This International Women's Day!

This International Women's Day,

I Want to Tell You About the Scariest Thing I've Ever Done

By Eugénie Ducatel  |  Published March 8, 2026

🌺 Happy International Women's Day. This one is for every woman who has ever shrunk herself to make others comfortable. It's time.

I want to tell you about a conversation that changed my life.

I was sitting across from my principal. My hands were cold. My heart was somewhere in my throat. I had rehearsed what I was going to say a hundred times and now, in the moment, every word had deserted me.

I had just sold one of my properties to give myself a financial runway. I had made the decision. There was no going back.

"I won't be returning in the fall," I said.

I was walking away from a $107,000 salary. A pension. A career I had built over decades. Security that every responsible adult voice in my head told me I was insane to give up.

It felt like jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

And it was the most important thing I have ever done for myself.

What International Women's Day Really Means to Me

Every year on March 8th, we celebrate women's achievements. We post about trailblazers and glass ceilings and how far we've come.

And all of that matters. It genuinely does.

But I want to talk about something quieter today. Something that doesn't make headlines. The private, daily act of a woman choosing herself — her joy, her freedom, her own life — in a world that has spent centuries telling her that is selfish.

That, to me, is the real revolution.

Not the dramatic moments. The quiet ones. The moment you say no when you mean no. The moment you book the trip everyone thinks is irresponsible. The moment you walk into your principal's office with cold hands and a trembling voice and say the words anyway.

The Woman I Was Before

I was earning $107,000 a year. From the outside, I had made it.

I also had two professional burnouts, a torn ACL, a broken wrist, three back injuries, and a growing, gnawing feeling that I had completely disappeared somewhere along the way.

I was taking care of everyone. Everyone except me.

This pattern didn't start at work. It started in childhood. As the eldest of four, I was the one who was supposed to have it together. I was left to figure things out on my own — which made me fiercely independent, yes. But it also taught me something dangerous: attention feels like love, and you earn attention by performing.

So I performed. For thirty years.

I said yes when every cell in my body screamed no. I worked harder than everyone around me and called it dedication. I pushed through exhaustion like it was a virtue. I wore busyness like armour.

And I was so, so tired.

Not the tired that sleep fixes. The tired that comes from living someone else's version of your life for so long that you can't remember what yours was supposed to look like.

What People Said

"You're crazy."

"What about your pension? Your security? Your benefits?"

"Do you know how hard it is to find a job like that?"

And underneath all of it, unspoken but loud: You should be grateful. You should stay. You should be reasonable.

What struck me most wasn't the people who said it out loud. It was the ones who pulled me aside afterward, lowered their voice, and whispered: "I wish I could do what you're doing."

They were inspired. And they were terrified. And they went back to their desks.

I understood. I had been them for three decades.

The Moment in the Principal's Office

Here is what nobody talks about when they tell you to "follow your dreams": the moment right before you do it is absolutely terrifying.

I had sold a property. I had done the math. I had made the decision in my heart weeks before I made it out loud. And still, sitting in that office, I felt the full weight of every voice that had ever told me to be sensible, to be responsible, to be grateful for what I had.

What if I'm wrong? What if I fail? What if this is the biggest mistake of my life?

I said the words anyway.

I won't be returning in the fall.

And then something unexpected happened. The sky didn't fall. The ground didn't open up. I walked out of that office and I felt — for the first time in longer than I could remember — like myself.

Terrified. Uncertain. And completely, finally, myself.

Cuba, and What Joy Actually Looks Like

If you know me, you know I am a Cuba Expert: I have made sixteen trips to this beautiful island. While we can no longer travel there (for now!), I went to Cuba.

Cuba strips everything back. There is no pretending there. No performance. The music pours out of every doorway. Women dance in the streets in the middle of the afternoon for no reason except that the music is playing and their bodies want to move.

Here are people who, by material standards, have very little — and who have a relationship with joy that stopped me completely in my tracks.

Joy not as a reward. Not as something earned after enough suffering and sacrifice. Joy as a birthright. As natural as breathing. As available as the morning.

I stood there, a formerly $107,000-a-year teacher who had jumped out of a plane without a parachute, and I finally understood what I had been missing.

Joy is not waiting for you at the end of some future checklist. It is available right now. It always was.

I just had to choose it.

What I Want to Say to You Today

I am 53 years old. I have two properties, a full house, adult children, responsibilities, a damaged knee, and a life that looks complicated from the outside.

And I am freer than I have ever been.

Not because I escaped my life. Because I stopped abandoning myself inside it.

This International Women's Day, I want to ask you something I wish someone had asked me twenty years earlier:

When do you get to choose YOU?

Not someday. Not when the kids are older, when the mortgage is paid, when you've earned enough, when everyone else is taken care of.

Now.

If you are reading this and feeling that quiet ache of recognition — the exhaustion, the dreams you keep pushing to someday, the sense that you've slowly disappeared — this is your sign.

You are not too old. You are not too busy. You are not too anything.

The woman you've been waiting to become has been there the whole time. She just needs you to stop shrinking long enough to let her breathe.

I know because I was you. I know because I walked into that principal's office with shaking hands and said the words anyway.

And I know that on the other side of your scariest conversation is the life you actually came here to live.

This Blog Is My Love Letter to You

Starting today — International Women's Day — I'm sharing it all. The travels. The real numbers. The messy truth. The tools I use with my coaching clients every day. The adventures that prove, over and over again, that a full, free, joyful life is not reserved for the young, the unattached, or the fearless.

It's reserved for the women brave enough to choose it.

Starting with Cuba. And now, to new adventures in the Caribbean! I am planning a retreat in the Dominican and going to do my "homework" in person in the fall. 🌺

✨ Ready to take your first step?

Take my free 5-minute Energy Quiz — discover exactly where you're leaking energy and what to do about it.

👉 Take the Quiz: https://teal-dragon-7de61c.netlify.app

Or book a free Discovery Call — no pressure, no sales pitch. Just a real conversation about what's possible for you.

Book your free Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/lifecoaching-joy/30min

In joy, health, and fulfillment always,

Eugénie Ducatel

Certified Core Energy Coach | Master Practitioner, iPECCambridge, Ontario 🇨🇦

PS: Did this post speak to you? Share it with a woman who needs to read it today — because she's out there, and she's waiting for someone to tell her it's possible. 💜

#InternationalWomensDay #IWD2025 #ChooseYou #JoyIsYourBirthright #WomenEmpowerment #LifeCoach #ReclaimYourJoy #DigitalNomad