When our managing director mentioned other Polka Dot chapters were looking for speakers, I noticed my heartbeat.
It wasn’t racing, and I wasn’t anxious enough to call it nerves. My heart seemed stronger and more present, as though some part of me had leaned closer to the conversation.
Polka Dot Powerhouse meetings followed a consistent format. After introductions, upcoming events, and celebrations, a preselected speaker had twenty minutes to share an idea. Sometimes the presentation grew from her business, but the ones I liked best went deeper. The speaker brought an idea she cared about, one she had lived with, and offered us a different way of seeing something familiar.
My kind of presentation, I remember thinking.
Then came another thought, quieter but persistent: I’d like to try that.
There were practical reasons not to rush toward the idea. I hadn’t spoken to a group larger than fifteen people or presented longer than seven or eight minutes in over twenty-five years. I didn’t know what I would speak about, how long it would take me to develop something worthwhile, or even whether I would be selected. Our chapter’s speaker calendar was already full until fall. I had time.
Time to develop the right topic. Time to figure out what I wanted to say and create a compelling application.
I have called myself an overthinker often enough that I say it now with an affectionate shrug. I like to consider possibilities.
But sometimes my thinking feels less like discernment and more like pouring water between two glasses, trying to decide which one to drink from. I compare them. Pour it back. Reconsider. Maybe one is slightly larger. Maybe the other fits better in my hand. Maybe I should ask someone which one she would choose.
Eventually my arms get tired, some water spills, and I may set both glasses down, exhausted from deciding.
Meanwhile, I am thirsty.
The speaking opportunity had the makings of two perfectly reasonable glasses. One held the possibility of growth, connection, and returning to a part of myself I had barely used in decades. The other held restraint. I had learned, finally, to protect my energy, especially in a season when my parents needed more of me. There was wisdom in not automatically adding one more thing simply because I could.
I did not need to decide all of that yet.
I only needed to ask our managing director one question: How does the application process start?
She sent me the link.
Opening it seemed surprisingly consequential for something that required no commitment. The uncertainty was enormous. The application was not. I didn’t know whether I would be selected, when I might speak, or what I would say.
Could I describe a personal idea without making it all about me? Could I give women something they might carry home and see differently?
The questions felt less like obstacles and more like a challenge I wanted to play with.
That strong heartbeat returned.
At the time, challenges with my parents occupied a large part of my inner life. I was preparing for another trip to see them and carrying the heaviness of wanting to help people you love while realizing there are limits to what you can fix for them. Part of my hesitation came from wondering whether I should preserve that energy rather than spend it preparing a presentation.
Still, something about this did not feel like another demand.
It offered its own energy.
Eventually the idea became a talk about identity — the versions of ourselves we keep carrying after they stop fitting, and the parts we leave behind without noticing. I called it The Most Dangerous Clutter Isn’t in Your Closet. The irony that I was preparing a talk about identities while quietly reconsidering one of my own did not occur to me until much later.
The day before I was scheduled to speak, the small takeaway cards I had ordered still had not arrived. There was almost no chance they would.
This was exactly the kind of problem my mind knows how to make larger. The cards had been part of the plan. The plan was how I would look prepared. Prepared was adjacent to professional. Professional meant I belonged at the front of the room.
Without them, I could feel myself beginning to pour.
Would something handmade seem amateurish? Was it better to eliminate the idea entirely than bring what looked like an elementary-school project into the room? I headed to a local store looking for plain poster board.
Then I saw the sparkle.
It was a large poster board with a glittering border, far less restrained than what I had imagined and not remotely my usual style. I am not particularly blingy. I don’t generally enter rooms trailing sequins. My instinct was to keep looking for something quieter and more professional.
Then I thought about the women who would be sitting in the room.
Sparkle is part of the Polka Dot personality, especially in our chapter. The board wasn’t supposed to prove anything about my style. It was supposed to help people see and remember the ideas I was asking them to consider.
I bought it.
At home, I spread everything out and started cutting, measuring, gluing, and trying to keep the pieces straight. This kind of thing had once been normal for me. In elementary school, creativity had been praised — construction paper, displays, encouragement to make something your own. Somewhere along the way, through higher education and corporate life, creativity became more restrained, shaped by approved formats and expectations of what professionalism should look like.
Now I was on the floor making an oversized “life wallet” bordered in sparkle, tired from keeping everything aligned and having far more fun than I expected.
Every so often I looked at it and wondered, What am I doing?
Then I went back to cutting.
By the time I finished, it no longer seemed like a substitute for the cards that hadn’t arrived. It felt like mine.
The next day, I stood in front of the room and began.
There were parts that went well and parts I would change. At one point, the thought I’d been following disappeared, and there was no elegant bridge waiting to carry me to the next one.
I stopped.
“I lost my place,” I admitted, then added, “I need to check my notes.”
I picked them up and gave myself a moment to find my way back.
For an earlier version of me, that pause could have become the evidence. I could have spent the rest of the presentation mentally watching myself from outside the room, grading every sentence and waiting for the next mistake.
Instead, the women began talking to me.
“It’s okay.”
“Take your time.”
“You’re doing great.”
I found the line in my notes, looked back up, and continued.
Afterward, several women came over to talk. They mentioned the ideas in the presentation and the oversized poster I had almost decided was too crafty to use. One woman told me she thought the way I handled losing my place was particularly professional. She hadn’t seen my notes as evidence that I didn’t belong there. She had watched me pause, orient myself, and continue.
Professional, apparently, did not require pretending I never lost my place.
What stayed with me even more than the compliments were the conversations themselves. Someone would tell me what had struck her, and we would follow the idea a little farther. She would connect something I had said to something happening in her own life, and suddenly the presentation was no longer mine. It was moving between us.
I remembered how much I liked that.
The speech, I realized, may be the work. Those conversations are the reward.
Standing there afterward, I felt none of the relief I might have expected from simply getting through something difficult. I felt energized, connected, and curious. I was already wondering what I would change if I gave the talk again, where else I might speak, and what other idea I might want to develop this way.
Not because everything had gone perfectly.
Because it hadn’t, and I wanted to do it again anyway.
The next day, I was leaving to see my parents. Before the talk, I had worried that speaking would take energy I needed for the trip. Instead, the experience returned something I had not known I was missing.
It made me reconsider what I mean when I say I need clarity before I make a choice. Sometimes I need more information. Another conversation, another day, another fact can genuinely matter. But there are decisions for which thought eventually reaches the edge of what it can tell me.
I can keep pouring the water between the glasses, hoping one of them will finally prove itself unquestionably right.
Or I can drink.
For twenty-five years, I had accumulated plenty of evidence that speaking was something I no longer did. One afternoon gave me different evidence.
