Why the World Doesn’t Need More Healed Women – It Needs Women Who Can Hold Power
- Brainz Magazine
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Cherie Rivas is a Transformational Therapies and Coaching Specialist who guides her clients to reconnect with their purpose, reignite their passion, and reclaim their power. By blending psychology, breathwork, NLP, hypnotherapy, and somatic healing practices, her clients are able to break through limitations and unleash their highest potential.
There is a quiet assumption woven through modern personal development and healing culture, that healing is the destination. That once the wounds are named, the stories processed, and the nervous system steadied, a woman will naturally step into her life with clarity, confidence, and leadership. This assumption captures part of the truth, but it isn’t the whole story. Not because healing is unnecessary, but because it was never meant to be the endpoint.
The world is not suffering from a shortage of self-aware women. It is saturated with women who have done deep inner work, women who know their triggers, understand their patterns, can name their coping strategies, and speak fluently about their nervous system responses. And yet, many of these same women still shrink at visibility, defer decisions, soften their truth, or wait for certainty, permission, or perfect internal alignment before acting. The gap isn’t insight. The gap is capacity.
When healing becomes the centre of life
Healing culture, as an umbrella for much of modern personal development, has normalised an ongoing inward gaze. It has taught women to become highly skilled at self-reflection, to unpack, regulate, analyse, and track their internal experience.
These practices are essential when a woman has lived in survival. However, distortion can emerge when self-work becomes the primary arena of life.
In many spaces, growth is measured by how well a woman can articulate her pain rather than how cleanly she can hold responsibility. Emotional sensitivity is elevated above emotional authority, self-protection is framed as self-leadership, and discomfort is treated as a warning sign rather than a developmental requirement.
The result is not weak women. It is misdirected strength. Women who are emotionally literate yet hesitate when choice requires consequence. Women who can describe their patterns precisely but struggle to act decisively when pressure rises, stakes increase, or visibility intensifies.
Power is not a feeling: It is a capacity
Power is not the absence of fear, tenderness, or history. It is the ability to remain coherent in the presence of those things.
A woman who can hold power is not someone who never becomes activated, she is someone who can feel activation without surrendering authority to it. She can tolerate being misunderstood without scrambling to manage perception, make decisions that create friction, and lead conversations that disappoint people, all whilst remaining internally anchored. This is not performance, but the result of genuine integration.
Healing may reduce the emotional charge around an experience. Integration changes the relationship to it, so that past wounds no longer organise present behaviour. Without integration, a wound can be understood and still run behaviour, and a pattern can be named and still dominate under stress.
Power is not built through better language or deeper insight alone. It is built through a larger internal container, one that can hold pressure, consequence, and choice simultaneously without collapsing into old protective strategies.
The illusion of insight
Insight creates a convincing illusion, because I understand myself, I will act differently next time. In reflection, this feels true. Patterns make sense, the narrative is clear, and growth feels integrated. A woman can articulate exactly what happened, why it happened, and what she would do differently if the situation arose again.
And yet, when it does, she often repeats the same behaviour. Insight lives in hindsight and safety, when the nervous system is regulated and the stakes are low. But real decisions are made in moments of consequence, when visibility increases, authority is tested, or belonging feels at risk. In those moments, the body chooses faster than the mind can reason.
This is why capable, intelligent women are often surprised by themselves. They know their patterns, and yet still default to them under pressure. Not because they lack awareness, but because insight has been mistaken for readiness. Understanding a pattern informs intention. It does not guarantee access to choice when it matters most.
Nervous system strength is a leadership skill
Holding power is not only psychological. It is physiological. Leadership, visibility, wealth, boundaries, and truth-telling all generate sensation in the body. For many women, that sensation is interpreted as danger, not because power is unsafe, but because consequence once carried real risk.
If consequence previously meant punishment, rejection, conflict, abandonment, or instability, the nervous system will treat more as a threat, more responsibility, more authority, more money, more self-definition, more visibility. So the body pulls her back toward familiar safety strategies, staying agreeable, staying busy, staying prepared, or staying hidden.
Regulation, then, is not the endpoint. It is the baseline. Power requires resilience, the capacity to stay present with intensity without collapsing into old strategies.
The work beyond healing
The most consequential shift in a woman’s evolution is not another layer of understanding. It is the moment she stops organising her life around processing, and begins organising it around choice.
Choice made without perfect internal conditions. Choice that does not wait for calm. Choice that accepts consequence as the price of sovereignty.
This is where self-leadership begins. Sovereignty is not emotional purity. It is behavioural integrity, and the capacity to decide, act, and remain present when the nervous system would prefer retreat, appeasement, or delay. It is the ability to be seen without softening, to disappoint without self-abandonment, and to lead without outsourcing authority to comfort.
Healing opens the door to this work, but it cannot complete it. The world does not need more women who can explain their pain. It needs women who can hold responsibility, visibility, and impact without fragmentation. Healing prepares you. Power is the assignment you are now accountable for.
Read more from Cherie Rivas
Cherie Rivas, Transformational Therapies & Coaching Specialist
Cherie Rivas is a Transformational Therapies and Coaching Specialist with a passion for shadow work. With nearly 20 years of corporate leadership experience and expertise in psychology, breathwork, NLP, and energetic healing, she helps her clients reclaim their power and purpose. Through her unique blend of traditional and complementary modalities, Cherie guides her clients to break free from limitations, step into their fullest potential, and create a deeply fulfilling life. She has also been a featured speaker for the Women Thrive Global Online Summit, sharing her insights on empowerment and transformation.
