Writing Her Story: The Power of the Feminine
“A big part of this work around the inner critic is catch the stories that you’re telling yourself. Learn to challenge those stories and interrupt the cognitive dissonance and then get to the reframe so that you can take the action that you wanna take. ”
Buy WOMEN RISING
✨💬 Unlock the secrets of radical confidence, take steps to silence that inner critic and learn the profound distinction between the Hero’s and Heroine’s Journey in this week’s bumper episode with @megandallacamina, author of WOMEN RISING 🤩🌟
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome and Updates
01:29 Exciting Announcements
02:27 Upcoming Writing Retreat
03:26 Listenership Survey
04:21 Introducing Today's Guest: Megan Dalla-Camina
05:37 Megan's Background and Accomplishments
08:19 The Drive for Women's Empowerment
13:03 Navigating Modern Feminism
17:21 Understanding Paradoxes of Power
21:11 Writing Process and Challenges
26:21 The Process of Surrender in Writing
26:49 Dealing with Imposter Syndrome
28:08 Understanding the Inner Critic
29:06 Exploring Inner Critic Archetypes
33:59 The Light and Shadow Sides of Archetypes
36:40 The Heroine's Journey
41:44 Women Rising Program
43:51 Promotional Strategies and Final Thoughts
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Transcript
This transcript is provided as a companion to the audio episode and has not been edited.
[00:00:00] Pamela: Hello and welcome to another episode of Rights for Women. It is, what day is it? I never know. It is Tuesday the 15th of October. I've been deep in editing land getting my third and final book in the Blackwater Lake trilogy, off to my editor.
[00:00:23] Pamela: She's got most of it. She still will be getting a little bit more of it today after I finish recording this interview, and I'll tell you all about my guest in a moment. First of all, massive shout out to everybody who is playing along on Substack. The writes form and Substack is just coming along in leaps and bounds.
[00:00:40] Pamela: I'm getting so many great comments and interactions and feedbacks over there. And just a reminder that you can join on Substack as a free subscriber. You can also support the podcast for a small amount each month, which also gives you a great, some great bonuses, which you can find over on the Substack app at rights for women.substack.com.
[00:01:05] Pamela: I think. Anyway, the link's in the bio, in the show notes. What else is happening? It didn't have an episode last week because editing. Hopefully I am enough through that now that I'm gonna be able to get back to the weekly, regular episodes and with the fantastic help of Annie Buckner, my va, who is just doing great things for the podcast.
[00:01:27] Pamela: So shout out to Annie as well. Also just a quick mention that you can. Now get my turn up the Tension online course at a super discounted rate of $199 for the eight modules. There is hours and hours of work in that and it is really all about taking your writing to the next level.
[00:01:46] Pamela: So if you are interested in a self-paced course with loads of resources and examples and access to me which even though I'm not doing any face-to-face tutoring in this course, you will see me in a little corner of the, at the bottom talking through all the slides.
[00:02:03] Pamela: You can email me at any time if there are any issues or anything you wanna chat about as you're doing the course. So that's available now@pamelacook.com au. Turn up the tension online, jump in and grab that if you are interested in doing it, because once I get through these edits by the end of this month, I am really thinking about restructuring that and.
[00:02:22] Pamela: The price will be bumped back up again. Ah, some more exciting news. I have fixed a date for next year's next level writing retreat. It's going to be at Carina House in the beautiful foothills of the Blue Mountains at Ong, where we had this year's. And this year's was just amazing. I've got some great feedback from all of the.
[00:02:44] Pamela: The 12 fantastic women who attended that. And that has spurred me on to do it again next year. So it's going to be April 10 to 13. It'll be a Thursday night evening to a Sunday afternoon at Ong 2025, April 10 to 13. I haven't actually had time to get all the details about that up on the website, but if you are interested, there is an expression of interest form there that you can complete.
[00:03:08] Pamela: And , if you fill in that form, I get a notification and anybody who has completed that email form I will give you advance notice before I actually put the retreat up on the website and let everyone know about it because it did sell out really quickly this year. That is happening.
[00:03:25] Pamela: Exciting.
[00:03:26] Pamela: Another thing I wanted to tell you about before I get onto talking to our guest today is Annie has put together a listenership survey. We're really keen to find out what it is you are loving about rights for women, what you'd like to see more of. If there's anything you'd like to see left, hear less of suggestions for tightening up the episodes, making them shorter, longer, whatever.
[00:03:47] Pamela: We really wanna get your feedback. So if you are a listener, whether that be regular, occasional, or somewhere in between, we would love you to complete the leader the listenership survey. Which is going to be going out I'm going to email that to everybody on Substack. It'll be on Instagram and it will also be on Facebook.
[00:04:06] Pamela: So where you can access the link there is going to be a book pack up for grabs. Everybody who completes the survey will be in the draw for that. And I'm really hoping that we can get some great feedback and take rights for women to even bigger and better places. Now, today's guest is someone a little bit different for Rights for Women. It's a nonfiction author the author of a book called Women Rising. If you're looking on YouTube, you'll see this fantastically gorgeous cover. And the author is Megan Della Camina. Now, I actually came across this book on Instagram.
[00:04:40] Pamela: Megan is with the same agency as me, key people, literary management. So I saw Lou Johnson, Megan's agent from key people posting about this book and I thought, whoa, that looks like my cup of tea. Anything about women's empowerment, women's voices, authenticity is right up my alley.
[00:04:56] Pamela: That's what Rights for Women is all about. So I contacted Lou, who contacted Megan, and today she's coming on to chat about. Women rising the book and also about this whole idea of women's empowerment. And that's something that is so important to all of us. There's a whole lot to talk about. And just a little heads up, I am from this point on doing a little bit of an additional interview.
[00:05:23] Pamela: There'll be a couple of extra questions that are gonna go out to my Substack paid subscribers. So that's something additional that hasn't been added to the bonuses there, but will be added very soon.
[00:05:34] Pamela: So looking forward to that. Let me tell you a little bit about Megan. I'm actually taking this from the back of the book on the website, the Women Rising website. There is so much information about Megan and it's all amazing, but she's such an accomplished. Person, author, speaker, entrepreneur. It's very hard to narrow it down.
[00:05:54] Pamela: So I came across this short bio in the back of her book, which I think really captures everything that's Megan's about Megan Dla Camina is a renowned expert in women's leadership and empowerment with decades of experience as a Fortune 500 executive and deep academic credentials. She's the visionary founder of the award-Winning Women Rising Leadership Program, which has empowered thousands of women and male allies in more than 60 countries.
[00:06:21] Pamela: Megan fuses science spirit and practical tools to help women step into their power and achieve holistic success on their own terms. Her transformative work has been featured in major media outlets, globally inspiring women to lead with authenticity and purpose. And that is just such a great summary after having read the book.
[00:06:41] Pamela: And this is a book that I'm going to definitely be diving back into because I've had a, an overview of it. I've read it. But there are so many great exercises and things to think about in here and a lot that actually pertain to us as writers, as well as women and as women writers. So I'm really looking forward to chatting to Megan about all of that.
[00:07:00] Pamela: Okay. Megan Dala Camina. Welcome to the Rights for Women Convo Couch.
[00:07:05] Pamela: It's so good to have you here. Thank you. Thanks Pamela. I'm so excited
[00:07:09] Megan: for our conversation.
[00:07:10] Pamela: Yes. I was just telling listeners in the intro that I came across your book, women Rising on Instagram, we are with the same literary agency as it turns out, key people, literary management, and I saw that Lou had posted about your book, I think at the launch it probably was, and about the book coming out and it immediately grabbed me because a gorgeous cover and b, just the title, women Rising.
[00:07:36] Pamela: Fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you. It's very
[00:07:39] Megan: exciting
[00:07:39] Megan: She's so beautiful. The cover's so beautiful as well. So thank you.
[00:07:42] Pamela: Yeah. Did you have any input into the cover? Was that kind of presented to you and
[00:07:46] Megan: do you love it? It was a beautiful collaboration actually. Design is very important to me and like beauty and how things are and Wiley were amazing.
[00:07:56] Megan: Which is quite rare in publishing. I did it on my last book as well. Simple, soulful, sacred with Hay House. We had this beautiful collaboration 'cause I had a really clear vision. And this one with Wiley. Yeah. They were amazing. And we just collaborated and, put all of our visions in until we landed
[00:08:13] Pamela: on that.
[00:08:14] Pamela: The colors are just gorgeous. They've done such a beautiful job on the book.
[00:08:19] Pamela: Now, Megan, reading your bio, it became immediately apparent that you are a woman of action, passion, commitment and a whole lot of other adjectives that I could include there, but particularly obviously in the area of, women's issues, women's empowerment, helping women find their voice. Where do you think that drive has come from?
[00:08:38] Pamela: Is it something that you've had? Do you think with you all your life from childhood that kind of drive to to raise people up and to raise women's voices? Could you talk a little bit about where you think that drive has come from?
[00:08:51] Megan: It's, look, it's such an interesting question and it like drive, I think. We can talk about the women's drive separately, but drive to get things done and all it's a blessing and a curse, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you've read any of the archetypes, like I'm the overachiever, like that's my archetype for my inner critic and just me in general.
[00:09:10] Megan: I don't know where it's come from, but it's always been with me. Like even as a child, I was a dancer, I was an actress and I was always, performing and, in a tedford's and doing all of the things. Maybe less so in my teenage years when I went through a real rebel phase.
[00:09:28] Megan: And I really didn't care much about, about any of that. From early in my career, yeah, I've had this sense of drive and it's really about a drive for making a difference. The women's piece came later, but for me it's always been just this inherent. Wanting to make a difference.
[00:09:47] Megan: And whether that was through, early days in writing or, performing and then corporate and then, all of the women's work about 15 years ago.
[00:09:55] Pamela: So that kind of almost innate drive that you've had you've channeled that into your interest in women's empowerment. So did that kind of more specific interest come about through your work and your career in the corporate world?
[00:10:11] Megan: It did. I, it's funny when you look back on your life and you start to pull the thread, how you can see pieces that you may not have thought were connected, but were connected.
[00:10:20] Megan: When I was 21, I got chronic fatigue syndrome long, like decades before they really knew what it was. And I was in bed for six months. I was incredibly sick. And, that was a transformative time for many reasons. But coming out of that, I was gifted a book, A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson.
[00:10:39] Megan: It was her first book and that book just changed me on a very profound found level. And her second book, A Woman's Worth. Was like a catalyst for me, and it would take another 15 years for that spark.
[00:10:57] Megan: I really felt something in that book to really, catch flame in my corporate career when I was at, when I was at IBM, but that it was there, it was like that kindling that, that had been put together from reading Marianne's work.
[00:11:13] Megan: And then, yeah, like when I hit IBMI ended up at IBM through acquisition. I was at PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, and again, in very formative years, I, at 29, I made director at PWC on a Thursday. Found I started my first master's degree on the Friday and found out I was pregnant on the Saturday.
[00:11:35] Megan: Oh, wow. Through this, period of doing all the things. Then became a single mother 18 months later. So by the time I hit 34 and my started my executive career at IBM, all of these different facets of being a woman and how challenging it is to be a woman and a mother and a single mother and like all of that, an executive and a young executive.
[00:11:59] Megan: And then I burnt out really badly and it just blew up into this. There has to be a better way of doing this for women. Yeah. There has to be a better way of doing work we're passionate about and raising our families and being well and healthy and not just running on this endless treadmill that we can't stop, and that we don't wanna pause 'cause we think we're gonna fall off. That, around 33, 34 for me it's 20 years ago. More I'm 54. Was really that spark first for me. Like, how do I do this better? How do I live my life better and work better, parent better and be healthy?
[00:12:35] Megan: 'cause I wasn't, and then just so passionate about being with women, being around women, talking to women not even supporting women at that stage. It was just like, I want this feminine energy. 'cause I'd been in skill and energy so overly corrected for so long. So that's really, where it started.
[00:12:56] Megan: And then it just, I want more and I want more. I want more. Like what are those next breadcrumbs on the path?
[00:13:01] Pamela: Oh, so interesting. I. I'm a bit older than you. So I was a high school teacher, but I was definitely, in the eighties and nineties in that period where, oh, you can have it all, we can have it all.
[00:13:13] Pamela: And it, it took me a while to work out you can have it all, but you can't have it all at the same time. Not if you wanna stay sane. That was the conclusion I came to with my kind of work life balance back then. I wasn't writing at that stage.
[00:13:27] Megan: Yeah.
[00:13:27] Do you think that kind of philosophy, I guess that was part of the feminism back in, in the, that period, how do you think that has morphed today and how do you think it is that women can navigate that idea that we want all these things, we want the family, we want the career, we want to stay sane and to have, connections and spirituality and all of those things. How do you think that has evolved to the point where we are now? Do you think things are better or do you, I know from reading the book that you still feel like we've got a long way to go, but can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:14:02] Megan: Yes.
[00:14:02] Megan: My first book was called Getting Real about having it all. Like it was
[00:14:05] Pamela: yeah.
[00:14:06] Megan: We stop having this conversation, that just puts women in this. Find that we can never get out of, but the conversation that we never have with men. So I have, we were gonna do a whole podcast on just that one, on just that one line.
[00:14:21] Megan: It's interesting. I was on another podcast a couple of weeks ago with two women in their thirties and we were having this exact conversation and I don't think it's changed. I think that pressure and this is what I write about in Women Rising about the paradoxes of power that still these forces outside of ourselves that hold us back, that stem from the patriarchy.
[00:14:42] Megan: We're still living in a patriarchal world. We're not a post patriarchal society. So I think so many of those challenges, so many of those paradoxes, those expectations that we as society place on women, that then we as women internalize, becomes our internal patriarchy and we take them on ourselves.
[00:15:01] Megan: We're still in this space. Think what has shifted for me is, number one, a lot of us who grew up in the seventies and eighties are in midlife now, and we're having an awakening, or have had an awakening or going through our heroin's journey and just saying, f this shit.
[00:15:20] Megan: I'm done with this. There has to be a better way and we are talking about it. I wrote getting real about having it all because we weren't talking about it. We we were never having a conversation about how challenging this is, being a, working woman and all the rest of it.
[00:15:35] Megan: And how we bring this together holistically. I do think that women coming up behind us have got this sorted better than we did. So that makes me very hopeful. And I also have this really interesting take. On what I write about with those paradoxes and like they really get it in a way that there's no way I would've understood this when I was, my twenties, my thirties, even my late thirties wouldn't have had a clue what I was talking about, now.
[00:16:07] Megan: Yeah. It really seemed to understand it and that also makes me really hopeful.
[00:16:12] Pamela: I agree. I've got daughters in late twenties and early thirties and I think, I do think they've obviously learned from, the women like us who have come before them, but also there has been so much more conversation around all of this as they've been growing up.
[00:16:26] Pamela: And so yes, they have internalized still some of these paradoxes that I wanna talk to you about in a moment, but they've also got this greater awareness, as you say, of what is happening. And there's a lot more kind of social awareness.
[00:16:40] Megan: And there's good and bad about around that, right? Yeah. So yeah, I've got a 20, nearly 24-year-old son, and we are living in a different time, no question. We're in a different, completely different zeitgeist and cultural narrative about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be, any gender.
[00:16:57] Megan: Like we, we've come such a long way what the world of work looks like. But then there's other pressures that we didn't have, like social media and comparison and mental health challenges and everything. So yes, we've come so far in so many of those ways and there's a whole nother layer of things that pose incredible challenges for women.
[00:17:18] Megan: Yeah.
[00:17:19] Pamela: That's very true. Let's get on to talking about, you've mentioned already about the number of paradoxes that you outlined so beautifully in the book and things like, the success paradox, , the motherhood paradox, the confidence paradox, and how we internalize, definitely internalized patriarchy.
[00:17:37] Pamela: Can you talk a bit about the importance of these paradoxes and how it's important for us to understand them in order to then work out where we are with them and then, make the next move sort of thing?
[00:17:50] Megan: Yes, great question. Here's what I see for, from working with so many women and the Women Rising program that I run, which is my main thing that I do, we've had nearly 10,000 women in the last three and a half years in this program that I, coach and work with directly.
[00:18:06] Megan: So that's a lot of women, 63 countries. All different cultures, ages and stages. And here's what I witness. When we run into challenges as women, there's really only one thought that we have. It's my fault. It's me. There's something wrong with me. And that's why this thing has happened, particularly at work.
[00:18:33] Megan: We get talked over in a meeting or we get passed over for a promotion and we immediately think, oh, I'm like, I'm not good enough, right? There's something wrong with me. And a big piece of this missing puzzle for all of us as women, it doesn't matter whether you're a stay at home parent, whether you're at uni, whether you're in the workforce, whether you're a writer and working on your first novel whatever it is that we don't understand for a lot of us, the external forces that shape our reality as women.
[00:19:02] Megan: And these are the paradoxes. And what I find is that, and it's took me 15 years to really know enough and have seen enough and done, like I'm an academic as well, have done enough research to be able to deal with this underlying feeling I've had right back since my thirties of, there has to be something more going on here.
[00:19:25] Megan: I was involved in the very first male champions of change with Elizabeth Roderick, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, doing all these listening tours with CEOs and all of the women in organizations thinking that if we just have enough conversations, we're gonna figure it out, we're gonna get the silver bullet, and then women will rise, they'll rise up in organizations and all the rest of it.
[00:19:47] Megan: And it didn't happen. And there is no silver bullet. And when I look back from where I sit now, like I've been trying to pull these pieces together. For what? What are the things that we don't talk about in society with our girlfriends, and particularly in our workplaces, that we have to understand to be able to move forward?
[00:20:08] Megan: And that's what the paradoxes are. .
[00:20:11] Pamela: And I love the way that you explain it so clearly in the book, but then you go through all these kind of steps in, how we can then take the next steps to pulling ourselves out of that mental space. I really love that about the book. You're not just explaining it.
[00:20:25] Pamela: You're walking us through, okay, what do we do about it? And I love that.
[00:20:29] Megan: Yes. So interesting you say that because it was going, this book was going to be a really small manifesto. Like it was going to be for anyone who's written a book or writing a book, you go through all these iterations and it was going to be this really small hardcover manifesto, and it was just gonna be part of the first section.
[00:20:49] Megan: And like about 30,000, 40,000 words. And as I was writing it, like I'm a teacher and a coach, I'm like, I can't just vomit out a problem and say, here's why the world's not working for women. And that's where all of the, still the steps. And then part two, part three came into it and it became like 93,000 words.
[00:21:08] Megan: Wow.
[00:21:09] Pamela: Wow. So let's take a little tangent onto the writing of the book, Megan. This is your fourth nonfiction book. Yes. So I haven't read the others, but it feels like it's like a culmination of everything, that you've been thinking and experiencing and doing over the last, 15 years or more.
[00:21:28] Pamela: Where was the seed? For writing the actual book, because you do have the Women Rising Program, so which came first, the book or the program, and then how did you then go about developing the book from there?
[00:21:39] Megan: , it is a combination and it also isn't like Simple, soulful, sacred was a, is a really deeply soulful spiritual book for women.
[00:21:47] Megan: It's really thick, but it's two chapters, like two pages a chapter. It's like an Oracle, but, that was 2019. So I've been sitting with this book. Since then, and the program came first. So the program came out in 2020 and we are now with the Women Rising Program in 700 organizations in 63 countries, plus individual women.
[00:22:08] Megan: Like anyone, anyone can join us. The book is the next evolution. The book is the next step in the conversation of, of Women Rising and where it started. Like I knew there was another conversation that needed to happen, as I was saying, it took me quite a lot years to really sit with what is going to add something different that hasn't been written.
[00:22:39] Megan: That's not just gonna be more noise. And that's gonna be really, truly useful for women. And that took time to unfold. Yeah. What's the model and what are the really important things of all of the things that could go in there that are essential? And I knew there was gonna have inner critic work in there, and I knew they would have the tools like that.
[00:22:59] Megan: Part three, with those really practical, how do you build life vision and how do you follow your purpose and how do you build confidence? But it was that first section that I just grappled with and grappled with. And until I finally, when when you land on something, you're just like this is it.
[00:23:15] Megan: Like this is the thing. And then it all just flowed.
[00:23:19] Pamela: And what was your writing process for actually getting the words on the page? Did you dedicate a certain period of time to it or were you writing in between doing all the other many things that I imagine you do in your life?
[00:23:29] Megan: Yeah, no, I, I run, I'm a founder and a CEO, so I run my company two Megan Deter and Women Rising. So I was doing what so many of us do as writers, right? Like I was just stealing the moments, like where's the space? We sold the book really quickly and I didn't think that was what was gonna happen.
[00:23:47] Megan: And then we put a really tight deadline on it because we're in this like geist moment around this topic. I found that I was much more effective if I gave myself a full day, forget it. Like I just dilly dally around. So I would give myself like blocks, right?
[00:24:03] Megan: You've got three hours here and this is what you're gonna write. Go. And I did that. I write in Scrivener. I don't know if you Yeah,
[00:24:10] Pamela: me too. Yeah. I love Scrivener.
[00:24:12] Megan: So I would like literally give myself an assignment, not sitting, oh, what do I feel like writing today? No. Tomorrow you are gonna sit down, you're gonna write this.
[00:24:19] Megan: So that for me worked really well amongst Yeah. Like running a scaling company. Yeah. And I wrote it like I wrote most of it in six months.
[00:24:28] That's amazing. 'cause it's an actually, it's quite a chunky tome and there's a lot in there.
[00:24:33] Pamela: As you say, you had the second and third section. You knew what vaguely was gonna go in there when you started, but there's so much that you are drawing on, from all your research and your experience and your work with women. There would be so much that you're drawing on to be able to narrow it down into, putting it between two covers must have been quite difficult.
[00:24:52] Megan: It was really difficult and there were a lot more words that I as we all do that don't end up in the book. Yeah. One of my books was 164,000 words I wrote and it came down to 84. The simple, soft or sacred one. I really just lasered in on what are the most important things?
[00:25:07] Megan: Because there is so much, like when I write about the tools, there's six key things that I think are incredibly important. So that's the, they're the chapters in that section with the inner critic part two, which is what I teach so much of for women 'cause it's women's number one issue that they self-declared that holds them back.
[00:25:27] Megan: 'cause theres voice inside our heads. So I wanted to, write about like my teachings around that and the stories around that. But then I wanted to go deeper and that's where the archetypes came in. And when I hit the 13 archetypes I was like. Like googling like archetypes of the inner critic thinking someone has to have done this before, didn't exist.
[00:25:49] Megan: Yeah. I'm like, I'm onto something here. And then it was about what's the structure and like how is this helpful and how do we unpack this and bringing those spiritual elements of affirmations and other things really dear. So yeah, like sifting and crafting. I had a brilliant editor at Wiley who gave me some not massive amounts of notes, but really important right.
[00:26:15] Megan: Notes that made me sit back and go, oh, okay. And just made the book so much better.
[00:26:21] Megan: I found that with being, this being my fourth book, this process of surrender.
[00:26:28] Megan: To the art and just the guidance that comes through and then, okay, pick that up and go to work rather than really trying to control all of the elements is just giving that space for the creation and the evolution. And that really served me with this book.
[00:26:48] Megan: Fantastic.
[00:26:49] Pamela: One of the things that you talked about is the inner critic, and this comes out obvious a lot in the book because you do deal with it in the archetype section. And I really wanna get onto those archetypes in a moment. But when you talked about imposter syndrome.
[00:27:04] Pamela: In the book. This is something that I feel obviously women and as a, woman writer and someone who talks to a lot of women writers, it's often a question, how do you deal with imposter syndrome? We all suffer from it. And it's funny, I know amongst my own writing friends, whenever we've got a bit of a dilemma, like particularly thing around things like, if you're teaching a workshop, how much to charge?
[00:27:26] Pamela: Or how to put yourself forward for some publicity or promotion. So we've got this bit of a joke in my writing group now. What would, and I won't say his name, but a certain male writer who is lovely, but we'll say, I'll make up a name. What would Tom do? What would Tom say?
[00:27:40] Pamela: As a kind of way to go, yeah, stop it. What would Tom say? I'm gonna do that, but but this whole thing around imposter syndrome obviously it affects women across all fields, but in creative fields, it can really become a serious kind of block to whatever creative endeavor, whether that's a book or art or whatever it is we're doing.
[00:27:59] Pamela: In your writing of this book and in your research and everything, do you think there's any way around imposter syndrome? For writers, for example.
[00:28:07] Megan: Yeah. And it's not just imposter syndrome, right? Like the imposter is one of the archetypes of the inner critic.
[00:28:13] Megan: There's 13 and if I had a coaching conversation with a number of your friends in your circle and really started to dig around, it may be imposter, may not be maybe something else, maybe it's the perfectionist, or maybe it's the people pleaser, or maybe it's the comparer. Yep. Or maybe there's something else going on.
[00:28:33] Megan: Like imposter is absolutely one where we think I'm not qualified. They're gonna find out that I'm a fraud, and I'm gonna get tapped on the shoulder and kicked out of the literary, world. Whatever that is. That's the imposter. But there are also other archetypes that really feed into, particularly as creatives.
[00:28:52] Megan: That feed into the belief that I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough, someone else has already done it. I'm never gonna get it done or get published, or no one's gonna buy it. Like all of their all inner critic stories.
[00:29:05] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:29:06] Megan: So the work, and like this section would be really helpful for all of the writers here, is to start to understand what is your inner critic voice?
[00:29:16] Megan: What is the voice in your head? Where does it come from? Sometimes you will find, oh, that voice is actually my mother, or that voice is actually that seventh grade teacher. What are the dimensions of that voice? And then what are the stories that you tell yourself?
[00:29:33] Megan: And then use the steps, to work through, to come out the other side. We are never gonna silence Erin, a critic. That is what our goal, and I think some people believe that we can make it go away. It's if you're a meditator, I'm a deep meditator. Deep meaning a deep practice, not always deep meditation.
[00:29:53] Megan: Yeah. We're gonna silence our thoughts and clear our mind. Like we are not gonna do that in meditation. , it may get quieter, it's not gonna stop. So that's a big part of this work around the inner critic is catch the stories that you're telling yourself. Learn to challenge those stories and interrupt the cognitive dissonance and then get to the reframe so that you can take the action that you wanna take.
[00:30:18] Megan: That's the guts of the inner critic work. And it does get better. Like I used to, my inner critic used to be at least scream at me like all day, every day. So loud, so negative, so harsh. And over the last, I would say 12 years , doing this work, evolutions of this work that I teach and write about my inner critic is very quiet.
[00:30:43] Megan: And now when I hear it, it's very clear,
[00:30:46] Megan: We know what it is and I know exactly what to do about it. So like it does get quieter and easier and we build our confidence as we go.
[00:30:55] Pamela: Yeah. I love that. We can have a number of different inner critics operating within us at any one time, can't we?
[00:31:01] Megan: We can. So there's 13 archetypes and I find that I've been having this conversation with a lot of women since the book's come out. There may be two or three that you go, oh, that's me.
[00:31:13] Pamela: Yeah. I went through with a pen, and I was asked to, that's me. Yes. Oh, no,
[00:31:16] Megan: hang on. That's
[00:31:16] Pamela: me. No.
[00:31:17] Megan: Yes. And then May, and sometimes we'll look at it and we'll go, oh, like for me, I used to be the people pleaser. I'm not a people pleaser anymore because I've done so much work on, removing that. And I can catch it really easily. Like I'm the overachiever, like that's me. I'm also the empath and like I have tools to manage that.
[00:31:35] Megan: So yes, there may be two or three that you think, oh, yes. And then when you really go in, there may be one that just leaps out and goes, for me, in this season of my life, yeah. This is my main inner critical, yeah.
[00:31:50] Pamela: I think that's interesting that you say in this season of my life too. 'cause I have found, when I was looking at all those inner critic archetypes, I could recognize them some as being louder at different parts of my life.
[00:32:01] Pamela: And maybe some, now that I'm a little bit older, a lot older are not as, as vocal.
[00:32:07] Megan: Yes. Yeah. And it can be, like going into different seasons. If you are going into a season of being a writer or you're going into a season of writing your next book.
[00:32:19] Megan: Watch your inner critic come up.
[00:32:20] Megan: Like you watch that thing. If you are launching a book, watch your inner critic come up. Yeah. If you are transitioning into midlife or going through menopause, like whatever it is, whatever season you're in, your inner critic will have a flavor. And when we can really understand that, when we can detach emotionally from that, and we do that by catching the stories.
[00:32:44] Megan: Just write down, sit, think about a moment that's happened for you in the last two weeks where you felt you're in a critic. Flare up. Just sit down for 10 minutes. Write down what was the internal narrative that was going on for you in that period. That's step one. Step one is catch the story.
[00:33:01] Megan: Step two is ask, is that true? 'cause we need to challenge the narrative. Like we believe the 60,000 thoughts we have a day, right? And they stop us in our tracks. So yeah, we get to challenge that story and then we can get to the action.
[00:33:18] Pamela: So that journaling practice is really important, isn't it?
[00:33:21] Megan: Yeah. And look, some people I'm not a journaler, like I'm not a big journaler, but I like to write things down. So I'm, I've, if you can see my desk, this is so pretty. This is like creative chaos. I'll I'll jot things down on a notepad or I'll pop them in a, on a note on my phone.
[00:33:37] Megan: Or I'll just, have, I have these little Indian journals I spend all the time in India and so it doesn't need to be a, I'm gonna sit down and journal for 10 pages every day. It doesn't need to be that don't put that pressure on yourself. Just jot things down on a piece of paper.
[00:33:52] Megan: Then yeah, if you can have them in one place so you can go back to them, great. But it doesn't need to be, any fancy process.
[00:33:58] Pamela: Fabulous. I loved that archetype section of the book because it did really, pull out all those different inner critic archetypes. But it also talks about the, with each archetype, you talk about the kind of positive aspects of that too.
[00:34:11] Pamela: Like you mentioned being an empath, that, that's a fantastic quality and it's great, but obvi obviously, it's not so great when it tips us over into, other areas that are not so healthy for us.
[00:34:23] Megan: Yeah.
[00:34:23] Pamela: But I love the way you outlined both sides, of those archetypes.
[00:34:27] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:34:27] Megan: Yeah. Thank you. I'm an eternal optimist, right? , I'm also a realist and a pragmatist. So looking at the light side and then the shadow side, of, if you're a perfectionist, the light side of the perfectionist is that you are gonna have incredible attention to detail. You are gonna always deliver.
[00:34:47] Megan: Like there are real benefits to being a perfectionist. And then there's the shadow side of that and how that can undermine a same for the overachiever as an overachiever light side. Get shit done. Yeah. Make an impact. Do all, do great things. The, the shadow side, burn yourself out, burn everybody else out.
[00:35:04] Megan: Because you're like, let's go. That's mine. Know thyself. So light side, shadow side. And then everyone has their own strategies, which are all nuanced. And I also really how they all go into where does this come from? Yeah. Where does the how are women cultivated as a perfectionist or the beauty queen or the ideal mother?
[00:35:27] Megan: And that link back to the paradoxes.
[00:35:30] Pamela: Oh yeah. The, that kind of web that you create where it really, you can really see all the connections is fantastic. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, brilliant for us as women, but as writers, my eyes just lit up when I saw those things. 'cause this fantastic writers, anyone listening out there for creating characters, there is so much in this book I'm going to be using.
[00:35:51] Pamela: Oh yes. Because this is everything that we talk about to do with, the psychology of our characters. I've just recently taught a workshop on climbing inside your character skin. Where I talk about the psychology of character and how our kind of childhood wounds and things like that, and the things that we absorb as we're growing up and from our environment.
[00:36:09] Pamela: So all these things, you know about character flaws and Yes. Oh, this is textbook. Yes, the light and dark side of it. It's like it's all in
[00:36:19] Megan: here guys. It's fantastic. Oh, I love never even thought about that before from that perspective.
[00:36:26] Megan: Oh, good. I'm glad it's helpful.
[00:36:28] Pamela: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic for character creation, for fiction authors. I'm telling you.
[00:36:33] Megan: I love that. Oh, I envy fiction authors. I wish I was
[00:36:36] Pamela: a fiction author. Sometimes. You never know, Megan. You never know.
[00:36:40] Pamela: The other thing that you've mentioned a couple of times, and which is also something that I've come across in my my writing life, because it's often, brought up as a kind of structural template for plot is the heroine's journey. But you've talked about this in relation, of course, to our actual real life journey.
[00:36:57] Pamela: So can you talk a little bit about that and how integral that has been to you, pulling all this together.
[00:37:05] Megan: Yeah, so the heroin's journey, credit to Maureen Murdoch. So the, Jungian analyst and psychotherapist who created that model for, and she back in the day, worked with Joseph Campbell and, when he was doing the hero's journey and she said I feel this is really limiting for women.
[00:37:23] Megan: This doesn't speak to women's journeys. And Campbell said to her no, it's inherent because that, that the feminines the place everyone's trying to get to. And she said I dismissed that. And she went and created the heroin's journey, which is specific to our lives and our journeys and our psychology as women.
[00:37:40] Megan: That factored quite heavily in my book. Simple, soulful, sacred, my book before this one. But it just informs everything I do. Like it informs my view of, and I'm very, fascinated by young and, all of that work and all of the other writers, Marian Woodman and others.
[00:38:00] Megan: But this essence of a woman's journey and how different it is to a man's journey and how we honor that, that's like a core foundation of my work. And this book, even if it's a bit less obvious. Yeah. Like again, it's like that thread, right? That goes, yeah. And my PhD that I'm doing right now, like it's all interwoven in everything that I do.
[00:38:28] Pamela: What would you say are the key differences between, the heroin's journey and the heroes journey?
[00:38:35] Megan: Yeah. One of the, that's such a good question. One of the things with the hero's journey and is it's all about out there, it's the boon of success and the trial and like you think about any of the movies, right?
[00:38:50] Megan: We have the current status and then we go through this. Men do not we go through this challenge and then come out the other side mostly with all of the boons of success.
[00:39:02] Megan: All of that's very outward for women and the he and the heroine's journey. It's about going inwards and it's about, the way that Maureen Murdoch writes it is, like we start here and then we come, around the circle and we're going through phases like disconnecting from the feminine.
[00:39:23] Megan: Aligning ourselves with the masculine, the external world. And then, often this sort of, whatever you wanna call it, this dark knot of the soul where we realize we may have gotten external success from aligning ourselves with the masculine. This is my journey, but we've completely diminished our soul and we've lost our feminine EE energy and essence in the process.
[00:39:47] Megan: So as we come out, the other side of that Herman's journey is that reclamation of the feminine.
[00:39:51] Megan: Which is such a big part of my work. And then, and then on it goes so amazing, that really deep inner journey of reclaiming our core essence as women, as the feminine, that society so often, certainly patriarchy says there's no place for this.
[00:40:08] Megan: The place for this is look pretty, have babies. And you're like, we're done with you. So that Yeah. Claiming the feminine reclaiming that
[00:40:17] Pamela: It is a great kind of structural thing for fiction writing as well, yes. If you've got a, again, going back to that your female protagonist character and looking at, who they are at the beginning of the story and then using that kind of heroine's journey structure to, get them back to that essence and have them tapping into those gifts that they already hold sort of thing.
[00:40:40] Pamela: And that's something Megan, actually, I was just reading the acknowledgements and stuff last night at the end of the book, something you write right at the end of the book, which is in the the epilogue. It says, while it seems that we have come to the end of our journey together, it's not really the end, obviously, the end of the book.
[00:40:55] Pamela: As with all heroine's journeys, this is only the beginning. Our paths as women are circular, not linear, ever winding and twisting as we unfold into who we are meant to be. We don't become a new and improved person on this path. The essence and purpose of our lives as women is not to become. It's to remember as we unshackle ourselves from who the world has told us to be.
[00:41:18] Pamela: We return home to who we truly are, and that I just got goosebumps again reading that now. It's it's just so profound and so important. Thank you.
[00:41:28] Megan: Thank you. That epilogue is one of the favorite things I've ever written.
[00:41:33] Pamela: I bet. Yeah. I could see why it's full of wisdom.
[00:41:37] Pamela: Was really good. Loved it. Thanks. Yeah. Now I am conscious the time is sticking on, but I just wanted to ask a couple of quick things. First of all, the Women Rising Program that you've, we've referenced a few times you said you operate that on a corporate level, but also for individuals.
[00:41:51] Pamela: So how would people tap into that and what is it all about?
[00:41:56] Megan: Yeah, thank you for asking. So the Women Rising Program is, we call it holistic, personal, and professional development. So it looks at eight core areas from your life, vision and your purpose. How to build what I call radical confidence.
[00:42:12] Megan: The building blocks for career success doesn't really matter what your career is, but like building blocks that we need to do that. We go deep into elements of wellbeing around physical, mental, emotional, spiritual wellbeing. Things like how to set boundaries grit and grace. Like how to build the grit for your long-term hard goals, writers, e essential
[00:42:32] Pamela: yes,
[00:42:33] Megan: I agree.
[00:42:34] Megan: And then happily change. So it is this beautiful, it's a four month live virtual. Program with live coaching as well okay. We have a cohort of women, usually we have about a thousand women globally. It's all self-paced curriculum, so you do all the modules in your own time. And then we gather so beautiful community.
[00:42:53] Megan: We do live coaching calls with me that cover all time zones where we get together and we unpack these things. We unpack the inner critic and we unpack your life vision and your purpose and meaning and confidence, and we coach on it. So it's an incredible four month journey. So we have organizations that send women.
[00:43:13] Megan: We have a lot of women who join themselves. And we run it in March and September every year.
[00:43:18] Pamela: Fantastic. Do
[00:43:20] Megan: you think there's any any age. Limit to doing that program.
[00:43:24] Pamela: Asking for a friend.
[00:43:25] Megan: Yeah. Asking for a friend? You're so cute. All ages, all stages, all different types. It's yeah. The thing that women say most often about it is that it's life changing. Which I was surprised though, was I was gonna, it's career changing and leadership and all.
[00:43:41] Megan: No. Like it's a very, it's a very personal journey. So fantastic.
[00:43:45] Pamela: Yeah. I'm gonna put all the links for everything into the show notes so everybody can access that there if you are listening. How has the kind of promotional side of all this been going for you?
[00:43:55] Pamela: Because fitting it into your already busy schedule must be difficult, but how are you liking the promotion for the book?
[00:44:01] Megan: It's been great. , I've got a beautiful publicist and she's been divine and we wanted to go with a podcast strategy. So we've had a lot of publicity, where it's weekly, this month, beautiful big writeup, review.
[00:44:17] Megan: Like we've had, we're, we've been in Forbes and we've got stuff coming up with Mary Claire. There's a lot of, been a lot of media. But what I really wanted to do was a pod. I wanted to do podcast publicity strategy because. I just love the conversation. Like I'm all about the conversation and I wanna get deeper in like, why does this matter?
[00:44:37] Megan: How is it helpful? Rather than just soundbites on morning radio. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
[00:44:43] Pamela: Yeah.
[00:44:43] Megan: So yeah, I've been really happy and we've just, we're just starting the US publicity now, so we've been very focused on Australia based publicity. And the book's just been released this week in the US so like we'll be in Fast Company and there's all of this other work that's about to start.
[00:45:02] Megan: But yeah, it's been nice. I just wanted it to have some grace, rather than just that sense of hustle that you can get when you launch something. Yeah. It just doesn't feel aligned to what it is. And we've certainly had some of that because we run a business, we're launching a book, I've just started my PhD, like there's all of these pieces going on.
[00:45:19] Megan: So just trying to stay grounded and balanced and do the things that will matter rather than just feel like you've gotta go and get, like it used to be about column inches, right? I couldn't give a shit. It's about like, where are the meaningful conversations where we can start to shift the conversation.
[00:45:39] Pamela: And that's been beautiful. Amazing. Now I have got one more question I wanna ask you, which is about the, that the tools that you recommend in the final section of the book. But that question is gonna be a very special segment for the SUBSTACK listeners. So anybody out there that wants to hear that, you'll have to sign up on Substack.
[00:45:57] Pamela: , Megan, it's been so lovely chatting and as I said, I just found this book inspiring and helpful, and I know it's something I'm gonna go back to many times over. So highly recommend it for all the listeners out there. And as I said, fantastic writing tool as well. Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much, Pamela.
[00:46:13] Pamela: Loved our conversation. Yeah, great chatting. Thanks Megan.
[00:46:19] So that was an amazing chat with Megan Dla Camina. Megan and I just could have talked all day, and in fact after I pressed stop on the recording we were just chatting about how great it was to talk about all this, particularly in regards to writing. And she said, oh, I'd love to do a chat about relating all this to the writer's mind.
[00:46:40] We're already in the process of scheduling that chat, so watch out for part two with Megan Della Camina. I'm doing the interview with her in early December. It's going to be all about applying all of this stuff we've been talking about on archetypes, imposter syndrome in a critic, all of that on the Writer's Mind with Megan Dela Camina.
[00:46:59] I already can't wait to do that interview. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that chat. And if you do wanna hear the additional little bit where I spoke to Megan about the tools we need to employ in order to take us to the next level of who we wanna be can sign up as a Substack supporter you can go to Substack Writes for Women, writes for with the number four.substack.com. And if you go onto there, you'll find a section where you can sign up as a paid subscriber. And there are loads of bonuses and we're adding to them all the time. So you can hear more from Megan as a Substack paid subscriber.
[00:47:38] Thank you so much everyone for listening. Have a great day. It's very cold and windy and wet here in the Illawarra, and I am off to do some more editing.