Hiya Heroine
You’re not in a crisis. You’re between chapters.
And you’re not on one journey. You’re on a stack of them. They’re all running in parallel, calling to you at different volumes, and all making demands at once. Several are always in the messy middle, and the single-journey midlife map you were handed can only describe one at a time. That’s why you feel fragmented.
It isn’t personal failure. It’s the wrong map.
The Heroine Society gives you a different map. We use story structure as the diagnostic, and multiple simultaneous journeys as the frame. Writing through your journeys is the practice that keeps them moving toward the life you want. Most midlife reinvention treats your life as one big transformation. It isn’t. It’s four or five journeys running at once, and you can’t think your way through them. You have to write.
Stop Performing. Start Designing. …by writing your way through your next chapter.
I’m Lisa-Marie Cabrelli. I’m a novelist, essayist, PhD, and a woman who’s never been good at staying in one lane. I live between Scotland, Italy, The Bahamas, and South Carolina / Brooklyn with my table-dancing husband. He keeps me adventuring. I keep him out of jail.
Here’s why I created the Heroine Society…
I used to perform the ideal woman for a living. Theatre, film, and the literal voice of Victoria’s Secret. I was the pretty young saleswoman in NYC in a tight pencil skirt and high heels eating steak with mediocre white men while they signed my sales order. I was the perfect corporate robot, watching the boys get promoted over me (who I then had to train to do the job I should have had). I know exactly what it costs to perform the version of femininity everyone wants, because I was paid to be it. Then I left.
I built businesses from scratch and sold one for seven figures because it was about to blow up and get huge, and I didn’t want huge. I wanted free time to spend with my daughter and long walks with my husband. The man who bought it was sure something must be wrong with it, because why would anyone walk away from that much momentum? Which was the whole point. I’d rather run something moral, generous, and mine than something maximised.
I’ve published seven novels, earned a Masters and a PhD in creative writing, and lived all over the world. And I grew up inside the same operating system you did. You know the one, it priced our worth as service to other people and called it love.
The work here is the work I’m doing on myself, in public, with a notebook.
Who this is for
You’re done performing the “good woman” everyone expected
You want intellectual discourse, not cheerleading
You’re designing yourself. Not reinventing, not fixing
You want community around ideas, not obligations
You’re moving through your 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond with intention
You want to practice being fully human in an increasingly artificial world
Who this isn’t for
You want 5-step formulas
You want polished inspiration (I’m messy and honest)
You’re not ready to do the actual work — and the work, mostly, is writing
This is a room for women. That’s structural, not incidental.
How this place works
Every week, a free Journal Prompt — the question. A reframe for women reclaiming identity, creativity and agency, ending in a prompt you take into your own writing.
Every week, a paid Quest — the answer. The printable workbook that walks you through the whole heroine’s journey, applied to one small problem, in one sitting. The prompt names the thing; the Quest gives you the practice to do it.
And The Story Room — where the work goes public. A quarterly Salon accompanied by a quarterly Magazine that takes your writing seriously, and provides real paid publication opportunities.
What you get
Free
Weekly Journal Prompts. These are the questions that start you designing your second act instead of performing it
The Story Room Magazine, and free submission opportunities
Paid — $9.95 / month · $90 / year
The Story Room — the live quarterly Salon, publication opportunities, and the downloadable Magazine
Weekly Quests — the workbook that turns each prompt into action
The full Quest Library — every past Quest, yours to keep
If you want soothing affirmations, this isn’t your place. But if you’re ready for some real talk about what it actually takes to rewrite your story (by actually putting that sparkly pen to actual real paper), then welcome. You’re in good company.
We’re cat people, and we’ve fostered kittens and cats all over the world. Here’s a collage of some of our babies…
