A Novel by Sherry Helgoe, Psy.D.
What Went Well
A Psychologist, Seven Women, and Eight Weeks That Changed Them All
Seven women, fluent in the language of being fine. Eight sessions to let themselves be known.
River Grove Books · Greenleaf Book Group
“The conversations that change us most are rarely the ones that give us answers. They’re the ones that help us hear our own voice.”
From What Went Well
About the Book
At the end of every session, Dr. Hannah Erickson asks her group one question:
What went well?
It sounds simple. It never is.
One evening each week, seven women take their seats in her circle, each one fluent in the language of being fine. They arrive as strangers, polished and careful, carrying what they are not yet sure they can set down. Over eight sessions, as the room becomes safe enough to trust, they begin to let themselves be known. In the room. In their kitchens at midnight. In all the hours between sessions, when the things said in the circle follow them home.
Hannah has spent her career making rooms like this one safe. She also belongs to a circle of her own, a member and not the guide, because she knows what steadiness can hide: she can listen so well she forgets what it feels like to be heard.
Told through the sessions, the lives the women live between them, and the journal Hannah opens after the last chair empties, What Went Well is a novel about what it costs to stay fine, the truths that surface only in the company of witnesses, and what becomes possible when seven strangers decide, one careful sentence at a time, to be seen.
By the final session, every woman in the circle will have answered Hannah’s question.
So, quietly, will you.
Meet Hannah and the Women in the Room
The first night, as Hannah sees it.
Hannah stands at the door, welcoming each arrival. She has done this for twenty-five years, and she knows that everything matters: every movement, every silence, every choice of seat. The circle is already telling a story in the way the women arrange themselves. She reads it the way she reads everything, quietly, completely, and keeps what she sees for the journal she will open after the last chair empties.
- AnnaArrives first, chooses the seat nearest the door, and maps the room with quick, methodical eyes, as though memorizing every way out.
- FionaEnters in a rush of jangling bracelets and breathless apology, her warmth filling the doorway before she does.
- BethanyCarries a canvas tote that reads Mom Life in cheerful script, and holds it in her lap a little too tightly.
- GraceMoves unhurried, composed, as though she has come from a pleasant lunch rather than a life. Nothing about her is accidental.
- ClaraHovers at the threshold, a large sketchbook clutched to her chest like something between a shield and an offering.
- EvelynWears her tailored blazer like armor, silences her phone with practiced efficiency, and crosses her arms before anyone has said a word.
- ZaraSlips in last, cheeks flushed, glasses sliding, reading the room the way young therapists do when they have not yet learned how to simply be in one.
Seven chairs taken. The eighth belongs to Hannah. What each woman is carrying, and what she does with it, is the book.
The Author
Sherry Helgoe, Psy.D.
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor
Professor of Group Therapy, Pepperdine University
Dr. Sherry Helgoe is a licensed marriage and family therapist and licensed professional clinical counselor who holds a doctorate in psychology. For more than twenty-five years she has led therapy groups, and for eighteen she has taught the next generation of group therapists at Pepperdine University, in theory, in practicum, and in the room itself. She has sat with the stories women carry beneath competence, caretaking, and the demands of an ordinary life, and for more than three years she has done something more unusual still: she has taken a chair in an international therapy group of her own, not as the guide but as a member.
What Went Well is her debut novel, and it exists because she has lived on both sides of the circle. It is also group therapy as it actually happens, not the version television invents. Real emotion, real work, real change.
She lives in Southern California with her husband and their dogs. When she is not in the room or the classroom, she is most likely with family and friends, traveling internationally, or somewhere on the open road in their Airstream, happiest near the ocean or in the mountains.
A note on the characters: no woman in these pages is drawn from a single real client. Each is a composite, shaped by the emotional patterns that surface again and again in the group room, and each is a portrayal I hope you find some part of yourself in. The privacy of my clients and my students is, and always will be, absolute. What is true here is not any one person’s story. It is the patterns we share: how we relate, how we love, and what we carry from the families that shaped us.
For Readers, Book Clubs, and Speaking Events
Ways into the circle
The Eighth Chair
A free companion journal for readers who want to do the group’s work alongside the women: the turning points, the inner critics, the letters to a younger self. Eight sessions. Your pace.
Coming soonBook Clubs
A reading guide built for real conversation, with discussion questions for each week of the group and a closing ritual to end your meeting the way Hannah ends hers: with what went well.
Guide arriving at launchSpeaking & Events
What happens in a room where people stop performing fine? Dr. Helgoe has spent twenty-five years finding out, first as the therapist leading the circle, then as a member inside one. Her talks bring that room to yours.
Inquire about speaking
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