Toastmasters
I joined Toastmasters because I wanted to get better at speaking in front of people, trust my own voice more, and stretch myself outside my comfort zone. It has become about much more than public speaking.

 

Speeches

Being a Human Is Weird

Being a human is weird.

Most mornings, we wake up after lying unconscious for several hours and immediately reach for a little glowing rectangle to see what happened while we were gone. Before our feet touch the floor, we may have already checked the weather, our email, and whether someone responded to something we posted online.

Some of us then check another device to see how well we slept. It tells us that although we were in bed for eight hours, we only got seventeen minutes of deep sleep and our recovery score is disappointing. Until then, we thought we felt fine. Suddenly we’re exhausted.

Work has its own human weirdness. We attend meetings to talk about other meetings, and sometimes have a meeting before the meeting so everyone is prepared for the actual meeting.

We also add exclamation points to emails so people know we’re friendly. “Sounds great! Happy to help!” Sometimes I am happy to help. Sometimes I add an exclamation point just so the email doesn’t sound annoyed.

But work is only one place where our oddities show up.

We make to-do lists because writing something down gives us a brief sense of control. Then we move the same task from Monday to Tuesday, Tuesday to Wednesday, and eventually into a vague future where we imagine we’ll be the kind of person who actually wants to do it.

We buy vegetables with good intentions and put them in a drawer called “the crisper,” where they slowly spoil while we pretend we’re still going to eat them. We ignore a text because we don’t have the energy to respond, then spend forty-five minutes watching videos made by strangers.

We want to be invited places, but we also want the plans canceled. We want people to notice us, but not too closely.

We are emotional creatures who like to pretend we aren’t. We can receive nine compliments and one mildly critical comment, then spend the rest of the day thinking about the critical comment. We can be completely composed during a difficult situation and then fall apart during a commercial involving a dog.

Maybe that one is just me, but I don’t think so.

We are full of contradictions. We want connection, but sometimes we need to be left alone. We want to be brave, but we’d also like a guarantee that everything will work out first, please.

One of the strangest things we do is ask people, almost as soon as we meet them, “What do you do?” But a job title tells us very little about who someone is.

I have spent most of my career supporting executives, and I’m proud of the work I do. But it isn’t who I am. What I do doesn’t make me human. Who I am as a human shapes how I do the work.

The same is true for everyone else. None of us is only a title, a résumé, or a performance review. We’re people first. We make mistakes, replay conversations in our heads, avoid things we know we need to do, and sometimes put them off because we don’t know where to begin.

But we also keep showing up.

We try again after things go badly. We spend time with family. We check on our friends. We laugh with coworkers during hard weeks. We hold doors open for strangers who are still far enough away that they have to do that awkward little jog.

We care more than we usually let on. And sometimes, even when we’re tired or overwhelmed, we choose kindness. We give someone the benefit of the doubt. We make room for another person’s mistake. We remind someone that they matter, not because of what they accomplished that day, but because they’re a human.

Being a human is weird. We’re inconsistent, hopeful, sensitive, and occasionally ridiculous. But that’s also part of what makes being human kind of wonderful.

We keep learning, changing, loving, telling stories, and trying to make sense of all of this as we go. On a good day, we can even laugh at ourselves. And on a really good day, we remember to eat the vegetables before they spoil.

Maybe that’s the best we can do: show up, care about each other, and remember that we’re all just weird humans trying to figure it out.

Read More, Scroll Less, Live Deeper

In 2016, Facebook helped me quit Facebook.

Which is probably the only time in history Facebook has actually improved someone’s mental health.

At the time, I had gotten way too far into the social media rabbit hole. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, news clips, comment sections, everyone’s opinion about everything, all the time. I told myself I was staying informed. I told myself I was relaxing.

But I wasn’t really doing either. I was just scrolling.

And scrolling is sneaky, because it feels like rest. You’re sitting down. You’re not technically doing anything. But somehow, after thirty minutes or longer, you feel more tired, more irritated, and less like yourself.

By the end of that year,  I found myself looking around at the country I lived in and wondering how we had gotten there. Every time I opened Facebook, it felt like stepping into a room where everyone was shouting and nobody was listening.

I realized I needed to step away. Not because I didn’t care, but because I did care, and my brain was simply full. Ironically, the turning point came from something I saw while scrolling.

I clicked on an article called “The Most Unputdownable Books of 2016;” and that moment changed something.

I started reading through that list. One book became two. Two became five. And somewhere along the way, I remembered something I had forgotten.

Reading is one of my favorite things to do.

So, I started reading more, scrolling less, and living a little deeper. And that became the heart of it for me: read more, scroll less, live deeper.

Reading gave me three things I didn’t realize I had been missing: my attention, refuge, and a way back to myself.

First, reading gave me my attention back.

I love the feeling of disappearing into a story. I love meeting characters who feel more real than some people I’ve actually met. I love sentences that make me stop, reread them, and then stare at a wall for five minutes.

Reading lets me explore different lives, different cultures, and sometimes completely different worlds. It stretches vocabulary, but more importantly, it stretches empathy.

And it gave me something scrolling never could. It asked me to slow down long enough for one thought, one scene, or one life to matter.

Attention is not a small thing. It is how we experience our lives. And social media is very good at chopping our attention into tiny little pieces.

A video here. A headline there. A comment that somehow raises your blood pressure before you’ve even finished your coffee.

Reading helped me remember that my brain was capable of depth, not just reaction.

The second thing reading gave me was refuge.

Not escape in the sense of avoiding the world. More like shelter. A place to go when the world was still there, but I needed a different way to be in it.

A book doesn’t demand that you form an opinion in real time. It doesn’t shout breaking news at you. It doesn’t ask you to compare your kitchen, your body, your vacation, your career, or your life to someone else’s highlight reel.

Instead, it offers something steadier. A place you can return to when you need it.

And I needed that. I needed somewhere quieter to put my attention. Somewhere that didn’t make me feel like I had to react, defend, compare, judge, or keep up.

Reading became that place.

The third thing reading gave me was a way back to myself.

After I stepped away from social media, I didn’t just read one book and call it a wellness experiment. I still read every single day. Even if I only have 5 minutes.

Books became part of my life again. They became how I learned, how I rested, and how I processed.

That matters because we live in a time where everything is trying to get our attention. Every app, notification, headline, outrage, and algorithm is pulling at us.

Reading is one way to pull back.

It does not fix everything. Books did not fix the world in 2016, and they definitely won’t fix the world now. But they help me stay grounded in it.

And I don’t believe that because social media is evil, although some days it is really committed to the bit. I believe it because our attention is precious.

Reading helped me find my way back to depth, curiosity, and quiet.

And sometimes the way back to your soul is simple:

Put down the scroll, pick up a story, and live a little deeper.

 

Lake Tahoe/introductory speech

My favorite place in the world is Lake Tahoe.

And I don’t mean favorite in some casual way.

I mean soul-level favorite.

The kind of place that changes you.

There’s just something about it.

The water is this unbelievable shade of deep cobalt at the center, fading to turquoise near the shore and somehow it is so clear you can see all the way to the bottom, even far from shore in some places when you are on a paddle board or kayak. It’s also freezing cold. The kind that takes your breath away.

It’s surrounded by mountain ranges and towering pine trees, and every single time I’m there, I still have that moment of, “How is this place even real?”

The air is the kind of mountain air that makes you want to take a deeper breath.

You hear water everywhere. Waterfalls. Alpine lakes. Lake Tahoe itself lapping against the shore.

Then there are all the other sounds: wind moving through the trees, bird songs, the squeak of squirrels and chipmunks, and the distant buzzing of bees.

Hopefully distant. I got stung there last year and weirdly still have a mark on my leg. Tahoe’s version of a tattoo, I guess.

There’s something about being there that just settles me. It calls me to slow down, to be still, and when I’m there, I feel this deep sense of gratitude and peace that’s hard to explain unless you have a place like that too.

But I didn’t fully understand how much I needed nature until 2007. That was the first time I went to Lake Tahoe, and it was about two months after my dad died.

Now, grief is weird and also very personal.

Especially when you are not grieving the relationship you had.

You’re grieving the relationship you wish you had.

My dad and I were estranged for most of my life, and we weren’t really aligned on much: religion, politics, the way we lived our lives, pretty much everything.

So when he died, of course I was sad.

But I think what I was really grieving was what never happened, the relationship I wished we could have had. I just felt so heavy.

For seven days in Lake Tahoe, I hiked miles and miles. I sat on rocks listening to waterfalls. I watched the lake. I listened to the trees.

Somewhere during that week, something shifted. Not in some dramatic kind of way. But I did feel lighter. Like I could breathe again. Like maybe I was going to be okay.

I still can’t fully explain what shifted that week. Maybe it was finally sitting still long enough to feel everything. Maybe it was listening to nature instead of the noise in my own head.

I just know I came back feeling less heavy.

That trip taught me that what I love about nature is probably the same thing I’m good at with people.

What I love most about being in nature is how it makes me feel: calmer, more grounded, more like myself.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that’s what I try to give other people too.

I think I’m really good at listening. People tend to tell me things, sometimes really big things.

Whether it’s a friend going through something hard, someone trying to make a difficult decision, or the work I do supporting a CEO, I think what I’m usually trying to create is space. A moment where somebody feels heard, a little calmer, clearer, maybe even a little lighter.

So if you ask me what I love, it’s absolutely nature.

But what lives in the sweet spot between what I love and what I’m good at is helping people feel seen. And maybe that’s what Lake Tahoe gave me almost 20 years ago. Not healing exactly. Just enough space to breathe again.

I go back every September to breathe and be still.

I think some places like some people just stay with you.

 

Panic With Forward Motion

Sometimes the story you remember most is not the perfect part of the trip. It’s the moment everything goes sideways.

My partner Mark and I love active vacations, especially hiking trips.

In March of 2021, we went to Tucson, Arizona, and for five days, everything was perfect.

Warm weather. Great food. Long hikes. Desert trails that looked like another planet.

Then came our second-to-last day.

We had planned a 10-mile hike in Pima Canyon. Rocky, steep, full sun. The kind of hike where hiking poles are not decorative.

We were on the descent, about three miles from the trailhead, and Mark was hiking ahead of me.

Suddenly we heard it.

That unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake. oh my god

Now, I would like to say that both of us calmly backed away and gave the snake plenty of space, because that would have been the mature experienced-hiker thing to do.

But for reasons known only to Mark and whatever ancient male instinct says, “Let’s investigate the danger,” he tried to figure out where the snake was.

Then he realized it was about three feet in front of him on the trail.

He jumped back.

His foot got caught between two rocks.

His body went one direction.

His ankle went another.

And that is how our peaceful desert hike became a medical evacuation with scenic views.

Let me just say, I am not who you want on your team during zombie apocalypse.

While Mark was on the ground, trying to crawl away from the rattlesnake, and I was standing there with my entire nervous system fully lit up like a Christmas tree.

I said, “What should I do?”

And Mark said very calmly, “well, I’m going to need you to call 911 and tell them we’re in Pima Canyon and I broke my ankle.”

Which was helpful.

I started running up the trail with my phone in the air, because apparently I believed one extra foot of elevation was going to unlock the full power of Verizon Wireless.

I finally got enough service to call 911. They told me they were sending a helicopter.

While I was on the phone, a kind couple stopped to help Mark. They gave him water, wrapped his ankle, and proved they had packed actual emergency supplies while we had packed snacks and false confidence.

Then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Ninety minutes later, I finally heard the helicopter.

It came over the canyon, and I have never been so relieved and so terrified at the exact same time.

An EMT was lowered down by a rescue hoist like a human spider. While he tended to Mark,  I realized I had a choice.

I could hike three miles down the canyon alone, knowing that snake was still out there

Or I could get hoisted into a helicopter hovering high above the canyon floor, even though I am afraid of flying, heights, dangling, and being suspended in the air like human cargo.

I chose the helicopter. Not because I felt brave.

But because I wanted to stay with Mark.

The EMT strapped me into what I can only describe as an industrial-sized diaper and asked

 “Are you afraid of heights?”

I said, “Yes. Yes. Very.”

He said, “I recommend you Keep your eyes closed.”

I have never followed instructions more successfully in my life.

A few minutes later, I was inside the helicopter, shaking so hard I was practically convulsing.

Then they hoisted Mark up and while 

I was having one of the worst moments of my life while Mark was having the time of his life.

Apart from the severely fractured ankle, this was apparently very exciting for him.

He got into the helicopter, saw me shaking, and immediately tried to comfort me.

So there we were. He had the broken ankle. I had the emotional emergency. And somehow, he was the one calming me down.

By the time we reached the hospital, we were dehydrated, sunburned, covered in canyon dust, and safe.

And that is the part I still think about.

I remember the rattlesnake because of course.

I remember the strangers who stopped to help.

I remember being terrified and still getting into that helicopter. I remember wondering why we didn't pack a first aid kit. 

And I remember Mark, broken ankle and all, somehow still being the calmest person in the canyon.

That day did not teach me that I’m fearless because obviously. 

It taught me that courage can look a lot less like confidence and a lot more like panic with forward motion.

It taught me that the people beside you matter.

And it taught me that sometimes the story you remember most is not the perfect part of the trip.

It’s the part where everything goes sideways, and somehow, together, you find your way out.