Like A Wave, We Break: How Falling Apart Builds Confidence with Jane Chen | 388

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil Episode 388: "Like A Wave, We Break: How Falling Apart Builds Confidence with Jane Chen" Guest: Jane Chen | Date: February 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the transformative power of failure and the critical role that breaking apart—emotionally, professionally, or personally—plays in building genuine confidence and authenticity. Nicole Kalil and humanitarian entrepreneur Jane Chen discuss how setbacks are not just passages to endured but teachers that forge resilience, self-compassion, and a truer sense of self, especially in leadership and "woman's work" today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Redefining Confidence Through Failure and Recovery

• Nicole challenges conventional advice on confidence (“fake it till you make it”) and shares her realization: failure is a powerful builder, not a destroyer, of confidence (02:00–03:50).
  • “It’s not perfection that builds firm and bold trust in self. It’s the failure and the recovery.” — Nicole (03:20)
• Jane’s story: After dedicating a decade to Embrace Global—a life-saving social venture—Jane faced its closure, which forced a painful identity crisis and ultimately, a healing journey that redefined her self-worth and resilience (04:14–08:10).

2. When Your Worth Is Entangled with Achievement

• Many women unconsciously tie their worth to external achievements. Nicole and Jane dissect how to untangle self-worth from outcomes (08:10–10:44).
  • Jane emphasizes focusing on values over outcomes: “If I’m living my values day in and day out, that is success, not necessarily the outcome itself.” (08:54)
  • Social media’s amplifying effects on external validation is noted as especially fragile territory for self-worth.

3. Knowing When to Push and When to Pause

• The dilemma: When do you give yourself grace versus push through?
  • Jane recommends pausing and asking: “Is this coming from my heart, or is it coming from a fear that I’m not worthy?” (11:23)
  • She introduces the “whole body yes”: only pursue what aligns your head, heart, and gut (11:23–13:57).
  • “When we care for ourselves, that is not weakness. That is what allows us to create sustainable impact over the long term.” — Jane (13:40)

4. Building Self-Awareness & Recognizing Body Cues

• Both speakers share how somatic clues offer guidance:
  • Nicole’s signal: disconnection and numbness signal she’s pushing from a place of needing to prove herself (14:27–15:27).
  • Jane reassures that self-awareness develops with time and pausing to notice subtle cues (15:27–15:58).

5. The Nonlinear Path of Healing and Recovery

• Healing from loss, change, or trauma is “not a linear process” (19:53).
  • Parts Work/Internal Family Systems: Jane describes how befriending all inner “parts” (the achiever, inner critic, wounded child) leads to compassion and self-acceptance (19:53–22:18).
  • “The goal is not to shame or banish these parts, but to relate to them with love and compassion.” — Jane (21:14)

6. Therapeutic & Transformative Modalities

• Jane goes on an “around-the-world” journey to explore healing modalities:
  • The necessity of pausing to actually feel difficult emotions, rather than intellectualize or escape them (22:54–25:34).
  • Parts Work/IFS: Jane offers a free exercise on her website for trying this practice.
  • The role of psychedelic journeys (specifically, MDMA-assisted therapy) in processing trauma: “What it’s really done is just allow me to safely process some very difficult emotions and to have compassion—both for myself and for my family system.” (25:47–28:57)
• Key learning from “The Body Keeps the Score”—trauma is stored in our limbic system and affects us unless processed at that level (25:47–28:57).

7. The Power of Community & Empathetic Resonance

• Sharing difficult emotions and stories in safe, supportive relationships dissolves shame and accelerates healing (30:49–31:30).
  • “When we have that shame and we’re not expressing it, it grows... The power of community is one of the reasons I think chatbots can’t replace humans.” — Jane (30:49–31:11)
• Jane shares her experience working with Bessel van der Kolk (author of “The Body Keeps the Score”) and how empathetic resonance in therapy helped her access and process emotions more deeply (31:30–33:06).

8. Moving From Achievement to Authenticity, Especially at Work

• Authenticity creates psychological safety, the top indicator of high-functioning teams (34:02–35:56).
  • Jane recalls: “When I was vulnerable with my team, it gave them permission to be vulnerable too.”
  • Letting go of perfection and focusing on impact, not outcomes—a symbolic ritual of surrender: “I threw my only copy of the book in the ocean... letting the wave take this message to where it needs to go.” (35:57–36:54)

9. Advice for Those in the ‘Break’

• If you are in a breaking or low point now:
  • “Our biggest breaking points become the most beautiful breakthroughs. If we can ride the storm and treat ourself with compassion... you will find freedom on the other side.” — Jane (37:24–37:48)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “It’s not perfection that builds firm and bold trust in self. It’s the failure and the recovery.” — Nicole (03:20)
• “My whole identity was so wrapped up in my company and my achievements, that I really didn’t know who I was anymore.” — Jane (06:30)
• “If I’m living my values day in and day out, that is success, not necessarily the outcome itself.” — Jane (08:54)
• “When we care for ourselves, that is not weakness. That is what allows us to create sustainable impact over the long term.” — Jane (13:40)
• “The goal [of parts work] is not to shame or banish these parts, but to relate to them with love and compassion.” — Jane (21:14)
• “Achievement itself can be a trauma response... When we don’t feel enough, then we need to do more and prove more.” — Jane (26:32)
• "When I was vulnerable with my team, it gave them permission to be vulnerable too." — Jane (34:35)
• “Our biggest breaking points become the most beautiful breakthroughs.” — Jane (37:24)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 04:14 — Jane’s journey: building Embrace Global & losing it
• 08:54 — Self-worth and internal values
• 11:23 — How to discern between grace and grit (“whole body yes”)
• 19:53 — Nonlinear nature of healing; introduction to Parts Work/IFS
• 25:47 — Psychedelic-assisted therapy & understanding trauma
• 30:49 — Power of sharing shame and relying on community
• 34:02 — The importance of authenticity at work
• 37:24 — Advice to those in the middle of crisis or “break”

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Memorable Moments

• Jane’s ritual: throwing her only pre-release book copy into the ocean as an act of surrender and letting go of outcomes. (35:57)
• The candid discussion of crying in a team meeting and how vulnerability as a leader cultivates trust and safety. (34:35)
• Reframing “breaking points” as sacred, necessary beginnings rather than evidence of inadequacy.

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Resources Mentioned

• Jane’s memoir: Like a Wave We Break
• Website for resources and free Parts Work exercise: janemariechen.com
• Book: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

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Final Takeaway

In a world that glorifies “holding it together,” this episode reframes breaking, failures, and emotional unraveling as essential, not shameful. It’s through these valleys—when self-compassion is cultivated, when authentic values override achievement, and when true connection is formed with ourselves and our communities—that lasting confidence, leadership, and healing emerge. As Nicole closes: “We don’t just ride the waves. We are the waves.”

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Transcript

[Jane Chen]

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[Nicole Khalil]

Quick Pause we expanded to YouTube because we keep hearing I needed this 20 years ago and the next generation shouldn't have to wait. So tell the young women in your world who are scrolling and watching to subscribe to this is woman's work on YouTube. I am Nicole Khalil, and you're listening to the this Is Woman's Work podcast, where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. And if you're a regular listener, you know that redefining woman's work and building women's confidence are deeply linked. For me, I've spent years trying to figure out what actually builds our confidence and what destroys it. I was tired of the empty advice like just be confident or fake it till you make it, or the almost universal suggestion that the way we become confident is by looking confident first. So I researched, studied, observed, and identified five confidence builders. But one of the five took me a really long time to identify and an even longer time to accept. And that's failure. That thing that we've been taught to avoid at all costs, that we wrap in shame or embarrassment and silence. But I've come to understand that failure and fear and doubt and all the things that make us feel like we're falling apart are the very experiences that make us stronger, more human, and ultimately more confident. Because it's not perfection that builds firm and bold trust in self. It's the failure and the recovery. It's getting back up after you've been knocked down Dusting yourself off and getting back into action towards what matter most. As our guest today points out, like waves, we rise, beautiful, powerful, full of momentum. And we also crash. We hit the shore, the wall, our limit. And for most of us, that breaking feels like failure, like something to hide, fix, or feel shame about. But what if the break isn't the problem? What if it's the point? What if every collapse, every loss, every unraveling is actually the moment when we meet what's real, the point where perfection ends and authenticity begins. Because the breaking doesn't destroy us. It reveals us. Our guest today, Jane Chen, knows this journey well. She's the co founder of Embrace Global, a nonprofit that's helped save over 1 million premature babies with its groundbreaking portable incubator. She's been recognized by President Obama, funded by Beyonce, and featured in the New York Times, Forbes, and Newsweek. Her memoir, like a Wave We Break, explores what happens when our success shatters and how that breaking can become the beginning of something truer, deeper, and more whole. So, Jane, welcome to the show. And because we don't often get to hear people talk about their challenges, obstacles and failures out loud, I'd love to start there. Can you share a little bit about losing Embrace and how it forced you to reevaluate, I'm sure very many things, but also who you are.

[Jane Chen]

Sure. And thank you so much for having me. Nicole. Embrace started when I was a graduate school student at Stanford. I was doing my MBA at the time and I took a course there that was all about creating low cost technologies for people living on less than a dollar a day. So I got with a team of graduate students and we invented this technology that it was an incubator to help the 15 million preterm and underweight babies born every year around the world, many of whom live in remote parts of the world and can't act, have families who can't access stable electricity. And so we ended up creating a technology that was portable, that could work without constant electricity and cost just a fraction of the cost of a traditional incubator. And so with that, once we graduated, we turned this into a company. I moved to India for the next four years where over 40% of the world's premium preterm and underweight babies are born. And I just poured myself into the work. I made the work my life. And so it was something I cared about so deeply and we could dive into why, you know, I started to unpack what was driving me much later on. But that work consumed me. And so I was working 80 to 100 hour weeks, I never took a weekend off. And I worked like that for, for many years. I lived in India for four years, moved back to the US and just kept pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, even though I knew I was exhausted. Meanwhile, we were facing countless setbacks doing this work. You know, from manufacturing to distribution to funding, challenges like every challenge you could imagine came our way because we were trying to do something very, very difficult here. So 10 years in, we had to shut down the company. And that felt like the ultimate failure, right? This thing I'd poured my soul into for a decade shut down and I didn't know who I was anymore. My whole identity was so wrapped up in my company and my, you know, my job title, my achievements, that I really didn't know who I was anymore. And so that set me off on a healing journey, right? And I felt like it was a matter of survival at that point because I was, I was like hanging off of a cliff. That, that's what it felt like. And through that healing journey we can dive into that a little bit more later. But I started confronting some, some really challenging things that I hadn't looked at carefully before, namely that I had grown up with domestic violence and I hadn't connected the dots until that point. That feeling so powerless throughout my childhood, that's what had driven me to help the most powerless people in the world had given me that fuel. But it had also driven me to work in such unhealthy ways. Right. And again I felt like, you know, I, I cared so much about our mission, but I also believe that my worth depended on what I achieved. And so as I, as I did this healing work and, and you know, it took me years to come out the other side of that, I began to learn self compassion. And it's interesting because for the longest time, most of my life, I thought resilience meant pushing harder. If I was tired, I kept going. I didn't take breaks, you know, if something was challenging. I found. And through this experience I learned that actually self compassion or resilience is about self compassion. And you talked earlier about the importance of failure and recovery. Well, when we have this inner sense of self worth, then we can take risks and fail and get up and brush ourselves off and know that we're going to be okay. Because it's not about success or failure. That's not what defines us, right. It's growing in the process, right? And, and, and, and then through that process of experimentation and failure, like then becoming who we've always Meant to be.

[Nicole Khalil]

Yeah. So you said many things in there that I think we can all relate to. But one of the things I want to hone in on is this thing that I think a lot of us unconsciously feel, and that is that our worth is connected to our achievement, to our results, to our output, to our accolades, to. I mean, the list goes on. Right. We've sort of outsourced or externalized our worth and our value. And my question is twofold. First, any insight, ideas, tricks or tips of how you connect to your value and your worth without tying it to all of those things? So let's start there. Any ideas on that?

[Jane Chen]

Absolutely. And this is one of the things I talk about often. What I learned is that outcomes can be arbitrary or dictated by things outside of our control. Right. Look what happened during the pandemic. Like the world turned upside down and everything went right, nothing went according to plan. And so if we define ourselves by only the external, then our sense of self becomes so fragile. And frankly, I, I, I worry with the rise of social media right now, our self worth is defined by how many likes we get on social media. Yeah. And so the way I've learned to separate my worth from, from the outcome or just the success or the failure is really focusing on what I can control, which are my values. Right. So am I acting with love every day? Am I giving to others? Am I growing? These are all things I can control. And so if I'm living my values day in and day out, that is success, not necessarily the outcome itself. Right. Which I don't have full control over. And that's not to say don't have goals. Yes, that is important. But even when things don't go your way, it doesn't mean that you've failed. So this is about redefining success.

[Nicole Khalil]

Yeah. And I think in that, redefining, knowing that failure, challenge, obstacles are part of that. It's not even separate from. I think sometimes we think of them as separate events as opposed to they're completely linked.

[Jane Chen]

Oh my gosh, completely linked. And I think back to that moment when Embrace failed, which was like, it felt like the worst moment of my life. And now I look back and I think, what a gift. What a gift. Because if that hadn't happened, I would not have gone on this healing journey. I would not have learned all the things I needed to learn to become a more grounded, happy person. Right. And that frankly led to like, the purpose that I now want to devote my life to.

[Nicole Khalil]

Yeah. Okay. So all of that brings me to the next question. And I'm going to try to frame this in the best way I can, but it's that knowing when to give yourself grace or when to keep pushing, when to start listening or stop resisting. I think we all have experienced this feeling of if we just keep going, if we just stick with it, and there's some truth to that. But then there's also the, like, never quit. Okay. But yeah, we should quit when it's not serving us, when it's doing us harm. So I guess my question is, when do we know which direction to go?

[Jane Chen]

Oh, I love this question. Nicole and I have two answers to this. First, I think it's really important to just pause for a moment and reflect. Right. Why am I doing this? Is it because I truly feel called to, because my heart is telling me to? Right. This is fulfilling me in some way? Or is this coming from fear? Is this coming from a fear that I'm not worthy or I have to prove something? If something's coming from a fear response, that is a clear indication. Yeah. That you might not be wanting to do that. Right. And, and, and, and one way to gauge that is when you start to think about this in terms of, oh, I should be doing that, instead of I want to be doing that. Once we get into that should category, it's a moment to. To pause and, and say, okay, what are my motives here? And is this truly aligned with who I am? Right. So taking that moment for yourself and asking these critical questions. The. The second thing I often advise people, and this is something I didn't know how to do until I went on this healing journey, is to listen to the wisdom of your body. Right. So tune in again. Take that moment to pause. What is your body telling you? Earlier, when I was, like, exhausted, as I said, I did not listen to my body, and I would just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing to the point where I had a full breakdown at the end of that decade, period. It took me over a year to recover, and I didn't even know that that could happen, you know, and that happening to me was so scary because I thought I was just invincible up until that point. And it's because I didn't listen to any of those cues. And so one of the things I've learned from my teachers that I now coach others on is what is a whole body? Yes. Right. And that means when is your head, your heart, and your gut all aligned? So think about a time where you really wanted to do something. Maybe it was a friend you wanted to See? Or a trip you wanted to go on, or even a food you wanted to eat. Right. Like, what did that feel like in your body? Right. And take a note of that and then map that out. Now, as you're making decisions, if something doesn't feel like a whole body. Yes. Then pause and just reflect. Do I really want to do this right? Or if your body is telling you you need to take a break. Honor that. Honor that. Because when we care for ourselves, that is not weakness. That is what allows us to create sustainable impact over the long term. Right. So invest in that and listen to the wisdom of the body.

[Nicole Khalil]

As you were talking, it seems to me that there is a measure of self awareness that we're talking about in all of this, and you gave some examples. And I think it's important for each of us to know how does that feel for us? How do we experience those feelings? Because I do think we have a tendency to default to certain things. So, like, you know, you talked about things where, you know, you're not doing it for the right reasons. For me, it almost always falls under the frame of trying to prove myself.

[Jane Chen]

Yep.

[Nicole Khalil]

That's usually when things get heavy and hard and I'm not coming from a good, healthy place. I'm trying to prove myself to myself and to everyone else. And all that you talked about, you know, knowing how it feels in your body when something feels right. For me, I feel excited, nervous, like it's a. It's a combination. It's never a hundred percent excitement and it's never a hundred percent nervousness, but it's a little bit of both. And I feel it, like, in my stomach when I push too far or when I'm doing things from an unhealthy place. I actually become completely disconnected from my body. I'm like, not even in my body anymore. I'm numb. And so those are, like, some clues for me. What I was thinking as you were talking is to you, the listener, what are your clues? How do you know when your body is telling you something? How do you know when something feels authentically good and healthy and right and when it doesn't? When you might be coming from a not so healthy place?

[Jane Chen]

Yeah. And just one more note on that, Nicole, is like, some people will say to me, well, I don't know. I don't have that awareness. And what I respond is, it can take time to develop.

[Nicole Khalil]

Yeah.

[Jane Chen]

And taking the moment to pause for five minutes and to sit with yourself and to notice, you start to develop and hone in on that over time you start to develop that awareness, right? And so just look for those subtle cues and then you'll be amazed that as you develop that, you can really tap into the wisdom of that and that can guide good decision making.

[Nicole Khalil]

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[Nicole Khalil]

Thank you for saying that because I think it's important that we know that these things take time and that we give ourselves grace and that we be patient with ourselves. I often think like it took us, however many years it took us to be this way. Thinking that transformation is going to happen in a 24 hour cycle seems fairly unrealistic. So that leads to my question of when we talk about transformation or transition or recovery from your experience, what are some of the ways that might show up? What are some of the things we might experience like this few steps forward, few steps back. Talk to us about that period of time where you went from a moment where you feel like you failed to today.

[Jane Chen]

Yeah, well it is not a linear process. And that is one of the things I really wanted to show in my book that progress is not about point A to B to C. And there are many points in the journey where I took two steps forward and then one step back. And I think the key to all of this and what I advocate the most is being kind to ourselves. Right. And that in that those moments know exactly what you said. Like change isn't going to happen overnight or in a week or sometimes even in a year, but it's allowing ourselves to, to, to continue growing and when we have setbacks to kind of like really take that moment to, to be kind to ourselves and then to keep moving forward and to, to reflect. And one of the things that I actually, actually have found the most helpful in my self growth process is something called parts work or internal family systems. Right. And this is a framework that's based on the premise that we all have different parts of ourselves. So, Nicole, you might have the overachiever, the control freak, the perfect, you know, the perfectionist, the inner critic. You also might have parts that carry feelings that are really painful, like the part of you that feels rejected or abandoned or really lonely. Right. And so the goal of this practice is to, rather than shame or banish each of these parts, to relate to them with love and compassion and to see the roles that all of these parts are playing in our lives, whether, you know, to protect us, to keep us safe, and so on. And so this is a practice that's been absolutely groundbreaking for me. And what I learned through that process was when that part, that inner critic comes up, that's like, no, you failed or do better. Like, okay, this part is here to keep me safe, to keep me from feeling like, you know, I failed or rejected. And so thank you for playing that part. But I can show myself that love and care. Right. And so that is just. It's a beautiful practice to practice that self compassion. Just notice when these voices come up. Yeah, Can. Can sometimes be, you know, I don't want to say like, toxic, but they can. They're not necessarily healthy voices for us. And so just again, this comes back to building awareness and then treating ourselves with kindness. And that is really what's allowed me to, like, get through this healing journey.

[Nicole Khalil]

So we recently recorded an episode with a woman who talked about this. It's like listening when parts speak, Right?

[Jane Chen]

Yes.

[Nicole Khalil]

And it actually was perfectly aligned with my next question, which was knowing that you look to a lot of different modalities that might be the answer to the question. But were there any that were really impactful or really surprising to you that were helpful or any other modalities that might be of interest as any of us go through failure, challenge, transition, whatever. Whatever we experience?

[Jane Chen]

Yeah, I'll. I'll talk about a few. And. And the book was fun to write from that perspective because I literally went out and tried every modality I could find around the world, you know, and I, I kind of put my CEO hat on. I had a whole spreadsheet of all the different things. If something didn't work, I'd quickly pivot and try something else, you know, and so I got a good taste of, of many of these modalities. But I would say a couple of things. One, and this is less of a modality, but just a practice. And I've already been talking a lot about this, but it's the importance of, of pausing to Feel, right? And I think many of us, especially us overachievers, we get caught in our heads, in our analytical brain, right? But there is something that is so important about tapping into our feelings, to process difficult emotions in particular. And for most of my life, as I said, I disconnected from my emotions to survive, to keep going, right? But part of this failure, that kind of forced me into my body, and that's the beauty of hitting rock bottom. I was forced to feel and to sit with that. And instead of, like, escaping, I just let myself feel sadness. I let myself feel heartbreak, right? I let myself feel the anger or the fear or whatever came up. And the thing about these difficult feelings is you can't think your way out of them. You can't work your way out of them. You have to just take that moment and really feel your way through. And I think that happens both through pausing, but through the power of community as well. So whether that's your friends, therapists, healers I've worked with, they created a safe space for me to go there. And so that's something I value so much about my community. But when we have that safety, then we can allow ourselves to go there. One of my greatest teachers, she always said to me, are you willing to feel your heartbreak? And we live in a society that doesn't encourage that, right? We live in an escapist society. When we feel painful things, we turn to social media or alcohol or working or whatever it might be, because we don't want to deal with that, right? And so what happens is when we suppress those emotions, they resurface more intensely as anxiety, depression, or burnout. And that's why it's so important to just pause and sit with and be with our feelings. That's the first thing. Second, I talked about ifs actually on my website, which I know you'll direct people to. There's a free exercise I've developed that gives you a taste of parts, works. If you guys are interested, please download that. You could try that on yourself. Psychedelic Journeys, we could talk about that. But that's been, you know, an important part of. Of my healing process.

[Nicole Khalil]

And then I'm wildly curious about that, by the way, that's coming up a lot in my, you know, I. I feel like the universe is sending these messages. I'm curious about it, but I've also literally never done a drug in my entire life, so I'm like.

[Jane Chen]

So one of the turning points in my journey was learning about the science of trauma. And I came across a book called the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk, which many of you are probably familiar with. And through that, I learned something really surprising. So most of my. My life, I thought trauma is something that happened in the past. Just leave it in the past, right? I've got my life, I've got my career. Why deal with that? What the science shows is that trauma actually rewires your brain and your nervous system. So it's the way you bring that past into your present, and it affects every part of your life. Right. And if you don't recognize it, then you can't appropriately deal with it. And so I think this is something that was something that was really valuable for me to understand. Okay. This is how I've been affected, you know, by these things from. From my upbringing. And the way it was showing up in my life was just this. This sense of hypervigilance, right? Not. Not feeling safe, the need to prove constantly. I think achievement itself can be a trauma response. When we don't feel enough, then we. We need to do more and prove more constantly to feel like we are worthy of love. And another interesting about trauma is it's not stored in our thinking brains. It's stored in our limbic systems, the part of our brains responsible for feeling and connecting. Right. And so you can only process trauma at that level. And that's why modalities like parts work or ifs have been really helpful for me, because there's a somatic element to it, and it really gets you kind of outside of your thinking brain. Right. So the same thing goes for psychedelic journeys. It kind of gets you kind of, again, into your body and into deeper levels of consciousness. For me, particularly, MDMA was the psychedelic that. That helped me the most. And the studies on this have been just remarkable. So there have been phase 3 clinical trials showing the effects of MDMA on PTSD with veterans. And in a guided setting with a therapist, within about three sessions, they're able to get many of these veterans off the PTSD scale, which is. Which is remarkable. Yeah. And so, you know, for so many years, there's kind of been this sense that drugs are taboo and all of that, but the science is showing something very different and showing the power of these medicines for healing. And so that has been the medicine that has been most helpful for me. And what it's really done is just allow me to, again, safely process some very difficult emotions and to have compassion, like, both for myself and for my family system, you know, and for others around me. And so I've been Able to access those emotions, but be able to kind of see them through a different lens. You know, almost holding myself through the process of that and just being able to see myself in a different light, you know, and those experiences, I, you know, I did my first journey years ago and that's really stayed with me on a day to day level.

[Nicole Khalil]

So there again so many things that you said jumped out at me. But I think a lot of times when people think about going back to trauma or how you were raised or what you learned from your parents, there's this sense of like, oh, it's always your parents fault. And what you said there I think was so important is that it creates compassion over blame for ourselves and for the people involved. And there is the opportunity and you can go back and understand your experiences without putting blame on someone else. And in fact, I would imagine that that's an integral part of the process is moving through that. I also want to reiterate what you said. This is not my area of expertise. But every person who it is their area of expertise says the same thing. Undealt with trauma, pain, feelings get stored in our bodies and resurfaces and some way, and usually not in a way that we would want it. And then you said this earlier and I want to talk about this a little bit. The power of community, it aligns with my experience. Every time I'm feeling guilt or shame or embarrassment. I have found that the best tactic for me is to put words on it, to share the experience with somebody I trust, somebody I love. It takes away its power. And you know, we talked a little bit about social media and like it's easy to default to go there. But I haven't experienced community in the way that we're talking about it there. I've experienced it more, you know, in close relationships. How important, how necessary is it that we connect with people in our hardest, darkest, most challenging times versus just when it's good and we have good news to share and everything's working, you know.

[Jane Chen]

Oh my gosh, I think it's so important and it's exactly what you said, right? It's putting words to it. Because when we have that shame and we're not expressing it, it grows and it, we bottle it up, it keeps growing and growing, right? And it's, you know, this is what, what you talked about. The power of community is one of the reasons I think chatbots can't replace humans, at least not in their current form.

[Nicole Khalil]

Right?

[Jane Chen]

Because something called empathetic resonance. And it's when you are speaking to someone and it's a simple look on their face or a gesture or something that shows you they care and they are empathizing with you and they're seeing you, and that, in it of itself, is so healing.

[Nicole Khalil]

Yeah.

[Jane Chen]

One of the things I didn't. I didn't mention earlier was after I read the Body Keeps a Score, I became so obsessed with it that I stalked the author, Bessel Van Der Kol, until he agreed to become my therapist. And so I've had the great fortune of working with Bessel over the last couple of years. And as I was writing this book, I went back and I looked through dozens of our. Our video therapies. It's horrifying, by the way. I do not suggest, like, watching your therapy videos. Okay. Like, it's not a fun experience, but for the process of, you know, my writing, I had to do that. But what was really cool about it was I started to see. See what was happening over time. Right. And this goes back to, like, this doesn't happen overnight. This happens over time. But I would see how I. I'd express a. A difficult story, and Bessel would just pause and take a deep breath, like, and it would force me to pause and take a deep breath and to realize, oh, that was sad. Right. Cause typically, I would just kind of power through it and move on to the next thing. But he created that space for me. It wasn't just him, but other te as well. Just created that space for me to. To pause in that moment and to access some difficult emotions. And so I saw how this happened more and more over time. And then as time went on, I was able to go there on my own much more easily. Right. And so it's like, it's about healing, happens together, and it happens when we hold each other. It happens when we allow ourselves to be held. Yeah, Right. And that comes down to vulnerability that.

[Nicole Khalil]

Aligns completely with my own experience, both with a therapist. Very glad those are not recorded, that I can watch back. And, you know, just in experiences, the amount of times somebody else has reacted to something that I said that I'm just, like, mowing through, and it forces me to go, you know what? That is bigger than I'm pretending it is, you know? Okay, my last question is around this transition of your journey, at least to my understanding, from achievement to authenticity. Talk to us about where authenticity matters, especially, like, in our professional worlds. I think sometimes we're told, you know, authentic at home is fine, but come polished and buttoned up to Work. And I said that was gonna be my last question, but it just triggered another one. So answer that and then I'll ask my final one. I have a little fly going around.

[Jane Chen]

No worries. No, that's, that's such a beautiful question. Yes. And I, I hear that a lot again in my leadership coaching. Well, what, what do emotions have to do with work? Right. Like, I, I can display my emotions at home, but in the work, it's a, it's a different thing. And I, I used to think that as a first time CEO, I thought I'd be so buttoned up and composed all the time, you know, and I, I never showed people how I was actually feeling, but the work we were doing was inherently emotional and very challenging, as I said. So I remember when I lived in India one day I was so overwhelmed, I started crying in a team meeting. And afterwards I was mortified, just mortified. You know, it was all men reporting to me at that time. But afterwards, my head of operations came to me and he said, thank you so much for being vulnerable, because when you're vulnerable, it gives us permission to be vulnerable too. Right. And I really started to understand that leadership is not about being so composed, it's about authenticity. Right. It's about that connection. And the more vulnerable we are, the more we can create safe spaces for our teams. So there's a lot of research now on this concept of psychological safety that that's the number one most important determinant of the highest functioning teams, and that's the ability for people to show up as their full selves at work so that they can take risks. Right. Without fear of failure. And my question for folks is, well, how do you create psychological safety for others if you don't have it for yourself? And that's why this inner work is so, so important. And authenticity means it's not, you know, some of what we've talked about, it's not just about successes or failures, but it's about living in alignment with our values and, and listening to who we are and being kind to ourselves. And the more we have that compassion for ourselves, by the way, the more we're able to extend it to others.

[Nicole Khalil]

Right?

[Jane Chen]

And so the way that shows up in my life now, even leading up to the launch of this book, of course I want the book to be successful. And there's all these people whispering in my ear like, you know, gotta make this a bestseller and do this and that and whatever. I remember kind of just feeling overwhelmed by that. And I had already, you know, really Given my whole soul to this book. And so about a month before the book came out, a friend came out to Honolulu, where I live now, and we did a little ceremony. And I only had one copy of the book at that time, and I threw it in the ocean. And it was just this beautiful act of surrender, you know, that, like, yeah, I put my soul into this, and now I'm going to let the wave take this message to where it needs to go. And so it's kind of that balance between, you know, having goals but also surrendering. Right. And. And. And not being so focused on the outcomes, but being focused on, I think, the impact instead. And so that's what's kind of allowed me to really step into my most authentic self.

[Nicole Khalil]

Yeah. Well, I, for one, love the title of your book. It jumped out at me right away. Like a Wave We Break. And as you were talking, you know, we all break. This is not a gendered thing. It's a human thing. And for anyone listening who might be in the crash or the break or the failure or the fear right now, what would be one last piece of advice or message to them before we.

[Jane Chen]

Wrap up that I think what I discovered in my process is our biggest breaking points become the most beautiful breakthroughs. Right. And if we can ride the storm and treat ourself with compassion through that process, you will find freedom on the other side of that. So that's what I would say.

[Nicole Khalil]

Amazing, Jane. Thank you and listener. I can already report that Jane's book is a national bestseller, which is very exciting. Again, the book is Like a Wave We Break. Available Amazon, wherever you buy books. Let's keep our local bookstores in business. And Jane mentioned this earlier, but her website has a resource. It's janemariechen.com we will put all the links and all the ways to find and follow Jane in show notes. Jane, thank you for being our guest and for sharing your wisdom and your experience.

[Jane Chen]

Thank you, Nicole. So great to be here.

[Nicole Khalil]

My absolute pleasure. Okay, friend. Like a wave, we ebb and we flow. We rise and we break. And we know that it all serves its purpose. And in the ebbs and the breaks, we can trust that the flow and the rise are coming. Because learning to trust that rhythm is the quiet kind of strength that doesn't always get celebrated, but it always transforms us. The world tells us to keep rising all the time, to hold it together, to power through, to stay strong no matter what. But maybe the real power lives in remembering that the breaking is sacred too, that falling apart can be its own kind of becoming. We don't just ride the waves. We are the waves. And the beauty isn't just in their power. It's in their rhythm. In knowing when to rise, when to rest, and when to begin again. Because confidence, authenticity and leadership, none of it means never falling apart. It means trusting that we can and we will rise again. And all of that is woman's work.