Before I ever chose colors for our home’s exterior renovation, or co-created and held my first retreat, or mapped out an RV route, the real work was happening quietly and without a timeline.

There were no announcements, no milestone posts, no big decisions to point to. Just a slow, persistent kind of growth. I’ve been working on listening to myself again, not just in passing, but deeply. And I started to believe what I heard. I was learning how to tell the truth about what I wanted in the daily practice of not dismissing my own thoughts, in noticing what I needed, in taking myself seriously.

None of that was easy. The biggest shift wasn’t in what I was doing. It was in what I could hold. More uncertainty. More risk. More emotional weight. I wasn’t suddenly saying yes to myself because everything was lined up perfectly. I was saying yes because my capacity was growing enough that I could finally handle the unknowns that used to stop me. I was doing the quiet, invisible work of building courage to stay with myself through discomfort and of trying even when I didn’t feel entirely ready.

Then came the visible parts: The house projects got underway. We launched the retreat. I planned this RV trip. Three very different projects, each full of obvious change, the kind of things people notice. You can take pictures. You can make posts. You can tell a story that’s easy to see from the outside.

But here’s the thing: I’m still on this RV trip as I write this, and it has not been what I imagined.

I got sick. It rained for days. The heater broke and I was freezing. The dogs, usually relaxed and easy, have been a mess. Every small thing has required more energy, more problem-solving, more mental stamina than I expected. I had such a clear picture of what this trip would feel like. That version is not the one I’m living and that has been hard.

There’s been a reckoning happening during this experience: the realization that even beautiful things can be hard. That even growth can be uncomfortable. That even dreams, once in motion, can ask more of us than we thought we had to give.

But here is where I really see the work I’ve been doing showing up. There’s a calmness in me that wasn’t there before. In the past, I would have taken all of this as a sign that I messed up, that I wasn’t cut out for this, or that I’d failed somehow. Now, I can meet the discomfort without letting it define the whole thing. I can say, “This is not what I expected,” without spiraling. I can rest, reorient, and keep going.

That’s the invisible kind of growth that doesn’t get much applause but it counts. It matters. It’s what allows us to do hard things without losing ourselves. It’s what gives us the strength to try again even when things don’t go as planned. It’s what builds a life that can hold both joy and difficulty at the same time.

This trip is a reminder of why I keep doing this work. I keep saying yes to hard things and creating spaces for the kind of growth that doesn’t always get seen because it deeply matters.

If you’re in a season like that right now doing the work no one sees, growing in ways that don’t come with milestones or applause please know: it counts.

You're not behind. You're building something real.

I see you. Keep going. You’re further along than you think.