She Leads with Intention

Episode 13 — The Mother Wound: Healing What Shapes How You Love, Lead, and Connect

Your earliest female relationship became the template through which you understand love, worth, belonging, and what it means to be in relationship with another woman. When that relationship carried pain, unmet needs, or simply the limitations of a mother who could not give what she never received, those gaps do not just disappear. They travel forward into every area of your life.

In this deeply tender and honest episode, Kristen Ivanov addresses the mother wound with compassion, clarity, and genuine hope. This is not a conversation about blame or dishonoring your mother. It is about understanding what you absorbed, naming where it has been showing up, and receiving the healing that is fully available to you.

Whether your mother did her very best and still left gaps, or whether her absence or harm was real and significant — this episode holds space for all of it. And it ends with one of the most powerful declarations you will ever speak over yourself and over her.

In this episode you will discover:

Eight ways the mother wound may be showing up in your life:

Your Five-Step Healing Practice:

Scripture referenced in this episode:

Mentioned in this episode:

Your action step from this episode:

Did this episode move you?

Choose Brave. Lead with Intention. 

Hard seasons are not a sign that something has gone wrong. They are part of every woman’s story. The question is not whether you will face them but whether you have the faith, the tools, and the daily practices to carry you through them without losing yourself in the process.

In this deeply practical and faith-rooted episode, Kristen redefines what emotional resilience actually is and gives you eight specific practices for navigating a challenging season with your faith and your sense of self fully intact.

Kristen draws a clear distinction between toughness — which disconnects you from what you are feeling — and genuine resilience, which allows you to feel what is real, process it with honesty and grace, and keep moving forward. Hard seasons navigated well do not just leave you surviving. They leave you with more depth, more wisdom, more compassion, and more capacity than you had going in.

In this episode you will discover:

Your Eight Practices for a Challenging Season:

Scriptures referenced in this episode:

Mentioned in this episode:

Did this episode encourage you?

Choose Brave. Lead with Intention.

Episode 11 — Forgiving Yourself

You extend grace to everyone around you. But when was the last time you genuinely extended it to yourself?

In this very honest episode, Kristen addresses one of the most powerful keys to freedom available to any woman, forgiving yourself. Not minimizing what happened, but making the clear decision to release yourself from carrying what God has already covered.

Kristen opens with refreshing honesty: we are human. We say dumb things, do dumb things, make decisions we wish we could undo, and sometimes fail the people we love, including ourselves. Self-forgiveness is not for a select few women with particularly dramatic pasts. It is for every woman who has ever judged herself and kept that judgment running in the background of her life.

In this episode you will discover:

Why every ambitious woman who holds herself to a high standard needs this work

The specific ways self-unforgiveness shows up in perfectionism, people pleasing, and self-sabotage

Five powerful things that become available to you when you forgive yourself

What Romans 8:1, 1 John 1:9, and Lamentations 3:22-23 say about your freedom

Why receiving God’s forgiveness without forgiving yourself creates a gap that quietly costs you everything

The four-step Self-Forgiveness Practice to walk you from awareness to genuine release

Your Four-Step Self-Forgiveness Practice:

Scriptures referenced in this episode:

Mentioned in this episode:

Your action step from this episode:

Did this episode move you?

Choose Brave. Lead with Intention.

Hello friend! In Episode 10, Kristen teaches one of the most important strategies for lasting breakthrough: praying God's Word over your life with precision, rather than praying from fear disguised as hope. She walks through why Scripture, unlike our own words, cannot return void, why healing for every place of pain has already been purchased, and why money can open doors but was never designed to heal a soul or replace faith.

The episode closes with a practical three-step tool for personalizing and praying Scripture daily, plus five additional verses listeners can pray directly over their income, identity, relationships, and decisions.

What You Will Discover in This Episode

Why faith is a decision, not a feeling, and why your feelings no longer get to dictate your life

The difference between praying your own limited words and praying God's Word, which cannot return void

Why healing for every place you carry pain, including identity wounds and fear-based decisions, has already been purchased for you

Why money can open doors but cannot heal a soul, rewrite a belief, or replace faith as the source of true increase

A practical, three-step tool for praying Scripture over your life starting today

The Three-Step Tool: How to Pray Scripture Over Your Life

Step One: Choose a Scripture that speaks directly to what you are believing for. Pray with precision, not generalities.

Step Two: Personalize it. Insert your own name and speak it in first person as your own declaration.

Step Three: Pray it aloud daily over the exact area you are believing for until it becomes the loudest voice, louder than fear, louder than doubt.

Scriptures Referenced in This Episode

Continue This Work With Kristen

The Intentional Leader — an 11-week group coaching program. This program represents over 20 years of Kristen's own growth combined with everything she has learned from coaches, conferences, books, and programs, distilled into 11 powerful weeks. Women who go through this program walk away with more peace, more confidence, more clarity, and more income than they imagined possible. 

Choose one Scripture from today's episode that speaks directly to what you are believing for. Personalize it, insert your own name, and pray it aloud daily over that exact area until it becomes the loudest voice you hear.

Hello friend! In Episode 9, Kristen invites you to picture yourself six months from now, walking into 2027 as the woman who finally made the decision to do the work, committed to it, and walked it out. She names eight specific benefits that ripple through every area of life when you do this work, addresses the quiet fear many women of faith carry about wanting more, and offers a practical tool for naming your own next season of increase. This episode is an invitation to stop building alone, and to believe that the woman on the other side of your next decision is not a fantasy.

What You Will Discover in This Episode

Eight specific benefits that become available when you finally do the inner work

Why your income has always been meant to follow your personal growth, not the other way around

The Eight Benefits of Doing the Work

Scripture Referenced

Practical Tool: Naming Your Next Season of Increase

Continue This Work With Kristen

Your Action Step This Week

Enjoying the Show?

Hello friend!

In Episode 8, Kristen turns her attention to the voice inside your head that criticizes you more harshly than anyone else in your life ever would. She traces where that inner critic was formed, names what becomes available when it finally quiets, and redefines what real confidence actually is: not the absence of fear, but a decision made in alignment with who God created you to be.

Grounded in Proverbs 31:25 and twenty years of her own inner work, Kristen offers four practical, faith-rooted practices for building confidence that lasts.

What You Will Discover in This Episode

Where the inner critic actually comes from, and why it once felt like protection

The five things that become available to you when you quiet that inner voice: energy, freedom to take risks, the ability to truly receive, deeper connection with God, and confidence to lead

Why real confidence is not the absence of fear or doubt, but a decision to move forward anyway

The difference between true humility and shrinking yourself, and why minimizing your gifts does not honor God

Four practical tools for building confidence from the inside out

The Four Confidence-Building Practices

Practice One: Change how you speak to yourself. Ask if you would say the same words to a woman you deeply love, and if not, replace the criticism with compassionate truth.

Practice Two: Celebrate your wins daily and write them down. Confidence is built through evidence your mind can return to.

Practice Three: Do the hairy scary thing. Confidence follows courage, not the other way around.

Practice Four: Anchor yourself in who God says you are every single morning, before the inner critic has a chance to speak first.

Scripture Referenced

Proverbs 31:25 — "She is clothed with strength and dignity and she laughs without fear of the future."

If today's episode is speaking to you, here are two ways to continue this work together:

The Intentional Leader — an 11-week live group coaching program for women ready to build lasting confidence, clarity, and income alongside a community of like-minded women. 

1:1 Private Coaching — three months of deep, faith-integrated coaching designed entirely around you, your story, and your next level. 

Reach out any time at [email protected] or connect with Kristen on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Your Action Step This Week

Pick one of the four practices from today's episode and begin. Just one. Write it down somewhere you will see it daily, and let this be the week you stop being your own worst enemy and start becoming your own greatest advocate.

Enjoying the Show?

Episode 7 — The Comparison Trap: Why It’s Keeping You Small and How to Break Free

Comparison is one of the most common and most quietly damaging experiences in a woman’s life. And in a world of social media highlight reels, it has never been more amplified or more accessible.

In this episode, Kristen unpacks what comparison actually is, where it was formed, and — most importantly — what genuinely becomes available to you when you break free from it. More joy, courage, and more of the life God designed specifically for you.

This episode will shift something in you. Not just about how you see other women, but about how you see yourself.

In this episode you will discover:

Your Five-Step Breaking Free Practice:

Scripture referenced in this episode:

Mentioned in this episode:

Your action step from this episode:

Did this episode resonate with you?

Choose Brave. Lead with Intention. 

Episode 6 — How to Set Goals That Actually Stick

A vision without a plan is simply a dream. And you were not created to just dream. You were created to build.

In Episode 5 we talked about the difference between living by default and living by design. Today we take that one powerful step further. Because once you have a vision for the life you want, the next question is how do you actually move toward it in a way that lasts?

In this practical and identity-rooted episode, Kristen Ivanov gets honest about why most goals fail, even for capable and motivated women, and walks you through exactly what it takes to set goals that you actually follow through on.

The key insight of this episode is one that most goal setting frameworks completely miss. Your goals must be connected to your identity. Because you cannot sustainably achieve a goal that conflicts with how you see yourself. The identity work always comes first. And the goals flow from that solid foundation.

In this episode you will discover:

The Five Characteristics of an Intentional Goal:

Your Goal Setting Formula:

Example Intentional Goals:

Mentioned in this episode:

Your action step from this episode:

Coming up in Episode 7:

Did this episode help you?

Choose Brave. Lead with Intention. 

Music from #Uppbeat

Episode 5: Stop Living by Default — Start Designing Your Life

Are you living the life you actually chose... or the life that quietly accumulated while you were busy taking care of everything and everyone else? If you are a high-achieving woman who feels like something is still missing despite doing all the right things, this episode is for you.

In Episode 5 of She Leads with Intention, life and leadership coach Kristen  introduces the second pillar of intentional living — Strategy — and opens with the most important question a woman can ask herself: Am I designing my life on purpose, or am I living by default?

This is the episode for the woman who is ready to stop running on autopilot, reclaim her time and energy, and start building a life that is truly aligned with who God created her to be.

In this episode you will discover:

Practical Tool from This Episode:

The Life Design Questions — three powerful, journal-worthy questions to help you get radically honest about what you actually want, identify where the gap is between where you are and where you want to be, and choose one courageous decision this week that moves you closer to the life you were created to live. Set aside quiet time, bring your journal, and work through these slowly. They are worth it.

Scripture referenced:

Proverbs 29:18 — Where there is no vision, the people perish.

Work with Kristen:

You are so worth it! Choose Brave. Lead with Intention.

Music from #Uppbeat

Episode 4 — Who God Says You Are

In Episode 3 we did something courageous together. We named the limiting beliefs that have been shaping your life, traced where they came from, and began replacing them with something true. Today we go even deeper.

Because the most powerful truth you can ever anchor your identity in is not a mindset shift or an affirmation. It is the living, unshakeable Word of God.

In this faith-rooted episode, Kristen walks you through why so many women who genuinely love God still struggle to truly receive what He says about them personally. She explores the profound gap between knowing truth intellectually and integrating it into how you actually live, lead, and see yourself every single day.

Then she takes you slowly and reverently through ten scriptural truths about who you are in Christ, reading each verse in full so you can sit with every word and let it land exactly where you need it most.

In this episode you will discover:

Ten scriptural truths about who God says you are:

Your Identity Declaration Practice:

Mentioned in this episode:

Your action step from this episode:

Did this episode move you?

Choose Brave. Lead with Intention.

Music from #Uppbeat