A conversation with Sophia Flores, founder of SheEO, and entrepreneur whose journey from California to France and eventually the Netherlands became an exploration of identity, belonging and learning to trust herself without becoming smaller for the environments around her.

Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, she learned early that questioning could come with consequences. At three or four years old, her father put her outside after she refused to pray before eating. She remembers banging on the door until eventually realizing he might not let her back in. Years later, she began questioning again, left the congregation and eventually left the United States altogether. 

Through therapy, difficult workplaces, relationships and rebuilding her life across countries, she gradually started bringing together who she had always been with who she wanted to become. 

We deep dive into:

👉🏾 Learning to trust yourself: from being taught not to question as a child to becoming a woman willing to follow her instincts and make bold choices;

👉🏾 The impact of isolation: how an early experience of exclusion shaped Sophia’s sensitivity to loneliness and her drive to create spaces where others feel supported;

👉🏾 Refusing to become smaller: how living in France led Sophia to consciously become quieter and less visible until friends and family confronted her with a painful question: what happened to you?

👉🏾 Choosing yourself over performance: why repeated experiences in workplaces where results mattered more than care eventually made Sophia realize she could keep performing but no longer wanted to;

👉🏾 Turning lived experience into care: how witnessing the isolation of mothers around her inspired Sophia to support women through postpartum transitions and help organizations rethink how parents are supported when returning to work;

Signs of empowerment:

🙌🏾 Trusting yourself does not mean knowing exactly where every decision will lead. Sometimes it means recognizing when an environment asks you to become someone you are not and having the courage to move;

🙌🏾 Self-awareness can create space between what happens to us and how we respond. Sophia’s therapy journey taught her to stop treating difficult emotions as something to defeat and instead become curious about what they were telling her;

🙌🏾 Protecting the people we love also needs to include ourselves. For Sophia, empowerment became recognizing that she is someone worthy of her own care and protection;

In Sophia's words: 🙌🏾 “Be bold, trust your instincts”

Her journey shows how easily we can learn to make ourselves smaller to belong. Yet every moment of awareness gives us another opportunity to question what we have adapted to and choose differently.

Where in your own life might trusting your instincts mean giving yourself permission to take up more space again?

Connect with Sophia: 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophia-flores-492709169/ 

Website: https://kindsugibox.nl 

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