We Are Not the Same
This morning, I walked out with nothing on my mind.
No plan. No outline.
I simply asked… and this is what came.
I have sat, run, written, and talked with women for nearly 20 years.
And I can honestly say:
Not one of them has gotten sober like me.
Not one has written like me.
Walked like me.
Run like me.
Or spoken like me.
But I can tell you this—
Most of them have found joy.
Peace.
Astonishment.
Hope.
Love.
Opportunity.
And, maybe most importantly…
a different perspective of who they were
and a clearer vision of who they wanted to become.
Not through a formula.
Through an experience.
Through what often felt like a journey of wonderment and witnessing.
There is no way you could have predicted where they would land.
I think sometimes mentors, coaches, and guides miss the mark.
They expect their process to produce the same result they had.
We see it everywhere.
Before and after photos.
Programs that promise, “Follow this, and you’ll look and feel like this too.”
And yes—those images often capture something real.
There is joy in them.
But what they don’t show
is the path it took to get there.
Five pounds.
Ten.
Twenty.
Small decisions.
Moments of doubt.
Choosing again.
What feels good isn’t just the outcome.
It’s the experience of moving toward something.
Of deciding.
Of following through.
Of realizing:
“I did this.”
No matter how good your coach is…
you have to do the work.
And nothing feels better than doing the work
and feeling your confidence grow
and watching a broader horizon open up—
because you begin to understand
you can become who you decide to be.
In my early days of coaching, women would call me and say,
“I messed up.”
Meaning—they drank.
And I would open my arms, metaphorically, and say:
What if you didn’t mess up?
What if you had an experience
that could teach you something valuable—
if you were willing to look at it that way?
That perspective is different from what many of us have seen or been taught.
And I want to be clear here—
There are many paths that support people beautifully.
There are programs, communities, and structures
that give people language, belonging, and a way forward.
And they matter.
I’ve seen lives change within them.
But I’ve also seen something else.
I’ve seen women who don’t quite fit the structure…
who don’t respond to rigid expectations…
who carry more shame than support
when they can’t do it “the right way.”
And I don’t believe that means they are broken.
I believe it means
they may need a different way.
A way that honors their agency.
Their timing.
Their voice.
Because not everyone is meant to walk the same path.
Some women are not powerless.
Some women are powerful in ways
that don’t fit inside a system.
My work is not to shape a woman into me.
It’s to sit beside her.
Sometimes we start in a similar place.
But where we go?
Is always hers.
I bring lived experience.
Perspective.
Instinct.
Sometimes I’m a mirror.
Sometimes I ask questions.
Sometimes we create something together
that neither of us could have predicted.
I call that play.
I can run beside you and help you train for your first 5K.
But you won’t run like me.
Your stride will be different.
Your pace.
Your preference—trail, treadmill, road.
You might be stronger.
You might go farther.
When I trained with a woman for her first half-marathon,
she surpassed me.
And that’s the point.
It’s not just about how you run.
It’s what running becomes for you.
For me, it was spiritual.
Meditative.
Creative.
It was where I went to move energy.
To process.
To come back to myself.
You will find your own version of that.
The same is true in writing.
When I write with a woman,
her voice is hers.
Her words are shaped by her life—
what she’s lived, learned, read, felt.
She may write something
she’s never seen before.
When I write, I’m having a conversation.
Just like this.
You’re sitting beside me.
And if you were writing,
it would sound different.
Because it’s you.
And when we begin to look at patterns,
at choices,
at the life a woman is creating—
everything influences the outcome.
Her desires.
Her fears.
Her dreams.
Her devotion.
Her willingness.
And sometimes…
there is no goal at all.
Just space.
And that’s often where something real begins to rise.
This reminds me of a “book club” I’ve shared with a friend for over 10 years.
We’ll read the same page
and take away completely different things.
And when she shares her perspective,
I want to go back and reread it.
Not because I missed it—
but because it didn’t land for me
the way it did for her.
That’s how we grow.
Not by being the same.
But by being open
to what we didn’t see before.
We don’t learn by becoming identical.
We learn by expanding.
By opening the door wider.
By softening our grip on certainty.
By allowing something new
to meet us.
You are not me.
And I am not you.
And that…
is exactly the point.
