You don’t have to earn the right to speak your truth. Your lived experience is already enough. You’re not waiting for a title, a degree, or someone else’s permission to name what’s true for you.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chanchal Garg.
Chanchal Garg is a speaker, executive coach and facilitator at The Stanford Graduate Business School. She is also the author of Unearthed: The Lies We Carry & The Truths They Bury.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was born and raised in the U.S., the daughter of Indian immigrants. Like a lot of kids in the diaspora, I grew up trying to balance two very different worlds. One told me to be obedient, self- sacrificing, and deeply devoted to my culture. The other told me to be independent, outspoken, and ambitious.
Each had its strengths, but neither gave me full permission to be me. I was raised to be a ‘good girl,’ which really meant don’t question, don’t take up too much space, and definitely don’t challenge the people in power. A lot of that was wrapped in love and tradition, but it also meant I learned to measure my worth by how much I could carry, and how quietly I could do it.
That conditioning didn’t disappear as I got older. It shaped how I moved through the world, and how I ended up in some of the most painful experiences of my life. It also made me pay attention to how power operates in families, in faith, in leadership.
Now, as a coach, author, and mother, I’m doing the work of unlearning what kept me small, and I’m helping others do the same. My book, Unearthed, and the work I do with women leaders is all about reclaiming voice, power, and presence. Because when women, especially those who’ve been taught to doubt themselves, start trusting their inner knowing, the ripple effect is real. It changes everything.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
The book I grew up on wasn’t a novel, it was The Ramayana, a sacred Hindu epic I was taught to revere. I read it not just as a story, but as instruction. Sita, the wife of Rama, was held up as the ideal woman: devoted, obedient, endlessly self-sacrificing. When she asked for something, a golden deer, she was kidnapped, and her honor questioned forever. The message was clear: when women desire, speak up, or stray from their role, they suffer.
I absorbed that deeply. I fasted and prayed for a ‘good husband,’ thinking that was the pinnacle of a woman’s purpose. I didn’t know any stories of South Asian women who challenged that narrative or who had made themselves the center of their own spiritual journey. When I did find books later, like Eat Pray Love or Conversations with God, I was struck by how these authors allowed themselves to question, to want, to wander. It inspired me, but I still didn’t see myself reflected in them.
Then, about five years ago, I found The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. It tells the Ramayana from Sita’s perspective. For the first time, I saw a version of Sita who didn’t just endure, she spoke. She questioned. She stood in her truth, especially when Ram betrayed her. Reading that was incredibly healing. It gave language to a part of me that had been waiting to be seen.
That’s part of why I wrote Unearthed. Because stories shape us, whether they confine us or set us free. When women who’ve been taught to shrink begin to see themselves in stories of power, choice, and self-trust, it changes what feels possible. I’m not the first woman to reclaim her voice. But I hope my story becomes part of the chorus that helps others do the same.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Yes, mistakes can be incredible teachers. I can’t share much from my coaching or facilitation work because of confidentiality, but I can tell you a funny one from my days running a yoga studio.
I’m directionally challenged . . . a lot. Right and left? Not my strong suit. If you’re teaching yoga, this is a bit of a problem. One day, I was leading a class and confidently cued everyone to lift their left leg into a posture that clearly required the right. I didn’t catch it until I looked around and saw a room full of students trying to contort themselves into something that made no sense. The looks on their faces said it all.
I was mortified in the moment, but later, I laughed. I realized yoga isn’t about getting it perfect, it’s about presence. So, in my next class, I owned it. I told them I have no idea what side is left or right and started using things like ‘the leg closest to the window’ or ‘the arm on the door side.’ It actually made things clearer, and it humanized the experience.
I learned that I don’t have to fake perfection to earn trust. Owning my quirks was disarming and connecting. The minute I stopped trying to get it all ‘right,’ my students relaxed, and so did I.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
I wrote Unearthed to interrupt silence, especially the kind women are taught to keep in order to be seen as good, loyal, or strong. Too often, women, particularly South Asian women, are raised to prioritize obedience over agency, harmony over truth, and endurance over choice. We’re celebrated for how much we can carry, not how clearly we can speak. That silence becomes generational. It’s inherited, internalized, and expected.
With this book, I wanted to break that cycle. I wanted to show what it looks like to reclaim your voice after years of grooming, gaslighting, and spiritual bypassing. I wanted to show that reclaiming your voice doesn’t have to mean abandoning your culture. It can mean reshaping it in a way that honors truth.
The social impact I’m aiming for is both individual and systemic. I want women who’ve been silenced by family, faith, institutions, or internalized fear, to feel seen and less alone. I want them to see that it’s possible to hold both grief and power, heritage and autonomy.
I also want to challenge the larger systems that make it so hard for women to name harm in the first place, systems that reward compliance and punish dissent, especially when it comes from women of color. If Unearthed gives even one woman permission to question, to speak, or to stop apologizing for her own knowing, that’s social impact. That’s where change begins.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
There are many stories in the book that shaped me, but one that stays with me most vividly is the moment I decided to discard every picture and item tied to my abuser. I was pregnant with my daughter at the time, and something primal in me knew that I could not welcome her into the world while that man’s presence lingered in mine. The trash can at home didn’t feel like enough. I needed to him gone completely.
So I packed up my car with all things related to him, photos, objects, memories. I placed the pictures face-down so I wouldn’t have to look at his eyes. And I drove, shaking, until I found a set of dumpsters behind a casino. The sun was setting and no one was around, but I still felt watched. He had once been my spiritual teacher, my ‘guru,’ and I had seen him as god. In that moment, every part of me was battling the fear of what it meant to throw ‘god’ away.
I grabbed armfuls of remnants of this demon and threw them into the dumpster. Then I came to the largest photo, the one that had once sat on my altar for years. I hurled it in, but it ricocheted off the side and flew onto the pavement. There was glass shattered everywhere. My heart stopped. My fear was real, but so was the fire rising in my body. I picked it up, hands trembling, and threw it in again. This time, it landed. Hard. I still remember the sound it made. This time, I didn’t flinch. I felt something shift. I felt power.
That moment taught me something I carry into my work and life every day: Fear and power often show up together. One doesn’t cancel out the other. Sometimes, our clearest strength comes in the exact moment we feel most afraid. And sometimes, the most sacred acts of reclamation happen in places as unholy as a dumpster behind a casino.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
There wasn’t a single aha moment. It was more like a slow turning toward something I couldn’t ignore anymore. Every time I spoke even a small part of my story, something in me began to settle and soften. And at the same time a fire or ferocity began to rise.
At first, I wasn’t thinking about writing a book. I just wanted my children to know who I am, not the version I had been trained to perform, but the whole story. The one that had been silenced. I thought about the women in my lineage who never got to tell the truth, not because they didn’t have one, but because there was no room for it. I thought about my daughter and my son. I knew I didn’t want silence to be their inheritance.
I started to wonder: what if speaking up didn’t just free me? What if it reached backward and forward? What if it could offer some kind of release for my ancestors, and for those still learning how to trust their own voice?
In my coaching work, I sit with powerful women leaders and changemakers all the time who carry old stories of doubt and disconnection. The details are different, but the pattern is familiar: the pressure to be good, the fear of being too much, the ache to belong without disappearing. I saw pieces of myself in every conversation. I realized this wasn’t just my story. It was a thread in something much larger.
So, I started writing. I didn’t know if I would finish. I definitely didn’t know if I would publish. I just knew I had to follow it. Slowly my writing became a commitment, not just to the truth, but to the women who are still waiting for permission to speak theirs.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
A client of mine was in a longtime business partnership. On paper, it was a 50/50 split. In practice, she was being treated like she worked for him. He questioned her decisions, blocked necessary purchases, avoided accountability, and consistently made her feel like she had to justify her presence in the company she helped build.
She kept trying to “do better”, to adjust her tone, to try a new strategy, to smooth things over. That’s something I see so often with women: when a dynamic is broken, we assume we just haven’t done enough. We try to fix what was never ours to fix.
When we worked together, it became clear: her feedback to him had always been framed around how she could change. She was tiptoeing around his behavior instead of naming it because that’s what she’d been trained to do. That’s what so many of us have been trained to do. To soften. To accommodate. To make it work.
The truth was that she wasn’t the problem. She was a skilled, visionary leader whose cofounder was threatened by her power and riding on her success. When I reflected that back to her, something shifted.
It wasn’t a quick or easy turnaround. She was understandably scared. His past behavior had shown her that speaking up would have consequences. Instead of choosing between fear and power, she chose to walk with both. She gave voice to the truth, named what was no longer acceptable, and when it became clear he wouldn’t change, she left. On her terms.
She didn’t just exit a partnership. She reclaimed her freedom. She rebuilt, this time with boundaries and cofounders who respect her leadership. Now she’s not just leading a business, she’s building a future where she never has to shrink to be safe.
That’s the work. Not just helping women find their voice, but helping them remember it was never lost. It was just waiting for the space to speak.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
- We can’t talk about healing without talking about access to care that honors complexity. It’s not enough to say therapy is available. We need therapists and programs that truly understand the layered realities of daughters of immigrants and women of color whose values may not fully align with what’s considered ‘mainstream’ in everyday America, even though they’re integrating in their own way.
When you’ve grown up in between worlds with cultural expectations on one side and western norms on the other, healing can be complex. Without that context, therapy can feel like just another place where you have to explain or defend your experience. True healing happens when you don’t have to translate yourself just to be believed. - We need to plant the seeds much earlier. Young people deserve honest conversations about gender, power, and consent, not just in theory, but in the context of real life. They need to know how to recognize manipulation, how to trust the signals their body is sending, and how to name harm when it happens — even when it’s subtle and even when it’s someone they were taught to respect.
If I had learned those things at thirteen instead of thirty, my life might have looked very different. I know I’m not alone in that. - We also need to protect those who dare to tell the truth. Whistleblowers and truth-tellers, especially women navigating spiritual, workplace, or family systems deserve real protection. Too often, the cost of speaking up is shouldered entirely by the survivor. They’re expected to keep the peace, preserve the image, and carry the shame.
Cultural loyalty should never be weaponized into silence. Naming abuse is not betrayal. It’s integrity. It’s leadership.
This isn’t just about helping individuals heal. It’s about shifting the conditions that made silence feel safer than truth in the first place. That’s where the real impact begins.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
To me, leadership is about staying rooted in your truth, especially when the world around you would rather you stay silent. It’s not about having a title or a following. It’s about how you move. How you make decisions. How you listen to your own voice when it’s easier, or safer not to.
So much of my work, and my own journey, has been about unlearning the roles I was taught to play in order to be seen as good, acceptable, or worthy. That unlearning is at the heart of leadership for me. Real leadership asks: What have I internalized that kept me small? Am I willing to let that go? Not just for me, but to create space for others to do the same?
Leadership means choosing alignment over approval. It means making choices that reflect your values, not just your fears. This is rarely clean or easy. It requires sitting with discomfort, with tension, with moments that don’t resolve right away. It’s about being able to hold space for complexity, your own and other people’s, without rushing to fix or smooth it over.
I believe leadership starts from wholeness, not perfection. When we lead from a place of trying to prove or perform, we disconnect from ourselves. When we lead from our full, integrated selves, messy, clear, in process, and grounded, that’s when people feel something real. That’s when trust is built. That’s when change begins. Real leadership doesn’t end with one person, it ripples outward. The most powerful leaders are the ones who create space for others to rise, to lead in their own way, and to do the same for those who follow.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
1. You don’t have to earn the right to speak your truth. Your lived experience is already enough. You’re not waiting for a title, a degree, or someone else’s permission to name what’s true for you.
I cannot count the number of times my own experience has been questioned or minimized, sometimes by others, and sometimes by the voice in my own head. I remember telling my father, as a child, that I didn’t like the way an older man had tickled me. I was told he was just being loving, and asked why I would feel uncomfortable with that. That moment stayed with me, not just because of what happened, but because of how quickly I learned to doubt what my body was telling me. It took years to reclaim the idea that my truth is valid, even when it’s inconvenient or dismissed.
2. Not everyone will understand your choices, and that doesn’t make them wrong. Clarity does not require consensus.
So many of the choices I’ve made, leaving the ‘guru,’ stepping away from religion, changing my name, were met with confusion, even judgment. Every time I ignored my inner voice to maintain someone else’s comfort, I lost a piece of myself. Listening to myself, even when it was hard, is what gave me clarity. That’s how I began to access my power. It didn’t happen by being understood by everyone. It happened by being honest with myself.
3. You can honor your culture without obeying all its rules. You’re not abandoning your roots, you’re evolving them.
This one took me a long time to learn. I tried so hard to embody what I thought a “good” East Indian woman should be: obedient, self-sacrificing, always putting others first. It came at a huge cost. I burned out. I ignored my needs. I stayed in situations that harmed me. Eventually, I realized I couldn’t keep honoring my culture if it meant abandoning myself. Now I hold both: reverence for where I come from, and permission to shape it in ways that allow me, and my children to thrive.
4. Rest is part of the work. You don’t have to prove your worth by burning out.
I was raised to believe that productivity equaled value. If I wasn’t constantly doing, I questioned whether I was enough. Over time, I’ve learned that rest is not a reward. It’s a necessity. It’s where clarity comes from. It’s how I stay connected to what matters. Rest isn’t what takes me away from my work, it’s what makes the work possible.
5. You’re allowed to change your mind. Evolving isn’t a weakness. It’s what integrity looks like in motion.
For a long time, changing my mind felt like failure, especially when people around me took it personally or questioned my credibility. I’ve come to understand that growth is a form of integrity. It means I’m willing to stay honest with myself, even as that honesty shifts. Integrity isn’t about clinging to old truths, it’s about aligning with what’s real now. That means giving ourselves permission to evolve, to adjust, to choose again, not because we’re inconsistent, but because we’re listening.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
– Audre Lorde
This quote has lived in my bones for years. I return to it again and again, not because I’ve outgrown fear, but because I keep learning to not let fear lead.
There were so many moments in my life where I didn’t speak, where I questioned what I knew, where I stayed quiet to protect others, to keep the peace and to belong. For years, I was taught that obedience was strength. That silence was grace. That doubt meant humility. None of those things helped me find my voice.
When I finally began to name what had happened to me, to speak the truth I had buried for so long, I was terrified. I still am sometimes. This quote reminds me that power doesn’t mean fear is gone. It means I’ve decided my vision matters more. That the truth I carry is worth more than the comfort of staying quiet.
Every time I step into a room to speak, every time I coach a woman through her own reckoning, every time I put words on a page, I hold this quote close. Because I’m not doing it to be fearless. I’m doing it to be free.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
If I could have a private breakfast or lunch with anyone, it would be Glennon Doyle.
I started following her after Love Warrior and have been drawn to her ever since. There’s something about the way she questions norms, not all at once, but slowly, honestly and with humility. That has always resonated with me. She doesn’t pretend to have it all figured out. She talks openly about learning the same lessons again and again. I’ve done that too.
Untamed cracked something open in me. It got me thinking seriously about writing my own book to get my voice out into the world in a way that felt true. Glennon gave me language for things I hadn’t said out loud yet. I have found her humility, her compassion, her humor and her wisdom to be disarming and deeply grounding. What I admire most is not just her writing, but how she’s evolved, how she’s moved from surviving to choosing, from coping to living with fierce integrity.
I see her as a warrioress, not just wrestling with personal demons, but naming and challenging the cultural systems that keep us quiet, small, or exhausted. I love that through it all, she holds motherhood with such reverence. She reminds us that our babies . . . all babies . . . are everyone’s babies. That we belong to each other.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
www.chanchalgarg.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/chanchalgarg22/ Instagram: Chanchal_Unearthed
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Chanchal Garg Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.