The sentence I didn't mean to say out loud

Hey Reader!

It was the 17th of May, a Sunday, and I was on a call with a business buddy, when a hot flash arrived exactly the way they always do. No warning. My heart palpitating like crazy. I had to stop mid-sentence and just breathe through it.

I was walking her through the second stage of a framework I'd built and hadn't even finished testing yet. The ROOT Framework. She was telling me, in that particular way people talk once they've stopped performing for the room, that she'd spent years marketing herself as one thing: the calm, together practitioner with all the answers. Not the whole of her. Just the acceptable slice.

I felt the heat climb up my neck and thought, same. The Exact. Same Thing.

So I said something out loud that I hadn't planned to say. Camera on, sweating slightly: "We've both been showing up as a curated version of ourselves, afraid that who we actually are won't pay the bills."

Neither of us had meant to say that. It just arrived, the way real conversations do once you stop trying to sound impressive.

That one accidental sentence is the whole reason the ROOT Framework exists. It's the whole reason Brand & Bloom, the project I told you about last week, exists too. So this week I want to actually tell you what happened on that call, and what it might mean for you 👇

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the 3 (things one accidental confession taught me)

None of this was planned, which is probably why it's stuck with me. Here's what I took from it.

1. We've all been performing the acceptable slice.

My business buddy wasn't hiding anything shady. She was just doing what most of us do: showing the calm, competent, together version, and quietly editing out the rest in case the rest wasn't marketable. I do it. You probably do, too.

→ Try this: name, out loud or on paper, the "acceptable slice" you've been showing up as. Not to fix it this week. Just to actually see it.

2. Thirty years doesn't fit inside a tidy little niche.

I've spent years trying to squeeze design, government work, a bag business I built before Instagram existed, twenty-seven years of yoga, and a breakdown I only survived with a photo a day, into one tidy sentence. Every time, something important got left on the floor.

→ Try this: write down 3-5 things about your own experience that don't fit neatly in a bio. That's not mess. That's your thread.

3. The real thing is finally beating the polished thing.

Last week I told you three magazines had noticed what we've known for years. This week, the same shift is showing up in what actually gets trusted: the unfinished, unflattering, specific version, over the polished stranger promising a transformation in three easy steps.

→ Try this: post the real, unfinished version of something this week instead of the polished one, and notice what happens.

Every one of those started the same way. A woman deciding the whole, unflattering truth was worth more than the tidy version of it. And if you need more help with this, try The ROOT Framework to get to the root of all you are, without leaving anything out.

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2 things i'm loving

✦ Brand & Bloom, the room this whole story built

Now you know exactly what it grew out of: one call, one hot flash, one sentence neither of us planned to say. It's a simple system that automates your content, personalised to actually sound like you.

A reader got in touch after last week's email, we met yesterday, and she's just become our newest beta tester. If you're curious to learn more...

→ Join the Brand & Bloom waitlist

✦ Notes, actions & memory. Without a meeting bot.

I've been using Granola for a year now, and I love it. It doesn't join your meetings, it just sits quietly in the background taking precise notes, then summarises the key points and actions. You can ask it questions. It syncs with your calendar. The free version works well, and it's what I recommend to my clients.

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1 affirmation