Many of us aren’t taught how to access and listen to our own truth.

We live in a culture where celebrities and experts are revered and we defer our own authority to those who “know best.”

But what if they didn’t actually know best?

What if you always have been and always will be the most knowledgeable person on this planet on YOU? How could you not be?

So the next time you have the urge to ask someone else the answer to a question you could be answering for yourself, why not try asking yourself instead?

Please don't give yourself a hard time if you get stuck or feel kind of awkward.

Connecting in with our own truth is a skill not many of us are taught but it IS a skill we can develop.

Common pitfalls when trying to access our own truth include:

Expecting an answer immediately

Expecting an answer in the form of voice or clear Yes/No

Expecting it to work like it does for a friend or someone else

Interpreting your own fear/trauma as Truth

We all access our...

I was walking on the beach past a group of older millennials carrying surfboards and heard a woman turn to the man next to her and ask:

"Do you think I'm Type A?"

He hesitated and looked a little uncomfortable

At his unwillingness to answer, she proceeded to say, "You know, it's like a good thing. You're on top of shit and stuff."

I couldn't help but laugh, smile and feel for this woman.

This woman who was me.

I have prided myself on my diligence, responsibility and quality of work for a long time.

I still get judgy when I feel like people aren't getting shit done in the way I would

But there's a difference between being in integrity with your commitments and being ruled by the drive to succeed.

It can be difficult to see that over-achievement and perfectionism are actually trauma responses because they are so celebrated in our society.

The flip side of this pattern is debilitating overwhelm where you actually can’t get much of anything done – if that’s more of...

There’s so much noise and misinformation around women having it all. Here’s what I believe to be true.

First wave feminists fought for women having it all – the vote, the job, the family, the board seat, the social life.

This myth of having it all, and all being “the picture perfect life” left a lot of women dry, depleted and void of vibrancy.

Because at the end of the day, having it all meant DOING it all, on your own, working all day, child-caring all night, and somehow volunteering in the spaces in between.

I am so grateful to the women who paved the way for me to want more than this.

Because I *do* want it all and I believe you can have it too.

But to me, having it all means having what you truly deeply want.

Not what you think you *should* want
Not what your parents want for you
Not what society tells you to want
Not what your friends want

What YOU want.

Because OF COURSE you get to have what is most meant for you.

It’s outrageous to think you...

What’s the difference between an over-achiever and a high-performer?

This question has been rattling around in my brain and I finally had a chance to sit down and reflect on this today.

Here’s what I came up with:

Over-achievers think if they want something done well, they have to be the ones to do it.
Over-achievers don’t trust themselves, so they force themselves to work instead of trusting their natural ebbs and flows of attention and energy.
Over-achievers work to compensate for a part of them that feels incomplete – if I could just do one more thing, maybe I’ll feel good about myself, maybe I’ll have worth.
Over-achievers are driven by fear – if I don’t do this well, then I won’t be safe.
Over-achievers don’t have a clear sense of what’s important to them, so they often give more of themselves to work then they might actually want to.

High-performers know that they’re actually not the best at everything.
...

We had our final closing call for the 2021 cohort of Radiance Collective just last week and I am so incredibly in awe of the magic that happens in this community.

We don’t heal patriarchy and capitalism on our own.

We can’t heal from hustle culture and proving our worth on our own.

We need women to see us, feel us, hear us and cheer us on when we get scared and want to run back to self-sacrificing and settling for less than we deserve in life.

I know it’s scary to commit. These same women were scared to join such a long container and give up ninety of their precious minutes every week. And guess what?

That resistance transformed into desire

None of us missed a call that wasn’t already agreed to be taken off the schedule

And not from an icky bootcamp-y you must show up or else vibe but honestly from desire – from knowing this was a space that we could show up to in all our moods, states of fatigue and glorious celebration.

I want to share some of the...

As much as I live, breathe and embody my work, I am absolutely still bumping up against old patriarchal conditioning in need of an update.

I was on a call with my coach earlier this week as I was grappling with places I felt stuck in my life and she asked me:

If there is no success and no failure, what is there?

My achiever brain short-circuited (Enneagram 3 here anyone else?) and through some muffled sobs I managed to say “Yeah, what else is there?”

I heard myself say that and then I cried for the part of me that truly didn’t know what else there was to life other than awards and achievements.

A slave to success and terrifed of failure. What a shitty way to live.

What if we took both options off the table?

There’s no way to mess this up and there’s no way to do it perfectly (no one is going to give you an A+ at the end of your life!)

I realized I had been feeling uneasy about ending this year because I was grading myself on an out-dated rubric that...

The patriarchal way of achievement and success runs deep.

As a high-achieving woman, it can feel like the only options involve burnout and overgiving, but I want to assure you there are more options than those you’ve been shown.

Are you ready to find the secret menu?

I’m leading a free workshop next week and I want you to be there! Especially if this programming sounds familiar…

Put your head down they said

The benefits are unparalleled they said

Keep saving they said

Start a family they said ‍

Buy a house if you can they said

Keep climbing the ladder they said

One day it will all pay off...

How's that working out for you?

See, the way you've been shown to do life and get what you want isn't the only way.

You've been shown the patriarchal way of achievement and success

Which to be honest, isn't a great fit for most women

We can trace the origins of patriarchy back to the original separation and hierarchy of mind over body. ‍

If you've checked the...

If you've been following my work, you know I teach about patriarchy and its lasting effects on the health and vitality of women.

It's easy to see why patriarchy makes us sick and makes it hard to be a woman.

We feel not enough, everything tells us we’re not enough, so we keep trying to compensate, work harder, hide our true self, be professional, and it’s making us sick and exhausted.

Thousands of years of patriarchy might have you feeling pretty down about being a woman and truly make you feel like you need to change yourself in order to be successful.

Add in navigating shitty bosses, uneven relationship dynamics, traumatic experiences and being a mom in this society...it can just make you mad with the injustice of it all.

I hear you, loud and clear.

But what I’ve learned in the past five years of studying patriarchy and women’s empowerment is that there are real systems and structures at play that require vast change AND systems have more control over us...

I need you to believe it’s possible.

It’s possible to feel better. It’s possible to follow what you know is meant for you. It’s possible to do what you’re most called to do, and be well taken care of. The choices you’ve been presented with aren't the only options.

It's okay if you've never done anything like this before. It's okay if you're a little bit scared

It's okay to jump anyway.

I know some of you have been wondering what we're actually up to in Radiance Collective so here is my attempt to explain...

The thing is it's also magic.

Without fail, like 90% of our calls this past year in this program, the check-ins the women shared tied directly into the topic I had in mind for that week.

This program is an experience of stepping into a container where we decide:

We decide you get to rest and heal your burnout

We decide you get to meet the love of your life

We decide you get to learn how to take amazing care of your body, mind and spirit

We...

So a lot of people have been reaching out recently to ask me some version of the same question – how did you leave your stable job to follow your dreams?

Because this question is essentially my life story it feels like an impossibly huge question to answer, but I will try ;)

In 2012 I was working for YouTube at Google and felt meh about my life so I started taking every single personal development class Google offered – Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Emotional Intelligence, Negotiation, Yoga – you name it, I took it.

But perhaps what started it all was a course I took called Search Inside Yourself, which at the time I took it was a seven week intensive growth course with meditation, mindfulness, intimacy and visioning components.

I can remember the place I was sitting in the classroom, not unlike a medium-sized university lecture hall, on Google's Mountain View campus, when I was led in my first guided visualization practice and I saw my life vision –...