But since this was going to be my first time using Substack Live on my platform, I didn’t want to waste the slot. So… I riffed (completely unprepared) on the topic that’s been moving through the collective and through Coven this season: self-trust.

Some of what we got into:

Tomorrow is 12 years since my last drink. Looking back through the lens of self-trust, my drinking was never really about the alcohol, it was about numbing the knowing I didn’t feel safe enough to act on. I was in relationships where I self-abandoned instead of speaking up. In a marketing career that made me feel like I was selling out for a paycheck. In friendships that took more than they gave. I even thought I loved concerts and big events, but it turns out I loved being drunk enough to tolerate them. My nervous system was telling me the truth the whole time. I just didn’t trust it yet.

We talked about how women are conditioned to self-silence (told to be agreeable, quiet, and easy to be around) and what happens in the body when you start breaking that pattern. That conditioning runs generations deep, and unwinding it takes practice, not a single moment of courage.

The practice, as I see it: exposure therapy. You don’t get clarity or confidence before you publish, speak, or leap, you get it from doing the thing. Belief follows action, not the other way around. Fake the confidence, take the leap, let the evidence build.

And underneath that: emotional capacity. Confidence isn’t just “I can do the thing,” it’s “I’ll be okay if it goes wrong.” The brain registers emotional pain like physical pain, which is why we reach for numbing instead of feeling. Building self-trust means practicing sitting in discomfort so your capacity to hold risk and the fear that comes with it keeps expanding.

And finally: honoring your inner authority. For me, that’s sacral, a gut yes or no that’s immediate and unmistakable. When I override it, I feel it. Whatever your Human Design authority is, the practice is the same: no to the no, yes to the yes, every time, until your whole system trusts that you’ll actually listen to it.

Resources mentioned:

* My post on building self-confidence

* Mark Manson’s newsletter piece on confidence and failure resilience

* The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron — the 12-week self-guided practice I recommend for reconnecting with intuition

* Don’t know your Human Design inner authority? Reach out — I’m happy to help you find your chart

Dr. Caite is being rescheduled for end of month to talk about pleasure, polarity, and the feminine nervous system.

If you don’t yet believe your voice matters, that’s exactly why I want you to keep showing up here. The women who are creating are the ones changing the world.

It’s summer, which is the season of full bloom, of being seen. Which makes this the perfect moment to ask yourself:

What is it that’s keeping me from being seen?

Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s conditioned self-silencing. Maybe it’s a time you were seen, and it didn’t feel good, it left you feeling exposed and vulnerable.

Or maybe it’s the fear of being too much. Here’s something I shared in this conversation, from The Heroine’s Journey: in a research study, when women spoke just 30% of the time, men perceived them as dominating the conversation. When women spoke 25% of the time, men rated it as an equal, 50/50 exchange. We are set up to be “too much” even when we’re taking up a quarter of the room.

This work is both internal and external. There are parts of ourselves that feel like too much, and those parts are ours to excavate and heal. And there are systems that taught us to feel and behave that way, and those are ours to see clearly and name.

This is rich territory. And summer is holding the door open.

Together we talk about:

* The difference between individual and collective conditioning

* Why visibility isn’t only an individual struggle

* How motherhood can magnify the patterns we’ve inherited

* Why healing is less about fixing ourselves and more about reconnecting with who we’ve always been

* And why we believe helping one woman at a time really can create a ripple effect that extends far beyond what we ever see.

I hope you enjoy watching or listening to the conversation! Stay tuned for more collaborations with incredible women in the coming weeks.

P.S.: I highly recommend checking out Amanda's publication, The Inner Ally. Amanda is a Certified HypnoVision coach, an expert Hypnobirthing Practitioner, a Spirited women’s mental health advocate, and a mother of two young children.

About The Author: Cara Matsukane

Cara is a sober woman, a writer, an intuitive, and an Integrative Trauma Coach. She believes the woman who creates consciously — who brings something wholly her own into the world — changes everything around her. She Who Makes is a Substack publication where she does that work alongside you.

Work With Cara:

☀️ Sign up for a 1:1 Wake Up Call | A 60-minute somatic & intuitive coaching session designed to help you process what’s been stuck, reconnect with your intuition, and give you clarity on how to move forward. I coach on the Four Domains of Relationship: Relationship to Self, to the Divine, to work & wealth, and to others.

🌕 Explore Coven | A seasonal, sacred accountability structure for women entrepreneurs and creators who are ready to surrender to what wants to come through them and show up with devotion.