this is why we get coffee

I remember a networking coffee I was having with my friend Danene back in 2018. She had asked me to speak at a charity event her company was hosting that benefited the therapy clinic and preschool my daughter attended. In her eyes, I had the unique position of speaking as both a parent directly impacted by the work of the organization and as a known businesswoman in the community.

However, I had deliberately been keeping “work Danielle” and “mama Danielle” rigidly separate to protect my credibility.

I was terrified.

“Danene, I keep those parts of my life so separated. I’m not sure how to bring them together.”

She looked at me, confused.

First of all, Danene is someone in the Nashville business community you just know by her first name. Like Madonna. Everyone knows her. Everyone loves her. She is a connector extraordinaire and she is damn good in her career.

Danene is the same person in every room. I’m not sure it had even occurred to her that someone might not be. Watching the way she moved through the world without splitting herself in two made something click.

Right then and there, I was given permission to do the same.

See, I had been afraid that if people knew I was not only a mother, but a mother of a child with special needs, it would negatively impact my business. Women are barely allowed to be mothers as it is. Whether said or implied, there is an expectation to be “fully committed” to your work.

Very few places cared that I needed to get my kids on the bus before I could head into the office, or that I needed to leave by 2:30 to be there when they got home. I wasn’t interested in after-school programs for them. No offense to anyone who uses them — I just wasn’t willing to believe I didn’t have a choice there.

This pressure to pretend motherhood didn’t exist was exactly why I had been splitting my life in half.

In a way, I thought if I kept it all a secret and my numbers were good enough, no one needed to know about everything I was doing that wasn’t “work related.”

So how the heck was I going to speak about being a mother to a child who has Down syndrome and a congenital heart defect IN FRONT OF the very people I was hustling to prove my worth to already?

If I was afraid to even mention having kids, speaking openly about my daughter’s Down syndrome felt like scaling a cliff without a rope.

But I had to bring my whole self to the room.

Y’all, I will not lie. That shit was scary. Every impostor gremlin visited me leading up to the event.

And then it was fine. It was better than fine — it was great.

A dear friend of mine likes to remind me that how we do one thing is how we do everything. That moment showed me how much energy I had been spending trying to compartmentalize myself.

I was scared that if people knew how many therapies I attended, how many doctor appointments there truly are, and that I can’t trust my child to be cared for by just any program, they wouldn’t trust me with their business.

“How does she have time to work?”

That was the question I was afraid of. But no one asked it. Or if they did, they didn’t say it to me.

I cannot say my business exploded overnight after that shift, but I can say that I became so much more free. The energy spent hiding such a huge piece of my life was suddenly available for other things — creative things, strategic things, meaningful things.

And I say it this way very intentionally:

Being a mother is not my identity. It is a piece of my life — but I am a multifaceted human, as I’m sure you also are.

Being a woman in sales is also not my identity, but it is a huge part of what has shaped me. It has influenced the experiences I’ve had in this life, but it is not who I am.

Over the years I have allowed more and more of myself to be seen by clients, colleagues, friends, neighbors, and even family. Turns out, everywhere I go, there I am.

The mask I thought I was so skillfully wearing was obviously a mask. People can spot when something feels off, even if they can’t name it. As I’ve integrated these parts more and more, the mask has come off — and ironically, that’s when my business truly exploded.

Turns out, in a profession where people are already skeptical of you simply because your title includes the word “sales,” the most powerful thing you can do is bring your whole self to work.

It gives others permission to do the same — and the liberation is palpable.

Danene didn’t know it at the time, but that coffee meeting was the moment I stopped choosing which version of myself was allowed to walk into a room. I owe her more than a coffee.

xx- Danielle