Elle

A five-week immersion for the woman who is ready to stop auditioning for her own life

Elle is a five-week live immersion where you’ll recover the signal of desire, practice acting from it, and make one real-world move before the program ends.

You have done the work. Built the life. You are accomplished by external measures and competent in rooms where you used to have to prove yourself.

And underneath all of it, the days have started drifting into each other. Nothing in particular to look forward to. Life feels predictable, settled, set.

There is a quieter version of this you may not have said out loud:

What is my purpose, now?
What am I still allowed to want?
What am I allowed to still believe is possible for me in this life?

You have been told, in a thousand small ways, that the asking is a problem to manage. A midlife crisis. A failure of gratitude. A sign of poor adjustment to aging. That maturity means making peace with what you have. That wanting more — at your age, in your life — is greedy, ungrateful, immature, late, unrealistic.

Elle is built on a different premise.

The yearning is not the problem. The yearning is the design.

It is the way a human being signals to herself that she is still in motion — still becoming, still alive at the level where evolution actually happens. Aristotle had a word for that motion: entelechy — the inner force that drives a living thing toward becoming what it is meant to be. The acorn becoming the oak. The bud becoming the flower. In a conscious being, that force is felt — as longing, as restlessness, as the pull toward what is calling. What you are calling yearning is the human experience of entelechy still operating in you.

The stirring is not a sign that something is wrong with you.

It is a sign that you are still here.

Elle is the room where you turn toward it.

Her name is Elle.

Elle is French for she. One syllable. One pronoun. One whole woman.

I met her in a small flamenco club in Barcelona, on a stage barely raised above the floor, close enough that you could see the lines around her eyes. She was older than the other dancers — old enough that any of them might have been mistaken for her daughter — and she was the only one any of us could look at. She moved like a woman who had stopped explaining herself decades ago. Sensuous, masterful, completely at ease. The energy she gave off was magnetic — the way it always is when a woman is so fully being herself you can't help but be drawn toward her. She knew exactly who she was, and she was not asking the room's permission to be it.

You know this kind of woman when you see her. You have seen her at a long lunch in Rome, in a linen dress, taking three hours over a meal because she knows how. You have seen her walking into a gallery opening alone, in red lipstick, stopping to look at exactly the painting she came for. You have seen her hosting a long dinner in her own house, candles lit, the good plates out, telling the story she has been holding back for years. Painters. Writers. Travelers. Women who finally took the trip. Women who finally opened the studio. Women who finally said the thing.

You may have caught a glimpse of her in yourself, too — in moments you didn't curate, in something you wore on a Tuesday for no reason, in something you said and did not take back. She has been there all along.

Elle is the room where she gets to come more fully forward.

A woman who knows who the hell she is, and is not afraid to say so and be it.

Five weeks. Sensuous, daring, alive. Hers.

The two forces you're recovering.

Both words have been made smaller than they are. We're taking them back.

EROS has been narrowed in modern usage to mean sexual desire. Its older and larger meaning is the primordial pull toward life itself — the generative force that draws a being toward what awakens it. Beauty pulls. Hunger pulls. Curiosity pulls. The painting that stops you mid-stride pulls. The afternoon light through the kitchen window pulls. The body wanting to be touched pulls. The work that has been knocking on your interior door for fifteen years pulls. The conversation you have been waiting your whole life to have pulls. Sex is one of Eros's expressions. So is the long bath. So is the meal you make slowly. So is the trip you finally take. Eros is every yes the body has ever said before the mind asked for a reason.

MOXIE has been narrowed too. Reduced to spunk, pluck, sass — a little woman with a little attitude. Its truer meaning is nerve. The willingness to answer what is calling, even when the voice shakes. The move toward what one loves, made on purpose. Moxie sends the note. Says what she actually thinks in the meeting. Draws the bath. Takes the afternoon. Buys the ticket. Tells the truth she has been managing for a decade. Names what she brought into the room. Because answering Eros is sometimes a private act and sometimes a public one — and Moxie is what makes either possible.

Eros without Moxie is longing without motion.

Moxie without Eros is hustle without a life.

Together: a woman who is finally inhabiting the life she has built.

On the question of permission.

Women ask me things, in the quiet at the end of sessions, that they have not asked anyone else.

Is it okay for me to have sex just because I want to?
Is it okay for me to spend money on something just because it’s beautiful?
Am I the kind of woman who takes a trip alone?
Is it too late to do the thing I have been wanting to do my whole life?
Is it okay to take an afternoon off when my list is not handled?

These are not women who do not know their own minds. They have been waiting because they were trained to wait. Trained to ask. Trained to hold the wanting until someone outside themselves authorized it. The training is not their fault.

Elle is, in part, a five-week reckoning with the permission you have been waiting for from someone outside yourself — and the recovery of the only permission that has ever actually mattered.

Yours.

On who Elle is actually for.

Elle is not for the woman who has it all figured out. Elle is for the woman who is ready to inhabit the larger life she has been reaching for — not the woman who is already inhabiting it.

It is a room full of cool, smart women who excel in some areas and feel like a hot mess in others. Mostly we are all secretly little hot messes. The threshold of admission is not already arrived. It is ready to practice being her now.

If you have been waiting for your external life to change before you let yourself be the woman you are becoming — Elle is the room where you stop waiting.

I don’t need to wait for my external life to change. I can practice being her now.

Elle is the choreography that brings Moxie & Eros back into one body.

Five movements. Five weeks. A sequence she carries for the rest of her life.

The Listening

She tunes to her own signal. The work begins by getting quiet enough to hear what is actually being said — by her body, by her life, by the wanting she has been talking over for years. We open with a jolt, and then with quiet. She meets the larger version of herself that has been there the whole time. Moxie and Eros land, reclaimed at full size, as the two forces she'll be bringing back online together.

She begins listening on purpose, twice a day, for what she has been talking over.
The Unburdening

She puts down what she's been carrying that isn't hers. The habitual override of her inner knowing is not her character flaw — it was installed. By family, by lineage, by culture, by the century she was born into. Once she sees it, she stops feeding it. The unburdening is not a loss. It is the lightening that happens when she stops carrying someone else's instructions about who she is allowed to be.

Honored, then walked past.
The Wanting

She names what she wants — out loud, in her body, on purpose. Desire returns as directional intelligence, the body's compass. The oranges on the counter because they're gorgeous. The bath drawn for no reason. The trip she stopped explaining. The lover she has been not letting herself want. The yes that arrived in her body before her mind asked for a reason.
This is the week she starts romancing her own life — not as recovery. As a claim.
The Reckoning

She sees fully — and reaches anyway. Full-bandwidth knowing — body, field, imagination, reason — all of it data, all of it legitimate. She practices holding the hard fact in one hand and the luminous desire in the other, and walking forward holding both. The lens shifts from fear to love. Same facts. Different moves. This is where Moxie starts being taught: the capacity to see truly — about a job, a relationship, a boundary, a yes, a no — and reach anyway.

The body's clean yes and clean no, restored as legitimate intelligence.
The Making

She makes the move that creates the thing. Interior becomes exterior. Knowing becomes life. She walks out of Elle with one irreversible move — something she has done, is doing, or will do before a specific date, with the room as witness. The conversation had. The email sent. The application submitted. The line drawn. The thing released. The thing claimed.
Small or large, but material. The world is now different because she moved.

What you walk out with.

Not feelings. Specifics.

❦ The capacity to recognize your own aliveness — the felt-sense markers in your body, so you can tell, in any moment, whether you are actually present to your life or executing the shape of it.

❦ One real move already made — the email sent, the conversation had, the application submitted, the line drawn. Material. Witnessed. Yours.

❦ A working relationship with the voice that has been overriding you — visible to you in real time, no longer running underneath choice without your knowing.

❦ Desire restored as data, not indulgence — the body's compass, legible again, in the kitchen and in the boardroom.

❦ The capacity to see clearly and still reach — fear at the threshold understood as information, not verdict. The full range of your knowing — body, imagination, field, rational mind — restored as legitimate intelligence.

❦ A way of moving through the rest of your life — a sequence you will run again, on a Tuesday afternoon, the rest of your life, without needing the room around you. The methodology is yours now.

Hi, I’m Deb.

Elle exists because the women in my practice have been asking me for a room they could afford that would actually move them.

What stirs in a woman is not always clear at first. Sometimes she knows exactly what she wants and has been waiting for permission to want it. Sometimes she does not yet know — only that something is moving in her that she has not let herself listen to. Either way, what she needs is the same: to get the parts of herself that have fallen out of sync back into right relationship — so that what she actually wants can be heard, and answered, on purpose, from a body that knows.

That is what Elle does. Five weeks. $555. A small group of grown women, held with precision, getting back in sync with themselves — and walking into whatever is next, big or small, on their own terms.

I have been doing the work behind this for forty years — across journalism, editorial leadership, brand voice, ritual, and one-to-one practice with women at thresholds. Ten years ago I named the work Moxie and started teaching it directly. The work has had many forms. What I do, in all of them, is help a woman see herself accurately enough — and love herself enough — to summon the courage to go after what turns her on. What makes her heart sing. What makes her neurons zing. What is, on a body level, hers. The seeing is the door. The loving is the ground she stands on. What she does with both, together with me, is the work.

AI has been part of my toolkit since early 2023 — a thinking partner for seeing patterns I couldn't see on my own. You'll get a glimpse of how that works inside the room.

I am also one of the women in the room. I’m 66, and I’m still in the work I’m teaching.

If you have read this far, you are probably ready to begin.

Sit Down at the Table →

When we gather.

GROUP SESSIONS (WEDNESDAYS):

May 20, 27 · June 3, 10, 17, 2026

All Elle sessions are conducted via Zoom and begin at:

4 pm LA · 6 pm CHI · 7 pm NY

Each session runs 90 minutes.

Cohort One. Intimate by design.

What’s on the table.

❦ Five 90-minute live sessions. Wednesdays, May 20 through June 17.

❦ Direct practitioner transmission. Deb leads every session herself. The container is held with precision.

❦ The Inner Symphony. The organizing teaching across all five weeks: that the woman in the room is not broken — she is a system to conduct. Inside her are three ways of being that, when restored to right relationship, allow her to live with aliveness, coherence, and direction. She learns to recognize them, and to bring forward the one each moment is asking for.

❦ Curated resources. Readings, frameworks, and tools drawn from three decades of study and teaching — slipped under the door between sessions.

❦ Live coaching in the room.In Weeks 2 and 4, real-time engagement with what one or two women are working through — a decision, a pattern, a move waiting to be made. Witnessed by everyone present.

❦ Witnessing rounds. Volunteer-based, in every session. Each woman who speaks is reflected back — not coached. Witnessed. Held.

❦ Practices between sessions. Each week closes with one act that crosses from inside to outside — the email sent, the class signed up for, the book begun, the bath drawn, the yes given. Small or large. Yours.

❦ A private community space. Stay in contact with the cohort between sessions.

❦ A room of women at your altitude. Some of them you'll keep.

❦ A closing benediction. Not a certificate. A sending.

Moxie moves.

Eros pulls.

This is for you if

You have done real interior work, and the outside of your life has not fully caught up.

You are reaching for something larger and you do not entirely know how to inhabit it yet.

You are tired of waiting until you feel more ready.

You suspect the next move is not more information. It is a different way of being in your own life.

You want to be in a room of women who are honest about being in motion.

This is not for you if

You're looking for someone to fix you.

You are in acute crisis and need clinical support.

You want to rehearse old wounds without moving.

You're staying loyal to a version of yourself you've already outgrown.

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“The her I uncovered and let out to play is someone who loves herself and everyone else.

As a verb.

Someone who accepts help, gifts, love, and success with gratitude, and but of course.

Someone who experiences disappointment and is not silenced by it.

Someone who has herself to give to the world.

Whether she does anything or not, she is cherished and priceless.”

— Letitia Johnson

"For the first time in my life, I realized I really am a special person. I'm not more special than anybody else, but nobody else is more special than I am."

Melanie Stanton, sr director
"You've given me my MOXIE back."

Diane Reed, CEO + author
“The everyday had pulled me into inertia. The work reconnected me to the possibility of being a vibrant, beautiful woman."

Carole Baumgart, marketing executive

Pull up a chair — Elle begins Wednesday, May 20, 2026.

ONE-TIME PAYMENT

$555

Pull Up a Chair →

Current members of CLUB MOXIE get 10% off with code:

MEMBERDISCOUNT

(With the Club Moxie discount, your tuition is just $499.50)

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"The course caused me to take leaps in my life rather than little snail movements. It empowered me to stop playing it safe."

— Monica Dashwood, professional coach

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"The energy is so palpable. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. That's an intimacy that I don't think we often get to experience."

— Sue Perisi, intuitive healer

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"Deb's wise and soulful leadership models vulnerable sharing in a way that helps women drop down to deep work immediately."

— Joann Hershberger Henderson, psychotherapist

Questions you might be holding.

Five live 90-minute Zoom sessions, one per week, Wednesdays May 20 through June 17, 2026, at 7 pm Eastern. Sessions are recorded if you have to miss one. Elle is designed to be experienced live. That's where the work happens.
Grown women who have done the work, built the life, and know — in the quiet — that they have been overriding something. See Is Elle for you above for fuller detail. If reading that section made your chest open, you are in the right room.
Three things. The work is the integration of Moxie and Eros — the two deepest forces in a woman's life, taught and practiced as one. The room moves slowly enough for real work to happen, and nothing in it is asking you to perform. And the room is small by design — intimate enough that no one disappears, structured enough that real work happens.
Every session is recorded. Elle is designed to be experienced live, but if a conflict arises, the recording is there and the cohort holds the space.
Because Elle is a small, intimate cohort, your registration is non-refundable. Please say yes on purpose.
Club Moxie is our ongoing private community — the living room of the Moxie world. Club Moxie members receive 10% off Elle with code MEMBERDISCOUNT at checkout.

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This is the table.

This is the room.

Walk in.