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This week, a letter arrived.
It was written not as a pitch. Not as an introduction. As a release — the kind of message you write when you finally find a place you think might hold it.
I asked her if I could share it with you.
I am sharing it because what she wrote is not just her story. It names something I have heard echoed by women across continents, across sectors, across decades of experience in this industry.
Katrina's letter (shared with permission, lightly edited for length)
You are giving a voice to women who are invisible and who feel invisible. Many women in our sector feel unnoticed and, what is more, powerless.
It seems that even in 2026 it is so difficult to break patterns formed hundreds of years ago. And the geographical location does not matter. What used to happen on farms is now happening in my office. Men receive glory not for their merits, but for being men.
Suddenly, knowledge, experience or skills don't matter — the fact that they are men is enough.
I am authentic. But I cannot escape competition and rivalry. Often I do not compete. I know that my truth, my authenticity will survive. But how long does it take for others to discover authenticity?
Maybe I'm lacking the second factor — courage. Not courage here in the office, but courage to look for my place. But do we women always have to leave and give way to men to find our place?
My childhood is not typical. When I was 10 years old in Poland, we were fighting for survival. I was standing in lines for food. Even then I understood that my only chance was education, cleverness, and courage.
But that is not enough. I always have to lose my energy to prove something — or leave.
— Katrina
* * *
I read this letter several times. Each time, a different line surfaces.
The first time: "What used to happen on farms is now happening in my office."
The second time: "Do we women always have to leave and give way to men to find our place?"
The third time, the one that stayed with me: "I always have to lose my energy to prove something — or leave."
That is the equation so many women are quietly solving every day.
Prove. Or leave.
Two options that look like choice but function like surrender, or perhaps even loss...
And here is why Katrina's letter matters beyond her own story.
This past week, in the same days her letter arrived, I had three other conversations. With women I deeply respect. Founders. CEOs. Women operating at the top of what they have built. And they were describing, in different words, the same thing Katrina had written.
Different geographies. Different stages of career. Same equation. Navigating the same pattern.
Building your own business does not exempt you from the fight. It simply changes the room.
Even when the office is yours, the fight is still yours to carry.
That is what Katrina's letter helped me see clearly. Expertise does not exempt you. Title does not exempt you. Ownership does not exempt you.
Why this letter matters.
The cost of that equation is not borne by women alone. It is borne by the industry.
Every woman who spends her energy proving rather than building — that energy is a tax. Quietly paid. Rarely accounted for.
We do not have a talent shortage in agriculture. We have a recognition failure dressed up as one.
And Katrina is right about something else too: geographical location does not matter. The pattern is not regional. It is not generational. It is not confined to one part of the value chain. It is a pattern. Hundreds of years old. Still operating.
Katrina put it in writing. That is why her letter is the centerpiece of this issue.
Not because she is the loudest voice. But because she had the courage — the very thing she questioned in herself — to name what so many have been carrying in silence.
To Katrina.
You asked in your letter whether you are lacking courage.
You are not.
Writing that letter was the courage.
And it has already begun to do what HERloom was built for: to make the unseen, named. Thank you.
Here is what I want to say to you — and to every woman reading this.
You do not need more courage. You need more witnesses.
Courage is not a deficiency to overcome. It is a thing that grows in the presence of others. Alone, every brave thought feels like an exposure. Shared, it becomes a foundation.
So I will not tell you to fight harder. You have already been fighting, and the cost of that fight is exactly what you wrote about.
What I will say is this.
Do not let the rooms you are in convince you that the rooms are the measure. They are not. Your work is the measure. Your judgment and discernment is the measure. The legacy you are building — quietly, daily — is the measure.
Authenticity is slow. Recognition is slower. But neither is silent forever.
Find one other woman this week. Just one. Tell her what you see in her. Name her work out loud.
We change the pattern by becoming, for each other, what the room has not yet been for us.
That is not a small thing.
That is how the future shifts.
Letters to HERloom is now a recurring feature.
If something in Katrina's letter found you — write to me. Anonymously, or not. I would like to hear your thoughts, ideas, struggles or solutions.
What is named begins the change.
What is shared, multiplies.
Together, we change the future.
— with love, Christina