A Loving Provocation

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You Are Allowed to Claim What You Know

You Are Allowed to Claim What You Know

Everybody, now, you are allowed to claim what you know.

This is about the temerity of saying, “This Is What I Know.”

Somewhere between the last exhale of a breathwork class and the part where everyone slowly sits up, reorients, and starts talking again, a woman I’d recently met told me she had spent twenty-two years building and running her own company.

Twenty-two years of making decisions no one else wanted to make.

Twenty-two years of reading a room, making payroll, and knowing when to walk away from a deal.

Then she waved her hand like she was shooing a fly and said,

“But I’m no expert.”

I nearly lay back down in despair. Honestly, I’ve also said those words right before sharing something I’ve spent thirty years learning the hard way. I’ve said it in groups where I was, factually, the most experienced woman present.

I’ve even said it while my hands were still shaking from having pushed submit, and I was literally living the very thing I was about to describe.

We say it smoothly as the hostess we all know who apologizes for a house that everyone can see is already clean.

So here comes the gentle provocation I warned you was coming. Friend, let’s talk about claiming your earned authority.

I know, I know you’re reluctant to do this. We all seem extraordinarily reluctant to do this. You know what I’m talking about. We discount ourselves in the first six words of the sentence, before anyone’s even had a chance to doubt us.

We’re just so helpful, really; we’ll do the doubting for them.

You know, as a courtesy.

I’ll say this part gently, because it’s my way, but I really want to shout it, up close to your ear.

Maybe you’re not an expert. Fine. It’s okay.

You don’t have to be the ultimate authority to have something valuable to say.

You don’t have to know everything about a thing to know something about it.

You don’t need a PhD in your own life because you’ve lived it.

You’ve paid attention, learned, and yes, you’ve even failed.

And… you’ve recovered, changed your mind, and accumulated a perspective.

That all counts.

Okay, I can feel someone’s shoulders creeping up toward her ears. Stop it!

I’m not asking you to stop understating what you bring; that’s its own kind of dishonesty and a subject for another day.

What I’m doing here is making sure you understand that there’s a big difference between claiming authority and pretending to be the ultimate authority.

I want women to know the difference between: "This is what I know," and "This is what everyone should do."

The first is a woman holding up a lantern to you. The other is a woman selling you a map to a country she’s never visited.

We’ve all met the second woman.

And I’d like to just say, notice, please, that she rarely says “I’m certainly no expert.”

That phrase has never once left her mouth.

Sadly, it gets reserved almost exclusively for those of us who actually did the work.

My invitation to you is that if you want, or feel like you need a disclaimer before you claim your authority on a subject, maybe consider using:

“This is what I know.”

And also:

“This is what I don’t know.”

Both, used in the same paragraph, because that combination is where I stand firmly in my maturity.

That’s earned authority without the BS of pretending to be the final word.

So, okay, I’ll go first, since I’m the hostess and invited you here..

Here’s what I know: I know what it is to build a life that looks almost perfect from the outside and feels like it doesn’t fit from the inside.

I know the loneliness of being admired for a version of yourself that’s long gone.

I know that being witnessed does more than being advised,

and I know how to hold steady while still feeling vulnerable.

Those are no small things.

Here’s what I don’t know: I don’t know your timing. I don’t know what your second becoming is supposed to look like. I don’t know whether the thing you’re grieving needs to be released or reclaimed- that one’s yours.

There- I confessed not knowing everything, and still claiming the authority I do have.

See, nothing fell apart?

I said what I know. I said what I don’t. Everyone is fine.

Which brings me to the part I most want you to hear.

Your unique magic isn’t going to look like anyone else’s.

It probably won’t mirror the woman whose newsletter you admire,

and it definitely won’t match whatever the algorithm has decided a

“wise woman” sounds like this month.

Your authority was assembled out of odd parts.

A decade in a job nobody understood.

A marriage that taught you something

you’d never say out loud at brunch.

A body that has its own language.

Twenty-two years of signing the front of the checks instead of the back,

and being the only one in the room who stays calm.

That’s the education.

It’s not hanging on a wall in a hallway somewhere.

Stop waiting to be certified in your own experience.

And, if by chance I’ve hyped you up enough that you’re going to hit the road running tomorrow and pursue your big dream, to be clear,

I’m not suggesting that you announce yourself as an oracle by Thursday.

Maybe just start with removing;

“I’m no expert, but…”

Just that.

Leave the rest of the sentence exactly as it is.

You are not an apology.

And one more thing, and then I’ll let you go.

It’s easier to claim what you know when there’s someone else is in the room to hear you do it.

That’s most of why I do this work.

I’m gathering a small circle of women for two mornings in September. It’s called Modern Female Elders: Forging Intentional Belonging.

It’s two live, seventy-five-minute sessions on September 10th and 11th at 10 AM Eastern.

An intimate cohort, which is a slightly more formal way of saying: a room small enough that no one is going to disappear in it.

On day one, we unmask and name the confusion and the quiet insecurities out loud, and we get practical about self-trust- where you find yourself shrinking, where you over-give, and what a boundary actually looks like for you.

On day two, we step forward, taking everything your life has already taught you and alchemize it into something you can build from.

That’s it. No fixing, because I’m not interested in pretending I’m the final word on your becoming; I’m here to create the spaces that invite you to remember what you already know.

If you’re shy, or tired of performing, or not sure you have anything to say yet- you’re so welcome in this space exactly as you are. You’ll never be called on. Camera off is honored, and listening counts as full participation.

So if something in you leaned forward just a little, you can reply here, and I’ll connect with you personally.

Message Me

Enrollment opens Tuesday, August 25th.

Forging Intentional Belonging Workshop

And if this isn’t for you but you thought of a woman to share this with, I’d be honored.

May you have the temerity to claim what life has taught you- and the grace to name what it hasn’t.

With Warmth,

Kyra🪶

Writer | Way-Shower | Speaker

Guiding women through the thresholds between who they’ve been and who they’re becoming.