What My Cancer Journey Taught Me About Leadership, Vision, and Becoming

This year has been a year of slowing down.

Not a gentle, leisurely slowing —
but the kind of slowing down that comes from life rearranging you, asking you to sit, asking you to listen, asking you to release anything that isn’t aligned with where you’re going.

Cancer did that for me.

It took me out of the motion of my life and placed me firmly into stillness — the kind of stillness that feels like a void.
The kind that humbles you.
The kind that reveals everything you’ve been carrying.
The kind that strips away what no longer belongs.

And in that stillness, something ancient, something wise, something deeply embodied began to speak.

I finally understood a truth I had heard a thousand times but never felt in my bones:

Slow is fast.

The Rush That Leaders Know Too Well

As leaders, visionaries, teachers, facilitators, we often feel the pull of the future.
We feel the people who are waiting for us.
We feel the potential of what wants to be created through us.
We feel the fire of the vision before we even know how to bring it into form.

And because of that, we tend to rush.

We rush the plan.
We rush the becoming.
We rush ourselves.

We try to carry our people, our ideas, our dreams on our backs —
as if urgency is the same as devotion.

But urgency is not devotion.
Urgency is dysregulation.
Urgency is fear dressed as productivity.

And I didn’t fully see that until I had no option but to slow down.

The Gift of Stillness

In the slowness of this year —
the chemo, the surgery, the. radiation, the new meds, the resting, the uncertainty, the surrender —
I stopped moving long enough to see clearly.

I realized that when we slow down, two things happen simultaneously:

1. Life begins to move toward us.

We stop chasing, and alignment begins to unfold naturally.
People arrive.
Opportunities soften into view.
The vision becomes clearer because we finally have the nervous system to hold it.

2. We shed rapidly.

Old patterns release.
Old versions of ourselves dissolve.
Old relationships naturally fall away.

It is the snake shedding its skin —
not from force, but from evolution.

And that shedding…
it makes space.
A space that used to terrify me.

But this time, I stayed.
I learned to be with the void instead of rushing to fill it.

The Void Is Not Empty — It Is Becoming

The space in between — the liminal space —
is not emptiness.
It is possibility.
It is the womb of transformation.

When we allow ourselves to be there without forcing clarity, the clarity comes.

When we stop gripping the plan, the path reveals itself.

When we stop rushing toward the next chapter, the next chapter steps forward to meet us.

This is what “slow is fast” means.

Stillness is not stagnation — it is magnetism.

Leadership Begins in the Pause

What’s emerging in my work, in my community, in the New Leaders, in the Guides Partnership, and within myself is this:

Leadership is not built through pushing.

Leadership is built through:

✨ anchoring
✨ intentionality
✨ deep presence
✨ nervous system regulation
✨ a grounded vision that is held, not forced

And this is exactly why we begin every transformative journey I lead — from retreat trainings to yearlong mentorships — with a grounding practice:

A practice of meeting the version of you who said "YES".
A practice of meeting the future version of you who is already living your next chapter.
A practice of walking the bridge between the two.

This is the foundation of becoming.

Slowing Down Is Also Strategic

Here’s the paradox:

As I slowed down, my life sped up.

Shedding happened without effort.
Clarity sharpened without thought.
New aligned opportunities arrived quickly.
People found their way to me without me seeking.

This is the energetic truth:

When you are anchored, life organizes itself around your alignment.

Slow is fast.
Let’s begin there.

Want to begin here?

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