What a Runaway Tractor Taught Me About Slowing Down

Shared from the stage at We're All Friends Here | April 30, 2025

The District, Clearwater, FL  

Watch the speech below and come find me on Instagram to tell me what landed for you.

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Recently, I got to do one of my favorite things.

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Stand in a room full of women who chose to be there. Who carved out the time, showed up anyway, and spent an evening investing in themselves and each other. That is not a small thing. I do not take it for granted, not ever.

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The evening was put on by Hang Ten Creative Agency in Clearwater, Florida, and it was exactly what it sounds like. Women of all ages, backgrounds, and stories gathering together to share their lives and tell their truths out loud. I was honored to be one of the voices in the room where I was able to tell a story I've been carrying since I was eight years old.

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Here it is.

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My dad needed help moving equipment, and I was the only one home. So he came and got little eight-year-old me, got me up on the tractor, got me started, jumped off the back, and just like that, I was driving.

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Pigtails in the wind, nearly too small to reach the pedals, and absolutely certain that I was, in that moment, the coolest person alive.

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And then I realized he forgot to tell me how to stop.

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I had three choices. Drive it over the hill into the pasture. Jump off the back like he did. Or point it at the big tree in our front yard and just keep going in circles.

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I picked the tree.

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For ten full minutes, I drove circles around that tree, my stomach turning with every loop, while my dad pulled up in his truck, hollering words I will not repeat here. I was hollering right back at him: you forgot to tell me how to stop.

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Not my finest hour. But maybe my most honest one.

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Because here is what I know now, years later: that is exactly how I lived most of my life. Nonstop. Same tree. Same circle. Not knowing how to stop and never slowing down long enough to ask if I should.

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And I’ve come to find out: I’m nowhere near the only one.

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As women, as mothers, as business owners, as daughters, we go. We keep going. We circle the same tree at the same speed because stopping feels like failing and slowing down feels like falling behind. Most of us were never handed an instruction manual. Nobody sat us down and said: before you take off, learn how to stop.

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Of all the lessons farming has given me, and there have been many, good ones and hard ones and ones that took me years to understand, that one sits at the top.

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Know how to stop before you get started. Know your limits before you hit them. Know what you are building toward before you commit to the speed. Know when the circle you are running is not actually taking you anywhere new.

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That night in Clearwater, surrounded by women brave enough to walk into a room and say something real, I was reminded of exactly why I do this work. There is something that happens when women gather with intention. The walls come down. The truth comes out. And everybody in the room remembers they are not as alone as they thought they were.

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That is the gift of a room like that. And that is the gift of finally knowing how to stop.

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Not stop as in give up. Stop as in pause long enough to ask: where am I actually going? Is this circle still serving me? What would it look like to get off this tractor on purpose, instead of just holding on and hoping?

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The path forward is always there. It does not disappear while you are busy circling the tree. It just waits. And when you are ready, when you finally give yourself permission to stop, it is the clearest thing you have ever seen.

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If any part of this story is yours too, I want you to know you are in the right place.