October Salon Stories... Your Second Coming-Of-Age
Or... The woman you're becoming versus the women you were raised to be.
Welcome to Salon Stories
You know that feeling when you’re in a conversation so good you don’t want it to end? Where ideas are connecting in real time and everyone’s getting smarter together? That’s what happens at the monthly Heroine’s Salon.
Each month, I curate four essays from women writers exploring our theme through story, lived experience, and hard-won wisdom. This post is your invitation to read these pieces before we gather live to discuss what they mean. How do these ideas land in real life? What do they make possible? What do they make us want to reconsider?
Join the Live Conversation: This month’s salon happens October 23rd at Noon Eastern Time (USA). Paid subscribers and anyone who submits a piece get in free (you’ll get your registration code via email at least 3 days before). If you’d like to attend a single salon you can get a ticket here.
Submit Your Work: Got a story to tell for next month’s theme? We accept submissions until Noon Eastern Time on the 15th of every month. You can submit here.
Now, let’s read what our contributors have to say.
*All pieces are unedited and as submitted.
This is a long one so bookmark it so you can keep coming back!
Linda Yetman - “The Hug I Didn’t Give”
Linda’s piece gutted me, because Linda refuses to let herself off the hook. She doesn’t conclude “I set a boundary and they’re toxic.” She sits in “I DO feel like I did something wrong. And maybe that’s the point.”
What makes the piece extraordinary? Linda interrogates without resolving. Was her body protecting her from depletion, or was she withholding love? Is guilt reliable guidance, or just conditioning? Can you simultaneously have done something wrong AND necessary?
We need to talk about performing love versus authentic love. About training people to expect constant service from us, then what happens when we can’t deliver.
You can find
here. And although it doesn’t look like she has started her Substack yet (proof that numbers and stats mean nothing when I am selecting pieces for the Salon), I think you will agree that we’d like to read more of what she has to say.The Hug I Didn’t Give
It’s early morning, and I tense as the hot coffee I’m drinking irritates the cold sore on my upper lip. I am immediately reminded of how my life changed exactly four weeks ago; can it really be that long? My mind quickly drifts to the waiting area outside the ICU, where my brother-in-law is intubated and on a ventilator due to complications of a progressive neurodegenerative disease. Only my family is in this waiting area; I feel we are exposed. It’s not a room, just a corridor space carved out for visitors who are in limbo. Staff walk by on their way somewhere, and other family members pass through to access a bathroom. My sister sits across from me in the waiting area. She might as well be on the moon; the tension is thick. As a nurse, I am used to seeing large groups of family and friends of patients in waiting rooms, where emotions run high. This waiting area is unusually quiet.
My body felt so heavy in the chair, like I’d been awake for days, which I had—sleeping with my phone by the bed for a year and a half, waiting for their calls to troubleshoot their medical concerns. Driving into the hospital the night before, I learned my niece had gone to a concert out of province. My nephew was furious. My sister turned around in the car and said, “This conversation stops here”, when I questioned the fact that my niece had gone to a concert while her father was intubated and on a ventilator. That was when I learned to stay in my lane.
The first four days after arriving there were a blur. However, there was no blur when I looked up and saw my niece walk into the waiting area after she returned from her trip. There were several empty chairs, with one on either side of me. She walked toward me. Why wasn’t she walking to her mother to sit next to her? I did not get up. I felt that part of me wanted to stand up to give her a hug, which is what I’d normally do and probably what she expected. However, my body did not move. I felt numb. I could feel my sister watching across the corridor. She did not lean in to give me a hug; she sat down next to me. I said hello, and that was that. She did get up when my partner came into the waiting area and gave her a hug. They chatted briefly, and my partner sat in the empty chair on the other side of me. I thought that was the end of it. The hug I didn’t give, the conversation we didn’t have. I flew home two days later, exhausted and relieved to be back in my own space. Then the texts came.
I had been texting my sister when I got back to ask how things were going. She texted one-word replies…totally unlike her previous texts. I asked her why she was being so short with me. She said, “I was heartbroken you didn’t give Cassie a hug at the ICU when you saw her. I just noticed it.” I read it twice. Then three times. My stomach dropped. I was sitting on my couch—the same couch where I’d spent the last year and a half answering their crisis calls, troubleshooting symptoms, and being needed. And now I was being told that the one time I didn’t perform love the way they expected, I’d broken my sister’s heart. I wanted to vomit. The numbness from the waiting area flooded back, but this time it came with something sharper underneath—rage? Grief? I couldn’t tell. I tried to call her a couple of times. She didn’t answer. I’ve gone from being on speed dial to silence. No texts about symptoms. No late-night phone calls. No one needs me to troubleshoot their crisis. I should feel relieved. Instead, I feel unmoored…guilty. And I also feel free.
I’ve been sitting with this question: Why did my body refuse to move that day? Was I too depleted to give one more thing? Or was I finally seeing clearly—that I’d spent my whole life performing love through service, through fixing, through being needed. And maybe that wasn’t love at all. Perhaps it was what was expected; perhaps it was just a matter of survival.
The woman I was raised to be would have given the hug despite the exhaustion, despite being told to stay in my lane, despite everything. She would have apologized to my sister immediately, explained herself, and tried to fix it. She would have been back on speed dial within days. But I didn’t do any of that. And every day that I don’t reach out to fix this feels like I’m betraying something fundamental about who I’m supposed to be.
This past month has been quite something for me. Not giving my niece a hug cost me the only family relationship I have left. I’ve cried more than I thought possible. My partner and friends keep telling me I did nothing wrong. But here’s what I can’t shake: I DO feel like I did something wrong. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe becoming the woman I need to be means doing things that feel wrong according to the rules I was raised with. The cold sore on my lip will heal. The silence from my sister might not. And I’m learning—slowly, painfully—that I might have to be okay with that. I’m not sure if I’ll ever stop feeling like I need permission to disappoint people. I’m not sure if the woman I’m becoming will recognize the woman I was. But I know this: my body knew something that day that my mind is still catching up to. Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is refuse to pretend.
Lesley Christine Tipton - “How Much Is Enough?”
Lesley’s piece stopped me cold at a garage sale. Her mother, browsing the “nice neighborhoods,” says casually: “They’re different than us poor people.”
I’m including this piece because economic shame is territory we don’t examine honestly enough. How beliefs pass down “like eye color.” How you can be physically close to someone you love while breaking free of the patterns that shaped them. And because Lesley asks the question that matters: How do you hold compassion for someone’s struggle while refusing to inherit their limitations?
You can find
and her Substack here. I think she needs some subscribers.How Much Is Enough?
I always knew I was going to leave my home state. How could I not? From my childlike perspective, it felt like an embarrassing place to have grown up. There weren’t many noteworthy people from Arkansas, and I wanted a bigger life than that. Not fame, but something more. Arkansas has a history of being the butt of many jokes.
After college, I packed up and didn’t come back except for visits—until eighteen years later.
I felt poor growing up, even though our electricity was never shut off, we owned our home, and I had privileges I didn’t recognize back then. Later in life, I caught myself wondering why I felt poor when, technically, I wasn’t.
Like many kids of the ’90s, I was told that college was the path to security. “If you go to college,” my parents said, “you’ll be able to get any job you want.” I went, graduated with a pile of debt that still sits on my shoulders, and waited for the promise to come true.
It didn’t.
Instead, I carried on the family tradition of worrying about money.
Over time, I’ve learned that worrying about money doesn’t bring money—it keeps it away.
I was raised to be average. To be careful. To make do. My parents wouldn’t agree with that statement—they’d say they wanted me to have a better life—but beliefs pass down like eye color. They pass through stories, habits, and fears absorbed without question. Ours came from generations shaped by the Great Depression.
My parents taught me to prepare for the worst, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t happen.
Florence Scovel Shinn wrote a hundred years ago in The Game of Life and How to Play It that you get what you prepare for. (I happen to be publishing the 100th anniversary edition of this book next month, so you can imagine which advice I prefer.)
I’ve spent years unraveling those inherited beliefs. I even learned energy clearing so I could release them. Moving back home, after nearly two decades away, showed me how deeply they ran.
My parents are loving and supportive. They mean well. But I grew up in the shadow of a poverty mindset—especially my mother’s.
I remember one Saturday morning, soon after we’d moved back, going to garage sales with her and my two daughters. My mom loves the “nice neighborhoods,” the ones where people “don’t need the money.” That morning, she said it again: “They’re different than us poor people.”
Wait. They’re different than us?
It hit me—that was the invisible wall I’d been living behind my whole life.
How could I ever become something I was taught I wasn’t?
Now, my mom teeters on the edge of hoarding, which I’ve come to understand is another symptom of that same mindset. She keeps everything, afraid she’ll never be able to replace it. Her house is filled with boxes stacked high, collections of craft supplies she longs to use but can’t because there’s no room left. She tells herself she’ll get to them “someday,” but someday never comes.
It breaks my heart.
She lives ten minutes away but won’t let us inside anymore. My daughters would love to learn stained glass from her—she has all the tools—but they sit boxed away in a room no one can enter.
She always says, “I just have to get myself together, to get organized.” But I know that will never happen. No amount of organization can fix what’s really going on. Only letting go can. And letting go feels impossible when you’ve spent a lifetime believing you’ll never have enough.
I want to enjoy my mom. I want my kids to know her better. But her fear of not having enough has cost her the joy of what she already has.
When I was twenty-one, I studied abroad in Europe. I was supposed to be gone for more than a year, and instead of letting go of my things, I was encouraged to store them. I rented a big storage unit and filled it with boxes of books, clothes, childhood memories—even candles.
Then I left with just a backpack. I lived simply, moving through hostels and trains with only what I could carry: a few changes of clothes, a towel, a toothbrush, and one book I’d trade for another when I finished. I discovered how little I actually needed—and how much freer I felt.
When I returned, I battled that sense of freedom against my mom’s familiar reminders: “You might need this later.” “You could do something with that.” “You should keep it, just in case.” I unpacked some of my storage, but what didn’t fit went into one of her sheds.
Looking back, I understand her more. My mom grew up a military kid, one of five children, moving constantly, each allowed only one trunk of belongings. When she finally settled down, she held on tight to everything.
Ironically, my grandparents were the ones who saw it most clearly. When I was in college, they sold everything and went gold prospecting in Arizona. They told us, “Be careful. You think you own your stuff, but your stuff ends up owning you.”
We didn’t understand then. It seemed crazy. But I do now.
Years later, I found myself repeating the pattern—only in reverse. My family sold 90% of what we owned and traveled the U.S. in an RV. We traded our stuff for experiences.
Through the purging, I felt lighter. I couldn’t quite explain it at the time, but I knew there was something sacred about it.
During those five years on the road, I learned to do energy clearing, releasing old emotions stored in the body. Letting go became a practice—something I could apply to all areas of life.
As I released those old energies, I began to understand myself and others more deeply. I started focusing on clearing the poverty mindset I’d inherited. I could trace it through generations—people who had survived the Great Depression, wars, and uncertainty.
I began to realize that trauma doesn’t always look like violence or abuse. Sometimes it’s the quiet conditioning of fear—the belief that safety only comes from holding on.
I’m still learning. I’m not where I want to be yet. But the grip is loosening, little by little.
The dream I have for my life is one my family doesn’t believe is possible. But I know it is, even if I can’t see it yet.
Because I’ve learned that freedom—not stuff—is what real wealth feels like.
Amanda Coleman White - “Origin Story”
Amanda opens with a devastating poem about the girl she was before the world trained her, then examines what it means to inherit belief systems you didn’t choose. She grew up evangelical. Amanda didn’t understand that her household’s politics didn’t match her values because those values hadn’t formed yet. She just absorbed them.
Graduate school exposed her to different perspectives. She deconstructed. She left the church. But now she’s mothering young children and facing the paradox: if you reject your parents’ framework, what ARE you teaching your kids? And how do you honor your pre-socialized self (the one who knew things before the world taught her what to think) when you’re still discovering who that person is?
I’m including this because we need to talk about inherited belief systems. Not to debate who’s right, but to examine how profoundly we’re shaped by frameworks we never chose. And what it costs to leave them.
You can find
here. She writes a publication called “Under Pressure.”Origin Story
My mother forbade carving faces
into Jack O’Lantern décor—
that lighthearted and messy family
activity that preps for sugar highs.
Instead as children we painted gourds;
our superstitious parents watching
that no sharp objects got close
to vegetables in October.
Surely the haints would come
claim our house for their own;
those unfriendly souls intent
on bedeviling produce.
Our house remained dark
as neighbor porches glowed warmly,
Hallelujah night bobbing for apples
and getting sick on sweets
just like the pagans.
My parents didn’t know their history;
the very thing they avoided
what would keep our home from harm.
Ancestors all Irish turnip eaters
frightening the devil away.
I chuckle to think of that face;
my mother, shielding me from pumpkins.
Now I carve that memory every October,
let it frighten from the porch steps,
then I cleanse the air with sage.
It isn’t easy to rid yourself of a childhood. I attempted it years ago and discovered that what haunted me could prove itself a relatively decent teacher if I allowed it. Growing up in an evangelical household, we faithfully attended church. My mother volunteered for Sunday school before transitioning, along with me, to middle school youth group. I know I’m not alone in the deconstruction I’ve had to do surrounding this particularly American subculture. Yet by being so intimate with it as a child, I became fluent in the language of that protestant Christian movement. This has proven helpful when navigating our current political landscape; anyone can cast-off something more fully when they understand exactly what’s being rejected.
As all children do, I assumed my parents were the same age as all the other moms and dads. Now I have the hindsight to see that they were practically kids growing up right alongside my brother and me, going with the status quo and not asking questions. I don’t know that many people asked questions in the South during the ‘80s and ‘90s. So while I wasn’t brought up to question religion, as a newlywed there was a defining moment that would set the stage for the growth that I’ve experienced for almost two decades.
A respected pastor began a new series at the church we attended. Among other things, he passionately called for rejecting any cultural norm that had its roots in paganism. He was particularly adamant about yoga. My husband and I shared a regular yoga practice at the time, yet I knew the nauseated feeling I was experiencing as the pastor spoke wasn’t guilt or ‘conviction’ as he would have me believe. It was a knowing that what I was hearing was wrong. We walked out in the middle of the service that day and never returned. Our friendships slowly began to change; more than anything, we began to be ostracized from that community, since we were no longer attending the church. And yet, sixteen years later I am still practicing yoga faithfully.
But yoga wasn’t the main thing that was pulling both me and my husband toward something new. Not even close. It was around this same time that I began a Masters program in literature, which exposed me to people from different walks of life. Socratic discussions were the norm, and I became used to asking questions when reading everything from ancient texts to Instagram posts. I found myself drawn to mythology and folklore – even the family folklore I had been taught – and I continued that fascination beyond graduate school. I discovered how syncretic many religions are, which then colored my knowledge of the Christian Bible I had always been so familiar with. My chosen path of education permitted me to see patterns and similarities from cultures around the world. This now allows me to base my personal practices in a deep knowledge of the systems in which they emerged from.
The religious experience of my childhood was the opposite. For instance, my brother and I were not allowed to celebrate Halloween. We couldn’t put on costumes and Trick or Treat, and we certainly weren’t going to carve Jack o Lanterns like the neighbors. That would invite the devil, and we were Christians who instead attended Hallelujah night at our church, getting candy from safe sources – because you never knew who might poison the treats out there in the wild. But now I know that ancient Celtic cultures would carve turnips and beets in order to ward off evil spirits. As I mention in the poem above, it was the very thing my parents were avoiding that might actually protect them from harm.
I find myself becoming a woman who doesn’t constantly look around to see what others are doing. Instead, I try to ask myself what feels like the right action for me. That day long ago at church, the right action was to get up and walk away. I honored my body by listening to that internal discomfort. And while I am still evolving into this being, I’ve found that one of the best ways to embody her is to look back toward that little girl I was. When I remember that former version of myself, before puberty struck and life revolved around perception, I realize I’ve always been someone with a unique take on the world. I knew what I wanted to wear, and it wasn’t what the other girls had on. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, and it wasn’t a housewife or mother. I painted, sculpted, knit, and wrote. Oh, how I wrote. I wanted to be a journalist. No, a marine biologist. No, I definitely wanted to be a journalist.
Now I’m a housewife with children. And yet, I also just finalized a PhD. I am able to take what I’ve been given, combine it with what I’ve learned over several decades, and then teach my kids to see the various angles in a story. I can hopefully raise them to understand nuance, to discover the players who benefit from the numerous world situations we find ourselves in the midst of, and perhaps most importantly, to simply bear witness, taking action when needed. I hope I am becoming someone who represents what it looks like to be given a piece of information – from the news, from our institutions, even from our parents – and really chew on it. I hope to model how to respond to a world on fire. The little girl I was would certainly have looked at all the angles before she wrote down her in-depth analysis and illustrated the stories. And I can guarantee there would have been a rainbow hovering in the margins somewhere.
Suzanna Quintana - “Who Knew a Butt Dial Would Lead to My Awakening”
Suzanna’s piece starts with her husband accidentally calling her while at the airport. With another woman. The marriage imploded. But what fascinates me is what Suzanna examines next: she didn’t just lose a marriage. She lost an identity.
Suzanna distinguishes between FINDING herself (which implies she was lost) and EXCAVATING herself (which implies she was buried).
We train ourselves. We practice our conditioning into competence. We get gold medals in ignoring red flags. And when you excavate, you have to shed the people who belong to the identity you’re leaving.
This piece raises the question of how much of “becoming ourselves” is recovery versus discovery? And can we ever fully escape our pre-training?
You can find
here and her brilliant publication for us Gen X gals, “The Totally Awesome After.”Who Knew a Butt Dial Would Lead to My Awakening?
The moment my marriage collapsed, and along with it, the woman I was trained to be
I heard him laughing, but not directly into the phone.
“Babe? Hello? Are you there?” I asked the void.
His laughter was big. Boisterous. I hadn’t heard him laugh like that for over a decade.
I pressed the phone to my ear and heard something else – airport noise and a weird shuffling, probably from the position of his cell phone on his belt loop, where he kept it. It was a new phone. Since buying it, he’d already accidentally called me several times.
This must have been another accident.
I could hear every word he said. Then a woman spoke, whom I couldn’t understand. Though I heard her Russian accent, which cemented my previous suspicions of the double life he was leading.
I got dizzy and slid to the floor, my stomach filling with acid. I heard them walk through the airport, and a message over the loudspeaker signaling they’d reached baggage claim. Together.
Then the call dropped.
As did every illusion I had about my marriage, my man, and myself.
Only a week before, I had begged the Universe for a sign. Not a shooting star or whisper in the wind, but a cement truck of truth to flatten me into listening. Because by that time, after sixteen years of marriage to a man who would be diagnosed a narcissist at the end of it, I had put my inner voice on mute.
What red flags? My daily mantra on a Titanic-sized ship of them.
By that point, however, I couldn’t hide anymore. Mainly because I’d run out of room to store the pain. So I told the Universe, Hit me with it. Show me what’s real here.
(Note to self: Be careful what kind of miracles you order)
If being blind to men’s bad behavior were an Olympic sport, by the time I hit my forties, I’d have won gold many times over. This was no accident. I’d been raised to be a doormat at the feet of the men I loved. To be good. Obedient. Agreeable. My value dependent on my performance. A master in the art of Whatever you say, Dear.
And for a while, it worked. Being a “good girl” got me approval, security, and love – or what I mistook for it anyway. So by the time my husband came knocking at my starving heart’s door, he didn’t have to teach me how to revolve around him. I came pre-trained. Our 16-year marriage turning into a magic act.
He the magician. I the disappearing woman.
But then the butt dial happened. And the performance ended.
His. And mine.
For the first time in my life, I saw things as they were, not how I’d scripted them to be. And while liberating, it was also terrifying to realize how my entire life had been written by men.
No wonder I’d married a narcissist, groomed as I was for self-erasure.
This moment of truth, however, was also the start of the journey back to myself. Because when I left him, I also had to leave the woman I was taught to be, which opened the space to get to know the real me.
Though it wasn’t about finding myself, I wasn’t lost. The girl I used to be, back before the world convinced her she wasn’t valued, necessary, or useful, was just buried under years of trauma dust.
So, I put on my 80s playlist and started digging.
Healing became my rebellion.
Not to say any of this was pretty. I didn’t walk out of my marriage and into empowerment. I ran with my soles on fire away from him, then collapsed exhausted into my new world as a single mother, before crawling on my hands and knees through each stage of grief that presented itself.
Turns out, trauma is retroactive.
The moments I’d blocked out, the feelings I’d stuffed down, the memories I’d buried – they all came up for air once I made it to a safe shore where I could lick my wounds and recover.
It was then I realized: This didn’t just cost me a husband; it cost me an identity.
I lost my two closest friends who couldn’t get off the fence between me and my husband. I lost a community where my kids had been born because I’m the one who moved away. I lost a home I’d built with love and hard work.
But I also lost the need to prove my worth. I lost the urge to convince people I had value. And I lost the version of myself who believed a woman’s world orbited around a man.
What did I find?
Gravity.
No more head in the clouds. Today, my feet are firmly planted on the ground. I’m rooted in the knowing of who I am.
I don’t care about being good anymore. I care about being kind, especially to myself. I don’t apologize for taking up space in whatever room I’m in. I no longer fake smiles (not that I was ever good at it and looked like I was constipated when I’d try).
And after decades of asking permission, now I sign daily permission slips to myself: to rest, to play, to tell the truth, to be wrong, to be right, to build a life that suits me, to laugh my ass off, to cry a river, to sing at the top of my lungs every time I listen to 80s on XM.
Still, at 57, I don’t have it all figured out.
After living on autopilot for all those decades, it’s understandable what keeps coming up, such as the reflex to cower in a corner when storms pass through, the instinct to wilt when faced with confrontation, and the urge to please people I love and care about (courtesy of a past believing I wasn’t worthy to receive love without doing something to deserve it).
Yet I’ve practiced for so long now that any voices from the past stay in the back seat of this car I’m driving, my hands firmly on the wheel and eyes forward on the future that awaits up ahead.
Grateful for the butt dial that put my foot on the gas.
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