What a grocery store cashier taught me about the real architects of power
Every corner of the internet is dedicated to dragging men.
They can’t think ahead.
They can’t see what needs to be done around the house.
They’re emotionally unavailable.
They’re laborers, protectors, providers — but never the ones doing the real inner work.
We’ve said all of this. Collectively. Loudly. Without stopping.
And then in the same breath — we want to claim that these same men architected one of the most sophisticated systems of global domination in human history?
Patriarchy. Colonialism. A thousand-year plan for world conquest.
Are you serious right now?
A Sigh in the Checkout Line
I was exhausted this morning. Standing in the grocery store checkout, I let out one of those sighs that comes from somewhere deeper than tired.
The cashier — a white man — heard it.
“I feel you on that sigh,” he said.
What followed was fifteen minutes I didn’t expect.
Gravity. Planets. Arrival. 3 Body Problem.
Science nerd joy spilling out of a man stocking shelves at a job his eyes told me he didn’t want.
I watched his entire energy shift. He lit up.
And what I felt in that moment wasn’t pity. It was recognition.
How did he get here? And who told him this was all he was for?
They’re Just as Innocent as the Rest of Us
I have male clients who tell me privately what they’d never say out loud:
I just want to make my art.
I want to collect things.
Build things. Nerd out on things.
But if I do that, she’ll think I’m weak. Weird. Not enough.
These are not monsters. These are people who got handed a script they didn’t write — and told to perform it or face exile from the only love available to them.
Men have been beaten down. And what happens when you beat someone down long enough?
They crack.
And then we act surprised at the violence.
We look at the statistics — white men are statistically more violent than most — and we use that as evidence of their nature. We never ask what psychological warfare produces that outcome.
I’m asking.
The Mastermind Was Never the Face
Here is what I know to be true, and what no history book is going to say:
The president has no real power. The power lives in every advisor, every cabinet member, every person whispering in the ear of the person in the room.
Power has never been the face. Power has always been behind it.
And women — specifically white women, in the context of colonialism and patriarchy — have always been methodical. Intentional. Strategic to a degree that we don’t give credit for, because giving credit for that level of strategy would mean holding them accountable for what it produced.
It is far easier to believe that a big, scary man killed people. Conquered lands. Built empires on suffering.
Much harder to believe that the woman he came home to was the one who sent him.
But every time a powerful man speaks about his success, who does he credit?
The woman behind him.
We have called that humility. I’m calling it a confession.
Weaponized Fragility Is Still a Weapon
I posted a TikTok once asking white women if they were okay — because their husbands were clearly not.
The responses were almost uniform: He’s abusive. He lies. He cheats. He’s the problem.
Every single one, a victim.
I have watched, in real time, what happens when you try to hold a white woman accountable in public. The speed of the pivot. The tears. The reframe. The sudden disappearance of agency.
This is not an accident. This is craft.
Weaponized fragility is a governance strategy. It keeps the wielder above suspicion while the accused absorbs every consequence.
White men have taken the fall for all of it. White women have kept the real power — and the plausible innocence — this entire time.
The Plan That Backfired
Here is the part that breaks my heart a little.
I believe they did this on purpose. I believe it was calculated and precise.
And I believe it backfired.
Because when you train someone to suppress everything tender in themselves — when you tell a man, over and over, that softness is weakness and conquest is virtue — you don’t just shape his behavior. You fracture his psyche.
Ed Kemper. Henry Lee Lucas. Men who killed their mothers and then hunted women who looked like them. Hatred born from intimate harm, not from nature.
Lord Farquaad in Shrek said it plainly: Some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
White women lost some of their own in this experiment. But they calculated the acceptable loss and moved forward anyway.
That is not innocence. That is a level of coldness that we refuse to attribute to women — which is exactly why it worked.
This Is Why Governance Has to Start Inside
I am not telling you this to vilify anyone.
I am telling you this because I have divine jurisdiction over this idea, and it would not have arrived in me if I wasn’t meant to carry it somewhere.
Everything we think we know about patriarchy and colonialism is a cover story.
The history books won’t say this.
The internet won’t surface it.
But if you sit with it — really sit with it — you’ll feel the truth of it in your body.
Power has always had a hidden layer. The visible leader is never the real one.
This is why my work in governance is so insistent on one question above all others: What is the actual source of authority here — and are we seeing it clearly?
Because when authority is hidden, it cannot be held. It cannot be designed. It cannot be governed.
And the systems we are all living inside were designed, very specifically, to stay hidden.
I am done pretending we are fighting the right enemy.
It’s time to look behind the face.
— Alexis Frank, Governor of Leadership
Recently, the universe has invited me to upgrade my impact (again)....
Through my almost 4 years in business, I have changed my "niche" more times than I can count. But what was actually happening was I was upgrading and stepping even further into my purpose.
It started with helping women grow their businesses using mind mapping and organizational tools, now I consider myself to be The Governor of Leadership.
I am creating governance through which all leadership flows.
To be blunt: I decide what leadership is.
It takes a large amount of self-awareness to stake my claim as The Governor of Leadership, some might even argue that it's arrogant. What other people argue isn't my business.
The universe has given me this assignment and there is nothing else in life for me to excel at but this. My work will impact hundreds of millions of lives, this I have always known.
But the path I'm traveling to create that impact has become even more clear, and for that I'm grateful.
So with that being said, the universe blessed me quite profoundly the other morning with my first piece of governance: The 5 Commitments of the Unprecedented Leader.
All of my clients are leaders who are building things that have either never existed before or they are completely revamping outdated systems. Either way, there is no structured precedent or blueprint for them to follow.
And because of this, they lack direction for how their leadership should look and feel during their build.
This is where the 5 Commitments come in.
We live in an age where anything built in the dark will eventually come to the light. These 5 commitments assure that unprecedented leaders only build in the light and create a new wave of leadership and human infrastructure that is committed to diversity, evolution, and transparency.
The way things should have always been before greed, capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy got in the way.
So below, you'll find the 5 Commitments and what they require of you as an unprecedented leader.
Please allow yourself to soak them in. To feel the responsibility of what is being asked of you as a leader who is building from scratch.
And remember that my 1:1 work is always available to you when you are ready to accept full responsibility for the calling you have on your life.
The 5 Commitments of the Unprecedented Leader
Any leader or founder building something that has never existed before or is working to improve a severely outdated system must adhere to these commitments.
Commitment to the self
Not in a selfish way
But a commitment to knowing yourself, trusting yourself, to deepening your relationship with who you really are.
This is the cornerstone of everything it is you will build.
Commitment to Diversity
Building something that has never been built before requires it to be built using different voices and perspectives in order to preserve all of humanity.
All genders, ethnicities, races, cultures, brain spectrums, ages, and sexual orientations
Commitment to Releasing the Status Quo
Not building according to what others dictate to be “best practice”
When building something unprecedented, there is no best practice.
There is only trust in the self and the collective minds to establish an entirely new infrastructure.
Commitment to Transparency & Communication
When building something completely new, leaders must be open and transparent about what they are building because of its effect on humanity or the constituency it governs.
This commitment also inherently demands honesty and truth because that is naturally what transparency and regular communication requires.
Commitment to Evolution
Recognizing that everything changes and must evolve over time. Stubbornness and attempting to remain the same does more damage to what was built than evolution ever could.
An excellent embodiment for all 5 of these commitments is NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He is unlike any leader the city of New York has seen before.
His cabinet is diverse (I mean he made Stanley Richards, an ex-Rikers inmate, head of the Department of Corrections)!
His social media is full of transparent communication about every decision he makes.
He knows the way NYC has been run has stifled the growth of the city and it's citizens and he is committed to its evolution.
He refuses to take notes from his predecessors who have only helped the rich.
And you can just tell that he trusted himself in his run for mayor. He knew within his whole body that he could do this job. And he is. Quite well.
This is what leadership should have always looked like. But there were no true guidelines to hold the magnitude of it.
Now there is. Because I have created and spoken life into it.
I'm excited to see where you leadership takes you, now that you have governance to show you the way.
There’s a lot of talk these days about how society has become hyper-individualistic — and while that’s not untrue, I want to make something very clear:
Individualism and self-preservation are not the same thing.
And confusing the two? That’s where the real harm happens — especially for people learning how to lead, parent, create, or exist in this world without burning themselves to the ground.
I teach leadership through self-preservation.
But the more I watch the world online, the more I realize how many people are calling survival “selfish” or equating self-preservation with narcissism.
But the more I watch the world online, the more I realize how many people are calling survival “selfish” or equating self-preservation with narcissism.
So let’s break this down.
Individualism is a Trauma Response
Let’s be real: individualism is a symptom.
A side effect of living under patriarchy and capitalism for way too long.
A side effect of living under patriarchy and capitalism for way too long.
Patriarchy tells you your worth is tied to how much you provide.
Capitalism tells you your worth is tied to how much you produce.
Capitalism tells you your worth is tied to how much you produce.
So you spend years — decades — providing and producing.
For your kids, your job, your partner, your community.
And what do you get in return?
For your kids, your job, your partner, your community.
And what do you get in return?
For most people, the answer is: nothing.
No rest.
No peace.
No support.
No peace.
No support.
And then one day, you wake up angry.
You say, What about me?
You say, What about me?
You’re bitter. You’re exhausted. You’re tapped out.
So you swing hard in the opposite direction — into me, me, me.
Into hyper-individualism.
So you swing hard in the opposite direction — into me, me, me.
Into hyper-individualism.
Into a survival response masked as self-focus.
But it’s not self-love — it’s self-protection built on resentment.
But it’s not self-love — it’s self-protection built on resentment.
That’s not leadership. That’s a nervous system collapse.
Self-Preservation Is Innate
Now let’s talk about what self-preservation actually is.
It’s not narcissism. It’s not a tantrum. It’s not spiritual bypassing.
Self-preservation is sacred.
It’s instinctual.
It’s that quiet, inner knowing that says:
It’s instinctual.
It’s that quiet, inner knowing that says:
“If I don’t take care of myself first, I’ll have nothing left to give.”
It’s not rooted in bitterness — it’s rooted in love.
It’s the difference between survival mode and sustainable wholeness.
Because someone who’s self-preserving isn’t closing off the world — they’re fortifying themselves so they can show up for it with more capacity.
When you self-preserve, you’re saying:
I want to pour from a full cup.
I want to give, but not from depletion.
I want to lead, but not from martyrdom.
I want to pour from a full cup.
I want to give, but not from depletion.
I want to lead, but not from martyrdom.
Here’s the Difference You Can Feel
The energy doesn’t lie.
Individualism repels.
It says, “I’m out for myself and screw everyone else.”
And people feel it. They walk away from it. They don’t want to be around it.
It says, “I’m out for myself and screw everyone else.”
And people feel it. They walk away from it. They don’t want to be around it.
Self-preservation attracts.
It says, “I care enough about my impact that I’m making sure I’m whole before I try to serve others.”
It says, “I care enough about my impact that I’m making sure I’m whole before I try to serve others.”
And when people feel that?
They want it too.
It inspires a ripple effect — a quiet revolution of regulated, grounded, self-led humans who still care about community because they first cared about themselves.
They want it too.
It inspires a ripple effect — a quiet revolution of regulated, grounded, self-led humans who still care about community because they first cared about themselves.
Leadership Through Self-Preservation
When you lead through self-preservation, you’re magnetic.
You’re not demanding attention — you’re embodying it.
People look at you and say:
You’re not demanding attention — you’re embodying it.
People look at you and say:
“Damn, she takes care of herself — and she still shows up with power and generosity.”
That’s the kind of energy that builds movements.
That’s the kind of leadership that heals instead of harms.
That’s the kind of leadership that heals instead of harms.
So no — self-preservation isn’t selfish.
It’s not individualistic.
It’s not individualistic.
It’s the antidote to burnout, bitterness, and performative power.
And if you’ve ever been made to feel guilty for choosing yourself —
Let me say this plainly:
Let me say this plainly:
The world doesn’t need more martyrs.
It needs more leaders who refuse to lead from depletion.
It needs more leaders who refuse to lead from depletion.
Being an eldest daughter often means shouldering expectations that start so subtly, you might not even notice them at first. Picture this: growing up, you were the one always given the dolls and cleaning playsets that nurtured you to care for others. But that might of come with hidden burdens of Eldest Daughter Syndrome, where societal and familial roles quietly shape our paths from childhood, often leading us into caretaking responsibilities that sideline our own aspirations. We dig into the roots of people-pleasing tendencies that blossom in families with emotionally immature parents and offer insights on breaking free from this cycle.
Feeling the weight of perfectionism and family expectations isn't just a mental battle—it's a physical too. Many of us in the "Worthy" community know all too well the anxiety and overwhelm these pressures cause. We explore how emotional suppression can manifest as physical ailments, and delve into the intriguing idea that ADHD and PTSD symptoms may be threads in a tapestry of inherited family trauma. Despite facing critique for tackling these topics without a medical license, we stress the importance of acknowledging and addressing our mental and physical health to enhance our well-being.
Reclaiming your independence starts by redefining what it means to truly be free. We talk about the difference between self-sufficiency and genuine independence, and how releasing unrealistic expectations allows us to embrace our feminine energy. This shift makes room for healthier relationships and personal growth, where setting boundaries becomes an act of self-love. We aim to inspire a journey toward self-discovery, encouraging listeners to reclaim their personal power and financial success.
Episode Highlights:
Exploration of Eldest Daughter Syndrome:
Alexis takes a deep dive into the psychological and emotional challenges faced by eldest daughters. She explains how societal and familial expectations often trap these women in roles that prioritize others' needs over their own. This syndrome, while not medically recognized, manifests in patterns that can significantly impact one's well-being.
Alexis takes a deep dive into the psychological and emotional challenges faced by eldest daughters. She explains how societal and familial expectations often trap these women in roles that prioritize others' needs over their own. This syndrome, while not medically recognized, manifests in patterns that can significantly impact one's well-being.
Impact of Perfectionism: Eldest daughters are often burdened with the expectation to excel in every aspect of life, leading to perfectionism.
Breaking Free from Family Expectations: Examine the pressures imposed on you by family dynamics and cultural norms. Challenge and redefine these expectations, with setting boundaries and focusing on self-care and self-love.
Embracing Feminine Energy: The concept of feminine energy as a means to achieve true independence. Embracing this energy can lead to healthier relationships and a more balanced life. The difference between being self-sufficient and being genuinely independent, is the importance of letting go of control and reducing anxiety.
Embracing Feminine Energy: The concept of feminine energy as a means to achieve true independence. Embracing this energy can lead to healthier relationships and a more balanced life. The difference between being self-sufficient and being genuinely independent, is the importance of letting go of control and reducing anxiety.
Three Action Steps to Take:
Recognize and Break the Cycle of People-Pleasing:
Recognize and Break the Cycle of People-Pleasing:
Reflect on your upbringing and identify patterns of people-pleasing and self-sacrifice that may have developed due to family expectations. Start by journaling about moments when you prioritized others' needs over your own aspirations. Once identified, consciously practice setting boundaries and saying no when necessary to prioritize your own well-being and goals.
Redefine Independence and Embrace Feminine Energy:
Differentiate between self-sufficiency and genuine independence. Consider what true freedom means to you beyond fulfilling familial roles. Embrace feminine energy by allowing yourself to relax, delegate tasks, and receive help from others. Practice releasing control over situations and trust in your decisions, which can lead to healthier relationships and personal growth.
Focus on Personal Healing and Self-Discovery:
Begin a journey of self-discovery to understand your true identity beyond familial labels. Engage in activities that nurture your emotional and physical health, such as mindfulness practices, therapy, or joining support groups like the "Worthy Everything" community. Address unresolved stress and trauma, which may be contributing to physical ailments, and explore potential links between family trauma and conditions like ADHD or PTSD. Use journal prompts such as "Why is it so important to me that I make my family happy?" to explore your motivations and desires, helping you move towards a life filled with freedom and abundance.
Begin a journey of self-discovery to understand your true identity beyond familial labels. Engage in activities that nurture your emotional and physical health, such as mindfulness practices, therapy, or joining support groups like the "Worthy Everything" community. Address unresolved stress and trauma, which may be contributing to physical ailments, and explore potential links between family trauma and conditions like ADHD or PTSD. Use journal prompts such as "Why is it so important to me that I make my family happy?" to explore your motivations and desires, helping you move towards a life filled with freedom and abundance.
Journaling Prompts
Prompt 1: Why is it so important to me that I make my family happy?
Prompt 2: Where can I put myself first, today and every day?
Prompt 2: Where can I put myself first, today and every day?
Conclusion: Your journey to independence and self-discovery starts with acknowledging that the burdens placed upon you are not yours to bear. It's time to break free from the expectations that have overshadowed your dreams. Embrace your true self, redefine what independence means to you, and let go of perfectionism and people-pleasing tendencies. By releasing these inherited patterns, you open the door to a life filled with freedom, abundance, and genuine self-love. This is your time to step into your power and live life on your own terms. Your future is yours to create, and it starts with choosing yourself.
Last episode of the season join my email list here to stay upto date on Season 2 coming soon. We will have guests, Q&A, and coaching episodes where I help you.
If you want to apply to be guest or for spot to be coached by me email.
Last episode of the season join my email list here to stay upto date on Season 2 coming soon. We will have guests, Q&A, and coaching episodes where I help you.
If you want to apply to be guest or for spot to be coached by me email.
thefcconsultant@gmail.com
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