Speak, Mother | Soul-Led Entrepreneurship for Mothers

Send Shannon A Note You've gotten so good at being low maintenance that you've forgotten you're allowed to need things. Support. Rest. Help. To be heard. This week's permission slip is for the woman who has stopped appearing on her own to-do list,  and the reminder that your needs are information, not inconvenience. Part of the Speak, Mother Summer Series: short permission slip...

Send Shannon A Note You've been spinning too many plates, and you're terrified to let any of them fall. But here's the truth: not all plates are created equal. Some are glass. They matter deeply and if they shatter they cannot be repaired. Some are Corelle. Practically indestructible. They will survive the fall. This week's permission slip is about figuring out which is which,...

Send Shannon A Note Wanting Time Alone Doesn't Make You a Bad Mother | Speak, Mother You love your kids. And you are also touched out, overstimulated, and desperately craving five minutes of silence. Both things are true. And only one of them is making you feel guilty. This week's permission slip is for the mother who can't remember the last time she had time that was truly hers. Pa...

Send Shannon A Note A quick one this week: If you've been comparing your timeline to someone else's highlight reel, this is your reminder that it's never apples to apples, and what's for you will not miss you. Part of our Summer Series: short permission slips, every week, all summer long. Book a Magic Session with Shannon → tidycal.com/resonantcollective/the-magic-session Speak...

Send Shannon A Note This is the episode I've been building toward. I'm turning 40 this week. And I have some things to say: about what my thirties gave me, what I'm shedding as I walk into this decade, and who Speak, Mother is actually for going forward. This is a love letter to the women who have been here. And a declaration for the woman who is just finding her way in: She's...

Send Shannon A Note You've been taught to make yourself more digestible. More palatable. More acceptable. To lead with your credentials instead of your perspective. To deflect the praise for work you built and led. To wait until you're more ready, more qualified, more something. But here's what that performance is actually costing you. This week I'm talking about what happens w...

Send Shannon A Note Have you ever evolved — genuinely grown, shifted, become someone new — but the external pieces haven't caught up yet? New you, old job. New you, a business model you've outgrown. New you, relationships that feel a little tight now. That gap between who you're becoming and where you currently are is disorienting. And nobody talks about it honestly enough. This wee...

Send Shannon A Note May has the same chaotic energy as December and we're not talking about it enough. The recitals. The field trips. The volunteer asks. The party you forgot to RSVP to. And somewhere underneath all of it: something of your own you're trying to protect. This week I'm talking about how I'm actually navigating this season without losing my mind or my vision. It&a...

Send Shannon A Note Crystal is 38, single, living in Southern France, and in the middle of her IVF journey. By choice and on her own terms. And she is so clear and so at peace with this decision it will make you question every time you've waited on someone else's timeline. We talk about the breakup that started it all, 13 years of undiagnosed endometriosis, what French healthcare made po...

Send Shannon A Note You'll have a good day. Feel proud, capable, like yourself. And then something will happen. A number on a screen, a bill, a reminder of the reality you're living in. And just like that, the good feeling collapses. This week I'm not pretending I have it figured out. I'm telling you what it actually looks like from inside of it: the whiplash, the spiral, and t...

Send Shannon A Note What do you do when your job is making you miserable, your gut is screaming, and you have no backup plan? If you're Kimberly Scanlon, you quit. You take six months off to recover your nervous system. And then you take a part time job at a hair salon and you don't look back. This week I'm sitting down with my friend and Minnesota mom of two Kimberly Scanlon, a sto...

Send Shannon A Note Drop me a note and tell me what you're reclaiming.  You may notice something different about this episode. It's dropping as Episode 86, not Episode 15.  That's not a mistake. When I relaunched Speak, Mother earlier this year I reset the episode count to one. But the more I sat with it, the more wrong it felt, because I didn't start over. I evolved. And the 7...

Send Shannon A Note Life has been a lot lately. Not in a vague everything-is-fine kind of way, but in a just-trying-to-get-to-the-next-day kind of way. And in the middle of it, I've been paying attention to what's actually helping. Not the aspirational stuff. The real stuff. The accessible stuff. This week I'm sharing the small, unglamorous, deeply nourishing things getting me throu...

Send Shannon A Note Sadness isn't one of the seven deadly sins, so why does it get its own chapter in On Our Best Behavior ? Because the same culture that turned human impulses into moral failures has spent centuries teaching us that grief is an inconvenience. That there's a timeline for falling apart, and you're already past it. This week, we're exploring what it actually cost...

Send Shannon A Note What happens when women get angry? We get called shrews, bitches, hags. We're labeled unstable, dangerous, dramatic. Meanwhile, men's anger gets results, respect, and recognition. This week, we're exploring why women have been taught that anger is unfeminine and dangerous, and what it's costing us. From the physical health consequences of suppressed rage to...

Send Shannon A Note Shannon's Appearance on It's Messy But It's So Good: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-podcasting-helps-women-be-seen-and-heard/id1708315989?i=1000746220272 Why do we expect perfection from ourselves in the one job that's guaranteed to be messy? Why do we think one mistake will traumatize our children forever? And what actually shifts when we finally...

Send Shannon A Note What happens when wanting things feels dangerous? When pleasure feels selfish? When you've been taught to be the object of desire, never the subject with desires of your own? This week, we're diving into Lust, and it's not what you think. This is about the full spectrum of desire: wanting experiences, growth, pleasure, and joy. It's about how women have been...

Send Shannon A Note What happens when life strips you down to nothing—and you discover that's exactly where your power was hiding? Andrea Gibson is our most downloaded guest episode and she's back! This conversation goes deep. After navigating metastatic breast cancer with fierce grace, Andrea returns with hard-won wisdom about following your inner voice, even when it leads you somewhere...

Send Shannon A Note What if the way we talk about each other's bodies is actually making things worse? What if diet culture's grip on women is stronger than we realized? And what if the solution isn't another set of food rules, but joy? This week, I'm joined by registered dietitian Hannah Koschak for a deep dive into the gluttony chapter of On Our Best Behavior . We explore why...

Send Shannon A Note Do you ever undersell yourself because asking for more feels "greedy"? Do you ever apologize when quoting your rates?  Do you ever think you should just be grateful for what you have instead of advocating for what you're worth? You're not alone. And it's not about the money. It's about the stories we've been told about what we deserve. This we...

Send Shannon A Note What happens when a woman is proud of herself? When she celebrates her wins without apologizing? If you've been conditioned to believe that pride is dangerous, that being "too much" will cost you friends, safety, or likability, this episode is for you. This week, we're diving into why women have been taught to shrink, stay humble, and never claim their gifts...

Send Shannon A Note What if the difficulty you've experienced in female friendships isn't actually about you, but about something we've all inherited? In this episode, I'm joined by Katherine Phifer, a mentor in feminine energetics and leadership. We dive deep into the sisterhood wound—a generational pattern that affects how women show up in relationships with each other and ex...

Send Shannon A Note Envy is one of those things we’re not supposed to talk about, especially as mothers. But what if it’s not something to fix or suppress, but rather to examine? In this episode, Shannon explores envy as a signal rather than a flaw. The moments where other women irritate us, trigger us, or make us uncomfortable often point to desires we’ve learned to ignore, downplay, or explain a...

Send Shannon A Note Before we talk about rest, we have to name why it feels so loaded in the first place. In this episode, Shannon explores the concept of sloth, not as laziness, but as something that became morally charged over time and why so many mothers feel caught between exhaustion and guilt. She reflects on overfunctioning as protection, the pressure to earn rest, and the often unspoken bel...

Send Shannon A Note Before we talk about fixing motherhood, we have to name the system we inherited.  In this conversation, Shannon explores patriarchy as inheritance rather than ideology, why “being good” became the organizing principle for so many women’s lives, and how motherhood makes these patterns impossible to ignore. This is not a book report or a call to self-improvement. It’s an invitati...