Purpose of Study:
The purpose of this study is to explore the lived-experiences of mid-career women leaders who have engaged in sacred-feminine spiritual practices (as defined by each research participant), as a pathway of embodied resilience and recovery as they navigate toxic workplace contexts and professional change.
Through a feminist critical approach to resilience, this discussion addresses how embodied Pagan rituals, feminist and womanist theology, and women-centered spirituality can offer a meaningful and effective form of trauma recovery that prioritizes embodied awareness (Menakem, 2017; Van der Kolk, 2014) and promotes nervous system regulation and psychological safety (Dana, 2018; Porges, 2011) within and beyond toxic workplace settings.
These alternative pathways of healing and wholeness challenge patriarchal understandings of servant-leadership (Eicher-Catt, 2005; Horan, 2025; Reynolds, 2014) and harmful narratives of the “bounce-backable woman” (Gill & Orgad, 2018) by replacing expectations of feminized self-sacrifice (Horan, 2025) with more holistic and sustainable forms of women's leadership identity and workplace productivity.
Through an expansive gender-critical approach that integrates sacred feminine spirituality and trauma-informed leadership, this study highlights potential pathways of empowerment and self-actualization for women leaders seeking to:
In order to promote de-colonizing paradigms, this study aims to:
Participant Criteria:
Research participants include mid-career women professionals who self-identify as empathetic and intuitive leaders. Participants have experienced some form of significant professional change or work-related trauma in the last ten years during which they found support, healing, and/or recovery in and through the practice of sacred feminine spiritual practices.
Methodology:
This study employs Participatory Narrative Inquiry (Kurtz, 2014), which is an experiential research and community-engagement methodology where groups of people collect, interpret, and work with their own raw, personal stories to make collective sense of complex situations. Participatory Narrative Inquiry (PNI) involves a decentralized and co-creative research process that seeks to reduce power differentials between the researcher and research participants. It also upholds elements a feminist epistemology as it centers women's voices as a critical form of knowledge production and prioritizes participants' own meaning-making process and interpretive lenses.
Ethical Research:
This study and its informed consent form and participant questionnaire have been approved by the Internal Ethics Review Board of Antioch University.
Co-Investigators:
Lynn M. Horan, MDiv, PhD is a doctoral researcher in the field of gender and embodied leadership, graduate of Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change, and owner of the independent research and coaching practice Lynn Horan, PhD Leadership and Life Development (www.lynnhoran.com). Her research focuses on the psychological safety of empathetic women leaders, which she engages strength-based, trauma-informed, feminist research methods and approaches that center the meaning-making processes of research participants and present women's lived experiences as a vital source of knowledge production.
Elaine Gale, MFA, PhD, is a Full Professor of Communication Studies at California State University and the Writing Center Director for Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change. She was an award-winning religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her work specializes in creating community, discovering, developing and amplifying other’s voices, and creating possibility and happiness in people's lives by bringing forth their voice and their authentic self.
To learn more or to inquire about participating:
The purpose of this study is to explore the lived-experiences of mid-career women leaders who have engaged in sacred-feminine spiritual practices (as defined by each research participant), as a pathway of embodied resilience and recovery as they navigate toxic workplace contexts and professional change.
Through a feminist critical approach to resilience, this discussion addresses how embodied Pagan rituals, feminist and womanist theology, and women-centered spirituality can offer a meaningful and effective form of trauma recovery that prioritizes embodied awareness (Menakem, 2017; Van der Kolk, 2014) and promotes nervous system regulation and psychological safety (Dana, 2018; Porges, 2011) within and beyond toxic workplace settings.
These alternative pathways of healing and wholeness challenge patriarchal understandings of servant-leadership (Eicher-Catt, 2005; Horan, 2025; Reynolds, 2014) and harmful narratives of the “bounce-backable woman” (Gill & Orgad, 2018) by replacing expectations of feminized self-sacrifice (Horan, 2025) with more holistic and sustainable forms of women's leadership identity and workplace productivity.
Through an expansive gender-critical approach that integrates sacred feminine spirituality and trauma-informed leadership, this study highlights potential pathways of empowerment and self-actualization for women leaders seeking to:
- Embrace the divine feminine
- Uphold the need for seasonal rest and rejuvenation
- Create sustainable pathways for personal growth
In order to promote de-colonizing paradigms, this study aims to:
- Problematize linear and one-dimensional understandings of resilience and recovery
- Avoid essentialist views of sacred feminine spiritual practices and the women who engage in them
- Acknowledge the Indigenous and non-Western roots of sacred feminine spiritualty and matrilineal cultural understandings
Participant Criteria:
Research participants include mid-career women professionals who self-identify as empathetic and intuitive leaders. Participants have experienced some form of significant professional change or work-related trauma in the last ten years during which they found support, healing, and/or recovery in and through the practice of sacred feminine spiritual practices.
Methodology:
This study employs Participatory Narrative Inquiry (Kurtz, 2014), which is an experiential research and community-engagement methodology where groups of people collect, interpret, and work with their own raw, personal stories to make collective sense of complex situations. Participatory Narrative Inquiry (PNI) involves a decentralized and co-creative research process that seeks to reduce power differentials between the researcher and research participants. It also upholds elements a feminist epistemology as it centers women's voices as a critical form of knowledge production and prioritizes participants' own meaning-making process and interpretive lenses.
Ethical Research:
This study and its informed consent form and participant questionnaire have been approved by the Internal Ethics Review Board of Antioch University.
Co-Investigators:
Lynn M. Horan, MDiv, PhD is a doctoral researcher in the field of gender and embodied leadership, graduate of Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change, and owner of the independent research and coaching practice Lynn Horan, PhD Leadership and Life Development (www.lynnhoran.com). Her research focuses on the psychological safety of empathetic women leaders, which she engages strength-based, trauma-informed, feminist research methods and approaches that center the meaning-making processes of research participants and present women's lived experiences as a vital source of knowledge production.
Elaine Gale, MFA, PhD, is a Full Professor of Communication Studies at California State University and the Writing Center Director for Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change. She was an award-winning religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her work specializes in creating community, discovering, developing and amplifying other’s voices, and creating possibility and happiness in people's lives by bringing forth their voice and their authentic self.
To learn more or to inquire about participating:
Lynn M. Horan, PhD
Leadership & Life Development
www.lynnhoran.com
Leadership & Life Development
www.lynnhoran.com