Jen Foley’s Post

Last week, our team gathered for an offsite that left me feeling inspired, grounded, and deeply grateful. The program and content were incredible. I learned new skills, spent meaningful time bonding with teammates, and had the chance to dive deeper with some of the clinical and strategic geniuses behind our mission to remove every barrier to mental health care. But one of the things that stayed with me most happened between the programming. During dinner one night, I found myself in conversation with both my leader and one of the people I am lucky enough to lead. We started talking about those moments that feel overwhelming, the kind where you briefly consider changing your name and moving somewhere far away with spotty Wi-Fi. The details of the situations matter less than what I realized in that moment. As I looked at my leader, I knew he understood the moments when the work had felt heavy for me. And in the same second, I knew those moments for my team member and my leader, too. Not because we are immune to hard days. We are not. But because we have created a safe place to talk about them, work through them, support each other through them, and eventually, when the pain has passed, even laugh about them together. This is what healthy leadership looks like: creating the kind of trust where people can name the hard moments, feel supported through them, and come out the other side more connected. Sometimes, it looks like writing thank-you cards to the people who encourage, challenge, and support you every day. At Spring Health, we do not just promote our mission. We live it, in the way we care for our members, our customers, and each other. Feeling incredibly grateful for this team, this work, and the leaders and teammates who make the hard days feel lighter and the good days far more frequent.