Second Chapter Woman

A private advisory for women coming home

By Application

There is a chapter in a woman's life when the world stops holding her.

A marriage ends, or doesn't. A parent dies. A child turns away or is taken. The body falters. A priest, a father, an uncle or a once trusted man took something. Now the weight of carrying this alone has finally caught up with her.

She feels she has no one to really hear her. No one to understand her. No one to protect her. No one to help her, let go of her demons.

Outwardly, much of her life still works. The career. The home. The competence. Inside that, something is asking to be met.

Healing herself.
Coming home.
Growing again.
Learning to live as love, maybe for the first time.

Who I Am

John Hale

I live in Brisbane. I founded Hale Consulting Group in 1998 and have spent over thirty years advising executives and boards on strategy and leadership. I have written four books on strategy and leadership. I am a visiting educator with honorary and adjunct professorial positions. I have taught in five business schools, including Bond University, Melbourne Business School and Singapore Management University. I present thirty times a year at conferences, off-sites and industry events.

Beneath that public life, I have trained alongside Tony Robbins, David Deida, Byron Katie, Paul Lowe, Avikal Costantino, Russ Hudson and Sandra Maitri and had a series of non-dual realisations in my forties.

I have taught alongside Cynthia Connop of Living Love, Oceana Valentine of Oz Tantra and Lianna Gailand of My Dangerous Beauty as well as with Ganga Cording of Awareness Academy. I have privately coached dozens of women one to one, facilitated women's circles and led couples retreats.

What I Have Lived

The man I am now was built on the ground of what was lost

My first marriage ended in a costly way at forty. At that time my children ran into my arms even when my hands were empty. I rebuilt quickly from nothing while raising four children.

I have walked the partnered and unpartnered parenting life and made both work. I know what it is to lose the life you built and to build another from the ground up. That experience sits underneath everything I bring into the room now.

The Women I Work With

Seeing the whole woman

M.

In her late sixties. Her husband had cared for her and she for him, through long years and finally through his cancer. When he died she kept a loaded gun in a drawer, ready, if she could not bear another day. M and I worked together for six months. She learned to feel safe in the world again and to release what her body had been holding. To move into and through the grief rather than around it. She found love for herself, and in time, a new partner.

J.

From the age of thirteen, J was violated by her priest for four years. She came to me asking that I work with her troubled twelve-year-old daughter. It was her own inner thirteen-year-old who needed the support. Over twelve months we met and healed that wounded girl inside herself. Her career and her wealth grew. She found a deeper love for herself and as a result her daughter's health returned.

L.

Her young son and only child was killed in a car accident. L's ex-husband at the wheel with no seatbelt on the child. Through her shadow work around her own father's violence, she met what could not be undone. She went on to build a business out of her transformation, educating mining companies and industrial workplaces about bullying and its human cost. She learned to speak in public, something that had frightened her. She is now visible and leading safety initiatives for hundreds of people each year.

Other women come to the work more quietly. For their bodies and their weight. For health, fitness, beauty and for the right partner. And for the courage to want what they want. The deeper work emerges from there.

The Woman Who Would Most Benefit

She has succeeded. Something is unfinished. She knows it.

She is likely in her early forties to her mid sixties. Her career works. She has built wealth, standing and a life that the world recognises. She may have children. Either way, much of her life is in order.

Two threads remain. Love: she is struggling to find a partner, or the love in her marriage has gone quiet or she has been alone for longer than she meant to be. Her body: she wants to lose weight, to feel strong, to feel beautiful again or for the first time.

Underneath both, she knows she has shadows to meet and inner work to do.

What she tells herself and her husband: she is tired, it has been a hard week, she just needs a little time.

However what she does not tell anyone is: That the life she built does not love her back. That a man once took something. That she has performed love for so long she no longer knows where she ends and the performance begins or perhaps that she does not know how to receive.

What she tells herself at three in the morning: That no one hears her. No one understands her. No one will protect her. No one will help her let go of her demons.

Why Choose John For This Work?

The closeness of the work without the cost of romance

Most of a woman's deep work is done with women and rightly so. What I offer is different and complementary.

Inside every woman lives an inner masculine that was shaped by her father, by the men she has loved, by the men who imprinted upon her and by the parts of herself she has rejected as unfeminine. As a therapist, I have a particular capacity to reflect that inner masculine back to her, so she can see it, befriend it and stop being limited by it.

In the room with me, she learns how a man thinks in a setting that is caring, protective and intimate. But therapeutically, without the investment of romance, marriage, cohabitation or the horse trading that lives inside actual partnership. She gets a powerful mirror without the attachment.

The training behind this work includes David Deida, Byron Katie, the Diamond Approach, the Enneagram, the ManKind Project and shared teaching experiences with Cynthia Connop, Oceana Valentine, Lianna Gailand and Ganga Cording.

The Trust Question

What makes this safe

I bring a deep consciousness to the work. Non-judgmental. Available. The ability to hold space for whatever arises in the moment. Her rage, her sexuality, her despair, her shadow, her fear. Without flinching, without managing her and without needing her to be smaller than she is.

Her fire is welcome here.

The Journey

Six months. One moment at a time.

• A monthly half-day in person, in Brisbane or in your city by special arrangement, from 8am to 12pm. The long conversation. The body of the work.
• A mid-month sixty-minute call, by phone or video, to hold the thread between sessions.
• Continuing access by phone or message between sessions, for the moments that cannot wait.
• One piece of monthly practice: a book, a meditation, a conversation or a habit. Chosen for the life stage she is in.
• A quarterly review at month three and month six, to celebrate what has shifted and name what is still ahead.

To Begin

A single conversation

The first step is a ninety-minute conversation, in person in Brisbane or by video. We meet. You speak. I listen for the woman underneath the situation. By the end we both know whether this is the work and whether I am the man to walk it with you.

The conversation is $550 inclusive of GST and is credited to the engagement if we proceed.

Please complete the application below and I will be in touch personally.

Or write to me directly — [email protected]