What if the thing you’ve been calling strength is actually keeping you stuck?

In this episode of Visionary Womenpreneurs, Donna Lynn Price sits down with Barb Varci Smith — trauma recovery educator, therapist, speaker, and creator of The Ascendance Method™ — to explore one of the most important concepts high-achieving women need to understand: Fake Resilience™.

Fake Resilience™ isn’t weakness. It’s actually a sign of how capable you are. But when achievement, productivity, perfectionism, and caretaking become survival strategies rather than genuine wellbeing — something has to shift.

Barb brings over two decades of experience and a unique systems-thinking background to make complex trauma concepts practical, relatable, and actionable. She believes — deeply — that one healed adult can change generations.

If you’ve ever wondered “If I’m doing so well, why do I still feel stuck?” — this conversation is for you.

In this powerful conversation, Donna and Barb unpack why so many high-functioning women feel exhausted and disconnected despite outward success — and what to do about it.

Barb introduces Fake Resilience™ — the hidden survival pattern that masquerades as strength — and walks us through the 5 Pillars of Self from The Ascendance Method™: inner strength, self-love, wisdom, intuition, and purpose. She explains why trauma isn’t what happened to you but how you adapted in response, and how understanding those adaptations is often the missing link between awareness and lasting transformation.

The conversation also touches on Barb’s background in technology and systems thinking, the Steps of Ascendance™ framework, and her vision for a movement that creates healing ripple effects across families, communities, and generations.

This is an episode about coming home to yourself — and building a life and business from that place.

3 Key Lessons

1. Fake Resilience™ Is Not a Character Flaw — It’s a Survival Strategy. The women who look the most capable from the outside are often the ones most quietly running on empty. Fake Resilience™ shows up as exhaustion, numbness, overthinking, perfectionism, and hyper-independence — and it’s so normalized in high-achieving women that most don’t recognize it. Authentic resilience feels different. It comes with energy, joy, and alignment.

2. Trauma Is an Explanation, Not an Excuse. Trauma isn’t what happened to you. It’s how you adapted in response. Those adaptations were intelligent — they kept you safe. But they’re running on outdated programming, and until you understand them, they keep driving the show. By restoring the 5 Pillars of Self — inner strength, self-love, wisdom, intuition, and purpose — women move from juggling survival strategies to living and leading with genuine agency.

3. One Healed Adult Can Change Generations. The ripple effect of one person’s healing is extraordinary. When you shift your own patterns, the impact extends beyond you — into your relationships, your parenting, your clients, your community, and the generations that follow.

Connect with Barb:

Website: ⁠https://your-steps.co.uk⁠

Podcast: Way Out of Childhood Trauma

Upcoming Book: Purposeful Parenting: Applying the Ascendance Method™ to Family Life

Are you a woman entrepreneur who’s been doing all the right things but the growth just isn’t coming? Sometimes what looks like a business problem is actually an alignment problem.

Grab the free Business Growth & Profits Field Guide and find exactly where the gaps are. ➡️ ⁠compassroseconsulting.com/field-guide⁠

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Chart Your Path. Build Your Legacy.

I've been gone from this podcast for a couple of years. And the reason I stepped away? It turns out it's exactly what this show — and everything I'm building — has evolved into.

In this relaunch episode I get real about what happened: caring for my mom through her battle with breast cancer, a major pivot toward cycling, nearly shutting down Compass Rose Consulting entirely — and what stopped me. Plus what's new inside the Business Growth Compass framework, why I rebuilt the leadership section from scratch, and what to expect from the show going forward.

If you've ever tried something that just didn't feel right in your body — and kept doing it anyway — this episode is for you.

IN THIS EPISODE:
— Why I almost closed Compass Rose Consulting for good
— What my own compass told me when I was ready to walk away
— The complete rebuild of the Business Growth Compass framework
— What's inside the Business Growth Hub and three monthly calls
— What's coming up on Visionary Womenpreneurs

👉 Watch the free YOUR WAY training — Why There Is No ONE Way to Business Success:
compassroseconsulting.com/yourway2

🧭 Join the Business Growth Hub — monthly coaching, live calls, and a community of women building their businesses their way:
compassroseconsulting.com/hub

📅 Book a Compass Clarity Call:
compassroseconsulting.com/clarity-call

📘 Get the free Business Growth & Profits Field Guide:
compassroseconsulting.com/field-guide

👥 Join the free Women's Business Growth Project community:
facebook.com/groups/businessgrowthproject

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📸 @donnalynnprice

👍 Like this episode if it resonated
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What does it take to see a problem so clearly you simply cannot walk away from it? For Sherri Combs, it happened in a swimming pool — and in one moment, she saw the entire vision for Silver Streak Senior Services: the logo, the framework, the platform. All of it, fully formed.

Sherri is an award-winning entrepreneur, bestselling author, and senior advocate who spent a decade as a private banker watching seniors and their families navigate a fragmented, fraud-riddled landscape with no trusted guide. Scams were everywhere. Referral lists went stale. Lead-selling platforms turned vulnerable people into targets. Families in crisis were Googling their way through one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives — and finding confusion instead of help.

So, she built something different. A nationwide vetted platform connecting seniors, caregivers, and the businesses that serve them with honesty, integrity, and heart. Every business on Silver Streak has passed criminal background checks, licensing and insurance verification, and reputation reviews. No shortcuts. No lead selling. No compromising the people she built this for.

Three developers told her it couldn't be done. She sat down, learned to code, and proved them wrong.

And she didn't stop there. Sherri also founded the Silver Streak Foundation — a nonprofit dedicated to fraud awareness and prevention education for senior communities nationwide. She delivers training through senior centers, Rotary clubs, and community organizations, teaching seniors and caregivers how to recognize and stop scams before they cause harm.

In this episode we cover:

• The swimming pool moment when the entire vision arrived at once — logo, framework, and all
• Why the current way we search for senior services is fragmented, broken, and dangerous
• How Silver Streak vets every business on the platform: background checks, licensing, insurance, and reputation reviews
• Three web developers, one determined founder, and what she did when they said it couldn't be built
• Her four-step Silver Streak It framework for scam protection: Pause, Verify, Reach Out, Delete
• The Just In Case Plan: why aging planning matters as much as estate planning — and the conversation every family needs to have before the crisis hits
• How Silver Streak is funded: membership fees as low as $1 for seniors, free for veterans and first responders, with proceeds donated to the nonprofit
• The seven-phase vision for where Silver Streak is going — and why she's not waiting to get started

3 Things You'll Take Away

1. Your vision is your protection. Three developers told Sherri it couldn't be done. Her clarity about what she was building — and her refusal to settle for anything less — is what kept her moving. When you know what you're building and why, obstacles become detours, not dead ends.
2. Integrity is a business model. Silver Streak isn't free to list on because free platforms can't be trusted. The vetting process is the product. When safety and trust are your differentiators, you build differently — and that's exactly the point.
3. Plan for the aging, not just the dying. Most families have a funeral plan. Very few have an aging plan. The Just In Case Plan fills that gap — and the conversation Sherri teaches us to have is one every family needs.

Connect with Sherri: silverstreakseniorservices.com | Facebook: Don't Fall for It! Silver Streak It | Don't Fall For It! SILVER STREAK IT! Scam Awareness Group |

Book: https://silverstreakseniorservices.com/book info@silverstreakseniorservices.com | 888-478-2885

Resources from Donna: Field Guide: compassroseconsulting.com/field-guide

YOUR WAY Training: compassroseconsulting.com/yourway

Business Growth Hub: compassroseconsulting.com/hub

Clarity Call: compassroseconsulting.com/clarity-call