I took this picture on a girls weekend in Pinehurst.
We had been talking, laughing, eating, catching up on life. Nothing particularly profound. Just one of those weekends that gives you a little room to be somewhere other than your usual routine.
At some point, I looked out and noticed the sun dropping behind the pine trees.
The trees were so close together that they almost blocked the whole view.
But just beyond them was all this open space.
Green. Light. Room.
And I remember thinking, well, there it is.
The forest through the trees.
It made me think about how easy it is to get so close to your own life that you can’t really see it anymore.
I know that feeling.
There have been times in my career when, from the outside, everything looked good. I had worked hard to get where I was. I had responsibility, credibility, people who trusted me, and work I knew how to do well.
Nothing was falling apart.
But something in me had started to change.
The hard part was that I couldn’t quite name it.
Was I tired?
Was I burned out?
Did I need a vacation?
A different role?
A completely different direction?
Or was I just having a rough season and overthinking the whole thing?
So I did what a lot of high-achieving women do.
I kept going.
I handled what was in front of me.
I went to the meetings. Solved the problems. Answered the questions. Took care of the next thing.
And because I was still functioning, it was easy to convince myself that maybe nothing really needed to change.
That’s the tricky part about feeling stuck when your life still looks successful.
There may not be a crisis.
There may not be a dramatic moment that gives you permission to do something different.
You may just have this quiet sense that the life you worked so hard to build doesn’t fit the way it once did.
And that can be really hard to admit.
Especially when there are good reasons to stay.
Stability. Income. Benefits. Family. People you care about. A reputation you’ve spent years building.
All of that matters.
But so does the part of you that keeps wondering, Is this still what I want?
I think one of the hardest things for me was trying to answer that question while I was still completely immersed in the day-to-day.
When you’re in it, everything in front of you feels big.
The next meeting.
The next problem.
The next person who needs something.
The next decision.
There isn’t much room left for the bigger questions.
And maybe that’s why I’ve always found it easier to think when I’m away.
Not because travel magically solves anything.
It doesn’t.
But sometimes being somewhere different quiets the usual noise just enough for you to hear yourself again.
Sometimes it happens halfway around the world.
And sometimes it happens on a girls weekend in Pinehurst while you’re standing there looking through a bunch of pine trees.
The trees were still there.
Nothing about the landscape had actually changed.
I had just noticed what was beyond them.
I think that’s what I want Ristare to create for people.
Not an escape from real life.
Not pressure to make some huge decision.
Just enough space to look at things from a different angle.
To ask the question you haven’t had time to ask.
To notice what has been sitting quietly underneath I’m fine.
To wonder whether you actually need to leave, or whether you need to change the way you’re living inside the life you already have.
Sometimes the answer is clearer than we think.
We’ve just been standing too close to it.
And maybe the real gift of stepping away isn’t that you suddenly know exactly what comes next.
Maybe it’s that, for the first time in a long time, you can see beyond what has been consuming you.
You remember that the role you’re in is not the whole of who you are.
That the life you’ve built is not the only life available to you.
And that sometimes the most important thing you can do is create enough distance to see that there is still more beyond the trees.
Sometimes you don’t need a new path yet.
You just need enough space to remember there is more than one.
Keep making room for what matters, Nicole