Lead Like You Mean It
Reclaiming Wholeness in Leadership Through Integration
Part I: The Awakening
Power isn’t out there. It’s in here.
Chapter 1: The Quiet Ache
That restless feeling. The question: Is this all there is?
→ Includes: burnout, perfectionism, chasing someone else’s version of success
Naming the Ache
It started in moments no one else noticed.
Like the pause before walking into a meeting, when I’d take a deep breath—not to center myself, but to brace.
On paper, everything looked right. The title. The seat at the table. The trust of people who counted on me. But beneath the calendar and the commitments, I could feel it.
A subtle, steady hum in my chest. The ache. Not a crisis. Not dramatic enough to walk away. But insistent.
The ache showed up when I laughed at the right time in a conversation, but felt strangely outside of myself.
It showed up when I said yes to another project while silently wondering where the space for me had gone.
It showed up in the quiet moments when the house was still, and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I felt joy without guilt.
The ache wasn’t a breakdown. It was a breadcrumb trail. A messenger. A reminder that something in me was missing—not from my résumé, but from my life.
More Faces of the Ache
The ache had a way of following me into ordinary moments, places where no one would have guessed it was hiding.
The Commute
It showed up on the drive to work, the same stretch of highway I had traveled hundreds of times before. My hands tight on the steering wheel, shoulders braced as if the seatbelt alone couldn’t hold me together. I rehearsed conversations in my head: how to say something in a way that would land, how to phrase a request so it wouldn’t be dismissed, how to sound steady when I felt anything but. By the time I pulled into the parking lot, I hadn’t even walked through the door and I was already exhausted. The ache lived there, in the twenty-minute commute where I was more focused on performing the day ahead than actually beginning it.
The Conference Stage
It showed up at conferences, too, under bright lights and applause. I remember stepping onto a stage once, introduced as a leader to watch, a rising star. The audience leaned forward, notebooks ready, waiting for my insights. I smiled, spoke with polish, delivered every line with practiced cadence. They clapped when I finished, told me afterward how powerful and poised I seemed. Inside, though, I felt hollow. They had seen the performance, not the person. The ache hummed beneath the applause, asking: If they admire me for this version, do they even know me at all?
The Performance Review
It even showed up in performance reviews, those carefully scheduled conversations meant to measure success. One year, my supervisor told me, “You’re the calm in the storm. People trust you because you never waver.” I nodded, smiled, thanked him. Inside, I wanted to scream. Calm? The calm he saw was my silence. The calm he praised was me swallowing emotions so they wouldn’t leak out at the wrong time. That calm cost me nights of clenched jaws, weekends spent numb with exhaustion, mornings staring into the mirror trying to piece myself together. The ache lived in the disconnect between who they said I was and who I actually felt myself to be.
The Missed Moments at Home
The ache showed up at home, too, in the places I most wanted to be whole. Once, my granddaughter had a school event — nothing monumental, just a class performance where she and her classmates sang three short songs. I promised her I’d be there. But a last-minute meeting was added to my calendar, and when I glanced at the conflict, I felt the familiar knot tighten. The meeting “won.” I texted another parent to record the songs, convincing myself she wouldn’t mind. But that night, as she asked me if I had seen her wave from the stage, the ache roared in my chest. I was there for everyone else, but not for her. Success on paper, absence in the moments that mattered most.
The Midnight Email
The ache sometimes arrived at midnight, when the house was quiet and the glow of my laptop was the only light in the room. I’d draft an email I didn’t want to send, every sentence polished to sound collaborative and agreeable, even when my body screamed no. My finger hovered over “send” before I finally clicked, heart sinking as the whoosh of delivery carried another piece of me away. The ache was in the silence that followed — the heavy knowing that I had chosen to fracture myself again, this time in words on a screen.
The Sunday-Night Ritual
And of course, there were the Sundays. The hours before a new week began, when the calendar glared back at me like a map already drawn. Meetings stacked, deadlines looming, every inch accounted for. My family would be watching a movie or eating popcorn, and I’d be in the corner with my laptop open, reorganizing the week, bracing myself for what was coming. The ache wasn’t just about being busy. It was about being consumed. It was the whisper: You’ve built a life that looks full but feels empty.
The Ache in My Body
Over time, I realized the ache didn’t only live in my calendar or my choices. It lived in my body. The jaw that never seemed to unclench. The shoulders that carried invisible weights. The shallow breaths that kept me moving but never really alive. My body was the first to tell the truth, long before my mouth caught up. It said, This way of living is unsustainable. The ache wasn’t a mystery anymore. It was my body begging me to return to myself.