These women have given me LIFE.

Hello beautiful soul

Last week, we closed out the very first group of Women Who Lead: Sisterhood One. 

And because the Universe just LOVES a bit of poetic timing, there are a few milestones colliding at once:
Bloom (my company) turned three this month... yay!
I’ve been teaching yoga for nine years... double yay!

Three years of building a business around sovereign, values-led leadership.
Nine years of guiding people back into their bodies.
And now, this first Sisterhood completing its first cycle, and gearing up for Sisterhood THREE. What a gift. 

All the celebrations. All the integration.

But we didn’t finish the program with a worksheet or a strategy.
We finished it as SISTERS on Zoom, hands on hearts, feet on the floor, breathing together and remembering who the f$£% we are.

A recent event with members of the Sisterhood, past and present in London. 

One of the women said it perfectly towards the end of our call:

“I finally learned how to connect who I am to where I currently am.”

Another reflected on where she started, working with “difficult women” as stakeholders and feeling disappointed by that. What shifted for her was being able to see the shape of the system around them — to understand “what they did to get there, and what they will have gone through, and what has shaped them.”

She hasn’t started tolerating bad behaviour.
She’s just started seeing the human inside the pattern.

That’s what happens when we zoom out from “she’s difficult” to “what has she survived?”, we meet each other in love and leadership. 

Another woman said something that feels like the thesis of this whole six months:

“I’ve realised you don’t have to be a certain type of woman to be successful. You can still lead in your own way… you don’t have to have the masculine energy. You can do it a different way.”

That’s it.
That’s the whole point.

We’ve been sheep-dipped in patriarchy our whole lives.
We’ve been told there is one way to lead, one way to have impact, one way to be taken seriously.
And for most of us, that “one way” always seems to live just outside who we really are.

So when a woman looks up after six months of this work and says:

“I can actually be me in any situation.”

That is not a small thing. That is a tectonic shift.

Here are some of the lines that came through when I asked them to complete the sentence, “I lead when…”:

“I lead when I embody the truth of who I am.”
“I lead when I’m in alignment with myself.”
“I lead when I’m living my values.”
“I lead when I see the human in front of me.”

Did you notice the important part there...? 

No mention of titles.
No mention of job level.
Just alignment, values, humanity, truth.

This is the kind of leadership I want to see in the world. That's the kind of leadership we need. 

We also talked about what’s changed practically.

One woman spoke about self-trust — how she’d quietly decided there was “one path” she had to follow, without really questioning it. Over these months she’s been opening up options, asking what works for her, and building the muscle to trust her own judgement instead of waiting for external permission.

Another said, “I realised I can do more than just have a corporate job. My skills are transferable… It’s not as impossible as it felt. I can coexist here, and I can do it in an aligned way.”

She hasn’t burned everything down.
She’s just stopped abandoning herself to stay.

Another shared how her relationship with boundaries has changed:

“I’ve started to have more respect for myself and for my own boundaries, and making sure that I don’t feel guilty for putting my needs somewhere on the list. Before, they weren’t on there at all.”

That’s leadership too.

We spoke about feminine power in a way I rarely hear in corporate rooms.

One woman brought a dilemma she’d been sitting with around whether pursuing an advanced qualification would make her “too much” — too ambitious, too intellectual, too unattractive to the kind of partner she wants.

By the end, she said:

“I’m going to get into that program. I’m going to do it. And I’m not going to punish myself for being intellectually ambitious or curious or wanting more. I’m not going to let anyone else punish me for it either. And I’m going to look at that as feminine energy too.”

That lands, doesn’t it?

Ambition as feminine.
Intellect as feminine.
Wanting more as feminine.

We’ve been sold a vision of “feminine” that is passive, quiet, non-threatening.
But the truth is, women’s spiritual and emotional labour has been holding up the world for generations. There is nothing passive about keeping everything together.

At the very end, I asked them each for final reflections. Here’s some of what they shared:

“The power of sharing, and the feeling of being collectively held… everyone has shared something that’s impacted me in a really positive way and been a role model for me.”

“It’s been such a pleasure to be part of a group where I’ve felt so safe, and I’ve shared things I probably haven’t shared with anybody. It’s really nice to know there are some wonderful women out there who are also having their own struggles, but always have time for each other.”

And this, which I think every woman needs to hear:

“There’s an unspoken peace and energy that time like this together gives us… having more experiences like this allows us to step into who we are in situations where it’s not expected and it’s not easy.”

That’s the whole game.

We practice being ourselves in rooms where it’s safe, so we can be ourselves in rooms where it’s not.

I want to leave you with the same question I left them with:

Complete this sentence for yourself today:

"I lead when…"

Write it down. Don’t overthink it. Let it arrive.

And if you’re reading this thinking, “I want to be in these kinds of rooms. I want this kind of circle. I want this kind of shift” — there will be more.

Sisterhood THREE is coming early 2026. I held it back to make it even better, to bring you EVEN more. 
More Women Who Lead.
More spaces where you get to practice being the woman you actually are, not the one you were trained to perform.

But for now, start with your own sentence, hit reply and let me know what it is!

I lead when…

Rooting for you always
Ruth x