I sat in the doctor’s office waiting to get my varicose veins zapped. 

 

Notebook open, pen in hand, I was listening to a course about entrepreneurial expertise and had to answer the inevitable “why” question. Why do I coach? What’s my mission?

 

In that moment this is what I jotted down: 

 

“I empower women to hear, trust and share their unique gifts because the world needs them now more than ever.”

 

Minutes later, the door flung open, and my name was called. I unplugged my earbuds, put away my notebook and followed the doctor into his office. 

 

I had been to this doctor a few times already and knew he was chatty.

 

I took off my pants, laid down on my back, and he started asking me what I do for a living, what my husband does, etc. 

 

I gave him the same info as during my last two appointments, then for flair, mentioned that in addition to my husband’s job, he was very passionate about tennis. 

 

“Passionate about tennis? Why isn’t your husband passionate about you?” the doctor quipped. 

 

I laughed, uncomfortably.  

 

And then out of the blue he added. “If you want him to be passionate about you you’ll need to lose this,” and he gestured to the little bulge of skin sticking out between my panties and my t-shirt and pinched my belly between his fingers. 

 

My heart stopped. My pulse quickened. I looked down and felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. “Did he just say what I think he said?” “Is that my belly?” “Yes, that’s my belly.” “What’s it doing here?” 

 

As he injected chemicals into my legs, he continued on with his unsolicited commentary. “You need to wear sexier underwear,” he said, flicking the waistband of my panties disapprovingly, “you should do butt and ab exercises,” and “don’t forget to wax and get your nails done.” 

 

He concluded, triumphantly, that this protocol would ensure that “at the end of the day, your husband desires you more than his tennis.”

 

I kept silent throughout most of this rant, thinking to myself, “This can’t be happening!” “Is this a joke?” “Does he know we’re in 2022?” “I’m a women's empowerment coach, this garbage won’t work on me.”

 

But it wasn’t a joke. And even though I am a women’s empowerment coach who has the solid support of family, friends, a therapist, a coach and a battalion of personal development tools, I found myself ugly crying on the phone to my husband as soon as I got out of that office.

 

The doctor’s words hit a nerve. They ignited millennia of self-doubting, shaming feelings and thoughts about a woman’s body that I thought I was immune to. 

 

They made me feel self-conscious, ashamed, embarrassed, exposed and weak. 

 

They made me doubt my inherent beauty. My femininity. 

 

His words, despite their almost comically Mad Men sexism, were an overt attempt to convince me that there was something terrible wrong with me that needed fixing.


That my full-time job as a woman was to keep my body pleasing and desirable, and that I was failing at that job. 

 

And, as a result of my shortcomings, I should use my precious resources— my time, my energy, my money, my thoughts, my actions—not on my own choices, relationships, convictions, or aspirations, but on the impossible task of living up to an unachievable ideal of feminine perfection! 

 

No, doctor, I’m not buying your sexist, patriarchal bullshit. 

 

Even though I wish I had jumped off the table screaming profanities into his smug face, months later, << Test First Name >>, I appreciate the experience the way it did go down. 

 

It’s helped me have some really honest, powerful, and healing conversations, like my heart-to-heart with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence (which you’re invited to listen to if you speak French). 

 

But the true gift of this experience is the heightened urgency and clarity I feel today around my mission as a coach. More than ever I feel like my place is to help women release the grip of limiting beliefs and feelings in order to step into their full professional potential, whatever that means for them. 

 

It’s the only way we can reverse course and dismantle a system that continues to subjugate a woman’s self-value, agency and dignity in order to strip her of her precious power. 

If that mission speaks to you, I'd be thrilled to chat with you during a free discovery call. 


PS. In case you missed my intimate chat in French with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence, you can listen to it over here.