What her panic attacks and recurring dreams taught her about alignment

Melinda French Gates has spoken candidly about losing her own voice while working alongside a strong, dominant partner, and the panic attacks and unsettling dreams that eventually forced her to listen to herself again. In this episode of Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins explores Melinda's journey: the dream of her house crumbling, her need for solitude to hear her own truth, her belief that we heal by talking to one another, and her deep-rooted spiritual practice of silence and faith in action.

Julie unpacks Melinda's now-famous advice — that in moments of fear, the real move isn't to lean back into safety, but to lean forward into courage — and offers one brave move to help you apply that same wisdom in your own life today.

This episode explores:

• How Melinda French Gates lost and rediscovered her voice
• What her panic attacks and recurring dreams taught her about alignment
• Why solitude and trusted community both matter in healing
• The meaning behind "lean forward into courage"
• One brave move to practice today

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Imagine being one of the most powerful women in the world, sitting on top of billions of dollars, decades of influence, and a global foundation with your name on it, and quietly losing your own voice in the room. And that's what happened to Melinda French Gates. And what she did to find it again didn't start with strategy, meaning a board vote. It started with a dream about her house crumbling about her, and the courage to finally listen to it. So stay with me till the end because her advice for finding courage in fear is one sentence, and it might change how you handle your next hard moment. My friend, I'm Julie DeLucca Collins, and I am so glad that if you're listening to this episode because you found me or because someone shared this with you, I wanna welcome you to Brave Moves, the daily-ish podcast family. It takes two seconds to hit Subscribe and Follow button in whatever app you're listening to. This truly means so much to me. And if you want more inspiration from me in your inbox, join my newsletter community. You can go to goconfidentlycoaching.com. You will see the Sign Up button for the newsletter. And this episode is not just for you or for me. Please share it with anyone who you know may need a boost of confidence or needs to find the inspiration to take their next brave move. What I have to share today can impact not only our lives, but the lives of those around us, so let's get into it. Now, Melinda French Gates has said something remarkably honest for someone in her position. She lost her voice more than once in rooms where she absolutely deserved to be heard. Now, you may know Melinda because she was married to Bill Gates. Billionaire? Okay. Well, so let's get back. So she talked about walking into computer science classrooms at Duke University as one of the handful of women in the room, and later walking through the halls of Microsoft, a famously brash, outspoken culture, and over time working alongside a strong, dominant partner, Which she said led her to become less of herself. In her own words, quote, "Somebody speaks over you, somebody speaks for you." And I think about that phrase for a second here, my friend, and it's not always dramatic silencing. Sometimes it's very quiet. It just years of somebody else's voice being louder, more confident, more assumed to be right until you stop reaching for the microphone yourself. And here's where her story gets even more personal. In the years before her marriage ended, Melinda began having unsettling dreams, her house crumbling around her. And she talked about the panic attacks that follow and how her body seemed to be trying to tell her something her mind hadn't caught up to yet In her own words, the panic attacks were a signal that her head and her heart were out of alignment. I find that so important because we tend to treat our body signals like inconveniences, the anxiety, panic attacks, a pitch in your stomach. We medicate it. We push through it. We tell ourselves to get it together. Now, Melinda's story is a reminder that sometimes those signals are actually information. A crumbling dream isn't random. It's your inner voice finally getting louder and louder, loud enough that you can't ignore it anymore. And for me, I know that when I start to feel physically ill or something is happening in my body, I right away, after a couple days, I realize, "Wait a minute. What is going on with my brain? What is going on with my heart?" Because all of this is interconnected. Now, Melinda has said that in that season, she needed separation to make sense of what she was feeling. Not separation as punishment, but separation as clarity. She needed space away from the noise, the expectations, the version of herself that had been shaped by everyone else's voice, and that helped her hear her own voice again. And that's such a counter-cultural idea, especially for us women. We're taught that needing to be alone is selfish and that walking away from something looks like a failure, but sometimes solitude is the only place loud enough to hear the truth you already know. So here's the balance of her story in that this is what I love. Melinda didn't just do this completely alone. She talked openly about leaning on trusted friends, what she calls her truth council, people she could tell the truth to before she could even fully admit it to herself. Now, Melinda believes that we can help one another simply by talking about what we're going through, and I think that this is so wise, and I see it time and time again, not only in my lives, but in the lives of the women that are in my universe, that are either in my community or I work with. And we don't have to perform strength. Actually saying the hard thing out loud to someone safe before you're ready to say it to the whole world is, wow, huge. And that's both, that's both the end of this story. You need the silence to hear your own voice, and you need trusted people to help you trust your way and trust what you have heard Now, Melinda has spoken about growing up in a Catholic church and attending an all-girls Catholic high school, where she said nuns actually encouraged her to question her faith and spend real time in silence. And she went on silent retreats as a young woman, and she's carried that practice of stillness into her own adulthood. You know, for Melinda, faith isn't just a belief, it's action. It's the thing that moves you from knowing something in your gut to actually doing something about it, even when it's frightening. And she described it to one person as believing they can make a difference in someone else's life, and then actually showing up to do it. Think about it. We believe, yes, we can contribute to the poor, we can support someone, but do we actually show up for that? And here's the line I want you to walk away with today. Melinda has said that in the moments when you feel the world pushing you back, when fear makes you want to retreat, when you actually have to do... What you actually have to do is lean in into the courage. Not lean back for safety. Lean forward toward the very thing that scares you. You know, the first time I went rappelling, it is not an easy thing. Now, you do, at least I, have rappelled going backwards, right? And you look over the cliff, and you're strapped in, but you're looking over the cliff, and you're about to step off this cliff, and the courage doesn't come from you staying in place or from someone lowering you down. You have to take a breath, and then take the first step, and the next one, and give yourself a little rope as you're rappelling. Because if you keep stepping and you're not giving yourself a little rope, you're gonna be tight, and then you're gonna start swinging all over the place. So think about that courage that it takes to lean toward the unknown, to lean to where it's scary. But also know and trust that there's something there that is going to catch you, and you may not see it, right? Now, there's such a different way to think about courage. We usually picture as gritting our teeth and holding your ground and getting into that power pose like Wonder Woman, and Melinda's version is more active than that. It's leaning your whole body in toward the hard conversation, the hard decision, the hard truth, instead of bracing against it. And my friend, your brave move for today, find a moment where you feel yourself wanting to lean back. Out of fear, out of self-doubt, and instead of doing that, physically, on purpose, lean forward into it. Have the conversation, send the message, say the hard truth, say the hard thing to someone you trust. You don't need the whole plan figured out. You just need to lean forward one inch further than fear wants you to do. So now, if you enjoy the show, my friend, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, and I look forward to seeing you, how you can lean in with courage into the dreams that you've devised for yourself. I'd love for you, go to the show notes and find the book about Melinda Gates, but also you can send me a message through the show notes, and I'd love to hear what are you leaning into with courage, and I'd love to hear how I can support you. Until next time, my friend, don't forget, go confidently in the direction of your dreams.