This episode explores how women can cultivate a more balanced, sustainable way of working by integrating qualities associated with the divine feminine into their businesses. Sara reflects on the broader cultural transition away from productivity-driven models and toward approaches that honor intuition, beauty, community, rest, and wholeness. She shares five practical practices that support both meaningful work and personal well-being.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why many conventional ways of working contribute to burnout and no longer serve many women.
- The role of the divine feminine as an orientation toward being, intuition, beauty, and relationship.
- Five practical ways to integrate divine feminine qualities into daily work and business.
- The importance of working in rhythms of action and rest rather than constant productivity.
- How including all parts of ourselves creates a more sustainable and compassionate way of leading.
Key takeaways
- Sustainable work requires balancing action with rest, reflection, and community.
- Beauty can serve as a meaningful support for the nervous system rather than simply decoration.
- Beginning the day with prayer, meditation, or quiet listening strengthens connection to inner guidance.
- Building a business from wholeness includes listening to inner critics and fearful parts instead of suppressing them.
- Devotion to a larger purpose can provide steadiness during uncertainty and change.
Resources mentioned
- Join the free training for spiritually mature women in business here.
- Subscribe to elle-même, Sara’s Substack
Episode FAQs
What does Sara mean by the divine feminine?
In this episode, the divine feminine refers to qualities such as being, intuition, beauty, compassion, receptivity, collaboration, and inner listening. Sara emphasizes that these qualities are not limited to women or to any particular gender.
Why does Sara encourage working in rhythms?
She explains that sustainable work includes cycles of focused effort alongside intentional rest, reflection, and recovery. Working this way helps reduce burnout and supports long-term well-being.
How does intuition relate to business decisions?
Sara describes intuition as a form of inner communication that becomes more accessible through meditation, prayer, journaling, and stillness. She encourages listening inward before responding to external demands.
What role do Internal Family Systems ideas play in this episode?
Sara encourages including all inner parts—including critics, fearful parts, and ambitious parts—when making decisions. Rather than ignoring or identifying with these parts, she suggests listening to them with compassion while leading from a place of inner wholeness.
Why is beauty included as a business practice?
Sara describes beauty as restorative rather than superficial. She explains that creating a workspace that feels calming and meaningful can support both creativity and the nervous system.
Read the Full Transcript
We’re experiencing an inflection point in the world right now. The old order is falling—white patriarchal supremacy—and a new order is rising that is much more woman- and human-centered.
We see this in many ways. I’m part of Gen X. I was born in 1977, and so much is coming forward right now around perimenopause and menopause as women of my generation, including myself, move through this transition. We’re outraged at how little information and support has been available. More books, retreats, and online programs are emerging, and I expect we’ll continue to see more over the next five to ten years as more women pass through this initiation.
Those of us who are alive right now are part of the transition team helping usher in this new world. Transitions, as we know from our personal lives, are often chaotic. They can be challenging, messy, disorienting, and confusing. What used to apply no longer does, while the new normal has not yet arrived.
For professional women and leaders, a significant part of this transition is acknowledging that the dominant way of working simply isn’t working. It prioritizes productivity over pleasure, profits over health, and transactional relationships over reciprocal and nourishing ones. The result is exhaustion, burnout, and sometimes illness.
The question becomes: what is the alternative?
It’s difficult to see clearly because we lack role models. Very few people have fully figured this out, and I don’t believe any one person can do so alone. We need to discover a new way together. Our ways of working are woven into our cultures and into the resources available to us. Breaking the spell of working in isolation and finding our way within community is essential.
This transition goes deeper than politics, healthcare, or business practices. It reaches into qualities of the divine that are ready to be expressed more fully in everyday life. These are qualities of the divine feminine.
All people and all of nature hold both divine feminine and divine masculine qualities. These are not gender-specific. One reason I began serving women more than twenty years ago was that I felt the absence of reverence for the divine feminine in our world and, as a result, the lack of support and validation available to women.
Many women I work with seek greater balance between masculine and feminine ways of living and working. By masculine, I mean a more outward-focused way of being centered on doing. By feminine, I mean a more inward-focused way of being centered on presence.
Because this inquiry has been part of my entire adult life, and because my understanding continues to deepen through different seasons of womanhood and business, I want to share five tangible ways to bring more divine feminine energy into your business.
1. Bring images of the divine feminine into your workspace.
My workspace is also my practice space. I meditate, practice yoga, exercise, read, write, record this podcast, and teach from this room. Virginia Woolf wrote that every woman needs a room of one’s own. Not everyone has that, but perhaps you have a desk, a table, or even a corner that is yours.
Since childhood, Mother Mary has been the representation of the divine feminine that has most spoken to me. I received a small painting of her for my first communion, and it has stayed with me ever since. It now sits on my altar. Over the years I’ve collected other images of Mary during my travels, and they hang beside my desk in what I call my Mary wall.
Each time I enter this space, I’m reminded of my deepest devotion—that I serve as an emissary of the divine feminine. That becomes the context for everything else.
Consider whether there is a representation of the divine feminine that speaks to you. It might be Mary, Tara, Quan Yin, Lakshmi, White Buffalo Woman, or another figure that holds meaning for you.
2. Bring beauty into your workspace.
On my desk I keep a large pillar candle in a glass hurricane. Whenever I sit down to create, teach, mentor, or record, I light the candle. It’s a ritual that reminds me I am entering sacred space and brings beauty into my environment.
I also intentionally create a workspace that feels calming to my nervous system. I use whites and creams, plants, a white orchid, and soft textures. Beauty is not trivial. It can be medicinal, and I see it as one of the central qualities of the divine feminine.
Consider one way you could bring more beauty into your own workspace, whether through a candle, flowers, a comfortable blanket, or something else that feels meaningful.
3. Pray.
By prayer, I don’t necessarily mean religious prayer. I mean communication with the divine, with your higher self, with your deepest wisdom, or simply with your own heart.
Another way to think about prayer is intuition. It speaks quietly, which means we need stillness to hear it.
This is why I begin my day with meditation followed by journaling. If I’m deciding how to launch a course, whether to hire someone, or what actions are needed, I begin there before I open email or social media.
My day unfolds very differently when I begin with meditation, prayer, and journaling than when I begin with external communication. Starting with deep listening helps me take action from devotion rather than reaction.
Questions you might ask are:
- What’s needed now?
- Where would you have me go?
- What would you have me do?
- What would you have me say?
- And to whom?
Consider how you might create more space for deep listening before the rest of the world’s voices enter your day.
4. Work in rhythms.
Many women I work with have experienced burnout, and I have too. Some have even closed businesses because of it, as I once did.
Now they’re building again with the intention of creating businesses that support both meaningful work and their health.
Sometimes women hold themselves back because they’re afraid of repeating old patterns. They believe the only options are working as they used to or not moving forward at all. We need new models for another way.
There will always be seasons that require extra effort and periods of stress. But those need to be balanced with breaks during the day, adequate sleep, meditation, gentle yoga, walks in nature, journaling, and longer stretches of time away from work.
Women are rhythmic beings. We move through lunar cycles, menstrual cycles, seasons of womanhood, and seasons of the year. Those rhythms belong in our work as well. Community can help us live this more consistently instead of trying to figure it out alone.
Reflect on the rhythms you could bring into your days, weeks, months, and years, and whether you can do so alongside other women walking a similar path.
5. Include all of yourself in your work.
You don’t need to bring only your hardworking or perfectionistic parts to your work. You can invite all of your inner selves into the process so you lead from wholeness.
This means listening to your inner critic instead of silencing it or assuming it speaks the truth. Become curious about what it fears and how your inner leader can support it.
Listen to the parts of you that are afraid. Listen to the parts that are tired and need rest. Listen to the parts that are excited and ready to move forward.
Imagine creating enough space for all of these inner parts to sit together, express their concerns, and move forward as a harmonious inner family.
This requires slowing down, listening, compassion, collaboration, compromise, and radical inclusivity. These are all qualities of the divine feminine.
These are qualities we want to experience more fully in our own lives and in the world. That begins within each of us, extends into our communities and businesses, and then ripples outward.
Ask yourself whether there is a part of you that you’ve excluded from your work life. Can you invite that part into the conversation? Can you get to know it more deeply and see what becomes possible when you move forward from greater wholeness?
To recap:
- Bring images of the divine feminine into your workspace.
- Bring more beauty into your workspace.
- Pray and listen deeply to your intuition.
- Embrace rhythms of action, rest, play, and pleasure.
- Invite all parts of yourself into your work.
Above all, remember your deepest devotion for doing this work. At its core is reverence for something greater, a call to service, and a desire to contribute to positive change.
Let that devotion become stronger than your fear of burnout, getting it wrong, or being judged. That devotion is part of the awakening of the divine feminine that is unfolding in our world and within each of us.
