The Room Where Everything Changes
Written by Jamie Richins
March13th, 2026
5 min read
March13th, 2026
5 min read
Jamie Richins is a published editorial photographer, business strategist, and host of the Just Jamie podcast, where she explores the intersection of ambition, identity, and sustainable growth. Her work sits at the crossroads of creative expression and commercial intelligence, shaped by years behind the lens and inside the strategy rooms of entrepreneurs who are building brands with depth. As a photographer, her editorial eye is renowned for capturing presence over performance, translating personal vision into visual storytelling that combines polish and power.
Through coaching, live events, and her community platform, The Collective, Jamie supports creative entrepreneurs in building businesses that feel aligned from the inside out. Her approach brings brand clarity, energetic alignment, and strategic structure so growth is sustainable rather than extractive. She teaches founders how to refine their positioning, strengthen their voice, and architect offers that reflect their lived values.
"The version of you who built it isn’t always the version meant to sustain it." -Jamie Richins
Through coaching, live events, and her community platform, The Collective, Jamie supports creative entrepreneurs in building businesses that feel aligned from the inside out. Her approach brings brand clarity, energetic alignment, and strategic structure so growth is sustainable rather than extractive. She teaches founders how to refine their positioning, strengthen their voice, and architect offers that reflect their lived values.
"The version of you who built it isn’t always the version meant to sustain it." -Jamie Richins
For most of my career, I didn't just show up to rooms. I built them.
I was the one who saw the gap. The women who needed to be in conversation with each other but hadn't found their way to the same table yet. And I made it happen. I curated the guest lists. I designed the experiences. I created the conditions for other people to have the moments that changed their lives.
I understood, deeply and intuitively, that proximity was power. That the right room could crack something open in a person that years of solo effort never could. And then my marriage ended. And I forgot everything I knew.
What no one prepares you for, what I couldn't have understood until I was standing in the middle of it, is how a seismic personal loss doesn't stay in one corner of your life. It moves through everything. When my marriage ended, I didn't just lose a relationship. I lost the version of myself I had built around it. The questions that followed weren't just about my personal life. They bled into my work, my identity as a mother, my faith, my sense of what I was even building anymore, and why I was doing it.
Who was I as a leader if I couldn't hold my own life together? What did I have to offer a room full of leaders when I felt so completely lost myself? Did I even believe anymore in the things I had spent years teaching?
So I did what a lot of women do when the ground shifts beneath them. I pulled back. I got quiet. I stopped creating the rooms. I stopped walking into them. I told myself I needed time, space, stillness, and maybe I did. But somewhere along the way, the pause became a hiding place. The woman who had once moved through the world with a certain ease, who knew how to hold space for others, who believed fiercely in the power of community, started to feel like someone I used to know.
There's a particular kind of silence that women in pain learn to perform very well. We keep showing up. We keep functioning. We take care of our kids, answer our emails, and say "I'm doing okay" with enough conviction that most people believe us. We become very skilled at being present everywhere except inside ourselves.
And we stop seeking the rooms. Not dramatically. Just quietly. One invitation we let sit unanswered. One event we talk ourselves out of. One gathering we decide we aren't ready for, not yet, not like this. Because walking into a room requires something from you. It requires you to be seen. And when you're in the middle of rebuilding who you are, being seen can feel like the most terrifying thing imaginable.
I was the one who saw the gap. The women who needed to be in conversation with each other but hadn't found their way to the same table yet. And I made it happen. I curated the guest lists. I designed the experiences. I created the conditions for other people to have the moments that changed their lives.
I understood, deeply and intuitively, that proximity was power. That the right room could crack something open in a person that years of solo effort never could. And then my marriage ended. And I forgot everything I knew.
What no one prepares you for, what I couldn't have understood until I was standing in the middle of it, is how a seismic personal loss doesn't stay in one corner of your life. It moves through everything. When my marriage ended, I didn't just lose a relationship. I lost the version of myself I had built around it. The questions that followed weren't just about my personal life. They bled into my work, my identity as a mother, my faith, my sense of what I was even building anymore, and why I was doing it.
Who was I as a leader if I couldn't hold my own life together? What did I have to offer a room full of leaders when I felt so completely lost myself? Did I even believe anymore in the things I had spent years teaching?
So I did what a lot of women do when the ground shifts beneath them. I pulled back. I got quiet. I stopped creating the rooms. I stopped walking into them. I told myself I needed time, space, stillness, and maybe I did. But somewhere along the way, the pause became a hiding place. The woman who had once moved through the world with a certain ease, who knew how to hold space for others, who believed fiercely in the power of community, started to feel like someone I used to know.
There's a particular kind of silence that women in pain learn to perform very well. We keep showing up. We keep functioning. We take care of our kids, answer our emails, and say "I'm doing okay" with enough conviction that most people believe us. We become very skilled at being present everywhere except inside ourselves.
And we stop seeking the rooms. Not dramatically. Just quietly. One invitation we let sit unanswered. One event we talk ourselves out of. One gathering we decide we aren't ready for, not yet, not like this. Because walking into a room requires something from you. It requires you to be seen. And when you're in the middle of rebuilding who you are, being seen can feel like the most terrifying thing imaginable.
What I didn't realize then, and what I want to say clearly to any woman reading this in her own version of that season, is that the avoidance wasn't protecting me. It was prolonging the loss.
I don't remember making a grand decision to return. It wasn't a moment of clarity or a motivational speech I gave myself in the mirror. I just started planning again.
A small gathering. Women I respected, a conversation I wanted to have, a room I could see needed to exist. The old instinct kicked in before my hesitation could stop it, and before I fully understood what I was doing, I was back in the work I'd always known.
But something was different this time. That room reminded me of who I was. And then it showed me something I hadn't expected.
The old me wasn't coming back. Not because she was gone, but because I had grown past her. The woman who walked back into that room had been through something the previous version of me never had. She had lost things, grieved things, and questioned everything she thought she knew about herself. And somewhere in that unraveling, she had become someone sharper, more honest, more real.
The old me was polished in ways that sometimes kept people at a distance. The new me had cracks, and that's exactly where the real connection got in. I stopped waiting to feel like myself again. Because the self I was waiting to return to had already been replaced by someone better. Someone who had earned a different kind of authority. Someone who could sit across from a woman in her own painful season and say I know, and mean it in a way I never could have before.
The loss didn't just test me. It refined me. And I wouldn't trade what I became for anything I left behind.
Here's what I know after being on both sides of that. Not every room carries the same weight. But over the years, building my own company, navigating my own unraveling, and watching women move through both, I've come to recognize three kinds of rooms that tend to mark a before-and-after.
The room that stretches your ceiling. This is the room where you realize your definition of what's possible has been too small. It might feel uncomfortable at first. You might feel like the least qualified person there. That discomfort is the point. Proximity to people operating beyond your current reality quietly rewires what you believe you're capable of. You won't even notice it happening until months later, when you're making decisions from a completely different vantage point.
The room that tells you the truth. Every woman building something needs this room desperately and avoids it instinctively. It's the room with the people who won't just celebrate your vision. They'll ask the harder question. They'll name the thing you've been circling. They'll push back with enough care that you actually hear it. These rooms are rare, and they are worth everything.
The room where you finally exhale. This is the one I didn't know I needed until I found it. The room where the performance stops. Where you don't have to hold it all together or explain the complexity of building something from nothing, or pretend the hard parts aren't hard. Being surrounded by women who get it, not as a concept but from lived experience, does something to you that's difficult to articulate. You simply stop being so alone in it.
We skip these rooms because we're busy. Because we can't justify the time. Because the work always feels more urgent than the investment in ourselves. And sometimes, if we're really honest, walking into a room when you're not sure who you are anymore feels unbearably vulnerable. I know that feeling intimately.
But I also know this: the version of yourself you're searching for is rarely waiting in more isolation. She's not at the bottom of a longer to-do list or on the other side of a more disciplined morning routine. We convince ourselves we'll invest in the community once things settle down. But things don't settle down. We just get more practiced at waiting.
She's in a room. Waiting for you to walk back in.
Here's what I've learned about women in leadership, from both sides of the table and from the messy, humbling middle of my own: our greatest seasons of growth rarely look like growth while they're happening. They look like a loss. Like confusion. Like standing in the wreckage of a life you built and wondering what any of it means now.
But the women who come out the other side of those seasons come back different. They come back clearer, braver, willing to say the things they used to hedge around, able to connect in ways their former, more guarded selves never allowed. That is not a consolation prize. That is the point.
And yet, we are extraordinary at building things for other people. We are not always as good at letting ourselves be built. We pour into our work, our teams, our families. And then we wonder why we sometimes feel depleted, stuck, or quietly disconnected from the bigger vision we started with.
The answer is rarely more strategy. Often, it's a room. A new community. A different conversation. A gathering of women who will see you more clearly than you're currently seeing yourself, and hold that vision for you until you can hold it again on your own.
I spent years building those rooms for others. Then I spent some time believing I had lost my place in them. What brought me back wasn't a reinvention. It was a return to the work I'd always known, and to a version of myself I hadn't yet met. One who had earned a different kind of authority. One who could finally show up without the armor.
The next version of your leadership might not be waiting in a course, a book, or a productivity system. It might be waiting behind a door you've been standing outside of, telling yourself you'll walk in when you feel more ready. You don't have to be ready. You just have to walk in.
Jamie Richins is an entrepreneur, global photographer, and podcast host known for helping creative entrepreneurs turn their stories, talent, and ideas into clear, sustainable businesses through strategy, storytelling, and community.
I don't remember making a grand decision to return. It wasn't a moment of clarity or a motivational speech I gave myself in the mirror. I just started planning again.
A small gathering. Women I respected, a conversation I wanted to have, a room I could see needed to exist. The old instinct kicked in before my hesitation could stop it, and before I fully understood what I was doing, I was back in the work I'd always known.
But something was different this time. That room reminded me of who I was. And then it showed me something I hadn't expected.
The old me wasn't coming back. Not because she was gone, but because I had grown past her. The woman who walked back into that room had been through something the previous version of me never had. She had lost things, grieved things, and questioned everything she thought she knew about herself. And somewhere in that unraveling, she had become someone sharper, more honest, more real.
The old me was polished in ways that sometimes kept people at a distance. The new me had cracks, and that's exactly where the real connection got in. I stopped waiting to feel like myself again. Because the self I was waiting to return to had already been replaced by someone better. Someone who had earned a different kind of authority. Someone who could sit across from a woman in her own painful season and say I know, and mean it in a way I never could have before.
The loss didn't just test me. It refined me. And I wouldn't trade what I became for anything I left behind.
Here's what I know after being on both sides of that. Not every room carries the same weight. But over the years, building my own company, navigating my own unraveling, and watching women move through both, I've come to recognize three kinds of rooms that tend to mark a before-and-after.
The room that stretches your ceiling. This is the room where you realize your definition of what's possible has been too small. It might feel uncomfortable at first. You might feel like the least qualified person there. That discomfort is the point. Proximity to people operating beyond your current reality quietly rewires what you believe you're capable of. You won't even notice it happening until months later, when you're making decisions from a completely different vantage point.
The room that tells you the truth. Every woman building something needs this room desperately and avoids it instinctively. It's the room with the people who won't just celebrate your vision. They'll ask the harder question. They'll name the thing you've been circling. They'll push back with enough care that you actually hear it. These rooms are rare, and they are worth everything.
The room where you finally exhale. This is the one I didn't know I needed until I found it. The room where the performance stops. Where you don't have to hold it all together or explain the complexity of building something from nothing, or pretend the hard parts aren't hard. Being surrounded by women who get it, not as a concept but from lived experience, does something to you that's difficult to articulate. You simply stop being so alone in it.
We skip these rooms because we're busy. Because we can't justify the time. Because the work always feels more urgent than the investment in ourselves. And sometimes, if we're really honest, walking into a room when you're not sure who you are anymore feels unbearably vulnerable. I know that feeling intimately.
But I also know this: the version of yourself you're searching for is rarely waiting in more isolation. She's not at the bottom of a longer to-do list or on the other side of a more disciplined morning routine. We convince ourselves we'll invest in the community once things settle down. But things don't settle down. We just get more practiced at waiting.
She's in a room. Waiting for you to walk back in.
Here's what I've learned about women in leadership, from both sides of the table and from the messy, humbling middle of my own: our greatest seasons of growth rarely look like growth while they're happening. They look like a loss. Like confusion. Like standing in the wreckage of a life you built and wondering what any of it means now.
But the women who come out the other side of those seasons come back different. They come back clearer, braver, willing to say the things they used to hedge around, able to connect in ways their former, more guarded selves never allowed. That is not a consolation prize. That is the point.
And yet, we are extraordinary at building things for other people. We are not always as good at letting ourselves be built. We pour into our work, our teams, our families. And then we wonder why we sometimes feel depleted, stuck, or quietly disconnected from the bigger vision we started with.
The answer is rarely more strategy. Often, it's a room. A new community. A different conversation. A gathering of women who will see you more clearly than you're currently seeing yourself, and hold that vision for you until you can hold it again on your own.
I spent years building those rooms for others. Then I spent some time believing I had lost my place in them. What brought me back wasn't a reinvention. It was a return to the work I'd always known, and to a version of myself I hadn't yet met. One who had earned a different kind of authority. One who could finally show up without the armor.
The next version of your leadership might not be waiting in a course, a book, or a productivity system. It might be waiting behind a door you've been standing outside of, telling yourself you'll walk in when you feel more ready. You don't have to be ready. You just have to walk in.
Jamie Richins is an entrepreneur, global photographer, and podcast host known for helping creative entrepreneurs turn their stories, talent, and ideas into clear, sustainable businesses through strategy, storytelling, and community.
