Twenty years of watching people cross.

Some of you have been receiving emails from me for over a decade.

You've been here through career changes. Through me becoming a mom. Through professional iterations I can barely remember naming. It's been a lot of life!

That's not lost on me.

And because you've been watching this closely (probably more closely than I have), you might recognize this pattern before I name it.

Let me share what happened a couple weeks ago:

In my 2026 annual planning, I did what I always coach others to do: I zoomed way out. Looked at the whole landscape. What I did last year, and what I've been doing for nearly 20 years.

500+ people I've coached one-on-one since 2022 alone. Most of them were informal at first (friends, former colleagues, people who reached out). Then formalized through CTOx when fractional CTOs kept coming to me for the same thing:

Career transitions. Identity evolution. The messy middle between "this doesn't work anymore" and "I know what's next."

Every single one.

And when I pulled back far enough to see the full picture, something became undeniable:

I help people navigate thresholds.

The fractional CTO whose corporate identity is dissolving. The ambitious mother refusing the binary choice between career and family. The executive whose body is screaming stop while their calendar says more.

Here's what a threshold actually is:

That liminal space where your current role doesn't fit but your new one isn't trustworthy yet. The vulnerable middle where you're between structures. Where your old identity makes you feel like a fraud and your new one feels too bold to claim.

Most people don't have language for this. They think something's wrong with them.

Your Sunday dread isn't laziness. That knot in your stomach during leadership meetings isn't imposter syndrome. The exhaustion that no amount of optimization fixes isn't a personal failing.

Through my lens, those are threshold signals.

Three signs you're at one right now:

1. What used to energize you now depletes you (even when you're successful at it)
2. You can feel something shifting but can't articulate what
3. The advice that used to work makes everything worse

The world outside us is increasingly chaotic. More noise, more pressure, more overwhelm.

I learned from Alex Charfen years ago at a Genius Network talk that stuck with me about the importance of reducing pressure and noise when the external environment is intense.

We can't control what's happening out there.

But we can protect what's happening in here. In you. In the crossing you're navigating.

Why this matters now:

I've spent 20 years around entrepreneurs who think differently and create things that didn't exist before. 

I know what's possible when you're willing to be brave and misunderstood.

And I know that your ability to navigate your own evolution without abandoning yourself determines whether you become who you're capable of being.

That's the work. That's what this has always been about.

I'm finally naming it.

More Tuesday on what this means for you and what's changing here.

For now, just notice: if you're standing at a threshold, you're not alone. And you're certainly not broken.

You're simply crossing.

Marissa

P.S. If any of this resonates and you want to talk through what you're navigating, hit reply. I read everything.