“The minute she said it, it hit so hard. I have been through the wringer, and some parts of me are not okay.”
We sat down with Kirsten Gunnerud, and one thing she said still hasn’t let go of me.
She told us about the messages that poured in after she shared her latest breast cancer diagnosis. One friend sent a long, heartfelt note: “My heart breaks for you; I’d do anything to take this away.” Completely sincere—but also, Kirsten says, one more thing to carry.
“It was shared with so much love and good intention, and it still added weight to something that doesn’t need more weight.”
I myself have sent notes like that, and you probably have too. It never occurred to me that the person on the other end might be spending energy managing my feelings about her diagnosis.
I met Kirsten a year ago at a Park City Arts Council event, in one of those rooms where everybody’s making pleasant conversation and nobody’s really saying anything.
She wasn’t doing that. So, in late July, the three of us sat at Kiln with coffee: Kirsten, me, and Jacquie, our assistant publisher. It didn’t hit me until afterward that we’d spent the morning in a room built for people to work near each other, while Kirsten explained why she’s building a different kind of space.
That gap between what we mean and what actually lands runs through much of her story. It’s also why the two things she’s building here work: WIN (Women’s Inspired Network) and The CoLAB, her new space at Junction Commons.
Tiffany Wickes tells you how Kirsten got here, the whole arc of it, in the piece running alongside this one. I would like to talk about the hour we spent with her.
This isn’t an “overcoming” story. Kirsten is still in what she and I have started calling “the messy middle.” The part nobody puts on a postcard, where most of us actually live. It’s hard. Sometimes scary. It’s also where the growth happens.
“I’m Fine” Is a Full-Time Job
The first time she got sick, she told almost no one.
“We’d just been through two cancer losses, and the sudden loss of my son’s friend’s dad. I didn’t want to add the worry that saying the C-word would create at that time.”
It felt like the generous choice, she says. Later, when the truth came out, it came with anger and confusion from people who loved her and hadn’t been let in. Silence has a price tag, too.
So the second time she tried openness, the support was immediate. What most people didn’t know was everything else she’d been carrying for five years—not because she was hiding it, but because she’d gotten used to living in it. When the full picture surfaced, including the financial strain underneath it, things got complicated. Then a trusted friend looked at her and said, Kirsten, you’ve been through the wringer.
“The minute she said it, it hit so hard. I have been through the wringer, and some parts of me are not okay.”
My stomach dropped. I know that posture. I’m fine, I’m functioning, don’t worry about me. It holds up, right until somebody says the true thing out loud.
Kirsten is good at hard things, and at igniting other people’s confidence that they can handle theirs. Which is exactly why she needed somebody else to say it for her. Her friend’s words turned out to be a gift.
It has taken her months to find words for any of this—the woman who does this for a living, learning to do it for herself.
What WIN Actually Is
If you’ve been to a WIN gathering, you know it’s not a normal networking night. Women talk business, but the conversation almost never stays on the surface, and that’s on purpose. Kirsten builds the events around a hunch that we’re all carrying more than we let on, and that real connection is what we’re short on.
The pressure to look put-together is wearing us down, so nothing is off the table: the good stuff and the hard stuff, the grief and divorce and parenting and money and doubt. Not as finished stories, but as things still in progress. She also keeps nudging people past “comfortable.” Improv nights, for one, where you might pee your pants laughing.
“We’re hiding all this stuff because we think we’re supposed to show up in this Instagram-perfect way,” she admits. “I think that’s causing more trouble than good.”
What convinced her was what she kept hearing one-on-one:
“You find out that almost everyone is navigating a lot behind the perfect pictures, and holding it alone because survival feels like it depends on it. Then you see the relief when they finally share it. So many people’s greatest gifts come out of that.”
It isn’t always smooth. Kirsten told us about a night when a woman who loves being home with her kids found herself explaining that choice to another attendee who couldn’t accept it. Holding space isn’t a neutral act. Sometimes it means stepping in.
She doesn’t claim to have it figured out. She’s intrigued by the question: How do you make room for everybody’s differences without letting the room turn on somebody? That’s leadership, whether or not she’d use this word.
The CoLAB: A Building for It
What WIN is in spirit, The CoLAB is becoming in square footage. Tiffany’s piece has the actual tour. What stuck with me is why.
Kirsten doesn’t describe it like a coworking space. It’s an experiment in being around each other differently: less performing, more building, and less fear, more joy. A place where you can pitch a startup, grieve somebody, and rethink your whole life without anyone telling you you’re doing it wrong.
She keeps coming back to improv, which she’s studied for years.
“My improv mentors, Rob and Gary, taught me to let go, notice more, and use everything. When you get good at those three things, you can find the offer in anything that shows up and work with it, even if it sucks. Which is literally how I’ve navigated the last five years.”
That’s what The CoLAB is really teaching. Sit in the not-knowing together, notice what’s true, and build from there.
The Domino Effect
What Kirsten does in a room, we’re trying to do in a mailbox.
She’s spent years building spaces where women can set down the polished version and say the true thing out loud. That works beautifully with 20 people around a table. Our magazines land in mailboxes across the Wasatch Back every month. So, we asked her:
What if we did it together?
Here’s the theory, and she’s watched it play out at WIN. One person tells the truth, and it gives the next person permission. That honesty reaches somebody else. It’s slow, it isn’t tidy, and it works. A room holds 20 of those; a magazine can hand it to a whole valley.
Why We’re Doing This
This piece starts a series we’re calling “The Messy Middle,” and Kirsten is going first. That’s not a small thing to do.
We’re not asking anyone to hand over the hardest thing while they’re still standing in it. For a lot of people, that’s too much, and it isn’t ours to request. Kirsten chose to—that was hers to choose.
What we’re after is the real version, the hurdle you got over. The year you’d rather not repeat. How you found your way through, and what you learned about yourself doing it. Most of us skip that middle part—it was bad, then I got past it—which leaves whoever is standing in it right now without a map.
The polished version doesn’t connect us to anybody: It’s the true one that does. Somebody reading this is in the middle of the exact thing you already came through and has no idea anyone else has been there.
With Kirsten, two things are true at once. She’s been through the wringer, and some parts of her are still not okay. She’s also the one building the rooms where the rest of us can be honest about ours. She’d say that isn’t a contradiction.
The mess is the mulch. Things grow out of it. Her story isn’t neat, and she’d say so first. But what she’s doing feels quietly radical: Show up as you are, stay curious, keep going, and don’t forget to laugh along the way.
Together: through the messy middle.
Any content, resident submissions, guest columns, advertisements, and advertorials are not necessarily endorsed by or represent the views of Best Version Media LLC (BVM) or any municipality, homeowners associations, businesses, or organizations that this publication serves. BVM is not responsible for the reliability, suitability, or timeliness of any content submitted, inclusive of materials generated or composed through artificial intelligence (AI). All content submitted is done so at the sole discretion of the submitting party.
