A woman can follow every rule and still reach a moment when she wants to know who wrote them.
It might arrive with a loss, a diagnosis or a divorce. It might be only a dream she cannot let go of. Either way, she starts asking whether any of it was her choice.
Chandler Stroud, founder and host of The Healing Heroines podcast, has spent two years listening to women describe that exact moment. "That's what they all talk about: that moment where they realized they had a choice to lean into the difficult, the hard thing or stay the course they were already on," she says.
In late August she changed the show's name from The Healing Heroes and rebuilt its premise and structure around the women who chose to answer. "The story was never the heroes, it's the heroine," Stroud says. "The heroes aren't going anywhere."
For its first two years the show centered on the healers who help women do the inner work. Then Stroud invited the women who worked with them to share their own stories of trauma, tragedy and illness, conversations she calls "testimonials on steroids." She heard hero's journeys: an ordinary life, a call that is often resisted at first, a rabbit hole of curiosity and the guides who appear along the way.
Those guides are the heroes, and Stroud says every story needs them. "You need these figures in these stories to help them with the transformation," she says. "You can't do it alone."
What she wants for the women who listen is a meaningful life, and she defines it in three parts. "You need to have a loving relationship with yourself, authentic connection with others and a connection with something larger than yourself," Stroud says. "I call it the divine, but it could be God, consciousness, universe, whatever you want that to be."
The call, in her telling, shows up in five ways: a lack of presence, a lack of authentic belonging, physical discomfort, a feeling of being stuck without purpose and a lack of awe and play. "And it happens multiple times in a woman's life," she says.
The women she wants to reach are not looking for rescue. "I'm speaking to women who are living the life, who have built this dream life, who are high achieving," she says. For them, watching another woman act on her call is "a permission slip," because "so many women don't even realize they have a choice to change all of these elements of their life."
Miranda Partridge spent eight years as a school counselor before her father died suddenly in 2023, when she was five months pregnant. The stillness that followed led her to TikTok and a tarot reading, where she said out loud, "I don't think I'm supposed to be a school counselor anymore." She is now an intuitive advisor and medium. "The call is the quietest whisper, and are you willing to listen to it and act on it?" Partridge says.
Jordan Craig built her career at Twitter, Google and LinkedIn while raising two children. When nothing she tried worked after her second child, she remembered deciding, "If I don't do it now, I'm never going to do it." She has checked in daily with accountability coach Bonnie Heim since 2019, including through her mother's death. "The only way out is through," Craig says.
Sarah Baldwin spent 20 years in corporate finance before her mother's death from lung cancer led her to co-found Restfully, a company that helps families navigate end-of-life and grief. "Use caution in deciding that it's unsafe to follow your dreams," Baldwin says. "I would challenge it and say it's unsafe not to."
Sharon Walker Epps spent years on Wall Street, including a seat at Goldman Sachs, and stepped back to raise three children. A call that arrived through her daughter led her to the Rowan Center, which supports survivors of sexual violence, and she now serves as its CEO. "You can have a second act if you want a second act," Epps says. "You can even have a third one, I'm sure."
Their lives look nothing alike. "What happens doesn't actually matter," Stroud says. "It's how the woman starts questioning every choice she's ever made and redesigns her life as a result of that trigger."
"I do believe that answering the call is the most spiritual act a woman can embark on," Stroud says. She does not mean religious. She means "reconnecting with your soul."
That is the idea the brand is built to protect. "The entire brand stands for women discerning what is theirs," she says. "We will never hand out a set of beliefs. We are trying to help you figure out what you believe."
"We as women are taught how to lead successful lives, but very rarely are we taught how to lead meaningful ones," Stroud says.
"You don't have to quit your job, divorce your husband and move somewhere else, but it will wake you up to feeling into your life in a completely different way," she says.
She is not asking women to give up what they built. She is asking whether it is theirs.
To learn more about Chandler Stroud, visit thehealingheroines.com, take the two-minute quiz to find out which call is speaking to you or connect with her on LinkedIn.
