I used to keep two versions of myself.
I'm done with that.
This is how I know the cost of staying silent.
While deep in revisions of my book Unfussy Life, with that inner voice still whispering “no one wants to read your stories,” I had a dream that shook me awake. Heart pounding, I looked around the room to make sure I was still alive.
In the dream, I was trying to speak. Except the words wouldn't come. I opened my mouth — and nothing.
I've had plenty of dreams about losing teeth and walking into class without pants. But the no-voice thing — this was new.
I'd open my mouth, grasp my throat, eyes wide in horror. I couldn't speak.
And at that moment, I understood: not speaking up meant dying.
I started shrinking into the bed, through the floor, sinking into death — where I'd cease to exist.
Then I woke up. Saw my husband beside me. Realized it was a dream.
For years I kept two versions of myself. The polished professional who knew how to find the right words for everyone else. And the writer with her own stories, her own voice — who I kept tucked away.
Staying silent wasn't new for me.
Speak when you're spoken to.
If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
You'll make them mad if you say that.
Everyone will see you — and when they notice you, you're opening yourself up for judgment.
I put that book down for three months around the time of that dream.
Then I finished it.
And write another.
And another.
And I’m just getting started.
I've learned that the book is almost always already there.
The author already exists.
She just can't see herself yet. That's what I see — and it's what I bring into every container I work in.
That dream taught me something I now bring into every room I work in.
The silence isn't laziness, a lack of ideas, or even writer’s block. It's the voice that got trained out of you — somewhere between speak when you're spoken to, and everyone will see you. Whether it was a seventh-grade English teacher, a bad boss, or your mother.
Wherever it came from, it doesn’t matter. The problem is when the sanitized version of you shows up in the writing. In the endless revisions that never feel finished. In the book that's been "almost ready" for three years. In the LinkedIn post you wrote and deleted eleven times.
I spent 13 years in corporate communications and crisis communications — rooms where the wrong word had a real cost, where I learned to find the clear sentence under pressure. Then I spent the next decade helping leaders, founders, and authors stop writing like a press release and start writing like themselves.
That's the combination.
Crisis-trained precision.
Intuitive writing mentorship.
It's always been both.
Here's what I know: the founders doing the most interesting work already know what they think. They just need to stop editing themselves before they start. That's what I work on — writing that sounds like you at full power. The one with a point of view, a lived experience, and something real to say.
I'm the author of Writing with the Moon (2026), Intuitive Writing (2023), and Unfussy Life (2021), host of the How Women Write podcast, and founder of The Intuitive Writing School.
My clients are leaders and founders who are done outsourcing their voice. They want their words back.
Start with the Book Map Intensive →
Or explore community and group experiences at The Intuitive Writing School →
I work with people who have something real to say and a book — or a body of work — that's been waiting too long.
Sometimes that's a founder whose thinking is sharp but whose writing sounds like a press release.
Sometimes it's an author who keeps circling the same story because she doesn't fully trust her voice yet.
Sometimes it's a CEO who's been handing her words to someone else for years and is ready to take them back.
The work is always the same: get the thinking out, in language that sounds like them at full power.
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