Most of the people I work with are not stuck on what they want. They are stuck somewhere quieter than that, and they have usually been there a while.

Out Loud is a letter about that quieter place. It comes once a month. It is short, there is nothing in it to do, and I never ask you to reply.

The most recent one is below in full, so you can read it before you decide whether you want the next one.

As you are, where you are.

October 2026

I think a lot of women come to coaching worried.

The fear goes something like this. You open up and share the things that make you feel vulnerable. And then someone points out what is wrong with you. Or confirms the thing you already believe is wrong with you. Or confirms that there is something wrong with you at all.

My coaching does not do something to you. It opens a space for you, as you are, where you are.

Before a woman will say how she feels, she often makes the case that she is allowed to feel it. It is small, she says. Other people have it worse.

Sometimes she says the true thing and then takes it back, usually within seconds, usually without noticing. She judges it before anyone else can.

What I notice is not that she took it back. It is that she got there, and that something in her is not ready to be caught holding it.

So I do not push, and I do not reassure. Telling her the sentence was good would only be one more outside opinion, and she has plenty of those. I would rather she sit with it, think about it in her own context, and come to her own answer.

I let the silence keep her sentence in the room, then hand it back to her in her own words and leave it there.

That is all for this month. There is nothing to do with this.

If it landed, it will keep landing on its own for a few days, which is why I write these.

Earlier letters

Out Loud comes once a month from Stephanie Dunn, an executive and leadership coach in Sonoma, California. If you ever want ninety minutes to say the thing you have not been able to say out loud, that is One Sentence.