Becoming the leader your purpose deserves
Why your gifts feel heavy (It’s not what you think)
There is a question I’ve had to sit with many times this year: Am I being the leader my light deserves?
I mean, that question is pretty confronting when you answer with radical honesty.
It will illuminate the gap between who you allow yourself to be and who you need to become for your mission and purpose to thrive.
When I asked myself this question this year as I was launching my book, starting a podcast, running my business… alongside preparing a wedding, homeschooling our children and everything else that normal life requires, the answers became clear and also challenging.
Because asking “Am I the leader my mission deserves?” is also asking:
Where am I still abandoning myself?
Where am I still trying to perform instead of honoring what is truly meaningful to me?
Where am I shrinking under the weight of what I was born to hold?
Where am I running on old relational imprints instead of inner authority?
That last question is especially important.
When you answer these questions honestly, sometimes your knee jerk reactions can emerge. This is what happened for me at first. The inner critic tries to take over, and you may want to dive into self shaming. I’ve had to disrupt that many times.
The answer that came up for me was that I needed to fully surrender to what was true for me and discard the rest. I had to honor my own values, principles, priorities and standards… instead of following anything external.
In order to be resourced internally to handle such moments of inner friction or when your light requires more from you, the inner mother and inner father within you need to be solidly anchored.
If not, the inner critic will run the show, and your inner child collapses under the weight of self shaming and inadequacy.
This year, I felt those forces inside of me more than once. I think they flare up when it is time to upgrade. Can you relate?
You know, these moments where you felt the internal pressure rise and when you question your capacity to hold everything your light and your life are asking for…
In my case, the highest invitation was to realize what parts of me were still leading from the imprint of my earliest relationships.
The places where I learned to over-give…. The places where I was still trying to stay small to stay safe because having the book out there felt like too much exposure.
And ultimately, the places where I inherited a blueprint of performance rather than honoring what is true for me.
These are what I call relational shadows: the mother and father imprints that quietly shape the way we show up for our life, our purpose, and our light.
The way you shine your light is intimately informed by your relational blueprint, even when you think it’s not.
Your inner mother shapes how you allow yourself to receive, rest, soften, belong, and be supported.
Your inner father shapes how you act, speak, take up space, and trust your voice.
And when these inner archetypes are distorted, your light feels heavy.
It becomes a place where: you over-function, under-receive, collapse your needs, procrastinate on what matters most, and measure yourself against standards that aren’t even your own. The list is endless.
When you allow yourself to rewrite these core relational scripts and to integrate your mother & father shadows, it gets easier to stop abandoning yourself. It gets easier to stop shrinking and to reclaim the capacity to show up in ways that are aligned.
This is what I mean by becoming the leader your mission deserves.
It’s not about being a perfect leader, hyper productive or the spiritually bypassed “I’ve transcended everything” type.
It’s about being a sovereign one… One who leads from the heart, not the wound. One whose authority comes from inside, not old relational scripts.
And that is the work we will be doing this Saturday.
Saturday’s Retreat: Uprooting the Relational Shadows That Hijack Your Mission
If this message speaks to you, then you already feel the pull.
Your relational blueprint is shaping your mission. It’s how you learned to survive before you learned to thrive.
This retreat is a full-day experience designed to help you:
• Map your relational blueprint
• Clear the mother and father shadows shaping your leadership
• Repair the places where your inner child still flinches
• Rebuild inner authority
• Anchor a new empowered posture for 2026
And the timing could not be better.
The holiday season activates everything we haven’t fully resolved… belonging wounds, expectations, attachment fears, regression patterns, visibility anxieties.
This isn’t a time to collapse, but one to time to reclaim yourself.
To enter the next year not just inspired… but internally reorganized.
The retreat is this Saturday, December 13th.
Replay included. And there’s less than 48h to claim your seat.
→ Reserve your seat here: https://www.xavierdagba.com/retreat
Here’s what the day will look like:
PART I — Mapping Your Relational Blueprint
10:30 AM – 12:30 PM EST | 7:30 AM – 9:30 AM PST
We begin by illuminating the relational patterns that shape how you lead, express, create, and receive. You will map your inner mother, inner father, attachment patterns, and inner child dynamics, and see how each one influences your mission.
This block sets the foundation for healing by making the unconscious visible.
PART II — Healing the Mother & Father Shadows
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST | 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST
This is a deeper descent into the somatic and emotional layers of your relational imprint. We’ll use breathwork, somatic release, and guided shadow integration to soften and repair the imprints that distort your sense of inner safety, visibility, belonging, and authority.
This is where profound inner reconciliation begins.
PART III — The Emergence of the Sovereign Leader
3:30 PM – 5:30 PM EST | 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST
In our final segment, we rebuild your mission from truth rather than survival.
You will reconnect with your inner authority, clarify your 2026 energetic blueprint, and anchor a leadership identity rooted in the heart — not the wound.
This block is about integration, embodiment, and stepping into a new inner posture toward your mission.
This live online retreat is your inner reset before the end of the year.
If your voice feels larger than the space you allow yourself to take, then this work is for you.
And now is the perfect moment to do it.
→ Reserve your seat here (link)
In gratitude and reverence,
- Xavier






Appreciate this insight a lot, been doing my own courses of therapy & as I step into my late 30’s these questions / observations are crucial to growth & change
Beautiful friend! This is so resonant with work I've been offering and opening to. Looking forward to learning alongside you.