The moment my relationship with fear truly changed was when I found out I had blood clots in 2021. That situation forced me to face the reality that my life could end at any moment, and fear could have easily consumed me—but instead, I turned to Jehovah God in a deeper, more personal way than ever before. Through prayer and relying on scriptures like Isaiah 41:10, I found a calm and reassurance that carried me through one of the most uncertain times in my life. From that point on, I stopped letting fear paralyze me and started moving forward despite it in all areas of my life (personal and professional), trusting that God would strengthen and support me no matter what I faced.

Every big move I've made has come with some level of fear: the unknown, the what ifs, and questioning whether it was the right decision. But, I moved forward anyway. The turning point for me was a time when I let that fear keep me standing still. I felt stagnant, and that was a bigger wake up call than the fear itself. Looking back, I realized that facing the fear, even when it feels messy and uncertain, is more powerful than staying in one place and wondering what could have been. That shift changed how I approach challenges. I don't wait for fear to go away. I make the decision to move forward and trust that I'll figure it out along the way.

For most of my life, I treated fear the way I treated a difficult patient on a twelve hour shift: I managed it, I documented it, and I tried not to make direct eye contact. I was raised in a high control religion that had very specific ideas about what women were allowed to feel, want, say, and fear. The message, spoken and unspoken, was consistent: your instincts are dangerous. Your body is not trustworthy. And fear? Fear was not information. Fear was punishment for straying too far from the approved path. I left that religion at eighteen. I walked out with the clothes I was wearing and one stubborn, half formed belief: that I was allowed to exist on my own terms. That was courage. That was real. But here is the thing nobody warned me about. You can leave a place without leaving the fear it installed in you. That part is remarkably good at forwarding its own mail. The turning point came in a hospital break room, at 2 a.m., when a patient asked me, "You keep looking at the door. Are you afraid to be in here with me, or afraid to walk out?" I realized I had been living in the doorway of my own life, afraid to stay fully present and afraid to walk into something new. Through Internal Family Systems therapy, I stopped treating fear like an intruder and got curious about it instead. What I found was not a monster, but a very tired girl who had been standing guard for twenty five years, never told she was allowed to rest. I did not need to be braver or finally free of fear. I needed to thank it and let it know it no longer had to run the whole operation. What changed was not that the fear stopped showing up. What changed was that I started to recognize it faster. I started asking: Is this fear protecting me from something real, or is this the old recording playing again? Those are two very different questions. Learning to tell them apart has been, honestly, the work of my life. Fear is not the opposite of courage. It is the beginning of it. Every brave thing I have ever done happened while my hands were shaking. The question has never been will I stop being afraid? The question has always been will I move anyway?

There wasn't a single, dramatic moment where fear disappeared. It was quieter than that, but more defining. For a long time, I believed that confidence came first. That clarity would arrive, fear would settle, and then I would step forward. But that moment never came. Instead, I found myself standing at the edge of something I knew mattered, building something that could support other women, create access, and shift the way we show up for each other. And I realized: If I waited to feel ready, I might never begin. But what truly shifted things wasn't just a decision I made on my own. It was a moment of encouragement from another woman. Simple, but powerful. She saw something in me I hadn't fully claimed yet. She spoke it out loud. And in doing so, she gave me something I didn't realize I was missing: I felt seen. I felt supported. And that changed everything. The turning point wasn't the absence of fear. It was the decision to move with it and the realization that I didn't have to do it alone. Starting Women 4 Mentors required stepping into uncertainty, into visibility, responsibility, and the weight of building something bigger than myself. There were questions I couldn't answer yet, outcomes I couldn't guarantee, and moments where it would have been easier to stay small. But I began anyway. What changed wasn't fear. It was my relationship to it. I stopped seeing fear as a signal to pause and started recognizing it as a sign that I was moving toward something meaningful. That the work mattered. That growth was happening. And more importantly, I realized that courage isn't something you wait for, it's something that can be sparked, sometimes by something as simple as another woman choosing to speak life into you. Now, when fear shows up, it doesn't stop me. It informs me. It asks: Is this important? Is this worth stepping into? And more often than not, the answer is yes. Because the work we're doing, creating opportunities for women to return to education, to be supported, to be seen, is bigger than fear. That's what reshaped my courage. Not the elimination of fear, but the understanding that it could walk beside me and that sometimes, all it takes is one voice, one moment, one connection… to help you rise.