2 Tickets to Paradise…Mayday, Mayday! Crash Landing on the Battlefield of Chaos

A heart-to-heart on leadHERship, being misunderstood, and what grew from the questions I could not put down.✨🌿

A recent organizational review described a significant translation gap between what people were communicating and how I interpreted and responded to their concerns—one that the review presented as a threat to the organization’s ability to continue. As with any leader, this did not land well with me. Not because it was a slight or an opportunity for growth for me as a leader, but because I deeply love and care for the people I serve.

I heard the possibility that people could experience me as someone who did not hear them. Did not understand them. Could not translate what they needed.

And it hurt.

Because hearing people has always mattered to me. Understanding people matters to me. Creating spaces where women feel considered, supported, and able to grow has mattered to me for my entire life. I know that it's who God wired me to be.

I found myself sitting with a question I could not answer quickly:

There is a particular ache in being misunderstood by someone who has experienced you up close. Someone who has been in the rooms you prepared. Someone you have encouraged, made space for, and invested in.

You remember the conversations. The opportunities. The time. The details you handled because you wanted their experience to be meaningful.

Then you hear an interpretation of yourself, and you struggle to find that history inside it.

That was part of my reality.

How could I have worked so hard to create an environment for women to be seen and end up creating a space where not only are they not seen, but I'm not even seen? And I wanted room to say that without it immediately being interpreted as an inability to receive correction.

But being willing to be examined does not make the examination painless.

I went back to the surveys. To the evaluations. To the words of women who had experienced the community over the years.

There were records reaching back to 2016. We had asked about leadership, events, support, participation, and why women were leaving. Those questions had been part of our work. Their responses had been part of our conversations and adjustments.

I needed to remember that.

I found appreciation, connection, and positive experiences. I also found women with full lives, competing responsibilities, and limited capacity to participate. There were practical concerns about communication, access to information, and parts of an experience that needed improvement.

It was a fuller picture than the one I had been holding in my hurt.

Some of those answers brought back work that would never look impressive in a leadership profile. Searching again for a caterer who could meet our budget and provide the experience women wanted. Revisiting details. Trying again after something did not land well.

I remembered doing those things because someone had spoken and I had cared about what they said.

That did not mean every woman felt heard. But it meant my history of listening was real.

Around that same season, my annual evaluation at WGU reflected something else back to me.

It recognized my ability to build authentic relationships while maintaining accountability. It described students feeling supported and encouraged while being challenged to take ownership of their learning. It recognized approachability, collaboration, trust, and sound judgment.

I sat with those words, too.

There were growth opportunities in that evaluation as well. It was not a declaration that I had arrived. But it reminded me that the woman I knew myself to be was being experienced by others.

I needed that reminder.

Not to make one group right and another wrong. I needed it because pain can make one interpretation feel larger than everything else you know about yourself.

That became something I wanted to explore.

When I began working more deeply with the aviation imagery in The Art of reFINEment: Sticking HER Landing, I kept coming back to what an aircraft carries and where it is trying to arrive.

I thought about how much of my own cargo is invisible.

The responsibility. The preparation. The history behind a decision. The hope attached to an invitation. The fatigue that can sit beside enthusiasm. The care that sometimes comes out as urgency because I can see what still needs to be done.

I wondered what people could see from the ground.

Did they see the invitation, or another expectation? Did they experience my confidence as reassurance? Did they have enough room to tell me when my pace was too much?

And I wondered about the destinations themselves. A university, a volunteer community, a leadership team, a close relationship. Different expectations. Different capacities. Different understandings of what it meant for me to show up.

I could not assume that because I had landed well somewhere, my approach would be understood everywhere.

But I also could not keep treating every difficult landing as evidence that something was fundamentally wrong with the aircraft.

That tension became part of the work.

HOW DO YOU LAND?™ was personal before it became something I invited other women to explore.

I was already living inside the distance between intention and perception. I was already asking how my presence was being received, what deserved refinement, and what I needed to stop questioning about myself simply because an encountHER had hurt.

I brought those questions into research, into reflection, and into prayer. I wanted to explore the distance between how we understand ourselves and how someone else experiences us. I wanted to look beyond one painful encountHER without looking away from what it might reveal.

The researcher in me needed to examine more than the evidence that felt reassuring. I returned to the feedback, considered the different settings, and let questions about perception, communication, and individual differences sit alongside my lived experience. I could not ask a single analysis to explain my entire leadership, and I could not ask a favorable evaluation to settle every concern.

The woman of faith in me needed room with God, too.

I brought Him my desire to lead well and my hurt over how leading had sometimes felt. I wanted help discerning what was mine to refine, what needed a clearer conversation, and what I was taking on that did not belong entirely to me. I wanted to recognize the difference between protecting my heart and closing it.

I did not want my pain deciding what I would hear next.

And somewhere in that process, I began to feel that more than just me could use this space.

• I thought about the woman whose quietness is read as distance when she is still gathering her thoughts.

• The woman whose enthusiasm arrives faster than someone else can process it.

• The woman who believes she is being clear while the person across from her feels overwhelmed.

I wondered how many of us were trying to explain ourselves without language for our own patterns. How many of us wanted to connect but kept interpreting someone else's differences through the way we naturally operate.

That is part of what I wanted to make room for in HOW DO YOU LAND?™: language for our personal wiring, for the ways others may interpret us, and for a conversation that can go beyond defending what we meant. I wanted the inventory to open that conversation, not pronounce a final verdict on anyone.

The book gave me space to explore it further. As I worked on The Art of reFINEment: Sticking HER Landing, I wanted to consider how we might land better with people who are wired differently from us. How I might remain fully myself and still adjust my pace, explain my intention, or leave more room for someone else's way of arriving.

There was something hopeful in that shift. The work was growing beyond my need to make sense of a painful experience. I could imagine it becoming a space where another woman might recognize herself, find words she had been missing, and approach a relationship with a little more curiosity.

I still had conversations to have. We addressed concerns in a Zoom meeting. We continued looking at capacity and examining feedback. Research and prayer existed alongside that practical work, not in place of it.

And none of it removed the vulnerability of being the woman asking the questions.

I wanted to remain open without abandoning myself. I wanted us to have a better chance of finding one another across our differences.

That is where this topic meets my real life.

The book is where I explore the teaching. Here, I want you to know something about the woman behind it.

She has been hurt. She has questioned herself. She has looked for evidence beyond her own intentions. She has found affirmation and things worth examining. And she is still asking God to help her hold all of it honestly.

I did not need to turn another person into a villain to acknowledge that an experience wounded me. I did not need to make myself flawless to recognize that the whole of my leadership deserved to be seen.

What grew from that place was a question I wanted to understand more deeply.

Not just when I am rested, understood, or in a room that welcomes my strengths. How do I land when I am carrying too much? When I am disappointed? When I believe I am helping and someone experiences something different?

I am still reflecting on those arrivals.

And when I share HOW DO YOU LAND?™ and The Art of reFINEment: Sticking HER Landing, I am sharing work connected to that reality.

There is a heart behind the inventory. There is lived experience behind the pages.

What grew from that ache was a hope that we could find better language for ourselves and more understanding for one another.

We are only better together when we understand one another better.

With grace and refinement,

Dr. C