💔 Why, If You’ve Experienced Trauma, You Need The Leadership Leap

“You can leave the battlefield, but sometimes the battlefield doesn’t leave you.”

Trauma Doesn’t Stay in the Past

Trauma is not simply an event, it is what lingers long after the event is over. It is the tightening in your chest before you speak in a meeting. It is the way your body rehearses safety when no one else sees danger. It is the inner monologue that whispers, “Don’t mess this up. Don’t get too visible. Don’t make them angry.”

I carried childhood trauma quietly for years. As a girl, I learned how to stay safe by reading the room, anticipating moods, and taking on more than I should have. I didn’t recognize it as trauma at the time, it was just life. It was just me.

But trauma has a way of resurfacing when life adds new layers. Marriage and the transition into motherhood cracked open the protective shell I had built. The pressure, the betrayals, and the relentless demands of caring for everyone else brought the wounds I thought I had buried roaring back to the surface.

I didn’t stop working during this time. I didn’t get to step away from responsibility. Like many of you in tech, I was still showing up to lead, still meeting deadlines, still navigating complex systems, all while carrying invisible battles under my skin.

Trauma in the Tech Workplace

In the fast-paced, high-pressure environment of tech, trauma often hides in plain sight. It doesn’t look like shaking in the corner or being unable to function. More often, it looks like:

• Hypervigilance: reacting to every Slack ping like it’s a siren.

• Overcompensating: taking on too much because you’re terrified of letting someone down.

• People-pleasing: apologizing before you’ve even done anything wrong.

• Dissociation: zoning out in meetings, not because you’re uninterested, but because your nervous system just hit overwhelm.

• Collapse: giving everything you have until you burn out, and then carrying guilt for not being able to give more.

And because tech often celebrates resilience, problem-solving, and “hustle,” many of us push through these patterns silently. We code late into the night while our hearts race. We manage teams with a smile while our insides scream. We perform “normal” while our bodies replay old wounds.

This is not weakness. This is survival.

But survival mode is not sustainable.

My Turning Point

For years, I wore my trauma like invisible armor, heavy, suffocating, and impossible to take off. I thought being strong meant pretending it didn’t exist.

But leadership is not about pretending. It’s about integration.

The turning point for me came when I realized that I was building my leadership career on top of fractured foundations. Every new challenge at work cracked those foundations a little more. I needed to face my wounds, not bury them deeper.

This is where The Leadership Leap began, not as a theory, but as a lifeline.

I wrote it because I know what it feels like to lead while carrying invisible scars. I know what it’s like to succeed on paper while fighting an inner war no one else sees. And I know what it takes to move from survival mode into sustainable leadership.

What Trauma Looks Like in Tech Leadership

⚡ Hypervigilance

The constant scanning, anticipating conflict, bracing for impact.

📖 In Chapter 3: Through the Fire, I show how to transform this vigilance into discernment, to tell the difference between old echoes and real threats.

😔 Fear of Disappointment

Overcommitting, overdelivering, and silently resenting it.

📖 Chapter 10: Face the Flame offers practices to hold conflict with courage, without letting it consume you.

🛡 Fragile Safety

Trust broken by authority figures, fear triggered by raised voices.

📖 Chapter 11: The Layers Within helps you build inner safety through boundaries, so you can lead without re-living the past.

🙇 Shrinking Through Apologies

Becoming invisible to stay safe.

📖 Chapter 5: Shedding Skin supports you in releasing old coping mechanisms and stepping into leadership that doesn’t erase you.

❄ Freeze, Fawn, or Flight

Responses that happen before thought.

📖 Chapter 4: The Cracking Open reframes these as survival, not weakness, and gives you tools to choose new responses with compassion.

🌱 Craving Gentle Leadership

Knowing firsthand the harm of cruelty and inconsistency.

📖 Chapter 13: Boundaries with Backbone equips you to create the safe, respectful environments you once longed for.

💔 Empathy That Exhausts You

Carrying others’ pain until you collapse.

📖 Chapter 6: Rooted to Thrive teaches you how to protect your energy while still leading with heart.

👁 The Invisible Storm

Looking fine on the outside, but managing chaos within.

📖 Chapter 9: Chosen Growth reminds you that your scars are not disqualifications, they are part of your wisdom.

Why This Book Matters

The Leadership Leap is not about fixing you.

It’s about showing you how to lead without ripping open your wounds again.

It’s about reclaiming your nervous system, your energy, and your boundaries.

It’s about recognizing that trauma may have shaped you, but it does not define your capacity to lead.

I know because I’ve lived it.

I’ve led teams with trauma humming underneath my ribs.

I’ve built strategies between panic triggers.

I’ve parented children while rebuilding myself from the inside out.

I’ve rebuilt my career multiple times after life tried to take it away.

And I wrote this book so that no one else has to do that work alone.

You Are Not Broken

If you’ve experienced trauma, you may sometimes wonder if you’re “too broken” to lead.

Let me say this clearly: you are not broken.

You are carrying wisdom forged in fire.

And that wisdom can transform how you lead.

🐉 The Leadership Leap doesn’t ask you to hide your scars.

It shows you how to lead with them, as strength, as empathy, as truth.

📘 Discover The Leadership Leap →