Anybody surprised? Absolutely nobody. 😂
But this week I was reminded of something simple. It doesn’t matter whether the work you feel called to do is serving ten people, a hundred people, or ten thousand people. If it has been placed on your heart, you have to show up for it. That landed differently for me. Sacred After does not need me buried inside every detail. It needs me leading it. My voice, experiences. and perspective. My willingness to sit underneath my pergola and tell the truth about what becoming actually looks like while I’m living it. I’m locking back in, and even that looks different now. Locking in doesn’t mean obsessing over every button, every page, every post, or every little piece of execution. I know how to do that.
This season is asking me to look up and ask the question, “Who am I here to serve? What experiences am I being asked to share?” What does this work look like when I stop treating myself as the person responsible for every detail and start leading it from the vision?
That feels different, yet it also feels right.
I am turning my attention to the work that has been placed on my heart without needing proof of how big it will become before I decide it deserves me. Maybe the question isn’t whether I’m still needed. Maybe the better question is:
What needs me now to see clearly?
That is the question I’m carrying now and maybe, for once, it’s the question I’m learning not to carry. Maybe I just need to look up, listen, and let the answer meet me there.
You’re not broken. You’re becoming.
