Soft Power Project

Fiona Chu had to talk to her therapist before she could send her dad one text message: that she'd spend a week of her trip home traveling alone. Sherry and Fiona talk about what happens when a good daughter starts setting boundaries. Fiona grew up walking on eggshells after her parents' divorce, taking care of her mom's feelings and learning to put everyone else first. The definition she carried s...

When I was in survival mode, I turned everything into a task. Even the things meant to restore me became one more thing to get done, and all of it felt draining. This episode is about three small, cheap things that pulled me out of overfunctioning, without me realizing it at the time. I painted a sunset at a café for no reason, at my lowest low. I hired cleaners instead of losing every weekend to...

Melissa looked high-functioning for over a decade as an ICU nurse. Underneath, she was exhausted, anxious, and abandoning herself to keep everyone else comfortable. Sherry and Melissa talk about what happens when the person everyone relies on finally stops performing. The people-pleasing you don't even notice, because it's your whole identity. The slow, scary work of setting a boundary when you've...

I didn't force the Soft Power Summit into existence. I let it happen. And for the first time in my life, I built something just for me, not for the validation. Not long after I started the Soft Power Project, I pictured this event while lying in bed at the lowest point I'd ever been: pushed out, publicly demoted, done performing for a world that only wanted to hear about achievements. A week ago i...

Joanna Stokinger spent over twenty years as a homicide victim advocate, guiding families through unimaginable loss. Then in 2021, she got the call that made her one of them. Her six-week-old grandson, Anthony, died from abusive head trauma, and Joanna found herself on the other side of the work she'd built her career on. The grieving grandmother who still had to be the advocate in the room. Sherry...

Eight years ago, I started praying every night to grow. I had no idea what I was asking for, or that the universe was listening the whole time. It just sent the lessons first. I recorded this while packing for New York and the first Soft Power Summit. Twenty years ago I left this city before I was ready, and now I'm going back to hold my first event here. I'm not a happy-go-lucky person, I never h...

Maïlys Jox lost one of her closest friends, very suddenly. What came after was a slow journey from grief to trusting life again, and becoming a mother. Sherry and Maïlys talk about what happens when grief and joy arrive at the same time. They get into survival mode and the people who help you out of it, the album she wrote and recorded while she was pregnant, and the song that opens on her daughte...

Around 2013, two books reshaped how a generation of women thought about ambition: Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso and Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg. I never read Girlboss, but I bought Lean In right after I had my daughter, and just holding it made me feel like an independent woman. I believed that message. So when I got divorced at 35, I girl bossed it hard. I had to prove to myself, to the world, to the...

Margo Aaron kept waiting for her life to level out. The divorce, the custody fight, the single motherhood. She kept thinking she would feel like herself again once things calmed down. They didn't. Sherry and Margo talk about what happens when the hard thing doesn't end. When co-parenting isn't co-parenting but managing a constant antagonist. When the court system gives him the benefit of the doubt...

For most of my life, I thought confidence was a performance. The right body language, the right phrasing, looking sure of myself on stage even when I was terrified. I learned that version growing up between two worlds. In Taiwan, humility was the virtue: speak up only when you have something worth saying. Then I studied in North America and got the opposite lesson: just speak, it barely matters wh...

In New York City on June 20, I'm hosting my first in-person event for The Soft Power Project. A three and a half hour Soft Power Summit, and the theme is coming home to yourself. I've been quietly manifesting this for a year. When I started this show, I was craving honest women's conversation. The real talk that happens before the recording starts, when we skip the small talk and say where we actu...

Alica Glavanova was 18, in her last year of high school, when the panic attacks started. The doctors ran their tests, handed her pills, and explained nothing. She did her own research, realized it was anxiety medication, and decided she wasn't going to take it. Right after school she started traveling. India, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia. Somewhere in those years she found a different way to underst...

The rage came up first. Then the grief. Then the shame for feeling either of those things, because no one had taught me what to do with them. I didn't have a name for what was happening, only that the water I'd been swimming in my whole life had suddenly become visible. Once I could see it, I couldn't unsee it. This episode is about that messy in-between time, when you start to see something the p...

Jess Prudhomme had been with her high school sweetheart since she was 17. For half her life, she was a "we." She didn't know who she was as Jess alone. Then the marriage started coming apart. One day she realized there was no book she could read, no podcast she could listen to, no couples therapy session left to attend. So she stopped fighting. What came next was a beautiful launching pad for her...

There's a kind of burnout I don't think we talk about enough, and it has almost nothing to do with working too hard.   Last week I posted a reel about the achievers and the cruisers, and so many of you wrote back saying that's me. What stayed with me wasn't the pattern, it was the burnout underneath it. Achievers don't break from long hours. They love the work. They break when their effort st...

Justina Rosu was stranded in Milan at midnight, no hotels, no trains, in the rain. The kind of moment that tests every identity you've ever rebuilt.   Sherry and Justina talk about confidence as memory, and what becomes possible when the ego stops insisting it has to figure everything out. Decades at the BBC. Three kids raised close together. A career remade from PR to content strategy. The s...

In this episode of Soft Power Project, we explore the role of enablers in narcissistic and deeply codependent relationships: the friends, family members, and communities that minimize harm, distort reality, and make survivors question themselves. We unpack why enablers protect toxic systems, the psychology behind their behavior, and why survivors often have to walk away from an entire ecosystem, n...

Agne was sitting in a spa, reading about the goddess Kali, when she asked the universe to bring something down. A couple of months later, everything started crumbling.   Sherry and Agne talk about what it means to descend. About the book she co-wrote with Ebonnie Shreve while they were both still in the darkness. About the dark times Agnes says she is still in right now.   This one is fo...

In this episode, I share some practical strategies for navigating challenging workplace environments where leadership may not support growth. Let's talk about - The importance of boundary setting Understanding personal values through emotional responses Finding fulfillment outside of work to maintain motivation and well-being. Leave a comment and share your thoughts: https://open.firstory.me/user/...

Sonya Weigle spent 25 years in biotech leadership, performing the way the workforce required her to. Then two years ago, watching her youngest daughter plan her future, she realized she had her whole life ahead of her too. Sherry and Sonya talk about what happens when you stop performing and start recentering. From putting yourself on a shelf to protect your career, to creating non-negotiables aro...

Danielle Frank thought she was on the path to motherhood. Then her engagement ended, and she had to rewrite the story entirely.   Sherry and Danielle talk about what happens when the future you pictured doesn't arrive. From Hollywood to wine and spirits to writing a rhyming book that teaches parents to let their kids breathe like a good Cabernet. Danielle reads from A Wine Lover's Guide to Pa...

Have you ever had a yearning you kept trying to talk yourself out of? I spent months doing exactly that — applying for jobs, calling headhunters, convincing myself I could still build the thing on weekends. I got nothing back. And I am so grateful. This solo episode is about conviction. Not the Instagram version. The kind that shows up when you're embarrassed, scared, and out of backup plans. I sh...

Djennie Falle was three years old the first time she left Paris to live with a Dutch family she barely knew. She adapted. She always adapted. Different language, different rules, different mother. By the time she was 24, she'd gotten so good at fitting in that she couldn't find herself underneath it all. In this episode of The Soft Power Project, Sherry talks with Djennie about the quiet cost of b...

As a communication trainer for close to 10 years, I'd like to think that we can smooth out all issues with better communication skills. However, most of the problems we see today cannot be solve with communication skills simply because they are ego problems. In 2026, knowing how to holding our peace and setting boundaries become the most important soft skills in the workplace. Leave a comment and...

Ellie Foden dreamed of London Fashion Week her whole life. Then one night on her sewing machine, a thought showed up that changed everything. Sherry and Ellie talk about what happens when you follow the pull instead of the plan. From fashion to yoga to closing a business during COVID to building something new. This conversation goes somewhere unexpected. TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Introduction: Creativity...