Hey, beautiful boss mom. Pull up a chair.

This week’s episode wasn’t an interview, it was a discussion. The kind that started ranty before I even hit record, because I had this guest on and within two minutes I knew exactly what I needed every mom in my audience to hear:

You cannot out-strategize what you’re feeling.

I’m gonna say it again, because I almost missed it for years. You cannot out-plan, out-schedule, out-hustle, out-content, or out-funnel a feeling that’s living in your body. The reason your business isn’t moving the way you want it to? The reason you can’t focus? The reason you’re exhausted from “doing all the things” and nothing is landing? It’s not strategy. It’s frequency. And until you deal with the feeling underneath it, no strategy on earth is going to work.

My guest is Jaclyn Orent, co-founder and frequency architect of the Cultural Catalyst Network, and what she brings to the table is wild. It’s the felt sense every mom I know has been carrying around for the last few years, something is off, something is shifting, and then it’s backed up with actual peer-reviewed science. The two things I love most in the world. Real talk and receipts.

Get your coffee, your tea, your wine, your weighted blanket, your cat, your bearded dragon, whatever helps you self-soothe. This one’s going to reframe how you see yourself, your business, and the moment we’re in.

About the Guest: Jaclyn Orent

Jaclyn is the co-founder and frequency architect of Cultural Catalysts™, an identity-based peer network for founders who’ve built real businesses from inspiration and purpose and are now at the inflection point between what they’ve built and what’s calling them next. Her network is grounded in nearly 60 years of consciousness, change, and scaling research, and she is genuinely one of the smartest humans I’ve sat across from on this mic.

You can grab her free masterclass, The Science-Backed Secrets to Catalyzing Culture, and you can find her on LinkedIn and Instagram.

You’re Not Imagining It (And It’s Not Just You)

Here’s the thing I’ve been saying out loud in BossMom for the last year, and it’s the reason I said yes to this conversation:

“It’s like the atoms in their bodies are starting to vibrate more. They’re feeling this need for change, this feeling of change.” — Dana

You’re feeling it. I’m feeling it. The mom in your school pickup line is feeling it. And we’re all kind of side-eyeing each other, wondering if we’re the only ones.

We’re not. And here’s the part most moms miss: trying to strategize your way out of that feeling makes it worse. You can’t optimize a feeling. You can’t morning-routine a feeling. You can’t batch-content a feeling. The more you try to outrun it, the louder it gets.

Jaclyn brought up research by macroeconomist Ray Dalio that shows the rise and fall of empires happen roughly every 80 years, with the same key indicators every time. The devaluing of the dollar. The wealth gap. Natural disasters. Civil unrest. People are fighting each other. And then a reorganization.

“This has happened before. It actually gives us the ability to take a step back and be like, okay, maybe this isn’t about me. Maybe this is just part of how evolution is working its way out.” — Jaclyn

That right there. Maybe this isn’t about you. Maybe what you’re feeling is real, it’s been felt before, and what comes on the other side of it is a rebirth. A revolution. A reorganization.

And here’s the part that made me sit up: the feminine is in the lead. Not because of an opinion. Because of the way we’re literally built.

Why the Feminine Is in the Lead Right Now

“The woman understands the kids, they understand the whole family, they make sure everybody gets fed. The men, they will just try to kill people to get where they’re trying to go. Literally.” — Jaclyn

I laughed out loud. But she’s not wrong.

We are the natural integrators. We are the ones who hold the whole system in our heads while we make dinner, while we run a business, while we field a text from our mom, while we remember that the field trip permission slip is due Friday. The mental load that we usually talk about as a burden? It’s also our superpower.

The cultural moment we’re in doesn’t need more force. It needs integration. It needs nuance. It needs people who can hold a hundred competing priorities and still feed everyone, including themselves. That’s us. That has always been us.

So when you feel that vibration in your chest, when you feel like something is supposed to be different, that’s not a problem to fix. That’s data. That’s your body telling you you’re built for this exact moment.

The Science of Resonance (Why Community Is Everything)

Jaclyn’s network is built on 60 years of research by Richard E. Boyatzis at Case Western, and his findings are honestly the foundation of everything I believe about BossMom.

Change at scale, from the individual to the community to the country, happens through one mechanism: resonant relationships. And resonance has three ingredients.

• Shared vision. We’re going somewhere together.
• Shared compassion through shared competence. We get each other, and we know what we’re talking about.
• Shared energy. We activate each other. We play. We’re alive together.

When those three things show up, your nervous system enters something called PEA (positive emotional attractor). Your body drops into rest and digest. Your brain literally opens to collaboration and creative problem-solving. Solutions you couldn’t access in a fight-or-flight state come pouring through. (If this part hits, Cathy Heller dropped some of the best nervous system regulation tips for moms on this show, and it’s worth a listen back-to-back with this one.)

“We actually need to create a network that’s built off of resonance. The women around me, the leaders around me, they call that coherence.” — Jaclyn

This is why I scream from rooftops that moms need communities. Not Facebook groups full of strangers. Real, small, resonant circles. Nano communities are quietly winning the entire game right now, and moms are the natural builders of them.

The algorithm-driven networks we live on were not built for this. They were built to take. To extract attention. To monetize what you stare at. They cannot generate PEA because they are not built on a relationship. They are built on transactions. You cannot scale change through a system designed to extract from you.

So when you feel exhausted from “doing all the things on social,” and nothing is moving, it’s not because you’re bad at marketing. It’s because the container doesn’t generate resonance. The container matters more than the content.

This Is Why You Can’t Out-Strategy What You’re Feeling

This conversation also gave me language for something I’ve been coaching moms through in a totally different way, and I want you to have it too. This is the heart of why you can’t strategy-your-way out of what’s actually going on.

Jaclyn introduced the work of Dr. David Hawkins, a psychiatrist who left the largest clinical practice in New York City to bring scientific rigor to consciousness. His book Power vs. Force maps a scale from zero (death) to 1,000 (enlightenment), with 200 as the critical threshold of life. Below 200, you take from life. Above 200, you give to life.

The thing that gets you above 200? Willingness. The willingness to feel what’s actually going on. The willingness to do the uncomfortable inner work. The willingness to surrender what isn’t yours to carry anymore.

And here’s why I keep coming back to this on the show: most moms are spinning at low frequency because they’ve never been given permission to feel. So they pile more strategy on top of an unfelt feeling, and wonder why nothing is working.

“Coming back into remembering our feeling nature and actually realizing that those feelings are calibrated levels of consciousness — they are measurable in terms of your effectiveness and your productivity, and ultimately the impact that you’ll have on this planet.” — Jaclyn

Stay with me. This is the whole thing.

The reason you can’t focus is not because of your kids. It’s because you have unfelt feelings sitting in your body. Your nervous system is dysregulated, your mind is running interference, and your work isn’t moving forward because you’re literally calibrated below the level where momentum lives. (This is honestly the business mindset every mom needs to have — strategy without inner work is just busy work in a prettier outfit.)

The fix isn’t a productivity hack. The fix isn’t a new funnel. The fix isn’t waking up at 5am. The fix is letting yourself feel the thing.

How to Let Go (the Three-Step Version)

Most people say “let go” and never tell you how. Jaclyn was specific, and I love her for it. There are three steps, straight from Hawkins’ work.

1. Feel the feeling until it runs out. Don’t perform it, don’t analyze it, don’t narrate it. Sit in your chair and let it move through you.
2. Stop the mind from judging it. No “I shouldn’t feel this.” No “what is wrong with me.” Just allow.
3. Stop the mind from trying to fix or change it. Radical acceptance. Sometimes that even starts with “I accept that I will never accept this.”

When all three are happening, the feeling actually moves. Your body drops out of despair, out of fear, out of shame, and into something higher. Joy. Peace. Willingness. And your thoughts change automatically when your frequency changes. You don’t have to force a positive mindset. The mindset comes when the feeling clears.

This is also why I do Say It Out Loud gatherings inside BossMom. Because so many moms are walking around with feelings they’ve never been given permission to even name. (Finally, us moms are being honest about the stuff nobody talks about — and it changes everything.) The mental load isn’t just logistics. It’s grief, frustration, longing, ambition, anger, hope, all stacked on top of each other with no exit valve.

The exit valve is feeling it out loud, in a safe container, with women who get it.

Your Kids Are Not Your Purpose (Sorry, I’m Saying It)

I will get in this argument with anyone, and I got into it again with Jaclyn (lovingly, because she was right there with me).

Your kids cannot be your purpose. (I went deep on why your kids aren’t your purpose, and why that’s actually better for them — if this section hits, that’s the deeper dive.)

They can be a priority. They can be your why for some seasons. They can give you a felt sense of purposefulness. But if they are the purpose, you’ve handed them a burden no human can carry. They will feel responsible for your fulfillment, and that’s not theirs to hold.

“You are the bow, and they are the arrow. May they go swift and far.” — Kahlil Gibran (and my dad, who wrote that in the front of my copy)

Jaclyn took it further, and I want you to hear it:

“Where people and families get stuck is that they never let go of their kids being their purpose. Or they get attached to their purpose. What you cling to is what brings suffering.” — Jaclyn

There’s a season where your kids absolutely do require 80% of your energy. That’s real. But as they individuate, you have to let your purpose evolve too. Purpose is not a thing you find once and clutch forever. It’s a thing that keeps unfolding as you do.

This is exactly why I believe every mom should have a business, or a calling, or a creative pursuit. Not because you’re supposed to. Because when your kids see you living in purpose, they learn what purpose looks like. They learn what resilience looks like. They learn how to chase their own arrow, without believing they have to carry yours.

The Self-Sabotage Trap (and the Way Out)

The other piece of this conversation that I want every BossMom to internalize is the difference between self-sacrifice and sacrifice in its truest sense.

Self-sacrifice is when you give up your integrity, your needs, your desires, your rest, your dreams. That’s not noble. That’s a negative momentum loop. And a lot of us are dressing it up in apron strings.

True sacrifice is sacrificing your lower self. Your fear. Your smallness. Your “I’m not a finisher.” Your “I can’t make money without losing myself.” Those are the things to lay down. Not your dreams.

“Through every action that we take, through the life circumstances that we incur because of our actions, we actually need to stop and review them. And not just intellectually — actually feel them.” — Jaclyn

The growth happens at the tipping point. Either life forces you to stop (illness, a crisis, a marriage falling apart, a business plateau), or you choose to stop and review on your own. The moms who thrive are the moms who choose it before life chooses for them.

What the Cultural Catalyst Actually Does

Here’s where I want to land this for you.

A cultural catalyst is not a guru. It’s not someone with a million followers. It’s not someone who has it all figured out.

A cultural catalyst is someone who is the captain of their consciousness. Someone who has done enough of their own inner work that the energy they put into the world is life-giving instead of life-taking. Someone whose essence, before they even take an action, adds to the room.

And the wild part is the science says you don’t have to do anything dramatic. Your frequency alone changes the people around you. Your kids feel it. Your clients feel it. Your community feel it. The mom in line behind you at Target feels it. (This is also the heart of personal branding done right, which I dug into with AJ Vaden — your brand isn’t your logo, it’s the frequency you walk into a room with.)

“The quality of your leadership, the essence and what it is calibrated at in terms of frequency, is actually the difference between your leadership giving to life or taking to life.” — Jaclyn

That’s the work. That’s the whole game. You change the world by changing the calibration of you.

And then? You build resonant networks. Small. Specific. Real. You find other moms who are doing the same work, and you problem-solve together, you celebrate together, you activate each other. That’s the ripple. That’s how culture actually moves.

Your Next Step

If this conversation lit something up in you (and if you’re still reading, it did):

• Grab Jaclyn’s free Science-Backed Secrets to Catalyzing Culture Masterclass. Real research, real frameworks, zero fluff.
• Follow Jaclyn on Instagram and LinkedIn. Her content is some of the smartest you’ll see.
• Come into the free BossMom community. This is where we actually practice this stuff. We help you figure out what you want to focus on, what your real goals are, and we hold the resonant container so you can stop spinning and start moving. Free networking events, mindset workshops, daily mindset audios, real connection with real women. It has its own dedicated app, completely off social media.
• When you’re ready to level up, BossMom+ is where you go. $197 for the whole year. We build the right marketing plan for your business and then walk with you while you implement it.

Heart to face, friend. You cannot out-strategize what you’re feeling. But you can absolutely feel it, move through it, and become the cultural catalyst the world is asking for. You just have to stop trying to schedule, plan, or hustle your way around your own body.

I’ll see you next week.

xo, Dana