Hello beautiful soul
"I am the softest and the most ruthless I have ever been."
I saw that Minnie Riperton quote at the end of 2024. I had just left my second marriage. And I was seeing more clearly than I EVER had what women actually face at work and at home. How the same dynamics play out in both places. How the same invisible cage forms — the one made not of bars but of tiny moments of self-abandonment. Of shrinking. Of deciding it is safer to be smaller than to be seen.
How the same woman who gets managed and minimised and made to feel like she is asking for too much at the kitchen table is the same woman sitting in the meeting softening her point before she has even made it.
I emerged from that chapter of my life softer than I had ever been. Cracked open by everything that had happened. And more certain than I had ever been about what I was here to do.
That is when Ruthlessly Penfold was finally born. Yep. My real FULL name is ACTUALLY Ruth LESLEY Penfold. She was born in 1980.
But Ruthlessly Penfold? She was only fully born in 2024.
Radiant, feminine, powerful, alive and laser focused.
Not because it sounds good. Because it is the most accurate description of what I had been building towards my entire adult life and did not have words for until I read it.
Soft AF. Ruthless AF. All at once.
Here is the thing about losing yourself... First off, most of us have done it at least one.
In a marriage. In a role. In a version of who we had to be to stay safe. In the performing and the pleasing and the proving and the shrinking.
I know. It sucks.
But the really creepy thing about losing ourselves, we don't do it all at once. We lose ourselves in tiny increments. One small yes when we meant no. One sentence softened before it left our mouth. One boundary not set because the timing was not quite right and then the timing was never quite right.
And one day we look up and we cannot quite remember who she was.
The one who knew what she wanted. The one who was not running that internal committee before every decision. The one who took up space without apologising for it first.
I spent most of my life looking for her outside of myself.
In the next job. The next relationship. The next qualification. The next room that would finally confirm I was enough to be in it. I thought if I could just get to the right level. Say yes to the right things. Be useful enough. Visible enough. Impressive enough.
Then I would feel like myself.
But here is the plot reveal that changed everything.
She was inside me the whole time.
Not hiding. Not broken. Not lost. Just waiting. In the parts of me I had quietly exiled because the world told me they were not welcome. The part that knew what she wanted and said it anyway. The part that led with love instead of armour. The part that danced before she knew the steps. The part that had no interest in being palatable.
I call that way of moving: Ruthlessly Penfold™️.
Ruthlessly. Not because it is aggressive. Not because it is hard. Because it is the opposite of losing yourself. It is the refusal to abandon yourself even when the room shifts. Even when someone looks at you like you have said too much. Even when the pushback comes.
And, my darling, it does come.
Since I started sharing more openly about the lived experience of women — the gaslighting. The power dynamics. The nervous system toll of simply existing in a world not built for us — the backlash has been real.
The scolding DMs.
The patronising comments.
The emoji replies designed to dismiss and diminish.
The men who show up with spite in my comments every time I name something true.
I have not stopped posting.
Not because it does not land in my nervous system. It does. Every time. My body still recognises an angry man as a threat. That wiring did not disappear when I found my voice.
But I have stopped letting the pushback push me back.
And the way I have done that is by getting very clear on what I actually believe and what I truly value.
Here is what Ruthlessly Penfold™️ looks like in practice.
Love wins.
Every person I meet has value. That includes me. Even on the days I forget it. Love is not a feeling I wait around for. It is what makes me curious instead of guarded. Present instead of performing.
Dance like nobody is watching.
I say the wild idea out loud before I talk myself out of it. Fear does not mean stop. It usually means I am close to something real. Creativity is not decoration. It is how I take up space in a world that trained me to shrink.
Live courageously.
My hardest experiences are not baggage. They are data. I look at them honestly instead of around them. Growth costs more than comfort does. It is the only one that actually pays you back. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is doing the thing anyway.
Take ownership.
I already know what I want next. So do you. I stop waiting for permission to go get it. I set the boundary before I am resentful. Not after. I take the action instead of building the perfect case for why I deserve to. Nobody was ever going to hand me this life. I build it myself.
That is Ruthlessly Penfold™️.
Now here is what I want to hand YOU, sweet girl.
Ruthlessly [insert your name here]™️.
Not my values. Yours. The ones you have been living by quietly without naming them. The ones that are already in you underneath the performing and the proving and the making yourself manageable for everyone else in the room.
What does she believe?
What does she refuse to apologise for?
How does she walk in?
How does she hold the silence after the ask?
Because the opposite of Ruthlessly YOU™️ is not gentle or humble or strategic.
The opposite of Ruthlessly YOU™️ is the Authenticity Gap. The space between who you actually are and who you have learned to be in order to stay safe.
That gap is where the Sunday dread lives. Where the raise email sits in drafts. Where the sentence gets softened before it leaves your mouth. Where you say the real version to your best friend on the way home instead of in the room where it mattered.
You already know who Ruthlessly YOU™️ is.
She has been in there the whole time.
And if you want to start practising what she sounds like out loud, I'm giving you the first step here.
We work on exactly this. The ask without the apology. What it feels like in your body to take up the space you have already earned. The straight spine. The big smile. The number you have been sitting on.
And trust me darling, it's amazing what a straight spine and a big smile can actually get done.
Rooting for you always
Ruth x
Ps. One more thing my darling, if you want to see exactly where Ruthlessly YOU™️ is most blocked right now — take the What's Actually Real survey. Ten minutes. Completely free. You will get a personalised Career Freedom Report that tells you where your energy is leaking and what needs to shift first. No fluff. Just clarity.
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