🌉 A bridge, a prayer, and a push

⏱️ Reading time: 5 minutes

Welcome to Fearless — my weekly-ish newsletter where I share leadership insights and honest advice for women of color in social impact navigating power, career, and change.

Two Novembers ago, I stood on a narrow platform on the Kawarau Bridge outside Queenstown, Aotearoa New Zealand. I was 43 meters above a river so blue it looked edited, and I could not move.

I have never prayed so much in my life.

My mind ran through everything that could go wrong. A heart attack on the way down. A stroke. Falling into the river, which was running so high that day that the crew swapped the usual ankle straps for a hip harness. (Honestly, I preferred it.)

I held on to my own body like it might come apart, and I kept saying it out loud: “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this.”

I didn’t back out. But I didn’t jump, either. I froze.

In the end, the staff had to give me a gentle push.

The fall lasted about three seconds. It felt like an eternity.

Then the cord caught me, and something cracked wide open.

​🎥 Watch the jump (and my face) here →​

The high I didn’t expect

That trip was an extended honeymoon my partner and I took a year after we got married. It was also a sabbatical of sorts. I was searching for what was next. It was spring there. The frost was melting and the flowers were just starting to bloom. I spent two weeks learning about the Māori people and their relationship with the land, and practicing something I’m not naturally good at: being present.

The jump broke all of that open. For hours afterward I was flying. Wonder. Awe. Pure joy. Gratitude so warm it was almost embarrassing. I felt tiny and transcendent at the same time, connected to the river, the gorge, and every stranger on that bridge.

It felt like a drug. For the first time, I understood why people chase that feeling.

The part that isn’t a rush

Here’s what I’ve been sitting with since.

Adrenaline is a gift. It sharpens you, mobilizes you, and makes you feel alive. Our bodies are built for it in bursts: switch on, meet the moment, switch back off.

But many of us aren’t living in bursts. We’re living on the bridge.

I know this one from the inside. I’m the first woman in my family to work outside the home, and somewhere along the way I absorbed that being “on” was the price of being there. For years I ran hot and called it commitment. The sabbatical that brought me to that bridge was partly me admitting I needed to come down.

I hear versions of this all the time in coaching. The executive director whose phone stays on her nightstand “just in case.” The program lead who can’t remember the last week without an emergency. The leader who finally takes a vacation and gets sick on day two, because her body crashes the moment it’s allowed to.

In social impact work, crisis is the default setting: the funding cliff, the urgent board ask, the community need that can’t wait. For women of color and non-binary leaders of color, there’s often another layer on top: proving, translating, and being the one who holds it all together.

And fight mode can feel good for a while. You’re needed. You’re sharp. You get things done no one else could.

But the adrenaline isn’t the problem. The problem is when the stress response never switches off. Then it stops fueling you and starts draining you: sleep that doesn’t restore, exhaustion that rest doesn’t fix, a shorter fuse, getting sick more often, and eventually burnout.

The rush that made me feel alive for three seconds would break me if I lived there.

Fearless was never about having no fear

People sometimes assume the name Fearless means I’m not scared. That video is proof that I am. I was terrified, frozen, and praying, and I went anyway.

That’s the whole philosophy. Fearless isn’t the absence of fear. It’s acknowledging the fear, telling the truth about it, and choosing your leap anyway.

But here’s the part of the story I might have left out: I didn’t make that leap alone. Someone gave me the push. Someone also pulled me back up.

That’s what every leader running on adrenaline deserves: people who help you leap, and people who help you land. Sometimes the bravest leap is stepping off the bridge you’ve been living on, and you shouldn’t have to do that alone either.

Three questions to sit with today

1. What leap have you been circling, the thing that scares you because it matters?
2. Where are you running on adrenaline that was only ever meant to be a short burst?
3. When you freeze, what’s your “push”? A person, a deadline, a community that gets you moving?

Looking for your people to help you leap and land?

Flourish is our peer community for women of color and non-binary leaders of color in social impact: a place to be honest about the fear and take the leap with people who get it. Cohort 4 starts November 1.

A few of you asked for more time, so we extended the super early bird rate of $204 until tonight, Monday, October 12 at 11:59 pm EDT. Use code SUPERBIRD20 for 20% off: that’s $204 for the year instead of $255.

Warmly,

Maya 🧡

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