Same Gold Medal. Different Treatment. And What I Found Under My Kitchen Sink.

We Were Never the Problem…

Thoughts on being a badass woman in a world that still hasn’t caught up.

I’m 63 years old. I snowboard. I mountain bike. I hike. I paddle board. I’ve played little league, played with sticks and lived outside since I was a kid. I’ve watched my husband fight cancer, rebuilt my entire career around something that actually matters to me, and I run a wellness business from a small mountain town in Montana where the winters can be brutal and the views are worth every bit of it.

Nobody handed me any of that. And nobody handed it to the women I’m about to talk about either.

So let’s get into it.

The U.S. Women’s Hockey Team Doesn’t Need Your Asterisk.

If you watched the 2026 Women’s Olympic World Hockey Championship, you already know. If you didn’t, let me fill you in on what you missed.

The U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team went out there and dominated. Not “for women.” Not “pretty good, considering.” Just dominated! They beat Canada in overtime. Same as the men did. Both teams came home with the same gold medal around their necks.

And then the president of the United States got on the phone with the men’s locker room to congratulate them, and suddenly these women, who had made history 3 days prior, were spending their gold medal moments answering questions about a punchline they never asked to be part of.

The women's team captain called it a “distasteful joke.” She was right. Some of the men’s players later said they should have reacted differently. At least there’s that. But the fact that it happened at all, in that moment, says everything about what women in sport are still up against. You can win the exact same gold medal and still end up as the afterthought in someone else’s celebration.

The women declined the White House invitation. They had other commitments. Flavor Flav, the rapper from Public Enemy famous for that giant clock around his neck, stepped up and invited the whole team to Las Vegas for a real celebration. The team said yes. And honestly, that sounded like the better party!

They didn’t just win. They reminded every little girl watching that the ice belongs to them too.

What gets me most about these women is how steady they are. They don’t shrink. They don’t play small. They show up, they work, they win, and they do it with a confidence that some people apparently still can’t handle.

The BS Women Still Deal With. Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise.

Here’s the part where I’m supposed to soften the edges. I’m not going to do that.

Women in 2026 are still being talked over in meetings they organized. Still being told to smile more, speak less, take up less space. Still being told their ambition is “a lot” while a man with the same drive gets called a leader. Still being judged on how they look while just trying to be judged on what they do. I know. I live it in my own home at times.

We're still the ones asked how we "balance it all," as if that's our job alone. We're still the ones who have to work twice as hard to get half the credit. We're still the ones called aggressive for saying the exact same thing a man just said to applause.

I've lived this. Most women reading this have lived this. And the frustrating part isn't just that it happens. It's the guilt we carry when we feel like we're not doing enough. Like somehow, on top of everything else, we're also supposed to feel bad about it.

We were never the problem. We were always the solution they weren’t ready for.

The women I admire most, the ones on the ice, the ones in boardrooms, the ones raising kids and running businesses and starting over from nothing, they all figured out the same thing. They stopped waiting for permission. They stopped trying to explain themselves to people who had already made up their minds. They stopped shrinking to make everyone else comfortable.

That’s not bitterness. That’s just knowing better. And there’s a big difference.

Being a Badass Woman Doesn’t Look One Way.

I want to say something about that word. “Badass” usually gets attached to a very specific kind of woman. Loud. Visible. Out there making big waves. And yes, that counts. But that’s not the whole picture.

I know badass women who nobody’s writing articles about.

I know women who quietly walked away from bad situations and built something new from scratch. Women who showed up for their kids every single day while carrying things nobody else knew about. Women who said no when everyone around them was pushing them to say yes. Women who changed direction at 50, at 60, at 70 because they finally decided they were allowed to.

I was one of them. I’ve had more careers than most people have had houseplants. Which makes a lot more sense once you know I have ADD. Most people (including myself) saw that as a problem. I eventually figured out it was just me refusing to settle for something that wasn’t right. Same reason I didn’t settle on the wrong husband, didn’t settle on where I wanted to live or how we raised our kids. And I certainly didn’t settle for a nutrition consulting career once I figured out that vegetables were a whole lot better than what I’d been preaching. Burnout has a way of making things very clear.

That’s badass. Even if nobody’s watching.

You don’t have to be loud to be powerful. You just have to be done apologizing for who you are.

A Small Thing That Matters More Than It Sounds.

When I started really paying attention to what I was putting in and on my body, I got angry. Not at any one person. Just at the reality that so much of what gets sold to women, especially in the name of health and beauty, is loaded with stuff our bodies were never meant to deal with.

We talk a lot about toxic situations in life. But there’s a very real, very literal version of it sitting under most people’s kitchen sinks and on their bathroom counters. Products full of fake fragrances and harsh chemicals that build up in our bodies a little more every single day. Most of us never stop to question it because it’s just always been on the shelf. It’s how we were raised.

When we Know Better, We’re Supposed to do Better.

That’s when things changed for me.. What I found were plant based non-toxic cleaners and safe products that actually worked without all the junk.

Melaleuca’s nontoxic products and eco friendly formulas were a natural fit. Cleaner. Simpler. Less stuff I never signed up for.

It wasn’t some big dramatic change. It was just one more way of saying I’m done settling. I know what’s in these products. I don’t have to wonder. And for me, that matters.

For women who are already carrying so much, that kind of peace of mind is worth something. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about making choices that actually match the life you’re trying to build.

To the Women Reading This.

You’re already doing it. You might not feel like it on the hard days, and there will be hard days, but you’re already doing it. To the women who showed up to that meeting anyway. Who said the thing anyway. Who tried again after it didn’t work the first time. Who cheered for those hockey players like they were cheering for themselves, because in some small way they were.

You don’t owe anyone a softer version of yourself.

The ice is yours. The room is yours. The mountain is yours.

Go take it.