She Talks
She Talks
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STARLA FORTUNATO
LIPSTICK BY
KECAS USNA
MAY 2026
VOL 3 | ISSUE 5
When You Can’t
Trust Your Own
Mind
FEATURE
FEATURE
Intelligent Beauty:
Redefining What It
Means to Be Seen
Intelligent Beauty:
Redefining What It
Means to Be Seen
MAGAZINE
Joy Vanichkul
Joy Vanichkul
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CONTRIBUTORS
Editor-in-Chief
DR. JULIE DUCHARME
Cover Layout and
Magazine Design
DR. JOSHUA DUCHARME
Contributing Writers
CATHY DOMONEY
LAURIE SHERIDAN
JOANNE BROOKS
DR. JULIE DUCHARME
LISA E KIRKWOOD
AVERY BRENNA CRUMRINE
CATHY DOMSCH
Table of
@leadandempowerhershetalks
shetalksmag.com
Contents
Cultural Diversity
Highlights and Social
Observances in May
The Cost of the Cape
High Performing People
Don’t Feel Ready Either
The Power Between the
Before & After
When You Can’t Trust
Your Own Mind
26
13
30
33
20
Why the Most Dangerous
Thing an Expert Can Do Is
Stop Learning
Intelligent Beauty:
Redefining What It
Means to Be Seen
Feature
16
FROM THE EDITOR
Founder, Lead and Empower Her She Talks
Dear She Talks Community,
May has arrived, and with it comes a sense of renewal, momentum, and
possibility. There is something special about this time of year the longer days,
the fresh energy, and the feeling that new opportunities are blooming all
around us. Here at She Talks, we feel that excitement deeply, and this month’s
edition reflects the incredible growth and inspiration happening within our
community.
May is a season of celebration and forward movement. We are seeing women
step boldly into their power, share their stories, launch new ideas, and lift one
another in meaningful ways. Our events continue to create spaces where
voices are heard, connections are built, and confidence grows. Each
conversation, each collaboration, and each courageous step forward reminds
us why this work matters so much.
This month, we are especially energized by the momentum building across our
programs and events. From inspiring speakers and community gatherings to
the continued growth of our initiatives, we are witnessing the ripple effect of
women supporting women. Every story shared and every connection made
strengthens this incredible network we are building together.
We are also thrilled about what lies ahead. New opportunities, upcoming
events, and powerful conversations are on the horizon, and we cannot wait for
you to be part of them. The passion, resilience, and generosity within this
community continue to amaze us, and this edition is filled with the inspiration
that comes from you.
Thank you for being part of this journey. Your support, your voice, and your
willingness to show up make everything we do possible. We are so excited for
you to dive into this month’s edition and experience the stories, updates, and
inspiration waiting inside.
With gratitude and excitement,
With gratitude and belief in every one of you,
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B Y L A U R I E S H E R I D A N
·
From the outside, Stephanie looked fine.
She showed up to work.
She handled her responsibilities.
She smiled when she needed to.
The Quiet Spiral No One Sees
She stared at the text message longer than she
wanted to admit.
It wasn’t even that complicated.
“Hey, hope you’re doing well.”
Simple. Neutral. Harmless… right?
And yet her chest tightened.
Her mind started racing.
What does he mean by that? Is he being
genuine? Is this a trap? Am I overthinking this?
Why can’t I just respond like a normal person?
When You Can’t Trust
Your Own Mind
T h e h i d d e n a n x i e t y a f t e r a t o x i c r e l a t i o n s h i p o r n a r c i s s i s t i c a b u s e .
She put her phone down.
Picked it back up.
Read the message again.
By the time she finally set it aside, she wasn’t just
confused—she was exhausted.
Not from the message… but from her own mind.
SHE TALKS | 8
When confusion
becomes your normal
What many women don’t realize is this:
that constant overthinking, that hyper-awareness,
that second-guessing…
it didn’t come out of nowhere.
It was built.
In a healthy relationship, your mind learns patterns of safety.
Words align with actions.
Emotions make sense.
There is consistency.
But in a toxic or narcissistic relationship, that foundation quietly erodes.
You may have experienced:
Being told something didn’t happen the way you remember it
Feeling dismissed when you expressed hurt
Receiving affection one moment… and withdrawal the next
Being made to feel like you were the problem
Over time, your internal compass starts to shift.
Not because you’re weak.
But because you were trying to make sense of something that was
never consistent to begin with.
So, your brain adapts.
It scans.
It analyzes.
It tries to predict.
And eventually… it stops trusting itself.
When your environment feels emotionally unpredictable,
your nervous system shifts into protection mode.
You become more alert.
More aware.
More cautious.
The anxiety isn't random — it's learned
But internally, everything felt… uncertain.
Decisions that once felt easy now felt heavy.
Simple interactions felt loaded with meaning.
She questioned herself constantly:
Am I reading too much into this?
Am I missing something?
Can I trust what I’m feeling?
This isn’t just anxiety in the traditional sense.
This is what happens when your reality has been repeatedly distorted.
The compassionate
reframe
This is the moment where many women turn on themselves. Why am I like this? Why can't I just move on?
Why do I feel so anxious all the time? But what if we gently shift that perspective? What if, instead of seeing
this as brokenness, you saw it as adaptation? Your mind tried to keep you safe in an environment where the
rules kept changing. It simply hasn't learned yet that things can be different. That doesn't mean you're stuck
this way — it means your system needs support, not criticism.
Separate past from present.
·
Build evidence of self-trust.
·
Start honoring your internal signals.
Reduce the need for perfect certainty.
·
Rebuilding self-trust, one step at a time
Healing from this kind of anxiety isn’t about forcing yourself to “stop overthinking.”
It’s about slowly rebuilding the relationship you have with yourself. That begins with small, steady shifts:
II
III
IV
You don't need to get everything "right" to be safe. You're allowed to make decisions, learn, and
adjust.
And by the way — there is no perfect certainty. It doesn't exist.
Each time you listen to yourself, set a boundary, or make a choice aligned with your values, you
begin restoring trust internally. Not all at once — but gradually.
So, celebrate the small wins.
Gently ask yourself:"Is this reaction coming from what's happening right now… or what I've been
through?"
This creates space between fear and reality.
Instead of immediately dismissing your feelings, pause and acknowledge them.
Even if you don’t fully understand them yet.
(Start with awareness - don’t judge your feelings, just simply think, “hmm, that’s interesting.”)
Not because something is wrong with you—
but because something happened to you.
Your mind learned that it needed to double-check everything to stay safe.
So now, even in neutral or safe situations, your system is still asking:
“Is this okay? Or is something about to change?”
SHE TALKS | 10
You're not losing your mind —
you're finding your way back.
That feeling of"I don't trust myself anymore" can be one of the
most unsettling parts of healing. But it is also one of the most
important turning points. Because underneath the anxiety, your
intuition is still there. Your clarity is still there. Your ability to feel
grounded, confident, and at peace with your decisions hasn't
disappeared — it's just been buried under confusion and self-
doubt.
As you begin to understand what happened and respond to
yourself with compassion instead of pressure, you start to
reconnect with that part of you again. Slowly. Gently. In a way that
feels safe.
Support that helps you not just manage your
thoughts, but understand them. Support that helps
you feel safe in your own mind again. You don't
need to become hyper-guarded to protect yourself,
and you don't need to analyze every detail to feel
secure. You simply need to rebuild trust — with
yourself. And that is something you are absolutely
capable of doing.
❃
Many women are told they're simply
dealing with anxiety. But when anxiety
is rooted in emotional inconsistency
and loss of self-trust, it asks for a
different kind of support.
Connect with Laurie
If any of these words felt like they were
written for you, please know — you are not
alone, and you are not too late. I work with
women who are quietly rebuilding themselves
after what no one saw, helping them
reconnect with their inner clarity and come
home to themselves again. Gently. Truthfully.
One grounded step at a time.
L I N K E D I N · @L A U R I E - S H E R I D A N
HTTPS://LAURIESHERIDAN.IO
SHE TALKS | 11
jdconsultingsolutions.com
619-206-6522
Cinematic visuals. Strategic branding. Powerful storytelling.
Designed to move hearts — and grow your brand.
Why the Most Dangerous Thing
an Expert Can Do Is Stop Learning
Completing a Master’s, embracing AI, and why your
expertise should never stop growing — or spreading.
By Joanne Brooks
here is a particular kind of confidence that
comes with expertise. After thirty years in
education, having built and scaled businesses,
authored hundreds of accredited courses, and
helped
I have known Mat Jacobson, founder of Ducere,
for over twenty-five years. He is one of the few
Australians to own a university in the United
States — Kennedy Leadership University — and
has built a global education network that
includes Torrens University in Australia, Rome
Business School in Italy, a university in
Mauritius, and the University of East London.
Ducere partners with these institutions not to
replicate traditional academia, but to reimagine
it entirely.
The School That
Thinks Differently
professionals across Australia turn their knowledge into
impact — I thought I understood learning. I understood it
deeply. And then I went back to school.
Last year, I completed my Master’s of Strategic Leadership
through Ducere Business School. And I am not going to
pretend it was a gentle, nostalgic experience. It cracked
things open. It challenged frameworks I had held for years.
It made me a better thinker, a sharper strategist, and
frankly, a better human being.
No exams. No death by dissertation. Written by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs. The curriculum is built around
lived experience and leadership in motion, not textbook theory. The learning is immersive in the truest sense —
interviews and conversations with world leaders who have shaped history. Imagine learning about misogyny, power,
and political courage through a direct conversation with Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female Prime Minister, the
woman who stood in parliament and named it without blinking. Imagine studying negotiation from someone who
built their career inside the CIA or NATO. Imagine Goldie Hawn, Desmond Tutu, and a cast of global voices not as
footnotes in a case study, but as living, breathing contributors to your education.
This is not a credential you collect. It is an experience that reshapes how you see the world — and your place in it.
SHE TALKS | 13
SHE TALKS MAGAZINE
JOANNE BROOKS
What Expertise
Needs to Stay Alive
Expertise is not a destination. It is a discipline. The moment
you treat what you know as fixed, it begins to calcify.
— J o a n n e B r o o k s
“
Here is the thing about expertise: it is not a
destination. It is a discipline. The moment you
treat what you know as fixed, it begins to
calcify. The world moves. Conversations evolve.
New problems emerge that your old
frameworks were never designed to solve. And
if your knowledge stopped growing at the
moment your last major achievement landed,
you are now offering yesterday’s answers to
tomorrow’s challenges.
I see this pattern constantly in the work I do
through One to Many — my program helping
established experts, coaches, speakers,
consultants, and professionals transform their
expertise into structured online programs that
people actually complete. The women I work
with are brilliant. Genuinely brilliant. Years of
experience. Track records that speak for
themselves. And yet, somewhere in the
busyness of delivery, many of them stopped
investing in their own evolution.
Your clients are not just paying for what you
know. They are paying for how you think. And
thinking sharpens only when it is being
challenged.
In July, I am beginning Ducere’s Artificial
Intelligence programs. Not because I feel
behind. Not because AI is the latest shiny thing
to chase. But because the intersection of AI
and expertise multiplication is one of the most
significant shifts I have seen in thirty years of
education, I refuse to advise my clients on a
landscape I have not personally walked
through.
That is the standard I hold myself to. If I am
asking you to invest in your own growth, in
packaging your expertise, in building a program
that serves more people more sustainably — I
had better be doing exactly the same thing.
The experts who will lead the next decade are
not necessarily the ones with the most
knowledge. They are the ones who keep
learning, keep integrating, and keep asking:
how can what I know reach further?
What’s Next:
Artificial
Intelligence and the
Future of Expertise
SHE TALKS | 14
The Invitation
If you are an established expert — in any field, any
country, any industry — I want to ask you one
question: when did you last invest in your own
learning with the same conviction you bring to your
work?
Not a webinar. Not a podcast during a commute. A
genuine, structured commitment to expanding how
you think.
Because the impact you want to have in the world
does not come from hoarding what you know. It
comes from continuing to grow it — and then finding
ways to share it that go far beyond the hours in your
calendar.
Your expertise is not a ceiling. It is a starting point.
Keep learning. Then build something with it that
multiplies.
About the Author: Joanne Brooks is the founder of
Navig8Biz and creator of the One to Many program,
helping established professionals transform their
expertise into online courses that people actually
complete. With thirty years in Australian education,
Joanne specialises in done-with-you program
development that achieves 85% completion rates —
in an industry where 10–20% is the norm.
Book a Viability Call at
tidycal.com/joannebrooks/viabilitycall
SHE TALKS | 15
Intelligent Beauty:
Redefining What It
Means to Be Seen
She was tall and slender, her sun-kissed skin
flawless, not a wrinkle in sight. Her hair
flowed effortlessly as she moved, and there
was something about the way she carried
herself—graceful, poised, completely at
ease—that immediately shifted the energy in
the room. I had been playing model for the
day, but in that moment, it was clear: the
real presence, the real supermodel, had just
arrived. She quite literally took everyone’s
breath away.
But what struck me most wasn’t just how
stunning she was—it was the warmth she
carried with her. There was an ease, a
kindness, and a quiet confidence that made
you feel it instantly.
Photos by Starla Fortunato
Lipstick by Kecas Usna
Written by Dr. Julie Ducharme
s I was getting ready for my
photoshoot, I remember glancing
toward the door just as it opened—
and in walked Joy.
SHE TALKS | 16
Joy Vanichkul
Breaking the Binary
And yet, what stayed with me even
more was this: Joy is not only
beautiful—she is an incredibly brilliant
businesswoman. I could see that so
clearly. But despite that, she shared
that throughout her life, people often
told her she had to choose—be pretty
or be smart, but never both.
Standing there, watching her
command the room so effortlessly, it
was obvious how wrong that idea truly
is. Joy embodies both in a way that
feels not only natural, but powerful.
For decades, women have been asked
implicitly and explicitly to choose: be
beautiful or be intelligent. Rarely
both. But for Joy, that false divide has
never made sense. Her life’s work is
built on dismantling it. “I’ve lived in
both worlds,” she says. “And I’ve spent
most of my life proving that I am more
than what people see.”
Joy began her career in the beauty industry at just
16, rising to prominence as a successful model in
Thailand. From the outside, it looked like she
embodied society’s definition of beauty. But
internally, she carried a different truth one that
didn’t fit the stereotype.
“In that industry, there’s this assumption: if you’re
beautiful, you’re not smart,” she explains. “But I
always knew I was both. And I kept asking why do we
have to choose?”
That question would eventually become the
foundation of her philosophy: Intelligent Beauty
Method.
Joy’s journey is shaped by contrast. On one side, she was
raised in a household rooted in meditation and spiritual
practice, an environment that emphasized inner beauty,
self-awareness, and service. On the other hand, she
worked in an industry obsessed with external perfection.
What she observed in both worlds was strikingly similar.
“In spiritual spaces, I saw people who were deeply
connected internally, but often felt unworthy or
invisible,” she says. “In the beauty industry, I saw women
who looked perfect but were still not enough in their own
eyes.”
The common thread? Disconnection.
“Beauty has been split into two categories, inner or
outer,” Joy explains. “But real beauty is not one or the
other. It’s the integration of both.”
SHE TALKS | 17
REDEFINING BEAUTY
THROUGH
AWARENESS
After two decades in the
modeling world, Joy
transitioned into
entrepreneurship, launching a
highly successful spa and
wellness business in Thailand.
Her reputation and credibility
allowed her to work with
government organizations,
serve as a board director, and
lead industry education
initiatives. In her home country,
she was recognized not just for
her appearance but for her
expertise and leadership.
But when she moved to the
United States, everything
changed.
“I went from being known to
being invisible,” she recalls. “I
had an accent. I looked
different. And suddenly, people
didn’t see my experience or my
intelligence.”
The transition was humbling
and revealing.
“It showed me how much
perception shapes
opportunity,” she says. “And
how often women are
underestimated based on how
they look or sound.”
At the heart of Joy’s work is a
simple but profound question:
“When was the last time you truly
felt beautiful?”
For many women, the answer is
fragmented, tied to fleeting
moments, external validation, or
impossible standards shaped by
media and culture.
“Social media has redefined beauty
in a way that disconnects us from
ourselves,” she says. “We’re
constantly comparing, adjusting,
editing. And it’s never enough.”
Joy’s answer is not to reject beauty
but to reclaim it.
Her Intelligent Beauty Method is a
transformational framework
designed to harmonize inner and
outer beauty through awareness
and intentional practice. She
describes it succinctly as:
“Science, Spirit, and Style.”
Science grounds beauty in
knowledge and logic
Spirit connects to inner
awareness and self-worth
Style expresses identity and
authenticity
“When these come together,” she
says, “that’s where true power
lives.”
FROM MODEL
TO MOGUL
Joy believes that beauty
when understood correctly, is
not superficial. It is energetic.
It is influential. It is powerful.
“Your presence matters,” she
explains. “How you show up,
how you carry yourself, how
you express your identity,
that’s power.”
But that power must be
rooted in self-ownership.
“So many women don’t feel
confident in themselves,” she
says. “They don’t feel worthy.
And without that foundation,
no amount of external beauty
will ever feel enough.” Her
mission is to change that,
especially for women
entering pivotal stages of life.
She focuses primarily on
women in their 30s to 50s—
those who are stepping into
leadership, redefining their
identity, and ready to take
ownership of their lives.
“This is the age where women
start asking deeper
questions,” she says. “Who
am I? What do I want? How do
I lead my life?”
OWNING THE
ROOM
Today, Joy is expanding her work through wellness centers in California,
beginning in Encinitas and soon opening another location in Agoura Hills. These
centers integrate advanced recovery technologies such as red light therapy and
hyperbaric chambers into accessible, community-driven wellness experiences. At
the same time, she is preparing to launch her first book, a project years in the
making, and continuing to develop her Intelligent Beauty platform on a global
scale.
“I see myself as a bridge,” she says. “Between East and West. Between inner and
outer. Between who women are and who they can become.”
Her vision is ambitious but deeply personal: to reach women across cultures and
help them reconnect with a more complete, empowered definition of beauty.
Joy believes the conversation around beauty is shifting—and that women are
ready for a new paradigm. “We’re moving beyond the idea that beauty is just how
you look,” she says. “It’s how you think. How you feel. How you live.” And perhaps
most importantly, how you see yourself.
“Intelligent beauty is not about becoming someone else,” she says. “It’s about
becoming yourself fully.”
A GLOBAL VISION
THE FUTURE OF BEAUTY
SHE TALKS | 19
CONNECT
WITH
JOY
C U L T U R A L H E R I T A G E & C O M M U N I T Y
Cultural Diversity Highlights and Social
Observances in May
A journey through the traditions, histories, and celebrations that honor the diverse
communities shaping America's cultural tapestry
W R I T T E N B Y Lisa E. Kirkwood
very year, the USA observes a number of cultural heritage months that recognize the significant
contribution of immigrants of various age groups, backgrounds, and ethnicities who have helped to build
the country as we know it today. Each month is a tribute to their life journeys, struggles, and ultimate
triumphs that shaped up the American history, culture, and society, and continue to build the fabled
American Dream now and into the future.
Preceded by February - Black History Month (African American History Month),
March - Women’s History Month & Irish American Heritage Month, and April -
Arab American Heritage Month, May is Older Americans Month, Jewish
American Heritage Month, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific
Islander Heritage Month.
SHE TALKS | 20