This past weekend I sat in a women’s sweat lodge in Thousand Oaks.
It was quiet, intentional, and grounded. A space built and sustained by women who understand that sacred things require labor.
My best friend volunteers there as a fire keeper, tending the fire and supporting the lodge. She also invited many of the women who attended. That matters. Women’s spaces do not simply appear. They exist because women build them, protect them, and show up for them.
As we went around the circle, a dozen and a half women spoke. Many were spiritual workers and healers in different forms. Almost all were mothers. The energy in the room was loving, calm, and deeply grounded.
And I felt like I did not belong.
I have spent more than a decade doing my own healing work. Therapy. Reflection. Integration. The long, unglamorous kind. The kind people assume eventually turns you soft. Love and light. Gentle hands. Quiet acceptance.
That never happened to me.
Sitting there, listening to these women speak, I realized how often I have measured myself against that version of healing. How often I quietly believed that if I were truly healed, I would be easier. Softer. Less sharp.
What became clear, woman by woman, is that many of us are carrying grief and anger about the state of the world right now. Not as an abstract idea, but as something that lives in our bodies. In our nervous systems. In how we mother, work, love, and move through our days.
And we are not meant to respond to this moment in the same way.
Historically, women have never had a single role in times of upheaval. That idea is a myth that benefits power.
Some women create peace, safety, and restoration.
Some hold spiritual space.
Some heal bodies.
Some nurture, rebuild, and tend what is fragile.
And some organize, confront, protect, and fight.
All of those roles are necessary. None of them are superior. None of them cancel the others out.
By the end of the night, something settled in me. I felt peaceful for the first time about who I am and who I have always been.
My healing did not make me softer.
It made me clearer.
I am kind and loving. And I am also fierce. I am direct. I am strategic. I see patterns. I know how to act. I know how to move things forward. I am not here to hold everyone in spiritual softness. I am here to name what is happening, speak honestly, and push back when something is wrong.
That is not a failure of healing.
My best friend embodies a different role. She tends the fire. She supports women’s healing spaces. She heals women through her work as an esthetician and through service. She has been a surrogate twice and is a mother three times. She strengthens women’s bodies, confidence, and sense of worth. She makes women feel valued and loved.
That work requires enormous strength.
For a long time, I believed that softness was the destination of healing.
What I understand now is that authenticity is the true destination.
Healing is not about becoming someone else. It is about becoming fully yourself, without apology, without hierarchy, without pretending that only one kind of woman is needed right now.
At Grunge Luxe, we talk about resistance not as a slogan, but as a posture. Resistance as self-possession. Resistance as refusing to be silent when your voice is needed. Resistance as refusing to shrink into something more palatable while the world demands courage.
Resistance does not always look gentle.
Resistance does not always look spiritual.
Resistance does not always look pretty.
Sometimes resistance looks like holding the fire.
Sometimes it looks like healing the body.
Sometimes it looks like rebuilding what was broken.
And sometimes it looks like standing your ground and refusing to back down.
We need the healers.
We need the holders.
We need the rebuilders.
And we need the fighters.
If you are a woman who has done the work and emerged not quieter but clearer, not softer but more solid, not smaller but more rooted, you are not wrong.
You are needed.
This is your invitation to stop apologizing for the role you were built for. To stop sanding yourself down to fit someone else’s idea of goodness, healing, or worth.
Join the resistance in the way only you can.
Bring your calm.
Bring your care.
Bring your fire.
Bring your refusal to disappear.
I am my mother’s savage daughter.
I will not lower my voice.
And neither should you.
“Remember who you are.”
These are the words my mother has said to me every time I walk out the door since I was a small child. As long as I can remember.
They are not a reminder to behave.
They are a reminder to stay rooted.
To stay honest.
To stay whole.
The Remember Who You Are mug exists as a daily ritual object. Something you hold in your hands in the quiet moments. Morning coffee. Late night tea. The pause before you step back into a world that often asks women to soften, silence, or shrink.
This mug is not inspiration.
It is permission.
A reminder that healing does not erase your edge.
That strength and care can coexist.
That you do not owe the world palatability.
Remember who you are.
Then move accordingly.
