Wherever You Go, There You Are
I don't usually revisit things:
I rarely read a book twice, I try to move on quickly from regret (with varying levels of success, let's be honest), and I have never - not once in my life - gone back to read any of the hundreds of journals (or my “Nerdals” as my family and friends call them) I've kept over the years.
But when I found myself at my sister's house last week, going through boxes of old mementos and cleaning out the random stuff I’d been hoarding since the late 90’s, I started opening Nerdals…and started reading.
I laughed, I cried, I cringed. Then laughed again, because what else can you do?!
The whole time, one phrase kept circling in my head: Wherever you go, there you are.
Because here's the thing: I have been writing pretty much the same things about love and breakups and my career and my family and manifesting and surrendering for the last 25 years, no joke.
Which got me thinking: do we actually change as humans? Like, fundamentally change? Or do we just keep growing into a more concentrated, more undeniable version of who we've been since the beginning?
This came up - in a different but still unmistakeable way - when Helaine and I recorded Episode 11 of Step Into Next. We finally did the thing we'd been putting off: we told our origin stories, and how we each actually got here.
For me, that meant going back to my life as a young writer in New York, then a bartender, then a coach/trainer, then the founder of Uplift, the fitness studio and female empowerment community I ran for nearly a decade before closing it in 2019. I wrote about that whole chapter at the time - if you want the unfiltered version of me back then, you can check it out here and here. It was a LOT, but the nice thing I’m learning from talking to our guests on Step Into Next is that literally everyone has gone through it in some - or many - forms.
What struck me in recording that particular episode, though, was how much of who I am now was already present back then. My values, and obsessions, and slightly-too-much-honesty sometimes while keeping things way too close to my chest other times.
I thought I'd reinvented myself multiple times over, but it turns out I've mostly just been iterating on the original!
Then came Episode 12, where we interviewed Carrie Kerpen - entrepreneur, author, advisor, and someone I've known my entire adult life because we share a best friend (Hi, Dale!).
Having Carrie on the podcast felt less like booking a guest and more like a reunion. Here's a woman I've been connected to since before I had any clue what I was doing with my life, showing up in this particular next chapter to talk about exits and optionality and building something that actually buys you freedom. The conversation was amazing and strategic (and exactly what women in business - and beyond - need right now). But the meta-fact of her presence - someone from my roots, now here - felt like this essay writing itself in real time.
Wherever you go, there you are.
I think we're taught to treat the past as something to leave behind - move on, don't dwell, keep your eyes on what's ahead. And I get it, because I've spent a LOT of energy doing exactly that. But going back through those Nerdals reminded me that the past isn't some trap to avoid - it is, as we say in business, data points.
Checking in on my younger self made me want to give her a huge hug and let her know that there would be tons of challenges, but she would grow and get stronger and better and have a big amazing life full of lots of love, adventure, incredible people, and places. And she’ll continue to be the spiritually inclined optimist she apparently has been since birth. Oh, and she’s only just beginning, even now.
That raw material in my journals was a through-line I can only now understand, since I’m a bit more willing to look at the whole picture of my life at once - face things, if you will.
So, the goal isn't to go back and live there, but it's to go back and actually see so you can step forward with your eyes open.