I stood on the Kawarau Bridge bungy platform in New Zealand, 141 meters above the Kawarau River, for three full minutes.
Not jumping. Not moving.
Just standing there, staring at the most beautiful, terrifying view I have ever seen, silently begging the guy running the platform to nudge me off.
He couldn’t. They’re not allowed to touch you. You have to do it yourself.
He kept trying to help. “It’s just like falling on a bed,” he said. And I remember thinking, “What kind of bed have you ever fallen on?”
My husband Lee went right before me. Barely paused for his photo. Just walked up and jumped.
I watched him dive and thought, okay, let’s be like Lee. Let’s just go.
And I couldn’t. Not yet.
It took holding my breath, closing my eyes, and deciding that I was going to do this even though every part of me wanted someone else to make it happen for me.
I jumped. And I’m still proud of myself for it.
But here’s the part that happens AFTER you jump: you bounce.
Not once. Several times. You fall, and then you’re pulled back up, and then you fall again, and the cycle repeats until gravity and physics work themselves out and someone comes to collect you.
It is the strangest sensation, that freefall followed by the rebound followed by the freefall again.
The Platform I See These Days
I’ve been thinking about that platform a lot recently. Not because of the jump itself, but because I see people standing on it every single day.
They show up in my inbox and my DMs.
They’ve been thinking about a session for months. Sometimes years.
They have the career, the credentials, the community, and imagery that tells none of that story.
They know something needs to change. They can feel it.
And they’re waiting for someone to tell them it’s okay to do it.
I know that feeling from the inside. Standing on the edge of something, scanning for permission that isn’t coming.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: when you can’t trust your own instinct on the things you want, all you’re doing is trusting other people to take responsibility for your actions.
You’re handing over authorship of your own story and hoping someone else writes the next chapter for you.
That doesn’t work. Not on a bridge in New Zealand, and not when it comes to how the world sees you.
What Happens When You Stop Waiting
The imagery you will love most, the images that actually feel like you, that carry your authority, that tell the truth about where you are in your work and your life, those come when you arrive willing.
When you’ve made the decision yourself. When you stop waiting for the external validation and say, this is mine.
I’m doing this because I want to. Because I’m worth it.
Not because a business coach told me I needed new headshots. Not because my website is embarrassing.
Because I have decided that my story deserves to be documented.
That decision does something.
It lays a foundation. It becomes the precedent for the next decision and the one after that: the next time you step into a room and take your place, the next time you say yes to something that scares you, the next time you choose to leave evidence that you were here.
So many of us do not stand in our own power.
We shrink behind humility. We let accomplishments go unwitnessed.
We tell ourselves we’ll do it later, when we’re ready, when we’ve lost the weight, when the business hits that next milestone, when someone tells us it’s time.
And then we’re forgotten.
Not because we didn’t matter, but because we never let anyone see us while we were here.
Nobody is going to push you off the bridge.
That’s the good news.
Because when you jump yourself, when it’s your decision, your ownership, your story, that’s when the images we create together actually mean something.
That’s when the work goes beyond a photo session and becomes the beginning of something you’ll carry forward for the rest of your life.
If you’re standing on the platform right now, you don’t have to be ready. You just have to take the first step.
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