What Does Wisdom Look Like in Real Life?
Introducing Wisdom in Practice, a collection of stories, conversations, and lessons from the teachers, alumni, and members of The Wise Women's Council.
The older I get, the less interested I am in expertise alone. I’m interested in practice. I’m interested in what happens not in perfect circumstances, but when we’ve been in the mud, when we can’t see out of one eye, when we’re trying to find our way forward in a new reality. For this reason, I keep turning toward women in midlife, curious to learn from them and to really listen. How are you navigating sleeplessness, perimenopause, new motherhood, teenagers, companies, business pivots, AI, and more? HOW!? And more than that, what must we do differently in order to navigate this world we’re in?
I’m interested in the messiness of everyday life, and how we show up in the moments that become our years. I want to know how women are navigating building their careers and their businesses alongside a culture that didn’t want women in leadership positions for the last two hundred years. I’m hungry to learn from women who let the house be messy, who shift the mental load into visible spaces, who refuse to dance for the patriarchy’s chains, who stand up for what they believe in, who give a damn about their own rest and well-being, who care deeply about their communities, and who aren’t hyper-focused on their individual success at the cost and expense of others.
This is one of the reasons that I first started The Wise Women’s Council. Because I wanted—longed—to talk to more women and to hear their stories, to learn what people are doing in real time, mistakes and all. I wanted to hear more than the superficial magazine cover or the glossy tips about how to have it all or do it all. No more retrospectives, thank you. I need to know how you’re dealing with it in the middle of all this mess. So I started asking people to join me in a masterminds and communities, and those conversations still haven’t stopped.
One of the greatest gifts of The Wise Women’s Council is the women themselves. Every month, I have the privilege of learning alongside founders, executives, consultants, creatives, coaches, and leaders — each of whom are navigating real questions about work, life, leadership, family, ambition, identity, and change.
But I want to do a better job of sharing the work and the wisdom of the Wise Women’s Council here, with all of you. We have such strict confidentiality rules in our community that I can sometimes forget to shine a light on the incredible women and the work that we do together. So I reached out and asked several members if they’d be open to me sharing a bit of their stories. This series, part of our new Collected Wisdom newsletter, is written in collaboration with Hannah Howard, a member of The Wise Women’s Council.
Introducing: Wisdom In Practice
A collection of stories, conversations, and lessons from the teachers, alumni, and members of The Wise Women’s Council.
Wisdom in Practice is a series of stories, conversations, and reflections from the Wise Women's Council community. Some essays will feature a single person’s story. Others will gather perspectives from many voices around a shared question. Some will explore ideas from teachers, authors, and experts whose work has shaped our thinking.
Together, they’re an attempt to showcase the deeper conversations we have inside our community. They address a series of questions I continue to return to:
What does wisdom actually look like when it meets real life?
How do we choose to live in a way that is most aligned for us?
How can we live better?
Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll be sharing stories from The Wise Women’s Council community to show you more about the ways that women are living, thinking, and leading differently. I’m excited to tell you about what they’ve learned, the lessons they have to share, and the work that they’re doing.
For the past ten years, I’ve run an intimate women’s group coaching program focused on creating peer-to-peer conversations that don’t often have a landing place to happen elsewhere. It’s a place for women to bring up hard topics, to be real, to pull down the masks and the makeup, to let ourselves be more vulnerable and raw, and to be in council with each other around the deeper questions of our lives.
The internet often rewards certainty and polished answers. But I want more depth than a shiny blog post can give. I want the kind of wisdom that is lived, that is earned, and that is an active practice. And it’s the women in this community that continue to remind me that wisdom is something different. They show me how they wrestle with the questions that their lives are asking of them. They are honest about what it takes to really build, to really lead — and to do the inner work of leadership that’s required for real change.
My hope is that you’ll discover new ideas—ideas that help you learn more about your own inner wisdom.
My hope is that you’ll meet remarkable people—people you can follow and learn from and connect with.
My goal is to shine a spotlight on the remarkable women who make up our community. Through conversations and interviews, we’ll explore their work, the challenges they’re navigating, the lessons they’re learning, and the ideas they keep returning to again and again.
These are not stories about having it all figured out. They are stories about paying attention. These are stories about letting go of who we were, so that we can leap towards who we are becoming. These are stories about changing how we move through life.
I hope you’ll enjoy meeting the women of Wise Women’s Council as much as I’ve enjoyed learning from them.
Essays in the Wisdom in Practice Collection
Spotlight Profiles
— Sarah K Peck
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