Beliefs That Shape Us
I have watched women’s networking groups online for years.
The mouse hovering over the membership button, considering… wanting to join. And every time, I clicked the small X in the corner instead.
I wanted to join. I really did. But there was a voice – a whisper – that told me, you are not good enough. You do not belong in that room.
It was my own voice. A twelve-year-old version of me.
That girl was standing in my family’s kitchen in 1990, holding a cordless phone. I had moved so frequently in my early childhood that I never stayed long enough to make friends. I didn’t know pop culture references. I wore my mom’s hand-me-down clothes. I had a frizzy mop of curly hair. And I was lonely.
So when a group of girls invited me to a sleepover, I was thrilled. I ran home from school, into the kitchen where my mother stood, and breathlessly asked if I could go. She said yes. I grabbed the phone and dialed the number written on a torn piece of loose-leaf paper.
When a girl picked up, I heard giggling on the other end. And when I said I could come to the sleepover, the laughter changed. It became something else. Something cruel.
They didn’t want me to come. They were joking.
I was not wanted in that room.
Thirty-five years later, while recovering from the traumas of my life and writing a book about the rooms that shaped me, I returned to that kitchen.
I didn’t realize until I went back – to that phone call, that moment of humiliation – that I had been carrying a belief about myself ever since.
I am not enough.
– Not pretty enough.
– Not cool enough.
– Not successful enough.
– Not good enough.
And I let that belief guide my decisions – what jobs I applied for, which relationships I invested in, how I treated my own body.
When you believe you aren’t good enough, you allow yourself to be treated a certain way.
That belief kept me from rooms I should have been in.
Healing and Growth
Healing that moment in the kitchen changed everything. I can see now that the perspective of twelve-year-old April was incomplete. She believed her value came from other people – and that what they said was truth.
Forty-seven-year-old April knows better.
What happened on that phone call says far more about those girls than it ever did about me. I belong in every room I choose to enter – and I value myself enough to leave the ones that are too small or no longer right for me.
So when I saw an application to speak at a women’s networking event I had quietly watched for years, I applied.
I was selected – not as a member, but as a speaker.
– Because not only do I belong in that room, I have the voice, the knowledge, and the message these women need to hear.
As women, we carry so many voices that never belonged to us. We’ve been told to be smaller – to be helpful, pleasing, quiet. We’ve absorbed the rhetoric about women who ask for more money, a promotion, or a seat at the table. We fear being labeled pushy, bossy, or worse, simply for advocating for ourselves.
But those messages are not ours to carry. They say far more about the people who repeat them than the women they’re aimed at.
Call to Action:
So I want to challenge you, women of Thrive:
1. What beliefs are you still carrying?
2. Who taught you that you didn’t belong?
3. What room are you standing outside of, afraid to enter?
4. Are you ready to name, address, and heal the moments that created those limiting – and false – beliefs about yourself?
Name: April Day Garcia
Professional Title: Author, Speaker
Bio: April Day Garcia is an Occupational Therapy Assistant, author and speaker. Her memoir, The Room to Be Brave, (launching January 2026) is a story of rooms. These are the rooms that shaped her and held her fear, shame and grief. After years of keeping those rooms locked, she found that returning, and letting in some light, was the only way she could move forward.
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