I’ve been waiting for this conversation for months, and I mean that.
Savala Nolan joins me to talk about her new book, Good Woman: A Reckoning (named Most Anticipated Feminist Book of 2026 by Ms. Magazine) and what it really means to step off the well-trodden path of “being good” as a woman.
We start with her opening essay, where she writes:
I refuse to be good. This is a matter of survival, not inclination or mood. I refuse to be easy. And I refuse other’s preferences.
I refuse to be amicable and I refuse to appease. I refuse to go along and I refuse to agree. I refuse to do what I was trained to do. Instead, I choose whatever lies beyond my social conditioning, even if I’m still looking for it, still spurring it into being.
These first few sentences stopped me in my tracks when I first read her book—and they became the heart of our conversation.
We dig into the ways women are socialized to prioritize others, bend themselves into what the world expects, and make thinness, control, and “good behavior” the currency of success. Savala reflects on midlife as a reckoning and on leaving decades of dieting behind; but we also get into divorce, raising a daughter who trusts her body, and what it’s like to choose a life that isn’t legible to the world but feels completely true to yourself.
I’m particularly interested in the space she calls the “wilderness”—and what it takes to trust your own voice and your own body in a culture that’s constantly telling you otherwise.
This conversation is oh-so-many-things, but above all, I just think it’s deeply human.
It’s for all of us who pause, even if just momentarily, to consider:
What if I stopped trying to follow the rules? What if I stopped trying to earn approval? What does freedom look like when we finally step off the map, even if we don’t know exactly where we’re going?
I loved every minute. I hope you do too.
Make sure to share this episode with the women in your life who are absolutely sick of following the map of goodness.
Today’s comment section is EXTRA special, because I’ll be choosing three people at random from the comments to receive a signed copy of Good Woman: A Reckoning (eeeek!!!).
What does it mean to you to refuse the role of being “good”?
The thread is open to everyone on this one.
Thank you so much for being here. It’s an honor to have this community as a space for these conversations — let’s keep breaking the rules.
