The Messy Middle Is Where Self-Leadership Is Built

For a long time, I thought the messy middle meant something was wrong with me.

That my life was chaotic. That I couldn’t get it together.
That no matter how much effort I put in, something was always about to fall apart.

The messy middle became the place I put my frustration. My anger. My exhaustion. It explained why I felt reactive, emotional, and constantly on edge. It helped me feel less alone but it also quietly convinced me that instability was my fault.

I believed the mess existed because I wasn’t enough.

What I see now is this:

I wasn’t failing.
I was forming.

The messy middle wasn’t proof that my life was unraveling. It was the season where I stopped numbing myself and started living honestly. It was where self-leadership began not in confidence, not in clarity, but in awareness.

When I Realized It Wasn’t Chaos, It Was Becoming

I never thought the messy middle would become the foundation of my leadership.

At first, I used the language almost defensively. I’m in the messy middle became permission to be unfinished, raw, human. I was tired of people-pleasing. Tired of performing versions of myself that fit better for everyone else than they did for me.

But over time, something shifted.

I realized burnout isn’t always about doing too much. More often, it’s about doing what no longer aligns with who you’ve become.

When your identity evolves faster than your life can keep up, your nervous system feels it first. Motivation drops. Exhaustion deepens. The things that once worked stop working.

This wasn’t chaos. This was becoming.

I wasn’t losing myself. I was shedding versions of me that were built to survive not to lead.

November: When the Messy Middle Got Loud Again

And just when I thought I understood this season, life tested it. November hit our family hard.

We had a plan. We thought we were stable. We were navigating our boys’ medical complexities with care and intention and then everything shifted. Hospital stays. Advocacy. Moments that reminded me how quickly control can disappear.

Old survival patterns resurfaced. Fear crept in. Grief followed.

One hospital staff member told me I should create a meditation for parents and children getting EEGs because I kept my son calm the entire time. If you’ve ever watched a toddler try to sit still while wires, glue, and loud machines surround them, you know the weight of that moment.

Everything came back up.

And for a moment, it felt like the messy middle had returned to prove me wrong, to remind me that stability is fragile and growth is inconvenient.

But that’s not what it was there to do.

The Messy Middle as Leadership Training

It didn’t come back to train me in some abstract way. It came back and asked real questions.

Can you stay present when there is no clear plan?
Can you regulate your body while advocating for your child?
Can you make decisions without certainty instead of waiting for reassurance?
Can you lead yourself when no one is telling you what to do next?

That’s where self-leadership actually forms.

Not when life is smooth.
Not when things are clear.
But when you’re tired, stretched, emotional and still choosing not to abandon yourself.

I learned that leadership isn’t about control. It’s about staying grounded when control is gone.

It’s choosing integrity over panic. Presence over performance. Listening instead of forcing forward movement just to feel productive.

Burnout wasn’t my failure. It was my body signaling that something I was carrying no longer fit who I was becoming.

My nervous system knew before my mind was ready to admit it.

And leadership, real leadership, starts the moment you stop overriding those signals and start listening.

Why Women Are Taught to Silence This Season

Women are taught to quiet this part of themselves long before they have language for it.

We’re taught that strength looks like composure.
That leadership looks like certainty.
That being “put together” matters more than being honest.

So when life feels heavy, when emotions surface, when something inside us starts to shift, we learn to minimize it.

Don’t talk about the hard things.
Don’t feel that deeply.
If you’re struggling, it must mean you don’t have it together.

We absorb the message early: uncertainty makes us unreliable. Emotion makes us difficult. Pausing makes us behind. And leadership, real leadership, is reserved for the women who can hold it all without flinching.

So we learn to perform stability instead of telling the truth.

We stay productive while disconnected. Capable while depleted. Strong while quietly unraveling.

But silencing this season doesn’t make us stronger. It separates us from ourselves.

When we override what we’re feeling instead of listening to it, we don’t become more disciplined, we become more disconnected. And disconnected women don’t lack intelligence, resilience, or ability.

They’re exhausted from pretending.

Pretending they’re fine.
Pretending this season isn’t costing them something.
Pretending that leadership should come at the expense of their nervous system, their health, or their presence.

The messy middle threatens that performance. It asks us to slow down, to feel, to admit we don’t have clarity yet. And because that doesn’t fit the version of leadership we’ve been shown, we learn to silence it instead of honor it.

But this season isn’t weakness.

It’s where truth surfaces. It’s where integrity is tested. It’s where leadership becomes embodied instead of performative. And when women are finally given permission to stay with themselves here, instead of rushing past it, something powerful happens.

They stop performing leadership.
And start living it.

The Collective: Why This Space Had to Exist

This is where my story stopped being just mine.

For a long time, I believed I had to move through my messy middle quietly. That becoming was something to handle privately, behind closed doors, until I could present a cleaner version of myself to the world.

But the deeper I moved into my own becoming, the clearer it became:
women don’t struggle because they’re incapable, they struggle because they’re isolated.

The Collective wasn’t created to fix women. It wasn’t created to rush clarity, manufacture confidence, or push transformation before someone is ready.

It was created because women need space to become without being minimized.

A space where the messy middle isn’t treated like a flaw to clean up, but a legitimate season of growth. A season where identity is shifting, nervous systems are recalibrating, and old versions are being released, often quietly, often painfully, often without applause.

So many women have been taught to believe that if they’re still processing, still questioning, still emotional, then they must be doing something wrong.

The Collective exists to say: this is not wrong, this is real.

Leadership isn’t built in isolation.

It’s built in spaces where honesty is safe.
Where you don’t have to perform stability to belong.
Where you’re allowed to arrive unfinished and still be respected.

In the Collective, becoming isn’t rushed. It’s honored.

Because the truth is, self-leadership doesn’t form when everything is figured out. It forms when women are given room to stay with themselves through uncertainty without being judged, dismissed, or told to move faster.

This space exists because I know what it’s like to carry growth alone. And I know how different the journey becomes when you don’t have to.

Redefining Leadership (No Title Required)

Leadership doesn’t require a title, an office, or permission.

It doesn’t arrive once you feel confident or certain.
It doesn’t wait until your life looks polished or resolved.
And it doesn’t belong only to women who appear to have it all together.

Leadership begins the moment you stop abandoning yourself to meet expectations.

When you stop overriding your body just to keep pace.
When you stop saying yes to stay liked.
When you stop performing stability while something inside you is asking for honesty.

Self-leadership is choosing alignment over approval.
Integrity over appearance.
Truth over comfort.

This kind of leadership doesn’t announce itself.

It’s built in private moments.
In decisions no one applauds.
In seasons where progress is internal and growth is invisible.

It’s built when you choose to pause instead of push.
When you listen instead of forcing clarity.
When you stay present with discomfort instead of rushing to escape it.

That’s self-leadership.

Not loud.
Not performative.
Not impressive by traditional standards.

But steady.
Rooted.
And strong enough to last.

And most often, it’s built in seasons that don’t look successful from the outside, seasons where you’re still figuring it out, still becoming, still standing in the messy middle.

That doesn’t mean you’re behind.

It means leadership is forming.

If You’re Here Right Now

If you’re in the messy middle, hear this slowly:

You’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
You’re not failing.

You’re in formation.

You’re in the part of the journey where things don’t feel resolved yet where identity is shifting faster than certainty can keep up. Where you’re holding growth, responsibility, emotion, and real life all at once.

That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.

It means you’re learning how to stay with yourself instead of rushing past what’s real.

This season isn’t asking you to have answers.
It’s asking you to listen.
To notice what no longer fits.
To honor what’s asking to change.

And that kind of awareness that willingness to stay present without clarity matters far more than having everything figured out.

That’s where self-leadership begins.

A Gentle Invitation (Not a Fix)

You don’t need to rush this season.
You don’t need to clean it up.
You don’t need to arrive somewhere else to be worthy of support.

Episode 30 of She Rises Through It lives inside this truth, that the messy middle isn’t something to escape, but something to lead yourself through.

If what you’re craving right now is grounded space not urgency, not pressure, not another version of “do more”, that’s exactly why the Collective and Rise & Reground exist.

Not to fix you.
Not to rush your growth.
But to walk with you as you learn how to lead yourself forward with integrity, presence, and compassion.

You don’t need to take a big step today.
You just need to know you don’t have to do this alone.

How to Use This

Come back to this when life gets loud.
When growth feels uncomfortable.
When old patterns resurface and you start questioning yourself again.

Return here when you’re tempted to believe the mess means you’re doing it wrong.

It doesn’t.

The messy middle isn’t the problem.
It’s not a detour.
It’s not a delay.

It’s where your self-leadership is being built, quietly, steadily, and in real time.

And that’s not something to rush past.

That’s something to honor.