Shine Don't Grind

Your sacred invitation to step into your soft power era... ✨

“Lindsay, you’re absolutely shining! You were like a totally different person up there than how you were in the office.”

An old colleague said this to me after one of my New York book launch events.

It meant so much because it’s exactly how I felt.

Like I was a vastly different person from who I’d been in corporate. And yet also the same person that I’d always been, just now with the permission to express myself fully.

For pretty much all my life, I’ve been grinding away in true over-achiever fashion. The Ivy League college, the prestigious Wall Street job, the promotion to VP at a young age.

My mind and even my body could do it, but my soul was always begging for a different path. A softer, more aligned version of success.

Sometimes I would just sit in the Goldman Sachs bathroom stall and start weeping because I felt so far from my dreams and from myself.

In the past three years since quitting my corporate job to design a life on my own terms, I feel like I’m finally starting to embody my full self. Not by grinding, but by shining.

That’s why I’ve decided to name this newsletter:
Shine Don’t Grind.

It’s for the ambitious professionals craving more softness in their careers and lives.

The ones in corporate jobs, quietly incubating their creative passions and searching for a balance that feels like home.

The ex hustle-culture over-achievers and recovering people-pleasers who now sip tea slowly and put their legs up against the wall at the end of a long day, dreaming about building their own dreams rather than wasting their one precious life toiling away on someone else’s.

The girlies longing for divine feminine flow, not another 5-steps-to-scale-to-7-figures blueprint.

The spiritual souls burned out from self-help content.

The ones craving raw stories and poetry and truth wrapped in beauty.

So every Sunday, I’ll send a personal essay like this one.

And every Wednesday, you’ll receive a poem that touches on these same themes.

This space will explore the journey from corporate grind to dream life—rooted in my experience going from Wall Street VP to author and creative entrepreneur.

Many of us have girl bossed a little too close to the sun and realized that it’s not so empowering after all. In many cases, that whole model is just misogyny in another form—a grisly distortion of feminism and merely another way to coerce women to act like men rather than honor our own unique superpowers.

So it’s safe to say the girl boss era is officially dead.

But our ambition? It’s more alive than ever.

We’re just doing it on our own terms now.

I have my third book in three years coming out this summer. I’ve given four TEDx talks and built a thriving business.

I’m incredibly driven and prolific.

I’m just doing it in a way that makes me feel authentic and alive.

And sure, I have many moments of overwhelm and doubt where I regress to old habits. I lose my balance and fail and fall down and ask myself if I’m doing it all wrong, but as I get back up each time, I feel the growth in my bones and in my breath.

This new paradigm prioritizes flexibility, flow, and deep alignment to our zones of genius.

Not by trying to mimic the men who came before us.

Not by shrinking in relationships to fit into someone else’s mold.

This newsletter will touch on that too—relationships, love, self-discovery.

Because of course I can’t help but write about all of it! Everything is entwined, and when we raise our vibration in one part of life, we raise it in all parts of life.

When we stop grinding and start shining in our relationships, we unlock our full radiance.

We attract the most magical opportunities and friends and partners, and we emanate that same sacred frequency of love from within.

We know when to let go and we have radical trust that everything is truly unfolding for our highest good. We don’t need to grip or control, but simply surrender in softness and knowing.

From this energy, we no longer accept the status quo at work or in love.

We no longer follow paths that were carved for someone else.

We are stepping into our soft power era. Unleashing our wild, witchy potential. Saying no to anything that dims our light or mutes our colors.

So if you’ve been feeling burned out…

Or like your dreams are so far away…

Or if you’re scared that you’re going to be stuck in a job or a relationship that leeches your lifeforce forever…

This space is for you. This space is for us.

We’ve been conditioned to play small, follow the rigid rules, force ourselves into someone else’s template, be the good girl, and hold our breath and hold our tongues.

But no more.

We are un-learning the old model and learning the new one.

And perhaps it’s less of a learning than a remembering. Tapping back into something sacred and primal that society programmed out of us.

Until now.

Our radiance is too bright, too urgent, to stay in a cage or under a candle snuffer any longer.

The world needs our light. And more than that, we need our light. You need your light. I need my light.

We all owe it to ourselves to stop living in the dark. Maybe we don’t think we’ve turned off the lamp. Maybe we just think that’s how it’s always been.

Maybe we can’t find the power switch at all.

But let me assure you. Even if you’ve lost touch with it, your innate light is still there, waiting and begging to be set free.

And you don’t have to do it alone. I am here cheering you on every step of the way and sharing my own journey with you as I go through all the highs and lows.

Thank you for being here and wishing you a gorgeous week of soft spring sunshine spilling onto your face and into your aches, warming your skin and your soul all in one go.

xx

Lindsay

Announcements:

• My third novel, Summer on Lilac Island, is out from HarperCollins on July 1. You can pre-order it from Amazon or anywhere books are sold.

• I’m taking on a few more career coaching clients this spring. If you’re working a corporate job and calling in a pivot of some sort to step into your full potential, I’m your girl! Reach out on my website and book a free 25-minute consultation.

• I’m having so much fun with the spring cohort of my small group coaching program, “The Art and Business of Writing and Publishing a Book.” If you want to learn more about my next cohort or one-on-one book coaching, reach out on my website.