How Kathleen Turner's Voice Made Me Find Mine
Issue 2892 -August 3, 2026
You know that voice. Deep. Smoky. Unmistakable.
So when I asked my friend Kathleen Turner to be the Voice of the Goddess for Take The Lead's Power Up Conference, I expected a quick yes.
Instead, silence.
Then: "Do you know I'm playing God right now?"
She sounded a little unnerved. I was too. This is the woman who went from smoldering as Matty in Body Heat to mousy Joan in Romancing the Stone to the gleefully murderous Beverly Sutphin in Serial Mom to Chandler's dad-turned-mom on Friends — and who will soon play Gertrude Stein.
Kathleen knows exactly who she is. She knows exactly what her voice is worth. That's the goddess part. Not the register. The certainty.
I know this better than most people, because I wrote her memoir with her.
And that book taught me the most painful thing I have ever learned about myself.
Second billing
Send Yourself Roses started out as her biography, with me as the author. It ended as her memoir, with me as the collaborator. Second billing. And I let it happen.
Kathleen and I were equal partners, and there was never friction between the two of us. She tells people I did most of the work. She's right. But she's a star and I'm known primarily in one movement.
I was an equal in the contract.
Then came the pre-release publicity meeting.
And the publicity director turned his back to me — turned his chair, physically, so I was looking at the back of a suit jacket — and spoke only to Kathleen for the rest of the meeting.
I sat there staring at that jacket, and something in me cracked open.
Because he wasn't the first. He was just the most literal.
I threw a verbal fit and reminded him of the contract. He paid no attention. Kathleen supported me. He still pitched only her for media interviews.
The numbers I was staring at that same month
While we waited for Roses to come out, I was researching my next book, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power.
What I found shocked me. Women were running for office less often than men. Women reached for the top jobs less often. Women asked for about 20 percent less money. Why? Because we have been culturally devalued — which adds up to more than a million dollars a professional woman never sees over a working lifetime. My focus groups, interviews, and the scientific research told me women often resist claiming power for reasons that stem from what we get rewarded and punished for.
The tell
I am not placing blame. I have been incredibly fortunate to make my life’s passion into my life’s work. And I have had my share of recognition.
Forbes 50 Over 50. Vanity Fair's Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders and Trailblazers. Glamour Woman of the Year. High school dropout in small-town Texas who became president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Author of the curriculum that Take The Lead is built on.
Notice I wanted you to have all of that before I admitted what comes next.
That's the tell. I still needed to hand you my papers before I could say a true thing about myself.
I had spent my whole adult life telling women to know their power and use it. I could see the pattern in every woman on earth except one.
What I saw in the back of that suit jacket
I had spent 50 years speaking in someone else's voice.
Always for a cause. Always for a movement. Or someone whose name was bigger than mine. Good causes, every one of them. And every single time, my own voice got smaller, and I called that service.
Nobody stole my voice. I lent it out. For decades. For free.
I was ghostwriting my own life.
Here's the strange part: saying that out loud did not feel like shame. It felt like a window opening. Naming it was the whole shift.
And here’s an important point that might surprise you: I was 65 years old at the time. So it doesn’t matter where you start. Just start. It’s never too late. The big transformation came when I cofounded Take The Lead.
Power over, power to
We don't have to change ourselves to fix this. We do have to stop discounting ourselves.
Power over is a fist — a finite pie, somebody wins, somebody loses, wars happen, women suffer. Power to is a hand — the power to make life better for yourself, your family, your company, your country. It grows when you use it. It rots when you don't.
Power unused is power useless. That was always true of you. It took me fifty years to learn it was also true of me.
Come find your voice in a room full of them
All of this is why I invite you to join us at the Power Up Conference, August 25–26 in Washington, D.C. This year's theme is Audacity: Leadership in Action — and audacity is not a feeling. It's a decision.
You'll hear that iconic Voice of the Goddess and use the power of your own voice to connect with women and men who want you to have your fair and equal share–of everything good.
You'll see Margaret Atwood — who gave us The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments — on stage with me on Women's Equality Day. She names what's broken. Together we’ll create solutions.
You'll meet young leaders like William He, who founded Dream for America at 16 and now at 19 has 1,200 volunteers across all 50 states — and Cheyenne Hunt, executive director at Reckoning Action who came into prominence by keeping alleged abusers out of public office and proving what happens when you use the power you have to make change..
You'll get straight answers from leading experts on women's health, on building wealth, on making the workplace work, and on using AI as an asset instead of a threat.
You'll cheer our 9 Power Tool Champions, Take The Lead alumnae, exemplars of the transformation that happens when you embrace your Power TO.
Most of all, you'll be in a room with 700 women and men who are done shrinking, and who will pick up the phone when you call them in November.
I spent 50 years lending out my voice. Don't spend another minute lending out yours.
Send yourself roses. Then send yourself to Washington.
👉 Get your ticket — from $497, students $250 with valid ID, Three weeks out and the room is filling.
I'll be looking for you.
— Gloria
GLORIA FELDT is the Co-founder and President of Take The Lead, a motivational speaker, and a global expert in women’s leadership development and DEI for individuals and companies that want to build gender balance. She is a bestselling author of five books, most recently Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good. Honored as Forbes 50 Over 50, and Former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, she is a frequent media commentator. Learn more at www.gloriafeldt.com and www.taketheleadwomen.com. Find her @GloriaFeldt on all social media.