By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group

Originally explored on Wake Up Women Leaders — Episode 12

There is not one leader who gets through this unscathed. Not one. You can be surrounded by people — your team, your clients, your community, your family — and still feel it. That specific weight that settles into your bones at the end of a long day of giving, deciding, holding things together, and showing up for everyone else. The feeling that says: nobody in this room is carrying what I am carrying.

That is the loneliness of being a woman leader. And in Episode 12 of Wake Up Women Leaders, Victoria Whitfield and discussed what it is, why it happens, what it costs, and what actually helps.

This Is Not a Small Problem

Before we get into the texture of it here is the data: according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 61% of business owners and leaders report being lonely. Victoria opened our conversation with the health consequences of that number — and they are serious.

“Loneliness has very serious effects on our health. This can lower our immune system, cause chronic stress on our heart and cardiovascular system. It opens us up to other forms of disease, such as cognitive decline.”

Loneliness is not a mood. It is a health condition. And for women in leadership, it takes a specific form because women in leadership are often the ones holding space for everyone else, which makes the experience easy to dismiss and hard to address.

The loneliness of being a woman leader is not the same as being alone. Victoria put it clearly: “Every business is a relationship business. So it’s a bit of a conundrum when you are serving, supporting, helping, connecting, speaking to people all the time — and then experiencing a state of dejection or grief by the condition of being alone.”

You can be busy every minute of the day and still feel it. You can have a full household and still feel it. “At the end of the day, even if you’re laying down next to someone, there is this feeling that sinks into your bones of — I’m apart, I’m other, I’m alone.”

That is the specific experience we are talking about.

Why Leadership Gets Lonelier as You Grow

The loneliness of being a woman leader does not arrive all at once. It builds. And it builds fastest at the moments of transition — when you step into a new role, take on more responsibility, or move from peer to leader within a group you used to belong to as an equal.

“When I stepped from being an employee into being an owner, that feeling of we are peers and we are all in this together shifted,” Victoria said.

That shift is real, and it is structural. When you lead, your role in the room changes. You are no longer just part of the group — you are responsible for the group. The need to project certainty, to hold steadiness for the people around you, creates distance even when you do not intend it.

“The need to project a level of certainty, to exude safety for the people that you are leading, sets you apart. Because now that role is creating a situation where you are not just part of the whole group — it’s your responsibility to care for that group.”

And the more people you lead, the wider that gap becomes. Your team has a different relationship with risk than you do. Your family has a different relationship with the decisions you are making. The friends you had before the role may not be equipped to understand the terrain you are navigating now.

“Your friendships will change. You may have to invest in peer groups in order to find friendships and people experiencing a similar environment.”

This is not a personal failure. It is a structural reality of leadership. The problem is that most leaders — and particularly women leaders — interpret it as a personal failing rather than a condition of the role. And that interpretation keeps them from doing the one thing that actually helps: finding the right peer group and asking for support.

The Problem Women Leaders Have That Men Often Do Not

The loneliness of being a woman leader has another dimension. Women in leadership still face a shortage of role models and mentors at the same level — people who have already navigated the specific terrain and can speak to it from experience.

“We just don’t have as many role models, we just don’t have as many mentors. It’s so much less likely for us to be able to look ahead and say, oh, I’m going to do it how she did it — because I see that she achieved the level of leadership I’m looking to achieve.”

When you cannot look up and find someone who has already walked this path, you end up paving it. And paving a path is not just the work of figuring it out for yourself — it is the work of carrying everyone who is now watching you do it.

“You’re paving the way. You’re carrying not just the weight of you figuring it out, but also all of these other folks who now you’ve just become the mentor to. It’s an enormous amount of pressure.”

That pressure — the pressure to get it right because other people are watching, to not fail because it might reflect on others who look like you, to be the example when there was no example for you — is a weight that compounds the isolation. And it tends to produce a specific pattern: the leader who cannot admit uncertainty, cannot ask for help, and cannot afford — in her own mind — to be seen struggling.

That pattern is not strength. It is a liability. For her health, for her organization, and for the people she is leading.

What Women Leaders Do Instead of Asking for Help

The loneliness of being a woman leader tends to find unhealthy exits when it is not addressed directly. Victoria named several of them plainly.

Dumping it publicly. “What’s inappropriate is to start a live stream on TikTok and shout to the world about how awful this is and how I’m such a victim. Stop it.”

Dumping it on the team. Your team needs safety to do their work. They are not equipped to carry your uncertainty. “If you are bringing uncertainty, you are making it very difficult for them to do their job.”

Dumping it on clients or on social media in ways that blur the line between sharing experience and burdening an audience that came to be served.

Victoria referenced her mentor’s distinction here: “I share my scars, I don’t share my wounds.” The difference between the two is processing. Scars have been worked through. Wounds are still open. Your audience, your team, and your clients deserve the scars — the perspective that comes from having navigated something — not the wound itself.

The alternative to all of these exits is not silence. It is finding the right container for the real conversation.

What Actually Helps

Victoria introduced the concept of the third space — a space that is neither home nor work, neither private life nor professional responsibility. A place where you can process what you are carrying without it landing on the people who depend on you for steadiness.

“Don’t dump it into the people that you’re serving. Don’t take it out on your team. Don’t take it out on your partner. You need a third space.”

The third space is where the loneliness of being a woman leader actually gets addressed. And it takes different forms for different people — therapy, coaching, a mastermind, a peer group, a professional association. What matters is that it is intentional, that it includes people who understand the level of responsibility you carry, and that you treat it as non-negotiable.

“Make it a line item. Make it a business expense. Make sure that you are getting this support.”

I want to be specific about what I mean by the right support — because not all support is equal, and the wrong kind can actually do harm. I had a therapist who, when things got hard in my business, recommended that I step back from the work. Step back from my mission. That recommendation came from a genuine place of care — but it was not aligned with the reality of what I was building or the level of leadership I was committed to.

“You need somebody who gets that. Look for therapists that have a leadership or entrepreneurship focus so they understand the goals that you’re setting and the stressors you might be experiencing.”

The right support does not ask you to make yourself smaller. It gives you a place to be honest about the weight so you can keep carrying it well.

What Peer Connection Actually Looks Like

One of the clearest things Victoria said in this episode was about what we are actually looking for when we seek peer connection as leaders. It is not people at your level in a hierarchical sense. It is people who share the same categories of challenge.

“It’s not people on my level — it’s people who share these challenges. Who have to think about paying other people. Who have to have the skill of marketing and selling and bookkeeping and doing taxes for an organization. Without that extra bit of intentional investment of, I need to go seek these out, that really opens up a tremendous chasm of loneliness.”

Finding this peer group requires effort. It does not happen by accident. “You could go for a long time without coming across another person who’s cut from the same cloth. And that’ll eat away at you.”

Victoria’s practical advice was to approach it like a Goldilocks process. “Go taste test some spaces. This one’s too hot, this one’s too cold. This one’s just right.” Try a workshop. Visit a professional association. Sit in on a mastermind. You will know when the room fits — and you will also know immediately when it does not.

Give yourself permission to outgrow a space. If a practitioner, a peer group, or a community supported you from zero to ten — and you are now trying to get to fifty — find the space that specializes in ten to fifty. “Giving yourself permission to expand and continue to ascend in your own personal development is powerful.”

Belonging Is the Antithesis of Loneliness

“Belonging is the antithesis of loneliness. And belonging is a huge factor in well being and longevity.”

That sentence is the clearest way I know to frame what we are talking about. The loneliness of being a woman leader is not solved by being around more people. It is solved by being around the right people — people who understand the terrain, share the responsibility level, and can hold a real conversation about what it is actually like to lead.

You deserve that. Not as a luxury or a reward for reaching a certain level — but as a baseline condition for doing this work sustainably and well.

“One of the hugest mistakes is that instead of asking for help, women leaders only see themselves as givers. It’s like only exhaling and forgetting to inhale. We need the third space.”

Inhale. Find your third space. Treat it as seriously as any other investment you make in your organization — because it is.

Three Things to Do This Week

1. Name the gap honestly. Is there anyone in your life right now who understands — not sympathizes with, but genuinely understands — the specific decisions and pressures you are navigating? If not, that is a structural problem, not a personal one.
   
   
2. Find one space to taste test. A professional association, a mastermind, a peer group, a leadership-focused therapist or coach. One. Put it on the calendar this week.
   
   
3. Ask one peer a real question. Not what do you do — but what is it like for you right now? Get your reps in, as Victoria said, on building the kind of relationship that actually addresses the loneliness of being a woman leader.
   
   

What’s Coming Next

In Episode 13, Victoria and I are shifting into a question that sounds simple but most leaders cannot answer clearly: who is actually in the room — and do you really know your audience? Join us Wednesday at 3:30pm ET.

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Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group · sapparigroup.com · © 2026