It’s disconcerting to sit in a room with a dozen accomplished, influential, and important women, and hear them tell you that you have innate talent and amazing potential. To hear them say that with genuine enthusiasm. It’s almost painful, the cognitive dissonance from those voices crashing in through your ears like a happy hour group at a bar, laughing and singing and high fiving over the old voices that have always lived in your head, complaining about all that’s missing and all they’ll never get done.

Can it be impostor syndrome if you haven’t made it yet? If you’re just looking over the possibilities and mentally filing away everything that’s out of reach before you’ve even tried to see how far your arms can stretch?

These women are running for office, running companies, running marathons. And they’re saying I can keep up.

Maybe it’s time to lace up my shoes?