not just a reset

April 21, 2026

I have not done many weekends away with women in my life.

I ran solo for a long time. Not dramatically. Not as a statement. Just as a pattern. I carried a lot, I moved fast, I kept my own counsel, and the idea of a whole weekend somewhere with other women was not really in my vocabulary. I was not avoiding it. I just did not know I was missing it. Which, looking back, feels like poor planning.

Then Maria came into my life, and weekends started to look different. Most of them have been at home. Coffee, conversation, the easy rhythm of women who do not need to fill every silence or perform friendship like it is being graded. That alone was new for me.

This one was different. Maria asked me to come away with her for the bodybuilding show. Not a retreat. Not a reset. A work weekend for her, and she wanted me there. I went because she asked.

At first I thought the trip would mostly be about recovery anyway.

A break. A brief relocation of my nervous system. A temporary suspension of household logistics and the thousand invisible things that usually travel with me.
Leave the house. Change the scenery. Eat something nice. Laugh too hard. Wander into shops. Sleep somewhere that does not contain my usual responsibilities. Strong concept. No objections.

But I am starting to think this weekend was doing something else entirely.
It was revealing me to myself.

It was my first girls weekend with both Maria and Sheila, and I can already say Sheila is one of those people who disarms you by being completely herself. She is easy to be around in a way that makes your body unclench before your mind catches up. By the end of the first day I was already attached, which seems premature but apparently is now part of the record.

Maria, meanwhile, was in full coach mode because of the bodybuilding show, which meant there were approximately fourteen moving parts, several stress points, and the general atmosphere of women trying to manage aesthetics, logistics, food timing, and human emotion all at once. I, naturally, remained calm because somebody had to represent institutional stability.

This is one of my gifts.

Not tanning. Not posing. Not rice cake management.

Calm.

I am not saying I was the interim Chief Regulation Officer for the weekend, but the role was not vacant.

Maria is also the woman who has been asking me, for over a year now, a question I had not fully let myself answer.

What actually makes you happy?

Who are you beyond being an executive?

Not in a vague self-care way.

In a real way.

Who are you when the title comes off?

Who are you when competence is no longer the only thing people praise you for?

Who are you when your value is not measured by how much you can carry, solve, contain, manage, or survive?

Maria has seen that part of me more honestly than almost anyone. She is also, not coincidentally, the person who taught me that I did not have to keep doing everything alone, which was inconvenient information for someone who had built a fairly robust solo operating system.

So there we were. In Victoria. On show day. Somewhere between bodybuilding, friendship, fashion, coffee, and chaos, which is honestly one of my preferred categories of experience.

And then, between the morning show and the evening one, we walked by an art gallery that stopped me.

Not because it was flashy.

Because it looked like the life I want.

Brick. Light. Restraint. Presence. Nothing overworked. Nothing trying too hard. Nothing with the energy of a place that had recently hired a branding consultant and become unbearable. It just stood there with that quiet confidence that says art belongs here and does not need to explain itself.

And in that moment, something opened.

For the first time while I was actually out in the world, not privately reflecting and not half joking, I openly talked about being an artist and about my next chapter as one. Showing my work. Living as one. Building a life around it.

Not as an accessory to who I am.

As the chapter itself.

That mattered.

Not because I became an artist in that moment. I did not. The evidence has been sitting around for years, dressed better than most people and waiting for the meeting to catch up.

But there is something different about saying it out loud in public, in motion, with two women beside you, and letting it stand without apology.

It felt less like fantasy and more like recognition.

For a long time, other people saw my fashion, writing, photography, and all the other creative instincts in my life as disconnects from the more acceptable thirty-year profile of leader, executive, CEO, serious person in serious rooms doing serious things.

But they were never disconnects.

Fashion was not frivolous.

Writing was not extra.

Photography was not random.

They were all pointing somewhere.

And what I am seeing now is that weekends like this one have held more than rest. More than shopping, coffee, laughter, and outfits, though for the record I remain committed to all four.

They have made room.

Room to be less managed.

Room to say things before they are fully packaged.

Room to stop acting as though the most interesting parts of me need to wait politely in the hallway until the respectable meeting is over.
And with Sheila there too, something about that room expanded.

It is rare to be with women and not feel the slightest pressure to edit yourself into one clean, readable version. Rare to feel no need to explain your intensity, your humour, your style, your range, your ambition, or your odd little side roads that are not side roads at all. Rare to realize you are not being tolerated in your full self like an eccentric appendix to the main event. You are being met there.
For a woman who spent most of her life running solo, that is not small.

There is something quietly powerful about being with women who do not ask you to reduce yourself to one recognizable role. Women who are not confused by your range. Women who let you be whole. Funny. Thoughtful. Stylish. Tired. Slightly overcommitted. Looking at art between bodybuilding events and discussing your future with complete sincerity while still carrying lip gloss.

That is my kind of spiritual development.

So no, this weekend was not just a reset.

It was proof that some forms of friendship do more than comfort you. They return parts of you that had been waiting, somewhat patiently, for better company.
It was a reminder that some people see you more clearly than the world has.
It reminded me that the parts of me that did not neatly fit the old profile were not mistakes.

They were trying to lead.

And maybe that is what I am finally learning.

Sometimes your next chapter does not arrive with a formal launch strategy.

Sometimes it arrives in Victoria.

With a stressed coach, a woman you have quickly grown to adore, an art gallery that feels unhelpfully specific to your future, and the realization that what looked like a girls weekend was, in fact, a full character development arc with lip gloss.