Episode 32: Backyard Days

In the back corner of the yard splayed an enormous holly tree, the sort whose branches seem to be hands stretching in all directions, daring visitors to fall into its prickly grip like a terrifying children’s story. When you’re eight years old, however, crawling under the holly tree into its shallow underbelly, a cool cave in the California sun, was not only completely doable, but offered a secret, protected place from the terribleness outside.

There my sister and I were safe, and could plan our next move: slink alongside the succulent and wildly fragrant honeysuckle bush that held up the old wooden fence, avoid At All Costs mom’s garden with radishes and carrots and beans that mysteriously grew up instead of down, and then crawl over the porch wall before landing in the sandbox. That sandbox was the destination — an island of sand holding “the guys,” the dolls and plastic figures we guarded who needed our help. Mom and Dad made that sandbox out of two by fours and plywood, which gleefully meant water leaked out when we reenacted Gilligan’s Island.

But to connive the way to the sandbox meant planning at the holly tree first. This tree — a burr to my dad when he mowed and a clear and present danger to everyone else — was our refuge, our tent of safety where secrets whispered to the sharp pointy green leaves and quiet earth could rest and be held. My sister and I crafted solutions to the world’s worst calamities, including the lack of orange popsicles in the house.

How serious we were during these strategy sessions. How much unabashed joy we knew.

And then life hits.

Suddenly you’re in your 50s wondering what the heck just happened — and how to do the next half better, how to discover and recover that sense of clear purpose and utter delight in the day under a holly tree.

We lose our holly trees slowly. Without quite noticing.

The branches get trimmed back one careful decision at a time until what was once a refuge becomes a memory, and we can no longer quite find our way underneath it. We lose the place where we were fully ourselves — unaudited, unfiltered, unstudied. The place where dirt got under our nails and we didn’t think to look.

I remember when I knew exactly who I was. I don’t know when I stopped.

For many of us — women especially — the filter goes up so gradually we mistake it for maturity. We learn to say the right things, in the right rooms, at the right times. We become very good at being what everyone needs us to be.

And somewhere in the mastering of that skill, something quieter gets lost.

Not our competence, not our capability. Our voice. The one that used to whisper strategies to sharp green leaves in the California sun.

Women self-silence with remarkable regularity. Research tells us that when we do speak up, we are far more likely to be interrupted — or described as aggressive for saying the very same things that, coming from someone else, land as confident.

So we learn. We edit before we open our mouths. We make ourselves smaller in the hope that smaller will be safer, that the filtered version of us will finally be enough.

It is never enough. And deep down, we know it isn’t.

Because the woman under the holly tree — the one who knew exactly what she thought and said it without asking permission — she is still in there. She has been in there the whole time. She just stopped being given a place where it was safe to come out.

My friends, I’m asking you to return to the holly tree. To the version of yourself who existed before the filter went up and the voice went quiet and the nails stayed clean.

I don’t think it’s an accident that so many women — at fifty, at sixty, sometimes even at thirty-five — find themselves standing in a life that looks, from the outside, like everything they were supposed to want. Accomplished and busy and capable and persistently, privately hollow. As though the most real parts of them have been living underground, waiting.

What are they waiting for?

Permission. A container. A place where the performance stops being necessary, where the filter can come down, where the dirt can get under the nails again.

Where they can remember — not who they’re supposed to be, but who they are. When they let their voice — through words or voice or both — finally be set free.

This November, I’m taking a small group of women to Costa Rica for nine days.

We’ll be entering into the nest of our own holly tree — a container to practice shifting our identity from silent to aloud. At Finca Mia, a family sanctuary at 4,000 feet in the Chirripó mountains, we will write. We will speak. We will sit with women from another world and recognize ourselves in them.

We will lay on warm rocks in a cold river, staring at the sky, toucans calling us from shore.

And in that space — far enough from ordinary life that the filter finally loosens — we will practice saying the true thing instead of the right thing.

The program is called Writing to Authorship: The Leadership Leap. It’s for the woman who has something to say and has been waiting — for permission, for readiness, for the right moment — to say it. Publisher Sierra Melcher will offer her guidance and expertise and Story Architect Susan Baracco will rekindle the joy of journaling. Susan Ellison-McGee will gently move you from the page to the stage, letting your voice come out. I’ll be there for all of it.

There are two information sessions this week if you want to hear more:

Thursday, May 7 at 4:00 PM PST

Friday, May 8 at 9:00 AM PST

Zoom: meet.google.com/npk-mbxk-qrc

Full details: theservantedge.com/immersions/costa-rica/

Or — if Costa Rica isn’t your next step right now — I’d still love to hear about your holly tree. The place where you were last fully yourself. Reply here and tell me about it.

Because I think she’s been waiting long enough.

See you soon with our next discussion, and in the meantime:

Wherever you can today, build a bridge of compassion and understanding with someone — it’s when real results begin.

We are a single community, after all.

———

A former U.S. Diplomat, Stephanie Mikulasek is an executive coach, professional public speaker, host of international immersion experiences, and CEO of The ServantEDGE. Her career has taken her from Silicon Valley boardrooms to the mountains of Chile and the savannas of Africa, coaching and guiding women along the way. Drawing from decades of global leadership, academic scholarship, and immersive transformation work, Stephanie blends wisdom, wit, and depth to inspire us and to challenge the illusion of certainty, invite radical belonging, and rediscover what matters most. Connect with her on LinkedIn and at www.theservantedge.com