Mirna's Story: Finding Her Way Back To Her True Canvas

Mirna knew what burnout looked like. She’s a psychologist. She had helped other women recognize unhealthy workplaces, trust what they were feeling, and find their way through.

Then it happened to her.

She stepped into the biggest leadership role of her career, excited and ready. But within the first month, her body was already telling her something wasn’t right.

Then came the questioning. The labels. Too aggressive. Intimidating. Contrarian.

And slowly, Mirna began asking herself the question so many capable women ask when the people around them keep telling them a story about themselves they don’t recognize:

What if they’re right?

In this Courage Story, Mirna shares what finally helped her see that she wasn’t the problem, the night she sat alone in a hotel room and wrote her resignation letter, and the childhood voices that had been making her second-guess herself for decades.

Most importantly, she tells us what she found when she began peeling away all those other voices.

Her True Canvas.

The resilient, honest, curious, funny woman who had been there all along.

Today, through Your True Canvas, Mirna helps other women ask the same powerful question:

What actually belongs to me—and what have I been carrying that was never mine?

If you’ve ever found yourself doubting what you know, overriding what your body is telling you, or changing yourself to fit someone else’s version of who you should be, Mirna’s story may feel very familiar.

Because sometimes courage isn’t becoming someone new.

Sometimes it’s finding your way back to yourself.

Connect with Mirna Mejia and Learn To See Yourself as Your Own True Canvas:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirnamejiaphd
Website: Your True Canvas  www.yourtruecanvas.org

Hosted by Bernice McDonald — Life & Courage Strategist, speaker, and author. 

Need to find YOUR Next Step through a hard thing you're facing? Have a simple conversation with the Tiny Brave Steps Generator AI:  www.tinybravesteps.com.

Connect with Bernice:  

Email: bernice@bernicemcdonald.com
Website: www.tinybravesteps.com

Join me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

If this episode moved something in you — leave a review, share it with a woman who needs it.

Do YOU have a Courage Story you'd like to share? Send Bernice a message. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The role was everything she'd worked for. Her first big seat at the table. She said yes with her whole heart. And here's what you need to know about Myrna before anything else. She's a psychologist. Burnout, unsafe workplaces, what they do for a woman over time. She'd read the books. She'd sat across from woman after woman and helped them find their way out. She had all the words. So here's the question I want you to carry while you listen today. Why, months into the job she'd dreamed of, was she all alone in a hotel room on the night of a team retreat, skipping the happy hour and writing a letter of resignation. And what did a dream about a little girl in a church in the South Bronx have to do with setting her free? I'm Bernice McDonald, and this is Myrna's Courage Story. If you're new to these stories, here's all you need to know. We talk about hard things, woman to woman, and we go looking for the courage that was there the whole time. Nobody is born brave. Think of a canvas that's been painted over, layer after layer, year after year, other people's colors, other people's words. Put down so long ago you forgot that there was anything underneath. Courage is the day you pick at the corner of one layer. So let's do that. Let's lift the first layer in Myrna's story. Act one. Waking up your courage is something you realize you need to do in response to some sort of fear. It can be as simple as realizing that something feels off. Sometimes it happens first in your body when it refuses to keep pretending everything is fine long before your mind is willing to agree. Myrna had spent her whole career reading about this exact thing. Nothing prepared her for being inside of it herself.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

It's really quite something when you realize that you're going through something that you've been reading about for quite some time. And one day it's like, oh, wait a minute, this this is this is actually happening to me.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Because it didn't start with anything she could point to. It started in her sleep, in her hairbrush, in a tiredness that she just couldn't name yet.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

So it was my really first major role that um I was offered. I was so excited to accept. And then fairly quickly, I guess it was my intuition, my nervous system was starting to tell me something, something's not quite right here. And I started noticing my sleep patterns were shifting. Um, even my hair, you know, I was just shedding more hair. Like I just felt like this general, like malaise.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Her body knew in the first month. In her work role on paper, she had all the authority. But in actuality, every decision she made came back to her with a question mark attack.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

I was constantly told, hey, you're the main decision maker, so feel free, make your informed decisions. You have complete authority to do so. And when I made my informed decisions, um, which I trusted, a lot of times the feedback was, well, are you sure? Help me understand why you made that decision and not this decision. Didn't you really mean XYZ?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

You know that feeling when someone describes you and you honestly can't understand where those words are coming from. It isn't you at all. That was Myrna in every leadership meeting.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

And then I started being thrown all of these labels, like, you know, you're being a contrarian, perhaps you're being a bit too aggressive, maybe others are perceiving you as intimidating. And it was quite confusing because the majority of my conversations with colleagues and direct reports were really incredible, amazing, collaborative discussions. So I felt very good doing my day-to-day work, but then throughout various meetings and with other leadership, I was really portrayed in a very contradictory way that it was even, well, who are who are you even talking about? Because that that is in me.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Now, if this were only a story about a hard workplace, it would end with a new job. But something else was happening.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

I constantly heard the voice, are you sure? You know, is is it true what they're actually telling you?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

A voice inside her had picked up on their question and made it her own. Within Tiny Brave Steps, that voice, which is really our fear talking, has a name. We call him Fred. We set him outside of ourselves so that we can see what's really underneath things like anxiety or indecision or uncertainty. It's the meaning you've given to things that have happened in your past. As the girl who went further with school than anyone else around her, she was given a hard time. She'll tell you more about that in a couple of minutes. Fred is the part of Myrna that learned a long time ago that being sure of herself comes with a cost. So when the labels came, it stirred all of this up again. Are you sure they're not right? She did what capable women do when they're told that they're the problem. She tried to fix herself with more books, more trainings, more hours on top of the 60 she was already giving. Because if she could just be better, maybe the labels would stop.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

And it was interesting because the more that I learned, the more that I realized, like, wait a minute, it it isn't me.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

It isn't me. Three words. The first layer, lifting. At two, embrace who you are. Embracing who you are is having your eyes opened to the strengths and qualities that you carry inside. The real you, able to face whatever the challenge is in front of you. But being able to do that always begins with understanding everything that got painted on top of you. Here's where she tells you what her desire to learn really cost her.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And I started having dreams about my youth. I was born and raised in the South Bronx. I mean, it was a very intense, unsafe environment. Um, feeling very much like an outlier in my own family of origin because the majority of them either didn't finish high school or they certainly didn't have college education. And so I was constantly told, hey, you can do it. And then on the flip side, well, who do you think you are? Right? Do you think you're better?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

So, two messages that little girl was raised on. On the one hand, you can do it. And on the other hand, who do you think you are? Try building a life on both of those at once.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Growing up, I felt a lot of anger because I felt like I was always battling, you know, other people's assumptions and expectations. And I I remember saying, no, that's not true. And then me, you know, 30, 40 years later, or yeah, um, kind of just doing the same thing. Like, that's not true. That isn't true. And then second guessing that, well, am I being too oppositional? So it was like this just vicious, exhausting cycle that just impacted all of me.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

A grown woman decades in still saying to the world, that's not true, that isn't me, and then doubting herself for saying it because her fear kept asking if she was being too much. This is what exhaustion actually is for so many of us. Not laziness, not weakness, a woman spending everything she has to defend a self that no one around her will confirm. Here's something we all need to learn from Myrna. She found her way past the labels by showing us exactly what it looks like to embrace who you are. Under the labels is something no one can take away from you.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

It's so many other people's voices. There's not a lot on my true canvas because it doesn't need to be complicated. It's just simple, right? And there are facts, right? It's I'm resilient. I I will never give up. Um, I'm honest, I'm curious, and I'm funny. It doesn't need to be anything more than that.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Resilient, never gives up, honest, curious, funny. That's the whole portrait. She calls it her true canvas. No credentials, no job titles, no defense attached. And she doesn't just see the words. Some days they come to her as color.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

So some days it's a mantra. Like I'm actually seeing the words and I'm I'm reminding myself, right? Other days it's colors, you know, and for whatever reason. Like I've even researched some of this. Like, what does the color teal mean, right? And why yellow? And also my brand um colors. Why sage green? So these are the colors that keep coming back to me. So some days it is just colors, you know. What am I gonna wear today? You know, um, what colors are really speaking to me? Um, but they're just different different manifestations of these core traits um and qualities that are really who I've been all along, regardless of the environment that I've been in.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Teal, yellow, sage green, gold, the same woman underneath, no matter what environment she's standing in. So, where had all of that been? Those years she was doubting herself in other people's meetings. She'll tell you exactly where she was and listen closely because it's true of all of us.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

It's so it's so many other people's voices. It's been there all along. It's just been hidden, it's just been painted over by by adverse experiences, you know, other people's expectations and the narratives that we've heard repeatedly. There's just so many layers, and we call it limiting beliefs and gremlins, but that's that's what we're really talking about. How many how many cults and layers of paint do we have to peel back in order to really come to the truth that has always lived within us?

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Painted over, layer on layer, by hands, by voices that weren't hers. The work was never to become someone new. It was to get back to the woman who'd been there inside, down deep the whole time. Act three, stand up for you. Standing up for you almost never looks like going on the defensive for yourself. Like a woman might do in a power story movie. It can look as small as a woman asking to be left alone with her lunch and meaning it. Which brings us back to that hotel. The retreat from the very beginning of this story. Good meals, team building, laughter at all the right moments, and Myrna watching it all from somewhere just outside herself.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

So I was at this off site and um really observing just a lot of disrespectful behaviors, not just with me, but I I it was almost like I was able to detach from myself and just be the observer. Like, what's happening with communication? How are people really addressing one another, even in the facade of we're enjoying great meals and we're doing team building activities and people are joking? But there's all there's this undercurrent of disrespect.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

At lunch, she asked for that moment of quiet that might be the very thing you need to do to stand up for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

And someone approached me and said something about, hey, I want to continue the conversation about whatever. And I said, I'd rather not. I just wanna, I just wanna eat. And then this person had their reaction, and then someone addressed me later on for not being a team player, and then and then it's almost like I tuned out the rest of what they were saying because in that moment I said, This cannot, this just cannot continue. Like I can't continue in this space, like I can't even ask for a moment to myself.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

20 minutes of quiet. That's what it cost her to finally see the whole thing for what it was. She skipped the happy hour, she went up to her room alone and she started to write. And here's where her story does something that I think is really moving. That same night, the night of a letter, her memory took her back.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

And I sat in my hotel room and I drafted my resignation letter. And in that same evening, I had a dream of something in my youth. I was raised, you know, Catholic, and I did the whole communion, confirmation, Sunday school. And I remember sitting in church on Sundays as a young girl having a very similar experience, like just being this detached observer of these are the same people that are hurting one another during the week, but somehow we're coming together on a Sunday, and everything is forgiven. And immediately after people are still selling drugs on the street, wives and women are still being battered, and there are gunshots several times per week. Like there's just something really off here.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

Do you see it? The girl in the pew and the woman at the off-site are the same person watching the same performance. Everybody's smiling on Sunday, everything forgiven, and nothing true underneath it at all. Myrna remembered another time she had stood up for herself, which she needed to see at this moment. I'm observing all of it.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

I don't have to stay in it, you know, and I didn't. I left, I left the Bronx, I didn't look back, and I I could leave this job and I don't have to look back on this.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

She stood up to the fear of making this important decision and handing in that resignation.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

The only thing that I will look back on is really knowing and and and trusting my intuition because by the end of my first month in this job, my nervous system was already telling me, like, something is off here. And I and I said, No, it's okay. This is great. This is a great opportunity, it's a big role. Um, it's exciting, it's fine. I was it's finding for quite some time. But my body was telling me it was never fine from the very beginning.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

It was never fine from the very beginning. Her body had tried to tell her that in month one. It took this long for her to sign it. But like fear does, it argued with her.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

I might not have this opportunity ever again. Um who do you think you are to leave this? I mean, you're so lucky to have this opportunity, don't blow it. And I think very similar to early narratives, is like, um, you don't really know what you're feeling. You you might think you know, but you're really feeling this.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Myrna has described what we all go through the back and forth in the face of the hard decisions. Fred reminding us of what might happen or what happened before, or how it's better if we don't take too big a risk. The same warnings that kept a girl in a hard place, still showing up decades later, still trying to protect her from losing what she'd fought so hard for. She heard him and she thanked him. And then she moved him to the backseat while she sat in the driver's seat and took over.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

I sent it, I didn't revise it because I was also getting annoyed with myself about is it framed properly? You know, could I I just want to make sure that it doesn't come off aggressive? And then I said, you know what? Just stop, just send it. I have to trust that I am a professional and I always proceed with integrity.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

No revisions, no softening. I am a professional and I always proceed with integrity. That isn't a letter anymore. That's a woman describing herself accurately, out loud, and daring the doubt to argue with her. Myrna didn't just sail off into the sunset at this point. Even the leaving was a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

And and how I off-boarded um was no different than my entire experience. You know, everything was micromanaged. This is when you're allowed to tell your team, and uh they drafted the email um for me to send and provided a schedule of when I should send it. And um, I just played along knowing that um there was no other decision for me to be made. This was gonna just be a chapter that had to close.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

They even wrote her goodbye email, scheduled it. She let them. Not because she was defeated, because there was nothing left in that building that she needed. The chapter was closed, she was already gone. And the real beauty here is that she made a commitment to herself going forward.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

I'm much clearer about what I want and what I don't want. And I'm still going to journal, I'm still going to do my meditation practice because I don't want to abandon myself ever again. I don't want to doubt who I've always been. And so I really made a commitment. Really taking a lot better care of my health, having just better boundaries. You know, I'm not gonna do 60-hour work weeks. I'm gonna work eight to four or nine to five, and whatever's not done is just not done. Like, what's the worst thing that can happen?

SPEAKER_00 20:55

I don't want to abandon myself ever again. All of us should write that one down. That's what standing up for yourself sounds like when the fight moves inside. Not a speech to a boss, a promise to yourself. Act four. Creating your impact is what happens when the thing that saved you becomes the gift you hand on to the next woman who's still hiding under all her layers. A while later, Myrna set up her own private coaching practice, and she needed a name for it. She wanted a name that told the truth about what she lived. She wanted it to mean something.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

So that's that's what I do now. Really walk women throughout their entire journey. I was thinking of what should I call my business? I ended up with the name Your True Canvas. I'm not I'm not an artist, but there was just something, it just really Really fall to me because the work that I'm doing is really helping women just see what's on their campus, the majority of which is not even their voice. It's so is so many other people's voices, whether it's coming from their youth or society or their current bosses. What belongs here and what doesn't?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

What belongs here and what doesn't? That's the whole work, isn't it? Hers first. And now every woman's who has the privilege to sit with her. And when a woman comes to her drowning the way she once was, Myrna doesn't start with strategy. She starts with a sentence that a woman has been waiting her whole life to hear. It isn't your fault.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

It isn't your fault. And the first thing to do is to really take care of the foundations. Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Are you hydrating? Are you moving? How are you treating yourself? Why have you ended up neglecting and mistreating yourself? The environment is already doing that to you. Why are you contributing to that mix?

SPEAKER_00 23:16

She sends them to the body first, not the resume. Because it's in neglect where we all hide. And she can name that neglect in words that you are going to recognize. I don't need to sleep as much.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

So I can just catch up on my emails, even if it means I'm going to bed at 3 a.m. Oh, I forgot to eat. I don't remember the last time I drank some water. Right. Um I don't have time to connect with friends. I don't have time to connect with family. Really putting ourselves absolute last. We're so depleted, but somehow we're mustering energy and it's still trying to make a situation work that was never our fault to begin with.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

If you just heard your own week in that list, she'd want you to know it isn't a character flaw, it's a signal. And then she turns that whole question around.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Maybe I need another certification or another degree, or maybe I need to do a lot more. Where the question really needs to be, what do I need to let go of? And a lot of it is these narratives, these voices that weren't yours to begin with.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

For a woman who's trained to keep on adding things, degrees, certifications, hours, that question is the door out. Not what's missing from you, what was added onto you that was never yours. The rest, she hands over like tools, small ones, the kind that fit in a pocket.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Debrief with yourself, just like you would debrief any meeting with somebody else. But the most important conversations are the self-debriefs. One of the concepts comes from self-compassion is what would you tell a friend, right? Because it's so much easier to give um kind and compassionate advice to someone else, but somehow we have different standards for our own self. You know, um, there are no such thing as mistakes. There's no such thing as mistakes. So whatever you decided in the moment, um, it wasn't a mistake to seek to understand where that decision came from.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

There's no such thing as mistakes. From the woman who spent so long being told she was one, I would trust her on this. So if you're the woman in the hotel room right now, wrestling with how to take a stand for yourself, or the one still downstairs at the happy hour, smiling through something that's costing you your own identity, or if your body is trying to tell you something, Myrna would want to reach you before any advice does.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

I always encourage my clients, whether it's therapy or coaching. I think that the most honest conversations that need to happen is with oneself, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:20

You can have a conversation with yourself. Let your fear wake up your courage, embrace who you are, and then stand up for you. Stand up for that person that you know yourself to be. You don't have to lift every layer at once. Just one honest look, one voice that you finally managed to question. One conversation with yourself tonight that's as kind as the one that you'd have with a friend. I'm Bernice McDonald. Thank you for listening to Myrna's Courage Story. Myrna is a psychologist, an executive and life coach, and the founder of Your True Canvas, where she walks women through all of it. Healing from the workplaces and the voices that shrank them, and uncovering what was theirs all along. If you'd like to get in touch with her or find out more about her work, you'll find her at your truecanvas.org. And if you're ready for your own small, honest step, the doable one, come find it at tinybravesteps.com. Because nobody's born brave. Courage gets built one tiny brave step at a time. And the woman you're hoping to become isn't out there ahead of you somewhere. She's underneath, under the layers. She always was. You are brave enough for this. You always have been.