I never planned to be a leader.
I want to say that clearly because I think it matters. I did not raise my hand. I did not have a five year plan that included management or director roles or any of the things that eventually became my career.
I planned to be a nurse. A good one. The kind who showed up fully for every patient, every shift, every moment that mattered. I planned to clock in, do the work I loved, and clock out.
And then my manager was let go. And someone looked at me and said — we need you to step in.
That one yes changed everything.
What I didn't expect was how completely that shift would reorganize my sense of self.
I went from an hourly role — clock in, do the work, clock out — to a salaried position with no edges. No clear beginning. No clear end.
And I questioned everything.
I knew I was an excellent nurse. I had no doubt about that. But as a leader? I felt like I was constantly one step behind. Constantly figuring it out in real time. Waiting for someone to realize I didn't actually know what I was doing.
That feeling has a name. A lot of us know it. Imposter syndrome followed me into every room for a long time.
But there was something else nobody warned me about.
How lonely leadership could be.
I had gone from being a peer — one of the team, part of the group — to being the manager. Overnight. Of the same people. My friends. My colleagues. The women I had worked beside for years.
I remember going out with them after work and sitting there smiling — present on the outside — and then going home and staying up all night thinking about every single thing they had mentioned. What could I fix? What should I address? What did that complaint mean for the team?
I couldn't just be in the conversation anymore. I was always the manager. Even off the clock. Even in my sleep.
And I didn't have a word for it then. But I do now.
It's loneliness.
In this episode I talk about what I was really building toward through all of those years of saying yes to bigger roles and more responsibility.
It wasn't status. It wasn't ambition in the way people assume ambition looks.
It was protection.
I was building a wall between my family and instability. Building options. Building the kind of security that meant my children would never have to worry the way I had worried.
Ambition that comes from survival looks different than ambition that comes from desire. It's quieter. More serious. It doesn't stop to celebrate. It just keeps building.
Because stopping feels dangerous.
And then COVID came.
I was in charge of the swabbing tent. A parking lot. Scared doctors. Patients who didn't know what they had. A team trusting me to keep them safe when the rules were changing every single day.
Seven days a week. Ten hours a day. For months. While my family was home full time and I was absorbing everyone's fear and coming home with nothing left.
I gave everything to the vaccine clinic launch. And I am proud of that. But it cost me in ways I am still reckoning with.
For the first time in my career — I didn't love what I was doing anymore.
That was the hardest thing I have ever admitted out loud.
But here is what came after.
I left. I went to startup healthcare. And in those rooms — building from scratch, working alongside people with completely different professional backgrounds — I found something I had been looking for without knowing I was looking for it.
Real confidence.
Not the performance of confidence. The real thing. The kind that comes from knowing — from evidence, from experience, from having done hard things — that you can figure out what you don't know.
She started building herself. Not for survival. For the first time — for herself.
A few questions to sit with:
- Have you ever stepped into a role you didn't plan for — and discovered something about yourself you wouldn't have found any other way?
- Is there a version of your ambition that came from survival or protection? What were you protecting — and for whom?
- Have you ever hit a wall with work you loved — and felt the disorientation of not loving it anymore?
- What would it look like to build something not for protection — but purely because you want to?
If this episode resonated with you I'd love to hear from you at faith@stillbuildingpodcast.com — I read every message.
You're not alone. You're not behind. You're not finished.
You're still building.
— Faith