I never thought of myself as a writer. I have dyslexia, and reading doesn’t come easy to me. I prefer audiobooks, so when I was approached to write a book after giving my TEDx talk earlier that year, writing one felt impossible. My first reaction was fear.

I said yes anyway, and then spent a long time questioning it. I kept waiting to feel qualified enough, and that feeling never showed up.

Eventually I stopped trying to write like an academic and started writing the way I coach, honest and practical, a little funny and a little blunt. I wanted women reading it to feel like they were sitting across from me going “oh my gosh, that’s me.”

There were days the writing nearly broke me. The content was hard, and every sentence was a fight against a brain that doesn’t work the way most writers’ brains do. I questioned constantly whether it was good enough, whether anyone would read it, whether I should keep going.

Then launch day came. I got the message that my book, Dance of Attachment, had hit the bestseller list and just sat there staring at my phone, reading it three or four times because I genuinely didn’t believe it.

That’s the part that actually changed everything for me. Writing the book was one thing. Seeing that it landed, that thousands of people saw themselves in it, was another thing entirely. It proved I had something worth saying, even when it didn’t come easy.

That moment gave me the confidence to go bigger. The audiobook, the podcast, and now the attachment research I’m doing, because I stopped waiting for permission to be part of the conversation.

The lesson I keep coming back to isn’t about publishing. It’s that if you wait until you feel qualified enough to start, you’ll probably never start.

I’m just really glad I said yes anyway.