Year of 40

In honor of my 40th Birthday

40 CONVERSATIONS in one year

10 conversations per Quarter

July 14, 2022- July 13th 2023

Between July 14, 2022 and July 13, 2023 I am gifting 40 women+ a 90-minute conversation in my Year of 40 project, in honor of my 40th birthday! This is a space for 40 women+ to receive 90 minutes with me to unveil the truest, most beautiful version of their lives.

These sessions create an opportunity for me to deepen relationships with people in my community (like you!), to learn more about what you need, and to reciprocate the gifts I have received from philosophy by paying it forward.

When I heard Brené Brown say this on her podcast, I recognized its truth immediately. It’s exactly what happened to me a few years ago, about halfway through my 37th year, when I decided I had done enough yearning for the life I wanted–it was time to start living it.

I was in the bathroom. My confidence as a mother was in the toilet. I felt at war with my headstrong four-year-old. My husband and I had grown distant. My business was hobbling along, barely breaking $20K a year in revenue. The memoir I’d been wanting to write about my postpartum psychosis was still just a bit of scribbled notes in a drawer, to be written…someday. The dream I had of publishing essays in big national outlets seemed laughingly out of reach.

As I brushed my teeth and stared into the mirror, a voice in my mind asked:

The pandemic had just shut down the country a few weeks earlier, and the world was a big question mark, but I didn’t care. I was tired of waiting for the right moment.

A few days later, I wrote a journal entry imagining that I was speaking from the truest, most beautiful version of my future 40th birthday. I described how, now that I’m forty, I feel more “more present and giving” with my daughter and “more connected, more intimate, and more fun” with my husband. I described a flourishing business, a finished book draft, publications in major national outlets, and a new house (with a sunroom) in an amazing neighborhood that we had just closed on.

Reading back over my journal entry, it’s EERIE how I’ve actually achieved all these things in the last two+ years – much improved relationships with my daughter and husband, a flourishing coaching practice, a full draft of my memoir, an essay in The New York Times, even the new house! (We’re closing on a house (with a sunroom, in an amazing neighborhood) next week!)

WEEEEIIRD.

But, then, I realized it wasn’t weird.

this isn’t about me

I started bringing my strategies to clients, asking them to unveil their dreams and speak from their future lives. I worked with them around the fear, resistance, and doubt they were feeling. I guided them to define and live in their values. I asked them to see themselves and their place in the world in new ways. And the damnedest thing started happening:

More and more of my clients started making HUGE changes in realizing their visions, sometimes at a speed and magnitude that shocked both them and me.

Here are some examples:

A mother-of-two and academic who’d been adjunct teaching for peanuts for 14 years, wanted to start her own coaching business but had no idea where to begin. In six months, she had set up her business, and had her first paying client, who paid her $3K for a 10-session program, an amount comparable to adjunct teaching pay for an entire semester, for a fraction of the time.

A mother-of-two and therapist was constantly fighting with her husband over domestic chores,“overwhelmed with grief related to the transition to motherhood,” and feeling trapped in “loss, helplessness and outrage.” Within six months, she had been able to plug back into joy and hope so deeply that, when we reviewed her goals and fears from the beginning of her program, she wept tears of gratitude, barely believing that she had felt that bad.

A writer was tired of putting her writing dreams on the back burner. She’d been facing writer’s block for two years and was sabotaging herself by letting other demanding jobs consume her time. Five months after our first session, she had op-eds and essays published in The Washington Post, among other outlets. She now is a full-time writer.

If it’d happened once, I’d think it was a fluke. But these are just three of the dozens of examples of clients from the past few years.

It’s like, once I had the courage to believe in my own dreams, it unlocked something in me that was able to help others do the same. In that imaginary 40th birthday journal entry I wrote two and a half years ago, I already knew the truth of how these things work. Here’s what I wrote:

Every word remains true. What truth do YOU already know?

MY birthday gift for YOU:

What makes my heart sing is helping others experience the same courage, freedom, resolve, and confidence that I have come to know over the past few years. So, for my actual 40th birthday on July 14th, I am gifting 40 women+ in my community 90-minute conversations to tell me about what the universe is whispering to you.

What is the truest, most beautiful version of YOUR life?

Let’s make it real.

Maybe you want to feel more confident as a parent, or more alive in your body, or more willing to speak up for yourself and others. Maybe you want to express yourself creatively, or start a business, or join the board of a nonprofit. Maybe you want to be a more involved activist, or adventure in nature, or work to improve the lives of others. Maybe you just want to feel more vital, more free, more at peace.

You don’t need to believe yet

It’s ok if all your dreams feel out of reach. Here are some of the things I hear from clients all the time, and that I told myself for years:

• I don’t deserve to be happy when others are suffering

• This kind of success happens for other people, not me

• My dreams aren’t important

• I don’t have what it takes

• I don’t have the time

• It will take too long

• I don’t have the right education/ experience/ credentials/ skills/ personality

• I don’t have enough support

• I should be farther along by now

• I don’t know if it will work

It’s ok if it feels like there are a million obstacles, like the world is terrible, like you don’t really believe you deserve any of it.

You don’t need the answers now. You don’t even need to believe it’s going to happen. You just need to be willing to explore what you want. We’ll figure out the rest together.

I BELIEVE THAT WHEN YOU are living your truest, most beautiful life, YOU WILL:

• Feel a deep sense of self-worth and a deep compassion for others

• Bring joy to others in your life, including your children, if you have them

• Make better use of your talents and resources

• Feel more deeply connected to the world, both human and natural

• Have deeper capacity to face and solve painful personal and social problems

• Work toward social justice, equity, and environmental care

• Celebrate, honor, and lift up other women+

TOGETHER, DURING THIS Conversation, WE WILL:

Each Year of 40 call is 90 minutes and designed to do a few very specific things:

1. Figure out the story that you are currently telling yourself about who you are and your place in the world.

2. Explore your vision for your truest, most beautiful life. What would be different? What would be the same? How would life feel?

3. Identify the obstacles and limiting beliefs that are getting in your way from realizing that vision.

4. Decide if a Philosophical Coaching Program with me is the next step for you. I offer 6-month one-on-one Philosophical Coaching Programs, and I’m looking for 15 women+ over the next year to join me in this transformational relationship.

Projects like this are part of how I connect with my ideal coaching clients and fill the limited coaching spots I have available in my practice each season, but these sessions are not sales consults. They are designed to have value for you as a stand alone experience.

DURING THIS CALL, WE WILL NOT:

1. Immediately and completely transform your life to embody your vision immediately.

2. Diagnose or treat any medical condition.

3. Achieve ultimate spiritual enlightenment.

THIS PROJECT IS FOR YOU IF…

• You identify as a woman, womxn, (she/her), non-binary, gender-fluid, and/or queer (they/them).

• You sense that you can live a richer, more joyful life than you currently are living, and you are ready to make changes to get there.

THIS PROJECT IS NOT FOR YOU IF…

• You are male-identified.

• You see no need for change in your life.

How do you book one of the 40 spots? 

Please follow these steps:

what is the universe whispering in your ear?

let’s find out.