Too Humble to Be Seen

Women are often taught that humility is a virtue. And it is, until it becomes self-erasure.

In this episode, we unpack the way many women instinctively minimize their accomplishments, deflect praise, over-credit others, and move past their wins without ever fully allowing themselves to feel proud of what they achieved.

We explore how women are socially conditioned to prioritize humility, likability, and belonging, while confidence and visible self-advocacy are often rewarded differently in men, especially in leadership and workplace environments. Over time, many women learn that being visible can feel risky, so they shrink their contributions before anyone else has the chance to.

The result? Women who are deeply capable become overlooked, under-recognized, and disconnected from their own success.

This conversation is not about arrogance, ego, or becoming louder than everyone else. It’s about learning the difference between bragging and healthy ownership, and understanding that acknowledging your contribution does not take anything away from the people around you.

Because there’s a difference between being humble… and disappearing from your own story.

Thank you for listening to NDA!

If this episode made you think, challenged a perspective, or helped you recognize a pattern in yourself, consider sharing it with someone else who might need the conversation.

You can connect with us on Instagram at @nda_pod, where we continue the discussion between episodes.

Until next time, notice the pattern. Then decide what happens next.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Tell me if this sounds familiar to you, Amanda. Knowing you the way I think I do, I bet you it is something you can relate to. Have you ever noticed how you are literally holding all these things together? I don't know, maybe mapping out a million and one plans for things that you guys have to do around the house, you and your husband, being the emotional support person to your family, friends, solving 100 problems before I won't say 9 a.m. because you're not a morning person.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Before noon. Definitely not before 9 a.m. Noon is fair, unless I've had a significant amount of coffee. But noon is fair, yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

And somehow pulling things together faster than anyone else could if they tried, only to respond to someone's compliments with, oh yeah, sure, it was not as good as I wanted, or it was a little bit of a mess. Have you ever done that? Uh more times than I can count. I think a lot of us do that. And we don't even realize how automatically we do it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Yeah, it's so true. I was just talking to someone yesterday, actually, who, very, very long story short, is working on some really interesting plans for expanding her business. And the entire time she kept talking about how I'm not the the one with the brilliant ideas, or it's not me, it's other people. And I at one point I just stopped and I looked at her and I was like, oh, I beg to differ. I I think you are the brilliant one, actually, just based on this last hour that we've been chatting, right? And and it is, it's always like attributing it to other people, or oh, I was just a small part of it, and really softening the role that they played in the success or the win or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Right. And you know what? You just made me chuckle because you know how the Olympics are always adding new events? I think I had one that we could add. What if we added one relative to watching women try to accept compliments? Your everyday women. Because Yeah, that's like you just gave the perfect example with the person you were referencing, and then one just popped into my mind when you said that. But I have very thick hair. Okay, so hang with me here, listen because this is relative to what I'm saying. So I have really thick hair, meaning I wash it every three to four days. That doesn't mean that's how often I bathe myself, so don't worry, everybody. And you're probably the same as me then, Amanda, where on day three or four is actually when my hair looks the best. It's crazy. Just this past week, someone said, Oh my god, I love your hair. It looks great. What do you think I said? Probably not.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Thank you. I put so much time and effort into it.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

I said thanks. It's really dirty if you look.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

So that's an example. Oh my god, why do we do this to ourselves? I don't I don't know why. Well, that's what we're here to talk about today. How women especially have such a hard time accepting compliments, owning their part in wins at work, at home, all of the above, because we have a lot on our shoulders, we do a lot, and we're good at what we do and we should own it.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Most NDAs keep people quiet. Ours does the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Around here, NDA means no dicks allowed. Not men, the behaviors that keep women small.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

This is the podcast for women who are done shrinking and ready to rise. I'm Amanda Kachurka. And I'm Elizabeth Cipola. Welcome to NDA.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Just to clarify, this episode is not about becoming performative, self-important, dismissive of others. It's about learning how to acknowledge your own contributions without apology or explanation.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

I'm the queen of always needing to bite my tongue because I want to give an explanation. But yes, that is what today is about.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

So where does this come from? We've talked before about how a lot of these behaviors start even from when we're very young, young girls being rewarded for being humble and agreeable and modest, and boys being rewarded for displaying confidence and certainty and visible achievement. And so I think there's definitely a foundation that goes back to as we were raised, what types of behaviors were encouraged and celebrated. And I actually have a distinct memory. We used to send out a family Christmas letter every year that kind of updated friends and family on what everybody was doing.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

You were one of those families.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

We were. And I one year, I was probably, I don't know, 12 or so. I volunteered to write it because I love writing. It's one of my favorite things to do. I wrote a draft of the letter and I showed it to my mom and she got done reading, and I was like super proud of it. And she got done reading and she looked at me and she was like, It's good, but it's coming off really braggy. Oh. And I was like, Oh, she was like, Yeah, I don't, that's not really the image that I want to portray. I want it to be really humble and not come off as look how great we are. There were other members of the family and friends letters that we received that were like notoriously maybe a little over the top. And I think my mom was afraid of being that. But what I didn't realize until much later in my life was that was one of my first memories of being told, you don't publicly celebrate these things, you stay humble and you don't outwardly express how much you've accomplished.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

So, out of curiosity with that example, can you go back to that conversation with your mom at 12 and remembered, did it feel a little off? Like, ooh, that doesn't seem oh, it did. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah, I was surprised. I'm thinking of these other letters that we received that were over the top. And because there were accomplishments that were mine and my brothers and even my parents that I had listed in the letter that I was really proud of. Right. And it was like, oh, you mean I don't get to tell people about this? So it was just kind of weird.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

And at that age, you're still really putting a lot of value into the advice of your parents. So you probably really took that to heart and stored that away in your brain to try to recall later on, oh, I don't want to come off too much as though I'm bragging, even in other situations, I would imagine. We try to condition it out of young ladies who are naturally excited or confident in certain areas.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Yes, we definitely do. You practice those behaviors when you're young, and then they carry into your adult life. Then you are in situations as you get into working life where there's a fear of self-advocacy because there's this if I appear to be proud of myself or proud of something that I accomplished, then I'm viewed as self-centered and not a good team player. And it just kind of grows and expands and gets reinforced, then we learn to just shrink our contributions, soften our expertise, overcredit other people, undercredit ourselves. Right. And it just snowballs basically.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

It does. And I definitely don't think that most women wake up and decide, you know what, I'm not gonna celebrate myself today. I right, I do think we learn in earlier life experiences when we're really making sense of everything around us that there are consequences if you take up too much space, let's say. So what is it that we want when we're growing up? What is it that we want from within our family or in our social circle or at school, and then later on in the workplace as grown women, we want to feel a sense of belonging. And so what happens is we as women, we learn that belonging feels safer than visibility. So that's when we're like, okay, then I want to belong. I don't want to put myself out there too much because of the consequences. So I'm going to one of my favorite things, overapologize. That's something I used to do all the time. I was a chronic overapologizer, and I notice it in so many women. Or we don't say anything, we just stay quiet, as you and I have talked about before. We just downplay our successes. I did it with you, Amanda. I did it right before we hit record for today's podcast episode. So I'm gonna call myself out. I had an idea for our podcast intro. And instead of me just coming out with it and sharing it, what did I do? I minimized it. I'm like, oh, it's stupid, it's a dumb little idea.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

What the hell? What are we doing? We do it unconsciously so much. I could sit here and list a million different times where I've done this in the last, I don't know, week, two weeks. Right. Right. I think there's also the lens of, you know, it comes from the the visibility component that you mentioned. I think there's also the other side of it where there's the desire to seek perfectionism, which honestly I think is a whole separate episode. Yes, just just on that topic. But just to kind of touch on it a little bit, some women, it's not a visibility issue. They're prioritizing belonging over visibility. They don't celebrate wins because they're only focused on what wasn't perfect. Right. And so any achievement is not enough unless it's completely flawless.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Or you know what? This too. So I'm building on what you said. Yes, and I have this superstitious jinxing it mindset, right? So I literally worry that if I celebrate too much or too early, that something bad might happen next. I'm guilty of that big time. And you know what? Thank you. Because you are constantly pushing me in that way. You just sent me a really lovely text last week, as a matter of fact, pointing out something for us to celebrate. If you're waiting for me to send that, uh until I continue doing more work on myself, you'll be waiting until the cows come home. But so thank you for that. But yeah, it's like this jinxing it superstition where I'm scared to celebrate too soon. It's almost like, well, I'll allow myself to feel proud once it's really, really, really secure or like you said, close to perfect.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

Right. Yeah, exactly. And for the record, the text that I sent, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've texted something like that. So a little context for the listeners. Elizabeth and I, we've mentioned before, we've started our own venture outside of the podcast, and we're just what, two, three months in officially to doing it full time. Anyway, Elizabeth and I are both very driving personalities, and we are the types of people who success is never going to come as fast as we would like it to. So I think when we both started this venture, we were wanting to see major success really quickly, not thinking about the fact that, hey, we're bringing this up from the ground from nothing. And it takes time to do that. And so it's really easy for us to get discouraged and focus on, at least for me, I don't know if you share this too, but we're not hitting where I thought we would be revenue-wise as quickly as I thought we would, and really getting hung up on that and ignoring the success that we have had and how much revenue we have generated again for something that is brand new. I was really stuck in that loop myself. And so when I was looking at our QuickBooks and actually paying attention to the amount of revenue that we've generated, I was like, oh, holy shit, we actually have done really well for something that we're building from nothing, especially. Like, that's really cool. This is awesome. Yes. That was that was a really good lesson for me to just recognize the success that we've had and stop and celebrate when I realized how much revenue we generated and I sent you that text, I was feeling amazing. So I'm gonna look for more opportunities to celebrate uh like that as it relates to the venture that we do together and other areas too, but I think that's a big one for sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Thank you for doing that. I appreciate that. Whoever would have thought, Amanda, that you would be described as our company's uh cheerleader, never in a million years, especially for anybody who knows me, especially professionally.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Like that's not something you would expect from me. No, definitely not. The thing that I think is funny, and I think about this even in the context of the consulting work that we've done in our careers. We are, and even personal relationships, we're really good at celebrating other people, but refuse to extend the same acknowledgement to ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

As we were preparing for today's episode, and as I was really doing some soul searching of my own, I was just challenging myself to think of why it is I constantly have to work hard at allowing myself to celebrate my wins. And it's almost like that I have this fear of fully allowing myself to be prideful or joyous with something I've accomplished or been a part of accomplishing. It's almost like my nervous system is constantly emotionally braced, at least in my upbringing. If you were praised for something, it was really quickly followed by being criticized or accused of boy, you think you're better? And just listening to how aunts and uncles talked about each other and and their own nieces and nephews, and just our parents. And I really think for me, it never really has ever felt safe to settle into allowing myself to be proud because I'm scared that something else is gonna come and knock me down.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, I think if you have that reinforcement of every celebration of a success is going to be coupled with a dig, yeah, it's no wonder that you have developed that conditioning over the years to expect when you celebrate something that something else that's negative is gonna come along with it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Or, like you said, with that, we could do a whole episode on perfectionism. For those of us who struggle with that, all we can see is what still needs to be done. So it's almost like we move that goalpost for ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

For sure. There is an important distinction to be made here because there is a difference between saying and having a level of really healthy ownership over a successing, I worked really hard on that, I'm really proud of it, and using an achievement to establish superiority over someone else or another group of people, there's a difference. And yeah, we're talking about the healthy ownership side of things, but I think even the healthy ownership side is tough. Something that's a good practice that I'm actually going to take my own advice here because I deflect compliments a lot too. We talk about the power of the pause a lot. So when someone gives me a compliment, I think pausing and just responding with thank you. Yes, yes, that's it. Period. That's a full sentence. Thank you is a full sentence. And instead of feeling like I have to bring some kind of qualifier to the table or explain or oh, it was nothing. Thank you. Right. I'm gonna start doing that. I'm gonna start practicing that. I like that. Just saying thank you. Yeah, because I think over time, the more we do this, there are consequences, right? As women, we talk a lot about wage gaps and how there are more now than there used to be, but still not enough. Women in executive leadership roles or positions of power. And this all directly correlates because when you compound it over an entire population of women that are all doing this in to some degree, that as a group holds us all back, right? It's it's because something that I really reflected on as I was preparing for today's episode is that people cannot consistently advocate for contributions they never fully see or understand. Right. If we continuously minimize our role, others around us absorb that framing as well, whether that's intentional or not, it happens. Then you're in a situation where somebody's being asked to speak on your behalf about your accomplishments, whether it's a reference or just a colleague or or whatever, and they can't do it because you haven't done enough advocating and promoting of the work that you've done. They can't speak to it.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Right. We saw that all the time in our previous live when we were interviewing candidates, when we were doing reference checks, we see these really capable, very accomplished women who are minimizing their contributions in the interview process or what have you. And then what happens is the hiring manager would understandably underestimate them. So then there we would be pointing out and trying to lead into, oh, but remember this example that you shared with us in the previous interview? How about you talk a little bit more about that? And most women, we don't have a hype girl sitting there next to us to do that and to point it out. So that does lead to, like you said, lower compensation or missing out on an opportunity to be hired, or maybe the leadership you are providing is being completely overlooked and the expertise you do possess is being undervalued when each one of us says thank you to a compliment that is, when each one of us doesn't qualify our accomplishments or doesn't stand down or remain silent when they're at a table and they have an opportunity to contribute, it actually truly does help all of us.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Absolutely. There's and I you have to think about the kind of ripple effect of this too, is in a workplace where you've got a woman, for example, in a management role who is refusing to acknowledge their own value and their own contributions. There are younger women on the team who are watching that happen and they're not having the example of a model for what advocating for yourself and celebrating your wins really looks like. So then that also impacts the team because there's less clarity on who contributed what. And collaboration over time can actually become less effective because people don't realize the role that that woman was playing. So maybe issues that were solved or ideas that were contributed get lost because they don't know that that was where they came from. So they can't keep going back to that source to repeat that success. So it really is so much bigger than just ourselves. And that ripple effect is important to keep in mind.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

It is. And if we can be one another's hype girls, right? Be one another's hype girls, even to a stranger that you just met. I just went today to an appointment at Eight Limbs Wellness Studio on Chautauqua Avenue in Lakewood, New York. And it was with a woman I just met for the first time. Her name is Sandy. She did an amazing job for some chronic discomfort and pain I've been having related to my plantar fasciitis. I just was so appreciative of just the care and compassion she showed me and just the instant relief that I experienced, which enabled me to carry on with today's episode without feeling distracted from pain and discomfort. And I shared that with her. And I just told her a few different times, thank you. You're so good at what you do. Thank you. I really appreciate you. And you know what? She really brightened up. Not that she was negative, it really lit her up. And so what starts as an external compliment quickly becomes internal to the person receiving it. And I think a lot of times we as women, as we talked about in the last episode from last week about mean girl behavior, we are conditioned to feel as though we have to nitpick each other and scan for what's missing. And then we literally are disconnected from being able to identify what's working. I'm working with so many women right now and coaching them, where I'm having to teach them how to recognize what's working in their lives. I've been using these podcast episodes, I think, as a therapy session, as I'm raising a daughter who's who recently turned 18 and reminds me of that on the daily. Um, as a senior in high school, I mean that with peace and love. And she's probably going to listen to this episode. So I want to make sure she knows I mean that with peace and love. But where I'm going with this is I think, despite our best efforts as parents, to do all the right things and to try to instill confidence in a different way than what we experienced when we were growing up, so that we can break some of those generational cycles. We still recognize how our daughters struggle.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

For sure. And I think another important point is sort of similar actually to a point that we made a couple episodes ago when we were talking about mean girls, but acknowledging your own contributions and your own successes does not negate anybody else's contribution or successes. Those things can and should, frankly, coexist.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

And I think there's such a concern of coming across as, oh, if I talk about my contributions or if I talk about my win, then that's going to overshadow someone else, or that's going to leave somebody else out. You can both be successful. You can both have contributions and you can acknowledge them independently of each other. Yes, we definitely can.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Because you know what? As our listeners, and we have built a really loyal base of listeners who, for those of you who maybe this is your first one to listen to, we like to affectionately call you the rise. And those of us who listen to this podcast and the people we care about, we understand that we don't have to shrink our wins anymore. And you know what else? If we have been shrinking our wins, we don't have to shame ourselves for doing it. And at the same time, we can choose to say thank you. We can choose to recognize another woman's win. And we can choose to celebrate it out loud. If you're in the grocery store and you pass someone and they look really beautiful in a particular shirt they're wearing, tell them. If someone has a lovely smile, tell them. Oh, your smile just brightened my day. It's been a crazy day today. Whatever it is, say it out loud because we want with this episode and with all the work we're doing through this podcast, this is a passion for us. And we want to normalize people publicly naming other people's contributions, not just women, by the way, but all of us. We want to normalize that because in today's world, the opposite is much louder, and we need to do something about it. It's so true.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Saying things like, I'm proud of the role that I played in that. Thank you. I worked really hard on this. I took the time to make sure I was well prepared and it really paid off. Those are completely appropriate things to say that are positioning the success that you had and celebrating the win that you had, without also simultaneously, you know, using that to position yourself as superior to somebody else. So it's a it's a more authentic and still assertive way to share your success. And I think these are all things that we need to practice saying. And it sounds silly, but even if there's going to be an opportunity that you know of coming up where you would tend to pass off the contribution to someone else or make it more about the team and and not acknowledge your own participation or role in it, practice in the mirror. Yes. Practice with a trusted friend or a partner or a family member. Just saying thank you. I I'm really proud of the work that I did, or I'm really proud of the role that I played. And just practice saying it so it gets more comfortable because it is the first few times you do it, it's gonna feel a little awkward, especially if you're not used to doing it. And I think for those who are looking to be allies, and for those who are in, you know, leadership positions or or work on teams with other people, specifically naming women's contributions in meetings, not allowing their ideas to be absorbed without attribution, encouraging women to speak to their own impact directly. And this is something that I have really worked on over the years is if I agree with a point that was made especially by a woman, I will echo, oh, to further emphasize Elizabeth's point or to build on what Elizabeth just mentioned, I will always call out the source for where it came from. Love that. So I think this is an appropriate time to transition to our recurring segment, shrink this. I talked about mine a little bit earlier in this episode, which was I have really caught myself lately beating myself up over the venture that we're building outside of the podcast, and you know, allowing myself to be brought down by some of the challenges or frustrations and not celebrating the wins enough. And I think sort of building on that, I've also caught myself not being fully honest and vulnerable. The question of the day that I receive virtually everywhere I go now, how's business? How's the business going? And with very few people, even like super close friends and family members, I actually just two weeks ago, I think, gave an honest answer to my brother when he asked me. I just kind of looked at him, I'd hit my limit for the day of that question. And I looked at him and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna be really honest with you. It's terrifying, it's very scary because you're looking at the revenue that you're bringing in and you're thinking, like, okay, that's the equivalent of X number of payrolls or X number of expenses, and that's only so far in the future. So then what happens after that? And I am definitely in the business of borrowing trouble from the future. I do it all the time. My therapist has really been reminding me of that lately. Shout out to Amy. Um, anyway, so that was the first time that I actually gave an honest answer, and it was funny. He just sort of chuckled and he was like, Well, yeah, of course, you're building a business from nothing. And he was super supportive and like happy that I shared an honest answer with him. But more often than not, I don't do that. Oh, it's great. The response has been amazing, which is true, but I think I kind of allow that to overshadow the realness of what this experience has been. And I think it goes back to a shrinking behavior we talked about a few episodes ago with people on social media sharing only their best days. And I feel like that's kind of what I was doing by downplaying any of the lower points that we've had as we've built this business. And so that's that's the shrinking behavior that I've been exhibiting. So I'm really working on giving honest answers. I mean, not like over sharing, but at least being honest about what this process has been, the good and the bad, because I don't know who I'm talking to if they have had a similar experience and I'm sharing that, oh, everything is rosy and perfect. They're gonna walk away from that conversation thinking, oh God, what's I'm really behind. Or yeah, exactly. And I don't want people to walk away from conversations with me thinking that. Right. That's a really, really good one. I like that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

The one that I am I was really trying to think of. I had so many to choose from. The the one I decided to do today has to do with how very recently, as in within the past few days, I caught myself treating it, was like I was treating my body as if it were a problem to solve before I'm allowed to feel confident and again, which is wildly inconsistent with what I literally coach women for a living about in terms of not abandoning themselves. From my shrinking example, women, and and I'm talking about me in particular, I'm just curious if any of our listeners can relate, will gain some LBs, and then suddenly we act like we should no longer be allowed to make eye contact with the general public. Nothing humbles someone faster than what just happened to me yesterday on the very hot day we had, which is putting on some shorts that fit perfectly last summer, and I turned into a hostage negotiator with the two buttons, and I prayed to sweet baby Jesus. They didn't pop off and blind my dog who was standing there watching me. What really I've been noticing about myself is how quickly I have been allowing myself to get comfortable with withholding certain parts of myself until I feel acceptable again. And here's what I'm talking about not being as confident, not, and I'm talking about my physical appearance, right? Being less fully present when I am with other people or in a group situation because of how insecure I feel inside about my physical presence because of the weight that I've gained, or just being less soft towards myself and the way I think of myself. So to me, that's the actual shrink that I've noticed. And it was pretty humbling to me last night how fast someone like me, who's truly objectively accomplishing really hard, meaningful things in a lot of other areas, how I could reduce my entire self-worth down to whether or not I felt comfortable in last summer's jean shorts, right? Right. What I am challenging myself to do is telling myself I'm allowed to want to feel healthier and more like myself again and stronger. But at the same time, I am no longer willing to make my ability to take up space in my humanity conditional until I get there. So that's my challenge to myself. And I I'm sharing it because I hope it does have a have a ripple effect of hitting some of our other listeners for today's episode Square Between the Eyes, if you also need to hear it too.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

It's a good reminder for me too, because it's I've come a long way, but I still have a long way to go with that. It's it is it's a good lesson for all of us. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

Yeah, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

So I think to summarize what we talked about today, so many women have spent their lives believing that they have to choose between being humble and being visible, but the bottom line is that there is a middle ground. And you can honor the people around you, value your own participation, value collaboration, stay grounded, and still fully acknowledge your own contributions, your own wins, your own successes. Those things can coexist. Yes, they can.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

And when they do, it feels a lot better than the alternative, which is the space that a lot of us are are existing in every day. So give it a try.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

You have nothing to lose. Right, exactly. And remember, whenever you receive a compliment, when someone comments on work that you've done or a contribution you've made or of success that you've achieved, just thank you. Speaking of which, thank you to all of our listeners. We are so grateful for you. And as a reminder, we are always looking to hear about your shrinking behaviors. Happy to anonymize those if you'd like. But I think there's so much value in you sharing the behaviors that you're exhibiting and catching yourself in, whether it's something shrinking behavior that you've not recognized, or maybe you're not sure if it's shrinking behavior, or if you have recognized it and are working to improve it, we want to hear about it so we can share it with, as Elizabeth said, the rise. And because the the focus of this podcast is really helping us, Elizabeth and myself included, learn and grow together and recognize these behaviors because when we recognize the behavior, we create awareness of it, we're empowering the ability to choose to show up differently next time. So please feel free to send us a note on Instagram. We are at Nda underscore pod. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, anywhere you get your podcasts. We would love to hear from you. So please do that. And remember, the goal is not to become louder than everyone else or minimize other voices. The goal is to stop disappearing from your own story.