A love letter to founders, death doulas, and anyone else who needs a confidence boost.
In early March, I was cracked open in the best way possible. For four days at Going with Grace’s death doula training in Albuquerque, New Mexico, we faced dying, death, and grief. Our own mortality included. The first invitation: no doing. Just being. I listened, reflected, journaled, cried, and fell into deep conversation with the other big hearts in the room, who we fondly called “death besties.”
On the last day, something quieter started to surface. A feeling I almost didn’t recognize. Steady, unhurried, not borrowed from anyone else’s belief or direction. I sat with it for a moment before I could name it.
Oh. Is that me?
For the last few months, I’ve been building a product strategy consultancy. The thrill of building a business based on my values and putting people at the center of their products, fueled this leap of faith. Yet, I kept reaching for external validation. A mentor. A startup friend. My partner. Even AI. Of course I appreciated the feedback, and sometimes it would help me think about or approach problems differently, but often I kept coming back to my instincts. So what was this about?
There is no right way to die. Or to build.
Back in the meeting space in Albuquerque, we were surrounded by discussions, stories, and affirmations that the body knows how to birth and how to die. Each death is unique and our own. When you sit with someone who is facing mortality, there’s no instruction manual for the person sitting vigil. Our job is to meet them and their support circle (family, friends, care team) where they’re at, in that moment.
Founders might be resonating with this feeling of ambiguity. How many times have you been given competing pieces of advice? Trusted someone else, or even an AI response, over your own instincts? Or maybe you’ve been comparing your ideas or product to another competitor?
It’s easy to favor the noise over your inner knowing.
You didn’t lose it. You just stopped listening.
Many of us, myself included, have spent years optimizing for someone else’s north star. Operating inside someone else’s values system, decisions, and definition of success. It might be a company, family or friends’ expectations, or society at large. Over time, you absorb the habits of taking feedback at face value, suppressing curiosity in order to spring to action, and deferring to someone else’s preference until your intuition gets harder and harder to hear.
And it goes deeper than habit. When we’ve spent long enough in environments that didn’t have space for our own knowing, we stop consulting ourselves. This body that has an inherent knowing of birth and death, that carries the accumulated wisdom of every ancestor who survived to pass something down to you — this body learns to look outward before it looks in.
The result? You have the gut feeling. It’s just hard to hear, and even harder to trust. Yet.
How to find your way back.
You already have the intuition. Next, you learn to trust it. Here’s how I found my way back.
Ground yourself in who you are. Reminding myself that many came before me and that I am a product of each generation who read a situation correctly and survived, makes me stand up a little straighter. Their stories, their instincts, their lives are encoded in me. I stand on their shoulders. And others will stand on mine. The decisions I make, the instincts I trust, the willingness to back myself right now… this gets passed on, too.
I like to think of my present body as a signal receiver. The more grounded I am, the more open I become to what my senses are already picking up. Explicit and implicit signals, things my conscious mind hasn’t caught up to yet. My gut isn’t guessing. It’s processing.
Make space before you act. The idea for this article came to me on a run. Running has been my active form of meditation for more than 25 years. It’s where my mind opens and something quieter gets to speak. Running is how I hear mine. Yours might be something else entirely. Meditation, walking, stream-of-consciousness journaling. Whatever gets you out of your head and lets your mind wander. The point isn’t the method. It’s finding just enough mental space to turn down the volume on everything else, so you can turn up the volume on yourself.
Be curious about feedback. Whether I agree with input or not, curiosity is how I find what’s useful in it. When feedback, data, or someone else’s opinion lands, I ask myself: what resonates, and what doesn’t? Where is it coming from, and how could that shape it? I’ve found that the best mentors and coaches don’t give you answers. They ask questions, because they know you already have the answer. They’re just helping you find your way to it.
Recognize when systems are not built for you and create your own. I’ve been in situations where existing frameworks don’t account for me because they weren’t designed with my context, needs, or situation in mind. It’s part of my motivation to build my consultancy. When your instincts pick up on this mismatch, that’s not a reason to doubt yourself. It’s an invitation to forge ahead and build something on your own terms.
Get creative. In Beyond Anxiety, Martha Beck makes the case that creativity is the antithesis of anxiety, as it engages an entirely different part of your nervous system. The anxiety spiral and the creativity spiral cannot run at the same time.
I enjoy picking up a paintbrush, but creativity can also show up in smaller moments throughout my day, including singing in the car, a quick dance break while making dinner, and doodling in the margins of my notes. Creativity doesn’t have to be a practice, it can be a posture, or a way to stay open throughout your day. I’ve written about this — the unexpected parallels between a watercolor class and building products.
And while comparing myself to others happens, I remind myself what my run coach said to me once. “Get your own watch and focus on your splits, not the others on the track.” If I do happen to peek at others, I use this observation to spark ideas and ignite curiosity, not measure my worth or set my own blueprint.
Try and learn. My inner knowing has strengthened over the last few months because I’ve had moments where I trusted myself enough to take a small step and see what it told me. I was not looking to move a mountain, just move in the right direction. Each attempt is teaching me something. Learning deepens my knowing. The two feed each other.
This article came to me two weeks after the death doula training. A friend and coach asked if I was going to write about the experience, and I let the question sit. Then one morning, on a run, my mind wandered and it came here. I didn’t force it. It just emerged.
Honestly, it scared me a little. Writing about my experience felt too woo woo. I worried it would turn business people away.
But this is me. This is the freedom I’m realizing as I embrace the courage to try and the grace to experiment. And when I show up as a product strategist, a coach, or a death doula in training, I bring every piece of me. That’s not a liability. This is who I am and this is my work.
What is your inner compass telling you?
A heartfelt thank you to Christy Dunwoodie, whose thoughtful read helped this piece find its shape.