how i became a leader by accident

(and maybe you are one too)

I didn’t plan to be here.

I didn’t raise my hand and say yes, let me lead. I was placed, dropped into it, and honestly, I didn’t feel ready.

For me, leadership began when my daily decisions stopped affecting just my own life

and started shaping the life of someone else.

Not just for a moment,

but maybe forever.

Motherhood, to me, is leadership.

When you share it with a partner, it becomes shared leadership.

You speak together about choices, education, rhythms,

about how you want to impact your child.

But when you do not share it,

when it is just you,

it becomes something else.

Something heavier. Something lonelier. Something unchosen.

When my daughter’s father left

and moved back to Germany,

over 650 kilometers away,

he did not just leave a city.

He left a field.

He left a responsibility, and suddenly

it was just me.

Just me and her.

And that is when I found myself, at twenty seven, in a leadership role I never asked for.

Every decision I made, from what we ate to how we lived to what time we got up, became more than routine.

It became imprint. Memory. Influence.

And to be honest, it overwhelmed me.

I did not know I had what it takes to lead, to decide, to not fall apart from guilt, to trust myself, to show up anyway.

But I stayed.

And I learned, sometimes gracefully, sometimes, well, not so much.

I screamed. I broke. I lost it sometimes.

But I returned, again and again, to love. To presence. To care.

Now I protect my daughter not just from the world, but from energies that do not honor her.

From adults who never met their own inner child and now want to dump their pain on mine.

From men who are not truly devoted, whose love shows more inconsistency than Donald Trumps hairline.

From teachers who speak down instead of meeting her eye to eye.

I protect her by leading differently. My leadership is not rational, not conventional, not always clear.

It is instinctive. Emotional. Sometimes messy. But I trust it.

And now I am leading us into the unknown.

I canceled our apartment. Withdrew her from the socially praised kindergarten that lacked grace in meeting her needs eye to eye.

Packed our bags and chose Berlin.

Do we know where we are going to stay here long term yet? No. But I know that we will, because I like it here, and my soul feels at home again.

I chose a new life. No big plans. No strategy. Just trust in my breath, my body, my leadership. For me. For us. For her.

I realized I can only lead when I am met in my dreams, my desires, my strength.

When I am honest. When I do not let the outside, the voices, the fear, the ancestors, the parents decide how far I go.

Do I wonder how far I will go? Yes, for sure.

I am the first in my line to get this far. Not because I am better, but because I stayed. Because I listened. Because I knew that if I wanted to lead her, I had to learn how to lead myself. And most of all because I never left her, not when it became dark, lonely or heavy. I stayed and that’s when I knew that I what it takes, to lead from the heart.

So here I am at twenty eight, leading myself towards love that does not drain me. Towards friendship that supports and lifts up. Towards work that makes me feel like I am on fire. Towards a home that feels safe. Towards a life that feels like a fairytale, maybe not to you, but to me. My own little messy, imperfect fairytale of a love story with life itself.

So if you are reading this and you feel like you never chose this either, you just loved something, believed in something, burned for something, and ended up alone with it,

with the responsibility,

with the decisions,

with the weight of it all,

then you are not alone.

You are one of us.

The ones who lead.

Not because we wanted to, but because no one else stayed.

We lead from the fire, from the vision, from that quiet part of us that refuses to give up,

even when no one sees it, even when no one asks, even when we are not sure how.

This is for you, not because you are doing it perfectly, but because you stayed.

Because you held what others dropped.

Because you are still here, even without a guarantee, even without applause, even without certainty.

And if you are one of us, just know that I love you and I truly hope you love yourself too.