Why brilliant women go silent
Plus: Join our free 21-day Eating & Speaking challenge to reclaim your voice—starting with lunch
I keep hearing the same things from women.
“I need to set better boundaries.” “I should practice more gratitude.” “I just need to accept myself as I am.” “Take time off and don’t apologize for it.”
The wellness advice is everywhere. And most of it isn’t wrong.
But here’s what I’m not hearing anyone connect:
Why the same woman who can articulate her truth perfectly in private—to me, to a friend, in her journal—completely loses access to it in the room when it matters.
The meeting ends. She thinks: I should have said something.
The conversation passes. She replays what she would have said—if she’d been clear enough to say it.
This happens repeatedly. To brilliant, capable women. Women who’ve taken the courses, practiced the frameworks, done the work.
So what’s actually happening?
The pattern I keep seeing
The women I work with are brilliant. Capable. They have the insight, the experience, the thing worth saying.
And they keep not saying it.
Not because they lack courage. Because they lack capacity — in the moment when it counts.
The ones who can’t find 15 minutes for lunch are the same ones who defer when they meant to speak.
The ones who eat standing up, distracted, rushing — they’re the same ones who shrink in meetings, hedge in conversations, stay quiet when they had the thing to say.
This isn’t coincidence. But it’s also not what most people think it is.
Here’s what they’ve already tried
The women I work with are doing everything “right.”
They take communication courses. Leadership workshops. They learn conscious communication frameworks, non-violent communication, how to structure difficult conversations. They practice. They understand it intellectually.
Some have worked with speaking coaches. Some have done Toastmasters. Some have watched every TED talk on presence and power.
They know the techniques. They can demonstrate them in practice.
And then they walk into the moment that matters — the difficult conversation, the pitch, the meeting where they need to speak up — and everything they learned vanishes.
For years, I couldn’t explain why.
I knew it wasn’t a skill problem. These women had the skills.
I knew it wasn’t a confidence problem. They had plenty of confidence when the stakes were low.
But under pressure? The body reverted. The pleasing, the hedging, the shrinking — all came back.
The techniques didn’t stick. Not because they didn’t practice enough.
Because something else was happening. Something no one was addressing.
What’s actually happening in that moment
Here’s what I finally saw:
Someone else is talking. Your nervous system is already running hot from the rushed lunch, the grinding morning, the stress you’re digesting alongside that salad.
You’re not listening to understand. You’re listening to survive.
Your body is tracking: Am I safe here? Do I agree? Should I defend? Will this cost me something?
That’s not listening. That’s threat assessment.
And when you’re in threat assessment mode, three things happen:
You lose access to your own thinking. The thought you had before they started talking? Gone. You’re too busy tracking their opinion to hold onto yours.
You either collapse or harden. You become overly accommodating (pleasing, smoothing, “I see your point”), or you become rigid (defensive, oppositional, “they’re wrong”). Neither of these is your truth. Both are nervous system reactions.
The moment passes. By the time you feel safe enough to think clearly again, someone else is talking. The meeting moved on. You’re left replaying what you should have said.
This is the same pattern every time: you can tell me your truth in a DM, in a quiet conversation, in reflection. But you can’t access it in real time when it matters.
Not because you lack courage.
Because your body isn’t in a state where listening and thinking can happen simultaneously.
The women who change this pattern — who start showing up differently in meetings, in difficult conversations, in moments that used to make them shrink — they all do the same thing first:
They stop trying to fix their speaking. They start by fixing the conditions that let them listen clearly.
The thing no one’s addressing
Then I realized: the communication training was trying to fix the wrong thing.
You can teach someone how to structure a difficult conversation. How to use “I” statements. How to pause for effect. How to claim space with their body language.
But if their nervous system is running on fumes from the rushed lunch, the grinding morning, the stress they’re still digesting — they can’t hold the alignment under pressure.
The body reverts to what it knows. The old patterns. Not because they lack skill. Because the nervous system defaults to survival mode when it’s already running hot.
You can’t hold space when you’re already grinding.
You can’t access clear thinking when your nervous system is in debt.
You can’t speak your truth when your body is still in threat assessment mode from three hours ago.
This is why the techniques don’t stick. Not because you didn’t practice enough. Because your body wasn’t in a state where you could access them under pressure.
What actually creates the conditions for speaking
Here’s what the women I work with — the ones who do change this pattern — have in common:
They changed what happened hours before the moment arrived.
They stopped eating cold salads standing at the counter, laptop open, chewing just enough not to choke.
They stopped treating lunch like lost time and started treating it like invested time.
They sat down. Warm food. Twenty minutes. No screen.
Not because lunch is magic. Because it’s the smallest, most ordinary place to practice something bigger:
Telling your body it’s safe.
Safe to digest. Safe to think. Safe to be heard.
When your body gets that signal — when digestion happens in a parasympathetic state instead of a grinding state — something shifts.
The fog at 3pm clears.
The gut-brain connection comes back online.
The capacity to listen to yourself and others simultaneously — that’s what returns.
Not overnight. But consistently. Measurably.
The same woman who couldn’t find the words in the meeting? She’s not scrambling anymore. She’s clear. She speaks. And people listen differently because she’s listening differently.
Not because she got braver. Because her body was in a state where bravery was accessible.
What this costs when you don’t address it
I’ve watched this pattern for twenty years.
Women who have the insight, the experience, the thing worth saying — and can’t access it when it matters. Not once. Repeatedly. The meeting ends, and they think I should have said something. The conversation passes, and they replay what they would have said if they’d been clear enough to say it.
It’s not a confidence problem. It’s a capacity problem. And capacity is built — or lost — hours before the moment arrives.
The women who do this work — who change their lunch, who build the rhythm, who let their body know it’s safe — they get there. The physiology shifts. The clarity returns. The gut-brain connection that lets them speak their piece comes back online.
But not everyone does the work. And not everyone knows this is the work to do.
That’s the gap I keep running into. Not the methodology. The reach.
The connection no one’s making
Then I met Dr. Jane Bormeister.
Jane is a speech scientist and rhetoric coach. She studies the invisible threads that trip people up before they even open their mouths — the contradictions between what your body is doing, what your voice is saying, and what your words mean.
She calls it the Rhetoric Code. When your body, voice, and words tell the same story, people lean in. When they contradict — when your words say “I’m confident” but your body says “I’m not sure I should be here” — even brilliant ideas fall flat.
Here’s what I realized:
You can teach someone how to align their body, voice, and words. But if their nervous system is running on fumes from the rushed lunch, the grinding morning, the stress they’re still digesting — they can’t hold the alignment under pressure.
The body reverts to what it knows. The old patterns. The pleasing, the hedging, the shrinking. Not because they lack skill. Because the nervous system defaults to survival mode when it’s already running hot.
Jane teaches you how to speak so you’re heard.
I teach you how to build the physiological capacity to access what Jane teaches — in real time, when it counts, not just in practice.
It’s a two-way street. Just like the gut-brain connection runs both ways, so does this:
Your body state affects how you speak. And how you speak reinforces your body state.
If you learn the techniques but don’t address the physiology, you’ll keep reverting under pressure. If you address the physiology but don’t learn the techniques, you’ll have capacity but no craft.
Together, we can get you there faster — and from more directions.
Eating and speaking. Not two separate skills. One integrated capacity with two expressions.
What we’re doing about it
We’re running a live challenge together.
Eating & Speaking: 21 Days to Become Audible, Visible, and Clear February 23 – March 15, 2025
Three weeks. One integrated practice. Not “eating tips + speaking tips” — but one capacity with two expressions.
Week 1: Foundation & Awareness Where do you already claim space? Where do you shrink? We start by observing — not fixing — the conditions that support you and the patterns that don’t.
Week 2: Practice & Experiment Low-threshold experiments that connect body state to expression. Play with warmth, pauses, simplicity. Notice what shifts when you slow down in one domain and show up differently in the other.
Week 3: Integration & Identity What stays? This is where practice becomes identity. You’re not just someone who “tries to eat better” or “wants to speak up more.” You’re becoming someone who claims space — starting with lunch, extending to everything else.
Live sessions weekly. Daily micro-prompts in a shared Chat. A space to practice — not perform.
Who this is for
Anyone who’s ever left a meeting thinking I should have said something.
Anyone who knows their afternoons are foggier than they should be.
Anyone who wants to stop shrinking — at the table, in conversations, in the room.
This challenge is free and open to everyone.
What’s next
Details on when to join are coming next week. Jane will be here as a guest on my publication to share her side of this work — what she’s learned about voice, presence, and why so many capable people stay invisible.
Claiming your voice starts before you open your mouth.
Three times a day, you’re either building the capacity to speak — or you’re borrowing from it.
The question is: which are you doing?
Eat warm, breathe slow, keep a rhythm.
—Savitree