We Didn't Come Here to Play Small

There was a time when everything we’d worked for slowly began to slip through our fingers. We had a family business that, to the outside world, looked successful. But behind the scenes, I was literally coming apart at the seams - physically, emotionally, and financially.

It started with my health. Without warning, I was bedridden for almost a year. And when the person driving the business suddenly disappears, the wheels begin to fall off. Clients quietly moved on, contracts fell through, and we were left scrambling to keep it all together.

Eventually, we couldn’t.

The decision to file for bankruptcy wasn’t a dramatic collapse. It was a slow, drawn-out loss of control. The kind where you keep hoping everything’s okay - until it clearly isn’t. And once the financial structure of our lives dissolved, so did a large part of my identity. I was no longer the reliable one, the one who always had it together. I was just… lost.

There are small moments that stay with you. For me, it was the day I stood in a grocery store holding a head of broccoli and trying to calculate whether I could afford it. Not as a metaphor. Literally. That’s how tight things had become. I left without it. And that was the moment I realized something had to change.

So I made a decision. One quiet, private choice to back myself. The cash we had managed to squirrel from the business at the 11th hour was enough for a couple of purchases and then, a decision – do we keep the rest under the mattress or use it to invest – in me! We took that cash and enrolled in a coaching diploma - not because I had a big vision, but because it was a calculated risk in our future.

Not long after, I saw an ad for a free coaching session with a Tony Robbins coach. Something about it pulled me in. I signed up. After the call, I was invited to apply for a coaching position on his team. And even before they responded, I knew I would be accepted. I could feel it. That same deep certainty would show up again years later, when I applied for the Einstein Green Card to move to the United States.

There’s a difference between hoping for something and knowing it’s yours. And by that point, I had stopped hoping and started becoming.

The coaching led to speaking. The speaking led to clients. And slowly, I began building a business that wasn’t a rebound from failure - it was a reflection of who I’d grown into. A woman who had lost everything she thought defined her and found something far more valuable in its place: clarity, conviction, and the courage to lead.

What changed wasn’t just our circumstances. It was me. I no longer led from a place of pressure or performance. I began to lead from embodiment. I didn’t need to prove I was capable like I used to - I knew I was. And that knowing changed the way I showed up, not just for my business, but for myself.

We built a new home. And even bought an investment apartment. And one day, my husband Tim and I looked at each other and asked, “Well, if we can come through bankruptcy in our 50’s, what if we didn’t wait until retirement to live fully and moved to America in our 60’s?” So we did. Not because we had to - simply because we could.

We didn’t come to escape. We came to expand our sense of self, adventure and life.

This has turned into an opportunity to stop reinventing myself and to receive what has been waiting for me to be ready - the speaking platform, the podcast, the mastermind, the academy. Not as compensation for struggle, but as the natural next chapter for a woman whose energy has finally aligned with her vision.

The truth is, the Universe isn’t withholding anything from us. It’s simply waiting for us to become the version of ourselves who can hold it and hold it firmly and proudly.

And that’s what I am doing today.

And so I often think back to that moment in the grocery store - standing alone, holding that broccoli, unsure of what I could afford. Today, I stand on global stages, hold the hands of emerging leaders, and teach others how to coach both the deal and the human behind the deal. I help leaders go beyond the numbers and address what they feel but will never share out loud. That woman didn’t disappear. She evolved. And she’s still with me - wiser, stronger, and no longer afraid of the price tag.

So if you find yourself at the edge of something uncertain, holding your own version of the broccoli, wondering how you got here - I want you to know that nothing is wasted. Every dark moment has the potential to become a turning point and a learning point.

You don’t have to chase what’s next.

You simply have to become the woman ‘what’s next’ has been waiting for.

-Bernadette M.