When I Stopped Dimming Myself
- Apr 7
- 2 min read
By Hannah Bottigheimer
I picture my before life: the years when I supported my family as its sole provider and established my professional identity. That was my public self. Privately, I was the mother of four children, two boys and two girls.
I spent thirty years as a healthcare executive—credentialed, fluent, effective. I knew how to manage complexity and guide teams through uncertainty. I also knew how to play by the rules. I didn’t call too much attention to myself.
Then everything changed.
When my fourteen-year-old daughter became psychotic overnight, my professional life ended abruptly. Caregiving became all-consuming, and the identity I had worn for decades—leader, executive, expert—fell away. For a long time, I thought the loss of my career meant the loss of my voice.
Instead, it became the beginning of my writing life.
At first, writing was a way to make sense of what was happening inside our family. But over time, it became something bolder: a claim. A decision to step into authorship rather than invisibility. To tell a story many women live but rarely name—especially mothers whose competence, ambition, and authority are slowly erased when caregiving takes over.
That was the moment I stopped dimming myself.
Writing asked me to believe that I had something worth saying, something that others might need to hear. There was no title to grant legitimacy, no one to tell me I was a writer. Just the conviction—and the courage to say: this story matters, and I am the one to tell it.
Claiming power didn’t mean returning to who I was before. It meant becoming someone new.
As women, we’re often taught that leadership looks a certain way: polished, confident, contained. Writing blew that myth apart. On the page, I learned to trust my instincts, describe complexity, and speak with clarity even when the truth made people uncomfortable. I got a little bolder. My writing got a little louder. I stopped translating my experience into something palatable. It’s not easy to talk about what happens when the baby of your family is hospitalized six times. I wrote the truth.
I became unstoppable not because the path was easy, but because it was necessary.
Writing gave me a new arena for leadership—one rooted in meaning rather than metrics. Through essays, memoir, and community, I’ve found that telling my story generates its own kind of strength and power. It invites connection. It gives others language for experiences they’ve been carrying alone. It creates community. I’m doing that. That, to me, is leadership: having the courage to name my experience and in doing so, create space and safety for others to do to the same.
This is me in the after times: starting writing groups, joining workshops, going on retreats, publishing essays, meeting with other aspiring writers, offering encouragement, and finishing my book.
Leading unapologetically doesn’t require certainty—it requires agency, conviction, vision, and passion.
Writing didn’t replace my leadership—it revealed it.
And once I stepped into this new space, I became unstoppable.
Connect With Hannah
Instagram: @HannahBottigheimerWrites
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