The Good Girl Exit: What I Couldn’t Say on LinkedIn

Hey there, I’m so glad you came over!

I’ve been working in corporate environments for over 25 years and have coached executives and leading workshops for over 20 years. I’ve sat across from some of the most accomplished women in every industry you can think of - women who run teams, manage millions, and show up every single day like they were built for it.

And here’s what I couldn’t say on LinkedIn:

Most of them are exhausted. They have no idea who they are underneath the noise. The roles. The responsibilities. The performance.

There’s a version of yourself you built a long time ago; through the stories you’ve been sold and told. She’s the one who learned early that being good - being helpful, agreeable, impressive, low-maintenance - was the price of belonging. She’s the one who over-prepares for meetings she could run in her sleep. Who edits herself in real time. Who says “I’m fine” so convincingly she almost believes it.

She’s The Good Girl. And she’s running the show.

I know her because I was her. For decades.

I was the one who could walk into any room and read it in thirty seconds. Who always knew the right thing to say, the right way to show up, the right amount of emotion to display (which is to say: almost none). I was so good at being good that I didn’t even notice I’d disappeared inside of it.

Until I broke.

Not dramatically. Not publicly. It was quieter than that. It was waking up one morning and realizing that the life I’d built - the one that looked exactly right from the outside - didn’t have me in it anymore. The real me. The one with opinions that made people uncomfortable. The one who was, frankly, a lot funnier than The Good Girl ever allowed herself to be.

That’s the exit. Not blowing up your life. Not burning it down. Just ... finding the door. And walking through it. Back to yourself.

Why I’m Writing This

I started The Good Girl Exit™ because I kept having the same conversation.

Different women. Different industries. Different cities. Same story.

“I have everything I’m supposed to want and I feel like I’m suffocating.”

“I don’t even know what I actually like anymore.”

“I’m so tired of being the one who holds it all together.”

These aren’t women who need a productivity hack, a better morning routine or a wellness app. These are women who’ve been so busy becoming what everyone needed them to be that they lost track of who they actually are.

And traditional coaching - the kind that gives you goals and accountability and action plans - doesn’t touch this. Because the problem isn’t that you’re not doing enough. The problem is that you’ve been doing too much of the wrong thing for too long, and somewhere underneath all that doing, there’s a woman who’s been waiting very patiently for you to come back.

That’s what The Good Girl Exit™ is about. Coming back.

What You’ll Find Here

Those of you who have followed me on LinkedIn know that I love to write. And sometimes that writing has to be distilled (because … character limits, algorithms, etc., etc., etc.). This Substack is where I write the things that don’t fit in a LinkedIn post.

The real stories. The messy middle of transformation. The parts of my own exit that I’m still figuring out. The framework I’ve built - The HERS Experience™: Honesty, Embodiment, Reclamation, Self-Trust - and what it actually looks like to live it, not just talk about it.

I’m also writing a book called The Good Girl Exit: Why Being Good Isn’t Working, and some of what I share here will be pieces of that process - rough edges and all.

If you’re a woman who has spent her life earning approval and is starting to wonder what it might feel like to stop - you’re in the right place.

If you’ve ever sat in a meeting performing confidence while a quieter voice inside whispered, “this isn’t it” - you’re in the right place.

If you’re not ready to blow anything up but you know something has to change - you’re in the right place.

One Last Thing

The Good Girl in you might be reading this and already calculating the risk. “Is it safe to subscribe? What if someone sees? What if this makes me seem like I don’t have it together?”

Aaaand, there she is. That’s her. That’s the performance.

You can just ... let her rest here for a minute. Just breathe.

Subscribe if this hit something. I’ll be here every other week with something honest. Even more often as we get closer to the book launch.

And if you want to talk - about coaching, about the book, about that thing you haven’t said out loud yet - my DMs are open.

Welcome to The Exit.