Wayfaring Women

A Wayfaring Woman Finds Her Way by Trusting What She Already Knows

A wayfarer is someone who finds her way by reading what's around her. The current. The wind. The small signs most people walk past. A felt sense of direction, trusted one step at a time, the same instinct that lets a sailor navigate open water without a fixed map.

I have been collecting wayfarers for years without knowing that's what I was doing. Women who never set out to become who they became. Women who started in one place, doing one thing, and ended up somewhere entirely their own, not because they had a plan, but because they kept following what was true.

Starting this week, I want to introduce you to ten of them. (one per week)

Some of these names will surprise you. A cookbook author. A pop star. A comedian. A morning show host. None of them would call themselves leaders in the traditional sense. But every one of them did something I think matters more than leadership: she got honest about who she actually was, underneath what she'd been told to be, and she let that discovery keep reshaping her path.

I keep coming back to a phrase from Jim Collins, though he never meant it this way. He talks about being encoded for something, the thing you were built for, sitting at the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, and what you have to offer. I think every one of these women found her encoding early, usually by accident, in a moment that looked like nothing much at the time. And then she trusted it. Not all at once. Not with a five-year plan. One small step, and then the next one, and then the next.

That's what I mean when I talk about recharting your course. It's getting clear on what you actually want, connecting that to your real values and the dreams you might have set aside, and then building a plan open enough to keep evolving as you do. A course correction.

Here's what I want you to notice as you read these stories over the coming weeks. A cookbook author stayed a cookbook author and built an empire without ever needing to look like a strategist. A comedian stayed funny and became one of the most influential mentors in her field. A morning show host kept the same warmth she always had, and used it to carry some of the hardest truths she ever told. Each one navigated toward more of who she already was, trusting that honesty to do the leading.

I think this matters especially for those of us who spent decades inside structures that rewarded a certain kind of person. I spent many years in corporate sales. Nobody was asking me to be curious about my own encoding. They were asking me to hit a number. But underneath the quota, I was always doing the same thing: trying to understand a person well enough to find a way through where we both walked away with something real. I didn't know it yet, but that instinct was the whole thing. It just took me many years and a career change to finally let it lead in the open.

That's the invitation inside this series. I admire these women deeply, and I also want you to ask yourself, as you read each one: where have I already shown a piece of this in my own life? What did I brush past because it didn't look like the thing I was supposed to be doing? What am I already encoded for, and have I been trusting it, or overriding it?

You don't have to become someone else to grow. You have to get honest about who you already are, and let that keep evolving. That is what coaching is, at its core, for me. Not handing you a new identity. Helping you notice the one you've been building all along, and giving you a way to trust it a little further.

Ten women. Ten different paths. One thread underneath all of them, and underneath you too, if you go looking for it.

I'll see you next week with the first one.

I am Coach Ellen. I help leaders and seekers navigate life to find clarity, confidence, and purpose, living more aligned with who they really are. Graduate, CoachVille | Member, ICF Connecticut | emzlifedesign.com