Hi Reader,

This weekend I went through my wardrobe and threw out all skirts and dresses I'd kept for years. Since I left my day-job. I told myself to better keep them in case I still needed them - for client meetings, in-person events, important professional occasions. I kept them because they were expensive brands, great quality, still fitting.

Fitting. My body yes but not my soul.

A week earlier, I was in a bridal store, looking at myself in a dress, and the person I saw wasn't me anymore. I looked pretty (cannot deny it) but my body screamed NO! And still, the decision to wear pants for my own wedding wasn't simple. I heard from many women that their wedding was the first and last time they wore a dress. The wedding dress expectation runs so deep that even there — in one of the most personal choices we'll ever make — the professional script follows us.

Once I asked a tailor to make my wedding pants, I knew that I graduated, that I passed old-me and would from now on feel free to show up to client meetings and in-person professional events as me. New me, wearing what feels right.

🎤 Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:

Donatella Caggiano was living in a Best Western while her flooded apartment got fixed when she watched a SWAT team raid a neighbouring house to catch a fugitive. She caught herself rooting for the person running and then realised she was the person running. Donatella accepted the hint her body and the universe were giving then drove to her office that morning and quit.

The job she walked away from was a corporate role she had stayed in through a merger and acquisition that kept her and her team in the dark, and left everyone working in an unfinished office surrounded by moving boxes for months. The message was clear long before the layoffs: stop investing. Stop expecting. Just wait.

The hotel window was Donatella's accidental third space — the room outside both home and work where she could finally see herself. She now designs that room intentionally, for teams. She helps organisations have conversations the office wasn't built for, to rebuild belonging in places where gratitude is demanded and silence is rewarded.

We talked about why grief gets skipped when organisations change, what happens to a team when a leader hands back agency instead of holding the line, and what four haircuts taught her about leading through change.

🎧 Click here to listen to the interview

📥 Download my 1-page summary

​UP_023_Summary.pdf​

That's it from my side. I hope to see you next week!

Myriam