The best way to learn, to evolve, to see what it takes and to find your own voice is to begin. To start. To engage. As Steven Pressfield is known for saying, “Start before you're ready.”

Over the last few months I have had the phrase, “You got this,” or “You can handle it” on my mind a lot. I’ve been saying one version or another of those words to myself, my clients or the people in my life every day.

Someone I met recently sent me this quote by Joseph Campbell, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

In a recent conversation with a friend and colleague, I was deeply moved when she shared how she is realizing that throughout her life, in her desire to belong, she has been denying a part of herself. She was seeing this as a young student, with friends growing up, in work environments and in certain communities. In her desire to belong, she has been trying to fit in. And for her, that meant denying and downplaying her blackness.