October 7, 2026
On my hike today, I came up behind a young family with a little girl. They heard me coming and stepped to the side of the trail to let me pass. I said hello, thanked them, and kept going.
As I walked ahead, I heard the little girl ask her parents, “But wait, how come she doesn’t have a leader?”
Her dad answered, “Well, sweetie, she is the leader. She is her own leader.”
I giggled the whole way up the trail, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. To her, a person out in the woods alone must have looked like someone who’d lost her group. But her dad saw it differently, and he was right.
I’ve been choosing my own path for a long time now, in business, in travel, in how I live. Most days I don’t stop to name it.
Today a stranger named it for me, in a sentence meant for a child, and it landed harder than any advice I’ve ever been given.
I am my own leader. I think I just needed to hear someone say it out loud.
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