What if the next stage of your life requires a different identity? There is an old way of describing the stages of a woman’s life: Maiden. Mother. Crone. I understand the history behind the word “crone,” and in some traditions it represents wisdom. But let’s be honest. For a modern woman, “Congratulations, you’ve reached your Crone years” doesn’t exactly make you want to throw confetti. It sounds like the story is winding down. And I think for many women, the opposite is happening. You may be entering the part of your life when you have more experience, more perspective, more discernment, and far less interest in proving yourself. You’re not disappearing. You’re becoming the Matriarch. And that is a very different identity. Maiden. Mother. Matriarch. I don’t see these simply as stages determined by age or whether a woman has children. I see them as different positions from which we create. The Maiden is becoming. She explores, learns, tries things, seeks approval, takes risks, discovers who she is. The Mother creates, builds, protects, nurtures, carries responsibility, solves problems, and often holds far more together than anyone realizes. Then something begins to change. The strategies that served the Mother start becoming exhausting. She doesn’t necessarily need to work harder, care more, or carry more. She needs a different relationship with her own authority. That is where I see the Matriarch. The Matriarch still cares deeply. But she doesn’t have to carry everything. She guides. She decides. She allows other adults to carry their own responsibilities. She knows when to intervene and when to stay out of the way. She has earned wisdom through experience, but perhaps more importantly, she begins trusting herself enough to use it. That shift sounds wonderful. Living it can be another matter. “I need better boundaries.” A woman I worked with recently was experiencing this transition in her family. She had spent years occupying the familiar role of the family mom. She helped. She worried. She stepped in. She carried things.

Today gave me a chance to practice exactly what I've been writing about. I woke up knowing what I needed to do. And then life happened. There was pressure and upset in my house. I got the kid to school. Cleaned the house. Went to the grocery store. Handled things that needed handling. And several things happened that could easily have become perfectly legitimate reasons to abandon what I had committed to doing for myself today. But I kept coming back to one thought: “This is still what I chose.” Maybe I'll only get 15 minutes at a time. That's okay. Because I realized there is a third piece: Capability asks: Can I do it? Capacity asks: Can I hold what doing it requires within the reality of my life? Commitment asks: When life pulls me away, will I return? I used to think commitment meant staying relentlessly focused. Now I'm questioning that. Maybe commitment is the return. Getting interrupted isn't failure. Feeling overwhelmed isn't failure. Having other responsibilities isn't failure. The critical moment is what happens next. Do I use what happened as a reason to abandon what I chose? Or do I return? Today, I'm returning. Maybe only 15 minutes at a time. But every time I do, I'm creating evidence that my commitments to myself matter. Capability. Capacity. Commitment. I think I'm going to be exploring these three for a while. I witness your mastery.

A 3-Part Series on Capability, Capacity & Commitment Part 1: When Your Results Don't Match Your Capability I had a thought recently that stopped me. My income isn't matching my capability. That is not particularly easy for me to say publicly. I've spent decades helping other people create results. I've coached millionaires. I've helped business owners break through income ceilings. I've helped people recognize their value, make better decisions, move through patterns that were holding them back, and create more money. When I'm working with someone else, I can often see their potential before they can. I see the opportunity. I see their genius. I see what's getting in the way. And I have no trouble believing in what's possible for them. But turning that same focus toward myself and my own financial well-being? That has been much harder. For a long time, the obvious question was: If I'm capable of helping other people create these results, why haven't I consistently created them for myself? It's tempting to answer that question by deciding something must be wrong with me. Maybe I need more discipline. A better strategy. A clearer message. More confidence. But I already have decades of evidence of my capability. So I've started asking a different question. What if my income isn't reflecting my capability? What if it's reflecting my capacity? That distinction opened up an entirely different conversation for me. And that's what I want to talk about next. I witness your mastery.