If you missed last week’s letter, start there first. It’s the one where I admitted I’d spent 15 years chasing something I no longer wanted and had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

This is Part 2. What happened next.

And fair warning: it’s not a tidy story. There was no lightning bolt moment or dramatic resignation speech, no clear next thing waiting in the wings. It was a slow unraveling. A spreadsheet. Learning to pause and hear myself. A community. And a lot of little experiments.

The thing about picking your head up from autopilot is that it sounds simple. It’s not.

We are all moving so fast. Checking the boxes, answering the emails, wiping the counters, packing the lunches, attending the meetings, returning the thing at UPS, sending the birthday text, trying to drink water and work out and not lose our minds. It is very easy to spend years inside a life you haven’t actually looked at. So I started small. Not quitting my job. Not burning anything down. Not announcing a personal brand and immediately buying a ring light. Just paying attention. (The ring light came years later.)

The crack that started everything

Six years before I actually leaped, I signed up for a second yoga teacher training.

Not because I wanted to become a yoga teacher. More because my first teacher training was one of the first times I invested a large chunk of money in something for myself for no reason other than learning more about something I loved just because.

And in this advanced training it was the first time I’d ever journaled to figure out my truth instead of what I thought was expected of me. And it was the first time I shared really scary vulnerable words I had been avoiding thinking about, better yet sharing out loud.

And somewhere in that room, sweaty, probably in Lululemon, definitely avoiding eye contact, I had this quiet uncomfortable realization:

I was unhealthily obsessed with career and money and productivity. Like, concerning levels. And there was so much more to life than what I’d been optimizing for.

Nothing changed immediately.

“I went home. Got busy. Stayed the course. Kept my head down. But I had changed. Those journaling prompts and sharing circles opened something up in me.”

Thank you Neda Honavar and Tough Love Yoga people for having such a huge impact on my life.

The jealousy I stopped ignoring

Around that same time I started keeping a mental note of people I was jealous of.

Not in a spiral, hate-scrolling, why-does-she-have-that-life way. More like detached curiosity. Hmmmm. Her again. Interesting. What is it about her and what she’s doing?

I started playfully calling these women my “girl crushes” and to this day I still have a list of them.

Jealousy, I’ve learned, is just admiration with nowhere to go yet. It’s your gut pointing at something before your brain has caught up. And if you get quiet enough to listen to it instead of shame spiraling about it, it might tell you exactly what you actually want.

A pattern emerged pretty quickly. My girl crushes were always a creative woman, not with impressive titles but with a personal brand, and who wasn’t afraid to say what she thought. They either built things with their hands (like artists) or had built lives and businesses around helping other people grow and figure out theirs (like coaches and media personalities). And the community they surrounded themselves with appeared to all lifted each other up.

I wanted that.

None were CMOs at tech companies, and none had an impressive corner office.

One name kept showing up: Darrah Brustein. I’d met her a few times and she always softened me and got me thinking deeply. I read everything she wrote. Follow everything she posted. Feel that particular brand of jealousy that is really just: I want what she has and I don’t know how to say that out loud yet. (More on Darrah in a moment)

The model I didn’t know I was running

Here’s something I didn’t understand about myself until I started doing this work.

My dad worked at one company his entire career. One. Showed up, worked hard, became successful, was a wonderful father, retired. That was the model I grew up watching. That was what i thought doing it right looked like.

So I did what made sense: I picked my path at 18 and assumed that was just it. Career locked in. Identity sorted. Moving on.

(Eighteen. I was eighteen. I had zero idea who I was, and thought ok life path decided.)

I’d always had this vague shapeless sense that eventually it would look different. I’d have kids, I’d work less, it would soften somehow. But I had never once actually asked myself: what do I want it to look like? specifically. How do I want to feel? Who do I want to be helping?

I just assumed the path would magically reveal it’s self if I kept my head down and checking the boxes laid out in front of me.

college: check.
cool internship: check
great first job: check
promotion, promotion, promotion: check
buy home: check
married: check
high title, managing a team: check
Then I got a slap in the face. Turns out the universe has opinions about autopilot…

I survived the second worst leader of my career, and then Covid happened.

And I knew something had to change, but I felt stuck and had no idea what. And then I thought of Darrah, and I, like yoga teacher training for no certificate, or reason other than to do something for me. I made a bet on myself and hired her as a coach.

I did the work. Found my aim. Started moving towards it. Started a side hustle.

And then I had kids and pressed pause. I kept thinking: I need the security while they’re little. I’ll figure out the rest later. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

Later became five years.

(Note: no regrets here. Early motherhood was not the time for me to start something new. My obsession was figuring out who I was as a mother. And I was in a great place to do just that.)

Then I opened Excel

So five years later… shortly after my second was born. I decided it was time… except I had no idea what it was time for.

In an ideal world I’d start a side hustle, start building something and then leap once I prove it feels good, and makes money. However, the last 5 years proved that as a mom of 2 with a full time job there was no space for a side hustle and be the mom and full time employee I want to be.

So are we leaping into the unknown without a plan? Yup, I guess that’s what we are doing.

Click Excel spread sheet open.

So I looked at what our life actually cost. Not vibes. Not “I think we’re probably fine.” Actual numbers. What do we spend? What could flex if it needed to? How long could we survive and not change our lives? What was my real risk tolerance? My runway? Could I hire help?

(This is the template I created and have used to get honest about our finances. I made it as simple as possible. Sharing it here if you want it.)

I had a lot of conversations with my husband. Not one tidy “are you aligned?” conversation. Many. About money, timing, risk, lifestyle, the life we’d built together and whether it could hold a different version of me.

Those conversations weren’t clean. But they were the ones that got me out of my ego, fear, self doubt spiral. I had so many stories running in my head about not bringing in the same income, about what it meant, about what kind of partner and mother that made me. Saying them out loud to him, instead of just spinning on them alone, changed everything. His support didn’t erase the guilt entirely, it’s unfortunately something I still feel, especially during that time of the month. He knows this. But knowing he was fully in it with me, understood the risks and fully supported me settled something in my chest that no spreadsheet could touch.

“I looked at what our life actually cost. Not vibes. Not ‘I think we’re probably fine.’ Actual numbers.”

One of the hardest things to work through was the guilt of not earning what I was used to earning. My whole sense of worth had gotten completely fused with my income, my title, the number of people I was managing. If I wasn’t bringing in the money, who was I? Was I still contributing? Still impressive? Still something?

I figured out my runway. And I found that excel sheet deeply comforting, it settled a lot of my fears and helped me get super clear on how wild I could comfortably go.

I revisit it monthly.

The Psychic

And then, because life doesn’t let you just spreadsheet your way to freedom, I went a little (ok a lot) woo.

I met her in Serenbe. A psychic medium. . I signed up the way you sign up for things when you’re quietly unraveling but not ready to admit it. A little impulsively. Zero expectations. Telling yourself it’ll probably be nothing but secretly hoping it’ll be everything.

I went in a full skeptic. My attitude was somewhere around: this could be fun, maybe I’ll get some little zaps about what to do, worst case I’ve wasted an hour and some money.

It was not nothing.

Yes, she gave me fun zaps into my future and messages from my spirit guides. But most importantly she helped me pause. Slow down. Picture my future self and actually feel her, instead of just planning for her on a spreadsheet.

And then she said something I needed someone to say to me:

What if I have another kid. What if money gets tight. What if it doesn’t work. What if, what if, what if.

Whatever you decide doesn’t need to be forever.

I had been holding so many what ifs as reasons to wait that I hadn’t noticed they’d quietly become a wall. She didn’t knock it down. She just showed me the door I’d been standing next to the whole time.

(I wrote a whole letter about what working with a psychic has actually been like. read it here)

The year after the leap

What followed, I didn’t have a name for at the time.

Now I think of it as the year I went back to school. Just not a conventional one. No curriculum. No grades. No one measuring my output or swiping my badge to check I’d shown up enough.

I tinkered. I played. I built things just to see what I enjoyed building. I went deep into the world of self-development and wellness and living intentionally that I’d always loved but never had proper time to inhabit.

I also took intuition classes. Found an expert in human design. Another in living in tune with your cycle.

And I dreamed. Actually dreamed. Dreamed up what the most genuinely good life I could picture would feel like, not what it would look like on paper, but how it would feel in my body on a random Tuesday.

I still have this mentality. I think I always will.

Treat everything like an experiment

I stopped asking is this the right move and started asking what happens if I try this?

I’m just going to post this and see what happens. I’m just going to write this and see what people ask me about. I’m just going to offer this and see if anyone wants it.

Some experiments stuck. Others I dropped quickly. What were people coming to me for? What made them reply, save, forward, bring up in real life months later? What felt good to make? What drained me before I even started?

That became the data. Not just analytics. Aliveness. Both matter.

When something didn’t work, it didn’t have to mean I’d failed. It could just mean the experiment gave me information. That tiny mind shift made it so much easier to keep moving.

It took a full year of playing around before what feels like my actual business emerged.

What I believe now

I used to think changing your life required a big dramatic leap. Now I think it starts much more quietly.

First you have to see your life clearly. Which sounds obvious until you realize you’ve been living inside a schedule, a title, a salary, and a version of yourself you built five, ten years ago and never stopped to question.

Not the “I should want this” version. The real one.

From there, you start making small honest moves. Not your forever plan. Just your next honest move.

And I’ll say this clearly, because I mean it: I’m not saying everyone should leave corporate like I did. Please don’t send your boss a resignation email because Gina on the internet was in a mood. For some people, staying is exactly right for this season. The job is stable, supportive, values-aligned. It gives them the life they want. Beautiful. We love her. I’ve been there.

But don’t stay just because you’ve been staying. Don’t keep climbing just because the ladder is there.

Pause. Pick your head up. Look around. Look inside. Ask if you’ve shifted. Ask if the life you built, or inherited, still fits the person you’re becoming.

That’s the work. And once you see it, you can work with it.

A small thing to try this week

If this is hitting close to home, try this.

For the next five days, keep a note in your phone called “What’s actually happening?”

At the end of each day, write three things:

1. What gave me energy today?
2. What drained me today?
3. Where did I feel resentful, jealous, or weirdly alive?

Don’t solve it yet. Don’t turn it into a 17-step reinvention plan. Just collect the data.

At the end of the week, look for the patterns. Your body has probably been trying to tell you something your brain has been making very busy PowerPoints to avoid.

If you want to go even deeper, I do this fuller version every couple of years when I’m feeling lost. I call it “Everything you do in a day”. Intense. But the fastest way I know to pick your head up from autopilot.

And if you’re ready to go further than a phone note

I’m hosting an IRL something I’ve been dreaming up the last couple years: A Life at Play Day. in June. Just south of Atlanta in my community, Serenbe.

One day. Small group. Real conversations. Designed for exactly the moment these two letters have been circling. Spots go to this list first and then drop publicly. Sign up to be the first to know

And separately, I’ve opened up a four slots each month to work with people on this 1:1. I have space for one more client in May and June. If something in these two letters felt like it was written directly at you, Id love to chat and see if we are a fit. Grab a free consult here.

xx, Gina

P.S. If this resonated, forward it to one person who needs to read it. The best thing that happens when I write these letters is when someone says: my friend sent this to me. That’s the whole point.