Six months into being a stay-at-home Mom and  working on a doctorate while teaching at a university at night, Meg Myers Morgan confronted her husband, Jim, with an admission.

Her pace was driving her insane.

“So, I came home one night, and I handed the baby very gently to him, and I said, `I’m really, really struggling,” Morgan said. “`And what I’m struggling with most is I need you to change so substantially in this relationship, and I for the life of me cannot come up with one benefit as to why you would do that.

“`What would be in it for you? You don’t have societal pressures to do this’…He said, `You at your best is the benefit.’”

That was among a litany of poignant and humorous anecdotes delivered Thursday by Morgan, the keynote speaker at the second installment of the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s Women’s Programming Series.

At the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa and Casino, she relayed motivational gems to about 270 attendees through the backdrop of her bestselling novel “The Inconvenient Unraveling of Gemma Sinclair,” the top seller in 2025 at Magic City Books in Tulsa.

“This unraveling will take work, but, ladies, those knots will take your life,” she said. “If you are not spending time untangling these discomforts that you feel, we’re going to lose you…”

Morgan encouraged women to be intentional about reweaving their lives while navigating hurdles.

“Our knots don’t bind us as much as our fear of loose ends does,” she said.

Morgan poked fun at 19^th century author Henry David Thoreau, who was quoted as saying, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

She gave his words a gender-amending twist.

“We’re going to say that most women lead lives of unconscious anger,” said Morgan, adding that women, to the detriment of their health, mask rage via self-criticism, jealousy and helpfulness.

“There is no one angrier than a helpful woman,” she said. “`Just let me do it.’”

“…So, if I’m helpful to you today, you probably pissed me off.”

Morgan stressed the importance of therapy, meditation and journaling when confronting personal and professional crises. She also told the audience to build an internal vetting network for requests.

“A `yes’ should take a lot more to get to,” she said. “Your `yesses’ should be pretty minimal…I promise you, a ‘no’ does not dry up the well.”

The final 2026 installment of the Women’s Programming Series will feature Lauren Sweeney on September 24 at the Mayo Hotel. Chamber members can register for the event by clicking this link.

The series is sponsored by Bank of Oklahoma, Summit Financial Group and Williams.