I’ve been noticing something for a long time now. The women who find their way into my world FEEL overwhelmed, but they rarely call themselves overwhelmed. They call themselves capable. Responsible. The one everyone counts on.

But eventually, most of them say some version of the same thing: “I don’t know why, but something feels off.”

This conversation is about that. Why you carry what you carry. Why this isn’t just a random thing in your life.

It’s my first one, live, and a little imperfect. Exactly as it should be.

If it resonates, there’s more for you in Road Work, my paid conversations, where we go one layer deeper into why you carry the way you do.

Find your happy. Love what you do. Make a difference.

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I embrace my changes while still working to preserve my strength and flexibility, my mind and my body.

But I remember a girl who did.

She had curly blonde hair in an era when the look was Charlie’s Angels straight. She tried everything to fix it. Huge rollers she slept on all night. An iron, the kind meant for clothes, run carefully over her own hair. None of it worked for long. The curl always came back by afternoon, and so did the teasing. She wasn’t even worried about her body back then. She was slim, the “right” shape for the moment. But she didn’t have the look, and that was its own kind of “not enough.”

She had yet to learn what I call the “Ten-Five-Three-Year Rule” of life.

A few years later, after three babies in three years, I worked hard to get my body back. And one summer I bought a bikini, lime green with a big floral print, the kind of suit you buy when you’ve decided to feel good in your skin again. I wore it on vacation. Felt like myself in it.

Then we went to the family cabin. I didn’t wear it there. Stretch marks. Skin that had stretched out way beyond where it started. The same body, the same suit, but somewhere I knew people, where it felt like it counted more? Nope. I covered up instead.

Here’s the rule.

Look at your body right now and all the “faults” you think you see.

In ten years, most of us look back and say, why didn’t I appreciate that body and celebrate all its glory? Why didn’t I wear the skimpy swimsuit, the daring dress? I didn’t realize how good I looked.

In my early-to-mid 50s, the rule shifted. Ten years became five, because the body was changing faster than it used to. Now, in my mid-60s, it’s down to three.

Not long ago, I told my 95-year-old mother-in-law about this rule. She laughed, HARD, and said it’s down to every ONE year now that she’s in her mid-90s.

Point being, enjoy this body, just as it is, right now.

Because we either keep changing or we stop existing on this material plane, and there’s no version of getting older that skips the changing part.

Honestly, my life keeps getting better and better. Not despite the changes. Because I’ve learned to keep growing instead of bracing against what’s next.

It’s every ONE year now.

Not beginners. Women who had been quilting for a while, who loved it, who were good at it.

They’d learned to piece. They had cut the fabric, sewn the blocks together, created these beautiful quilt tops. And then... the tops just sat there. Stacked up. Waiting.

Because the next step, the actual quilting, where you stitch through all three layers of the quilt sandwich to hold everything together and put a design on it, was the part where everyone hit a wall.

“It’s too big.” “It’s too bulky.” “I can’t do it.”

I heard that over and over.

And here’s the thing. I believed them that it was hard. I wasn’t dismissing their frustration. The bulk IS real. Bunching up all those layers under your sewing machine arm is genuinely awkward and uncomfortable.

But I didn’t believe they couldn’t do it.

So, I got a little determined. I played around. I tried things. I came up with a way to quilt one unit, add the next block or section to it, and then quilt the newly added section, so you’re never dealing with the whole unwieldy thing at once. When I figured it out, my first thought was honestly, “That can’t be right. This is too easy.”

But it worked. And I traveled around and taught people how to use my technique. I delighted in watching them learn just how easy quilting their quilt could be.

I eventually wrote and self-published a book. Called it You Can Sew Quilt, a little play on words, “sew” instead of “so.” Because that was the whole point. You CAN do this. We just needed to find a way that worked for how they operated.

The quilt that started it all. Also the original cover of my book, You Can Sew Quilt.

I’m hearing the same words again now.

“It’s too big.” “It’s too confusing.” “I just can’t do that.”

But now they’re talking about AI.

And I get it. I really do.

Because when I first started paying attention to AI, I felt some of that too. The overwhelm. The sense that everyone else already understood something I was still trying to figure out. The pressure to catch up, to keep up, to do it the right way.

The tech world does not always make this easy. A lot of the conversation around AI is loud and fast and assumes you’re already on board, already building, already automating everything.

That’s not where most of the women and men in my world are.

They’re smart and capable. They already carry a lot. The last thing they need is one more thing making them feel behind.

Here’s what I know after working with capable people for a long time:

When someone says, “I can’t do that,” what they usually mean is:

“Nobody has shown me a way to do it that works for how I actually operate, how I do things.”

That’s different.

That’s fixable.

And that’s exactly why I created this space.

“You Can Do This” is not about turning you into a tech person. It’s not about learning every tool or building complicated systems or sounding like everyone else online.

It’s about finding the way that fits YOUR life. Your work. The way your brain operates. The pace that doesn’t burn you out.

No pressure. No tech-bro energy. No pretending this is magic.

Just honest, practical conversation from someone who has spent a lot of years helping people do the thing they thought they couldn’t do.

You can do this.

I’ll show you how.

We’re just getting started.

Find your happy. Love what you do. Make a difference.

Linda