This weekend, my sister and I took our mom out for brunch and pedicures to celebrate Mother’s Day early. Mom is going on an international adventure for the next 6 weeks – miss you already Mom! – and so we wanted to sneak her off for some special treatment while we had the chance.

We laughed, we experienced angst over the wait for brunch, we shared our wins, we downloaded itineraries, we brought up old adventures and misadventures, we relived our biggest fights and quoted family sayings both empowering and not-so-empowering. We even planned a 2026 Mother’s Day adventure that I’m pretty excited about – Cabo or Vegas or Bust!

After our pedicures, we ended up talking in the parking lot outside for almost an hour.

It was soul-quenching and fulfilling and fun and that evening, my face hurt from smiling.

I am a different expression of myself with my mother and sister than I am as Mom or Wife or Boss Erica. And I like being reminded of that from time to time, especially in the company of women who I can trust to remind me with love of who I was before all those roles were mine to embody.

Last week on my birthday, I got to spend 30 minutes chatting on the phone with a dear friend from highschool.

And last night I texted back and forth with my other bestie from highschool, talking about how we missed our 25 year highschool reunion and weren’t all that sad about it.

Each of these interactions brought out sides of Me that I like, that I forget about.

So today the challenge I extend to you is this:

Who can you spend a little more time with this week that might bring out a different side of you, a side of you that you may have forgotten, a side of you that you like and want to embody more frequently?

Make that phone call.

Reserve a pedicure together, or make brunch reservations (we did not and that was our downfall yesterday).

Spend time with people who bring out more of who You are this week. Because you’re giving yourself a gift and you’re also giving THEM a gift, whether they know about it or not, as you both live into a little more comprehensive an express of you.