Parliament | The Shadow Work of Leadership
In 2015 on the Gimlet podcast with Alex Blumberg, I heard something that changed the way I think about development as a leader: "Your shadow qualities will be reflected back to you in the people who work for you."
Well, that scared the shit out of me AND sounded accurate.
I didn't fully understand it at the time, but I knew I needed support. When Jesse Bodine (in my mastermind group), founder of Scout & Nimble, recommended Kelly Howe, I decided to try tapping for the first time.
Kelly introduced me to somatic work—the kind that gets into your body, not just your head. For the last ten years, she has helped me see patterns I couldn't have named on my own, as well as take the physical reaction out of the equation. That feeling of "blacking out" when someone does something triggering, I can now (most of the time) stay in the front part of my brain, grounded and engaged.
Then in 2023, I thought I needed business coaching. I was dealing with a scarcity mindset and losing our biggest client. I wanted someone who could analyze our P&L and help me think bigger about revenue, growth, strategy—the usual CEO stuff. So I started working with Mike Brown.
What I got was not what I expected.
Mike's approach is different from therapy or even somatic work. Therapy helps you understand yourself. Coaching puts a fire under your ass. Mike operates at what he calls "the intersection of acceleration and beliefs," and that turned out to be exactly what I needed.
Because I couldn't accelerate until the beliefs changed.
Together—Kelly's somatic work and Mike's coaching—something finally clicked. Not immediately. Not in some dramatic breakthrough moment. But slowly, over three years of Mike's work layered on top of ten years with Kelly, the egg that had been cracking finally broke all the way open.
I spent three years getting my brain on board before my body finally decided to show up.
For years, I could intellectually understand what needed to change. I knew I was taking on others' problems like they were my own. I knew I was solving my team's personal issues because some confused part of me thought that was leadership. I knew I was showing up for everyone else and having nothing left for my family at night.
I knew all of this. And I kept doing it anyway.
Because here's what I didn't understand: your brain can get there first, but until your body catches up, nothing actually changes. When you're dysregulated—when your nervous system is stuck in fight-or-flight—your body will override every good intention your brain has. Every time.
This is especially messy for female leaders. There's this maternal energy that shows up in leadership, and it confuses everyone—including us. We think we're being good leaders by caring deeply about our people. And we are. But somewhere along the way, "caring" morphs into "carrying," and suddenly we're responsible for everyone.
I didn't want my team to think I was coasting. I didn't want them to look at my calendar and think I had it too easy. I wanted to model grit from the top. So I never blocked off Fridays. I never said no to a meeting. I never admitted when I was stretched too thin.
This year feels different. Not because January 1st magically fixed anything, but because that egg finally cracked all the way open.
My body finally believes what my brain has been trying to tell it for years: Caring doesn’t mean carrying.
The proof isn't in some grand transformation. It's in the Fridays that are now blocked off in my calendar. It's in the boundary I held last week when someone wanted to unload a personal problem and I gently redirected them. It's in having energy left for my kids at dinner instead of being a shell of a person who gave everything away before 5 PM.
I'm not suddenly enlightened. I'm just finally regulated enough to act on what I've known for a while.
If you're in the slow middle of your own work—where you can see what needs to change but can't seem to actually change it—this is your reminder that the body moves slower than the brain. And that's okay. The work compounds. The crack is coming.
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