Shaped by what pushed against it.

Virginia Beach is about 95 miles from my house. If I'm lucky, and it is not a holiday weekend, I can usually get there in under two hours. I wasn't concerned about the ride this past weekend. I was more focused on escaping the grey, drizzly weather hanging over Richmond. Against all odds and the meteorologist's reporting, I held out hope for sunnier weather as I packed my sunscreen. I was arriving a day ahead of my friend and had no agenda. I settled in and enjoyed the view from the balcony. The weather was cool and the sky misty. My sunscreen was staying in my bag, I was still content. I can't hear the ocean or smell the salt air from Richmond. I took a deep breath and settled into my new home for the weekend. That's when I noticed the tree. I have seen them before, often in the yards of beautiful beachfront homes. Maybe it is a Southern Live Oak, or an Eastern Red Cedar, I am not sure, but it leans in a way that I perceive as persistence. At first glance you might assume years of coastal winds have pushed it sideways, bending it under the pressure of endless storms. Look a little longer and you realize it's something different. It's shape is created by the very force it spent years pushing back against. The lean is not a sign of damage, it is a reflection of its strength. Evidence of showing up against something hard, day after day, until the resistance itself became part of the form. I sat with that feeling for a while, because I know it well. Leaning into something you believe in or are determined to become is not easy, and no one holds you to it. You have to decide to show up day after day and push forward. What if you did not have to do it alone? Had I arrived at a warm and sunny beach, I may not have slowed down to admire that tree. I may not have correlated it to what I have been quietly building over the past few months. Imagine a small group of driven, creative women ready to lean into building their own thing, with witnesses, other women leaning into the wind right alongside them. I am putting the finishing touches an intimate cohort I plan to launch in July. I almost have the details finalized and am excited to share next week. If something in you just leaned forward reading that, it is worth paying attention to. Is there something you have been pushing yourself to build but have not yet taken the leap?