The Salon - Call for Submissions (compensated)

The Room Where It Happens (And You’re Invited)

Writing is a lonely business.

I know you know what I mean. Like, having a story idea so revelatory it lifts you out of your seat with excitement, but knowing that if you shared that idea with your best friend Sally, or even your husband, Bob, they wouldn’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Or, shutting the door to shut out the world because you can’t write with the constant needing.

And someone is always needing.

Wait. Now, I’m thinking about it…

Womaning is a lonely business.

wom·en·ing verb
/ˈwɪmɪnɪŋ/

1. The act or process of being a woman; to embody, navigate, or perform womanhood in all its complexity.

2. To move through the world as a woman, often balancing strength, care, resilience, and rebellion.

I’m not a lonely person. I have an amazing partnership, a global circle of friends, and a thriving (sometimes overwhelming and I miss my pajamas) social calendar. But lately I’ve realized I miss that feeling when you’re in a cohort (like a course, a program, a conference) and everyone is focused on a common topic, and everyone knows what you’re all talking about, and you don’t stop talking until there is a waterfall of ideas cascading into a pool around your feet.

You know that moment when someone says something that makes three other people lean forward at once? When an idea catches fire and suddenly everyone’s building on it, talking over each other (in the good way), making connections you’d never see alone. When you leave a conversation still thinking about it three days later because someone just reframed your entire worldview in a single sentence.

That feeling of your brain getting bigger just from being in the room.

I’ve been chasing that high ever since I left academia. And I’ve discovered the following: networking events are my nightmare, masterminds come close, but don’t quite fit, most book clubs are just a chance to drink wine without judgement). Even good coaching calls can’t give me that cohort high.

Perhaps it’s because most of those things are designed for support, not stimulation. And while support is lovely (I’m looking at you hubby), it’s not what I’m starving for.

I’m starving for the collision of human minds in real time over ideas that actually matter.

The Case for Real Conversation

For the past year, I’ve been hosting these small gatherings sometimes in person when I’m somewhere interesting, sometimes on Zoom when I’m not. Women sitting around discussing things like: What does your second coming of age actually look like? What makes you irreplaceable in a world that’s about to get very algorithmic? How do you design yourself instead of just finding yourself?

And something happens in these conversations that doesn’t happen anywhere else.

The performance drops. The cheerful “I’ve got this” energy drops. The “everything is fine” facade drops.

And what emerges is real thinking.

Women who’ve been making it work for decades suddenly admitting: I don’t know who I am anymore. Or: I’ve spent 40 years performing the good woman and I have no idea what I actually want. Or: I’m terrified that if I become who I’m supposed to be, I’ll lose everyone I love.

These aren’t support group confessions (though those have their place). They’re intellectual wrestling matches with big ideas, or your own identity. And they require the kind of conversation most spaces don’t make room for.

That’s why I’m building a salon.

Not only because I’m craving intellectual discourse (though I absolutely am), but also because AI is coming to take over every conversation in the near future. It’s coming to put words in everyone’s mouths. And those will be AI words, not human words.

Because in a world that’s about to get very algorithmic very fast, we need spaces that are stubbornly, unapologetically human. Where messy, live conversation creates insights no AI could generate. Where your taste, your judgment, and your lived experience actually matters.

We need embodied conversation, and we need to start practicing it regularly now before everyone forgets how to do it.

Because the thing is, that feeling I’ve been chasing from graduate school (that seminar room energy) is exactly what can’t be automated.

This isn’t anti-AI. I’m a huge fan (and why I’m a huge fan is perhaps a salon discussion), but I believe the only way to exist with the promise (threat?) of an AI emergent future, is to BE MORE HUMAN.

These Heroine’s Salons are resistance architecture.

I’m building a life and inviting you into a community that proves humans are irreplaceable.

What a Salon Actually Is (And Why Most Women’s Communities Miss the Mark)

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most women’s communities are designed around the assumption that we need to be taken care of. The self-help industry constantly tells us that we need support and encouragement and reinvention. We need someone to tell us we’re doing great (by the way, you’re doing great!).

And maybe some women do need that. But the women I’m talking to?

They might need a hug, but they also need a brainstorming partner (or tribe).

A salon isn’t a networking event. It’s not a social gathering where we make polite conversation about safe topics. It’s not even a book club (though book clubs can sometimes approach salon energy if you’re lucky and you limit the wine).

A salon is a learning laboratory.

And before you think I’m making this up or being dramatic, let me remind you that salons have a long history of being the place where women wielded intellectual power when they were excluded from everywhere else.

This isn’t a new impulse. We’ve done this before

In 17th and 18th century Paris, the salonnières, women like Madame de Rambouillet and Madame Geoffrin, ran the rooms where Enlightenment philosophy was actually debated. While men controlled the universities and academies, women controlled the salons. In the salon’s conversations, women did not merely listen. They intervened, questioned, curated discourse, steered which texts or ideas were introduced, and weighed whose voice would be amplified (Goodman 1994, 11–14, 49–52)

The salonnière wasn’t just a host. She was a curator. An intellectual gatekeeper. The woman who could make or break a philosopher’s reputation by whether she invited him back.

Even earlier, in Elizabethan England, “gossips” gathered. “Gossip” came from “god-sibling,” the women who gathered for births and deaths and the important moments of life. These weren’t just social gatherings. They were spaces where women transmitted knowledge, made decisions, and wielded power outside the formal structures controlled by men.

When women were locked out of universities, they built salons. When they couldn’t publish in academic journals, they hosted conversations that shaped entire intellectual movements.

The salon has always been women’s answer to being excluded from the official rooms where thinking happens.

And here’s what’s perfect about reviving this tradition now: We’re about to be excluded again (and not just women this time, but all humans) from the “official” spaces of intelligence. Because the algorithms, the AI, the systems that will increasingly do our thinking for us are about to become the norm.

So I’m doing what women have always done, and building our own room. And in that room, human judgment, taste, lived experience, and the messy work of thinking out loud actually matters.

Our Heroine’s Salon is where you bring your half-formed thoughts and let them collide with other people’s half-formed thoughts until something new emerges that none of us could have created alone.

It’s the graduate seminar without the academic politics. The dinner party conversation that goes deep instead of staying polite. The peer group that matches your mind, not just your circumstances.

Women are starving for this.

We don’t need more cheerleaders. We need intellectual peers who can keep up with us. Who can challenge us, build with us, and make us smarter just by being in the room.

That’s what we’re building here.

How the Heroine’s Salon Works

Once a month, we gather for 90 minutes of conversation that bridges story and transformation. (Because of course I’m using story structure. You know me by now.)

The Heroine’s Salons are held on the
fourth Thursday of every month at noon (ET) on Zoom.

Here’s how it works:

1. I announce the themes by the first of each month (one for the current month, one for next month because I know some of you need processing time)

2. You submit 1000s words (of essay, poem, prose, up to you) exploring one of those themes from your lived experience

3. I curate the best 4 pieces and publish them here to the full community

4. We gather live on Zoom for a two-part conversation:

• First 30 minutes: Panel discussion with the 4 featured contributors (streamed free on YouTube so everyone can watch)

• Next 60 minutes: Intimate salon conversation where all attendees participates (this part is for paid subscribers only and this is where the real magic happens)

5. Everyone thinks together. Not just consuming content, but building ideas in real time

No slides. No three-step frameworks. No tech bro guru energy. Just real conversation with real stakes.

All Submissions Welcome.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES HERE

If you’re a PAID subscriber and your piece is featured:

• Publication to 4,500+ readers

• $50 payment (because you’re supporting the concept, payment amounts will go up as more paid subs join)

• Featured panelist status in the YouTube discussion (Required. If you are chosen, we need your brain)

• Full access to the intimate 60-minute salon

• Inclusion in our semi-annual Salon Stories anthology

If you’re a FREE subscriber and your piece is featured:

• Publication to 4,500+ readers (still worth something)

• 3-month gifted paid subscription (full salon access, all recordings, everything)

• Featured panelist status in the YouTube discussion

• Full access to the intimate 60-minute salon

• Inclusion in our semi-annual Salon Stories anthology

If your piece isn’t featured (paid or free subscriber):

• Full access to the intimate 60-minute salon (because submitting is brave and deserves a reward, and everyone should have a way to access the salon)

• The experience of writing your story, which is transformational whether I publish it or not

  

The Themes: October & November 2025

I’m opening submissions for TWO salons at once because both themes are pulling at me, and I suspect they’re pulling at you too. Submit to one. Submit to both. I don’t care. Just write the one that won’t let you sleep.

SUBMIT HERE

October 2025: Your Second Coming of Age

Theme: The Woman You’re Becoming vs. The Woman You Were Raised to Be

Tell me about the moment you realized you weren’t who everyone expected you to be. The threshold where the “good woman” performance cracked and something truer started emerging.

I don’t want the Instagram version. I don’t want the “I had it all figured out” narrative. I want the real one.

The moment you stopped performing the life everyone expected and started designing the one you actually wanted, or the threshold you crossed when you realized you weren’t who you used to be, and that was okay (or terrifying, or both).

What I’m looking for:

• The specific moment the mask cracked

• What it cost you (and what it gave you back)

• The woman you’re designing for your second act

• The permission you stopped waiting for

Submission Deadline: October 15, 2025
Salon Date: October 23, 2025 at noon EST

SUBMIT HERE

November 2025: What Makes You Irreplaceable

Theme: In a world of AI, what makes you stubbornly, unapologetically human?

If you read my post about the AGI conversation that cracked me open, you know I’ve been wrestling with this question: When AI can do everything we can do (but better, faster, at scale), what’s left that can’t be automated?

This isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s happening now. AI is writing, designing, coding, strategizing. So what makes YOU irreplaceable?

I think it’s the embodied experiences. The human connections. The messy, imperfect, beautifully human parts that no algorithm will ever replicate. The ability to touch, taste, smell, and feel. The luxury of an uninterrupted thought that belongs entirely to you.

This isn’t about being anti-technology. It’s about identifying and cultivating the parts of you that are irreplaceable BECAUSE they’re human.

What I’m looking for:

• The experiences that make you irreplaceable

• What you’re protecting from automation

• How you’re practicing being more human, not less

• The skills, relationships, or experiences you’re doubling down on while everyone else is optimizing

• What you’re doing to become more humanly yourself

Submission Deadline: November 15, 2025
Salon Date: November 20, 2025 at noon EST (to avoid Thanksgiving)

SUBMIT HERE

Why This Matters (And Why It Matters Right Now)

What makes any of us irreplaceable?

The answer isn’t our skills (AI will match those). It’s not our productivity (AI will surpass that).

It’s our humanity. Our taste. Our judgment. Our ability to be present with complexity and sit with uncertainty. Our embodied experiences that can’t be downloaded or replicated.

And here’s what I know about your second coming of age: It requires a different kind of support than your first one did.

At 18, you needed mentors who could show you the path. At 45 (or 55, or 65), you need peers who can think alongside you as you create a path that doesn’t exist yet.

You need intellectual discourse that matches your complexity. You need conversations that challenge rather than comfort. You need space to wrestle with ideas that don’t have easy answers.

You need a salon.

A place where you can practice being more human, not less. Where you lean into the five senses, the real relationships, the long conversations without an agenda. Where you develop your aesthetic judgment (because AI doesn’t have any). Where you strengthen your own voice instead of outsourcing your thinking to algorithms.

That’s what we’re building here. A place where you become more humanly yourself.

The room where it happens is waiting.

The only question is: What will you bring to the conversation?

LM xx

P.S. If you’re thinking “my writing isn’t good enough” or “I don’t have anything interesting to say” or “who am I to submit?”... you know that’s only the voice of the woman you were raised to be talking. The woman you’re becoming has something to say and we need to hear it.

P.P.S. Still not sure? Hit reply and tell me what you’re wrestling with. I actually read and respond to these. You’re not shouting into a void.

P.P.P.S. If you want to get notified of all compensated submission opportunities, please subscribe to Call for Heroines…