Malu Journey Dinner: The Connect Experience
A Dinner for the Version of You Who Doesn't Have to Hold It Together
This is not your typical networking dinner. A licensed therapist and a networking coach are both in the room, not on a panel, not presenting. At the table with you.
Because there's a particular loneliness in walking into a room full of people when, privately, you're grieving. Grieving the life you were sure you'd have by now. The friendship that quietly ended. The marriage, the title, the version of yourself you spent a decade building... gone, or going. And the cruelest part? The exact moment you most need connection is the moment every instinct screams: cancel, stay home, don't let them see you like this.
So you isolate. You call it "I'm just busy." You network with your résumé voice while the real you sits in the car afterward, depleted.
This dinner is for that gap between who you're trying to be in a room and who you actually are right now, juggling aging parents, growing kids, a career in flux, and a grief you haven't fully admitted to yourself.
Over a slow, unhurried meal we're bringing together a therapist, a coach, and a small group of people who are quietly carrying their own version of this. You're not the only one at this table who's canceled plans, gone into autopilot, or just run out of gas. Together, you'll work through what genuine connection actually takes and walk away with tools you can use, not just a good conversation.
You'll learn how to network as the real you (not the polished one) and why that's the version people actually want to know. How to stop performing "fine." How to let your nervous system trust a room again. And how the relationships you build from honesty outlast every contact you ever collected from pretending.
Come hungry. Come tired. Come exactly as you are.
This is the table where you don't have to hold it together to belong.
Food and beverages are not included. Estimated at $150 per person minimum, subject to menu selection and beverages purchased, payable at the end of the evening via cash, Venmo, or Zelle.
