How She Learned to Celebrate Herself

I've learned to intentionally celebrate the moments that remind me how far I've come, not just where I'm going next. Seeing my first masterclass published was one of those moments, I let myself sit with it and recognize the woman I had become along the way, because sometimes acknowledging your own growth is just as important as continuing to pursue it.

Celebrating myself did not mean pretending the difficult chapters never happened. It meant refusing to let those chapters define my life. I learned to celebrate the woman I became through them: more resilient, more discerning, and more aware of my own value. Perhaps my greatest achievement is that, after everything life has asked me to carry, I still have the courage to believe in possibility.

Self-pride is just as important as self-agency. There are too few Black females in the academy and with PhDs. I am blessed and thrilled to have been an endowed chair at Vanderbilt University, and now a Distinguished Professor of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University.

I'm getting much better at celebrating myself instead of waiting for someone else to hand me a trophy. I've spent years being a CPA, mom, wife, problem-solver, crisis manager, and professional "I'll figure it out" person, so occasionally I think I deserve to pour the drink, eat the cake, and admit, "Dang, girl. You're doing a fine job."

Intentionally celebrating my own career breakthroughs reminded me of the core lesson I teach in my #IamRemarkable workshops: it's not bragging if it's backed by data, and owned success is the ultimate act of self-advocacy.

Years of longing led to a beautiful beginning. When motherhood finally found me, I spent nine months simply living the dream my husband and I had waited for.

From the moment I made the decision to rise, the events that transpired were nothing short of miraculous! I had only myself to thank. Because from that moment forward, I slowly began learning how to love myself.

True influence is measured not by what you achieve for yourself, but by the opportunities you create for others.

For most of my life, I was excellent at celebrating everyone else: my patients, my children, my students, my clients. I could cheer for their wins, honor their milestones, and recognize their strength. But when it came to myself, I often moved on quickly, quietly, without pausing to acknowledge what I had survived or built. That changed the year I rebuilt my life and career from the ground up. I had walked through exhaustion, reinvention, and the uncomfortable process of letting go of an identity that no longer fit. I was raising children, completing advanced training, creating a coaching practice designed to help women reclaim their vitality. It was one of the hardest and most transformative seasons of my life. When I finished developing the full Vital360 framework, the diagnostics, the pillars, the habit systems, the identity work, I sat alone at my desk and felt something I hadn't allowed myself to feel in a long time: Pride. Not the loud kind. Not the performative kind. The quiet, grounded kind that comes from knowing you didn't quit on yourself. I closed my laptop, made myself a cup of tea, and intentionally celebrated. Not with a big event. Not with an announcement. But with a moment of recognition: "I did this. I built this. I became this." Celebrating myself mattered because it marked the shift from surviving to owning my strength. It reminded me that women deserve to honor their resilience, their evolution, and their courage, not just their productivity. It was the moment I realized that self-celebration isn't indulgent. It's necessary. It's fuel. It's identity work. And it's part of the vitality I now help other women reclaim.

For much of my life, I was better at celebrating everyone else than I was at celebrating myself. As a mother, a leader, and someone who has navigated significant adversity, I was always focused on the next thing that needed to be done. There was rarely time to stop and think about what I had actually accomplished or survived. That began to change when I started looking at my life not through the lens of what was still unfinished, but through how far I had come. I had built a 20-plus-year career in technology, risen into executive leadership, raised two children on my own through extraordinarily difficult circumstances, supported my son through brain cancer and its lasting effects, and rebuilt our lives after leaving an abusive marriage. For years, I treated those things as simply what I had to do. At some point, I realized there is a difference between moving forward and actually honoring the woman who did the moving. So I began allowing myself to celebrate the milestones, not just promotions or professional achievements, but resilience, independence, motherhood, and becoming someone I am proud of. I learned that celebrating yourself isn't about ego. It's about giving yourself the same recognition, compassion, and encouragement that we so freely give to everyone else. Today, I don't need everything in my life to be perfect before I allow myself to be proud of it. I'm still building, still evolving, and currently beginning another chapter in my career. But I can look back at the woman who kept going through some very difficult years and say, "You did that." And sometimes, recognizing that is the celebration.