The Door I Didn't Know I Was Opening

The Yes That Started Everything

I was sitting in a room full of strangers, waiting for my turn to stand up and do my two-minute pitch.

Networking events are not my favorite thing. I can work a room. I know how to connect. But there is always that moment, right before it starts, where I have to talk myself into it. Show up. Be present. See what happens.

So I did.

And then a man stood up across the room and started talking about being a filmmaker.

Something stirred. Not a thought exactly. More like a pull. An internal yes that rose up before my brain had time to weigh in. I didn’t know what it meant yet. I just knew I needed to go find out.

So I walked over, introduced myself, and told him I was interested. I was honest about my desire and equally honest about my uncertainty around cost. He didn’t flinch. We booked a coffee meeting before we left the room.

That, yes, the one I felt before I had a single answer, was the beginning of everything that followed.

When we finally sat down for coffee, something clicked quickly. We are both creators. Both are most alive when an idea catches fire and demands to be made real. The project we eventually landed on didn’t come from a strategy session or a marketing plan. It came from two people in alignment, asking what we could actually make together that would mean something.

What we came up with was this: real women, in my living room, having real coaching conversations on camera. No script. No polish. Just the truth of what happens when someone finally sits down and does the work.

My first thought, if I’m being honest, was: who is going to do that?

I was wrong to wonder.

I put out the invitation, and the responses came in quickly. I had created an intake form, and what came back stopped me cold.

These women are wrestling with whether their worth lies inside their titles. They know it is time to leave something that no longer fits, but they cannot yet make themselves go. They have spent years taking care of everyone around them and somewhere along the way forgot that they were someone who needed tending to. They have walked through the kind of loss and hardship that most people never face, and they are still standing, still searching, still reaching for something more.

Different lives. Different circumstances. And every single one of them is circling the same quiet question underneath it all: I have given so much, for so long. Who am I inside all of it?

These are not women who lack strength. They are women who have been strong for so long that they have lost track of themselves in the process.

And every one of them said yes to sitting in front of a camera and telling the truth.

I was stunned. Not because they were brave, though they were. But their willingness told me something I already knew, though needed to see again: women are not afraid of being seen. They are starving for a space where being seen is actually safe.

Let me be clear about something. I am not standing outside this project, holding the camera steady while everyone else takes the risk.

Coaching is private work. It happens behind closed doors, in confidence, in the kind of sacred space that only exists because both people know it stays in the room. Inviting a filmmaker in means opening that door. It means letting my work be witnessed. Not just the polished version I might choose to share, but the real thing. The pauses. The turns. The moments where something shifts and neither of us quite knows why.

That is vulnerable. And I said yes anyway.

Because I believe what happens in a coaching conversation is worth being seen. And because I cannot ask the women who sit across from me to be brave if I am not willing to model it first.

Here is what I have learned from all of it so far.

The project began with a desire. Not a plan. Not a guarantee. A feeling that said yes before I had a single answer lined up. I had to trust that first. Then, to use discernment to ensure the collaboration was aligned with where I was going. Then take the next step without knowing how it would turn out.

That is, I realize, exactly what I ask my clients to do.

And I sense that this project is only the beginning. I don’t know yet what it is opening into. That is part of what makes it feel alive. There is a door here; I have walked through it, and what lies on the other side is still a mystery. I find that I am not afraid of that. I am curious about it.

That curiosity, I think, is what bravery actually feels like from the inside. Not certainty. Not readiness. Just a willingness to keep moving toward the thing that stirs you, even when you cannot see where it leads.

The filming is still a month away. But this project is already teaching me.

The yes has to come first. Everything else follows from there