We thought we were gathering to discuss the woman we’re becoming versus the woman we were raised to be.
Within thirty minutes, a different question took over the room: What if the performance isn’t just a performance? What if it feels like love, like duty, like who you actually are?
Linda’s body refused to give a hug. Not a conscious choice—just paralysis. A month later, she still feels like she did something wrong.
A participant noticed that when she stops performing joy, she feels less joy. Now she’s wrestling with whether she lost something real or if she’s just experiencing withdrawal from her own performance.
Suzanna realized that performing made receiving impossible. She’s been so busy earning the right to receive that she can’t actually let anything in.
And across the entire conversation ran one brutal thread: We’ve been so well-trained that we can’t tell what’s authentic anymore.
This wasn’t a conversation about empowerment or finding yourself. This was 90 minutes of women holding complexity without resolving it prematurely, and asking hard questions about body wisdom versus trauma response, about what our children lose when we transform, about whether “authenticity” is even real or just better-chosen performance.
One participant said it perfectly: “We don’t get a chance to talk like this. How many women do you know that come on and just speak, or come on and listen? This is where change happens.”
Below the paywall, you’ll find:
Full salon replay (panel + group discussion)
Salon Summary - Don’t have time to watch the entire thing? We’ve summarized for your comments in the comment section.
Eight curated collaboration clusters matching writers with shared themes for co-creation
Journal prompts that won’t let you escape into easy answers
Resources that go deeper than the conversation could
This is what happens when you gather women who’ve outgrown coaching-speak and want to actually think together.