The Power of Your Pause Expands Into a National Conversation With Multi-City Tour
Atlanta, Georgia – September 2026 – What began as a book signing in Atlanta is becoming something much bigger. Psychotherapist, author, professor, and mental health expert Dr. Moniek Garside is taking The Power of Your Pause: From Autopilot to Awareness – The Transformative Power of Stillness on the road with The Power of Your Pause: Coffee, Conversation & Community Tour, a multi-city experience designed to create space for meaningful conversations about rest, awareness, boundaries, burnout, connection, and intentional living.
The Atlanta book signing in July 2026 marked the beginning. Surrounded by readers, supporters, friends, and community members, Garside saw firsthand that people were not simply interested in buying a book. They were ready to have a deeper conversation. A conversation about what happens when life moves so quickly that we stop checking in with ourselves. A conversation about the pressure to constantly produce, perform, achieve, and keep going. Perhaps most importantly, a conversation about giving ourselves permission to pause.
From a book signing to a movement of conversation
“The Atlanta event showed me that this message needed to go beyond the pages of the book,” says Garside. “People are tired. They are navigating transitions, carrying responsibilities, managing expectations, and often doing all of it without creating space to ask themselves, ‘How am I really doing?’ I realized that we needed spaces where people could come together and have those conversations.”
That realization became the foundation for the Coffee, Conversation & Community Tour.
Rather than approaching the tour as a traditional series of book signings, Garside intentionally created an experience centered around connection. Each stop invites attendees to slow down, engage in an intimate fireside-style conversation, reflect on their own relationship with rest and productivity, and connect with others in the room. The goal is simple: create spaces where pausing is not something people have to earn.
Why this conversation is needed now
We live in a culture that often celebrates being busy. Full calendars can become symbols of success. Productivity can become intertwined with identity. Rest is frequently postponed until everything else is finished, even when “everything else” never seems to end.
For Garside, who has spent more than two decades working across social work, mental health, healthcare, education, and clinical practice, the consequences of constantly operating on autopilot are familiar.
Burnout. Disconnection. Difficulty setting boundaries. Chronic stress. Feeling successful on paper while feeling depleted internally. The Power of Your Pause challenges the idea that slowing down means falling behind. Instead, Garside invites readers to see the pause as a place of awareness.
“When we pause, we give ourselves an opportunity to notice,” Garside says. “We can notice what is working, what is no longer serving us, what we are carrying, and what may need to change. The pause is not about doing nothing. It is about creating enough space to become intentional about what comes next.”
That message is now moving from the page into communities around the country.
The power of your pause tour
Following the Atlanta launch, the Coffee, Conversation & Community Tour will continue with stops in:
Chicago – September 2026
Houston – October 2026
Tampa – February 2027
Las Vegas – March 2027
Los Angeles – April 2027
Raleigh/Durham – May 2027
Washington, D.C. – June 2027
Each city will offer its own experience while remaining grounded in the same purpose: bringing people together to pause, reflect, connect, and have honest conversations about how we are living. Coffee is intentional. Conversation is intentional. Community is intentional.
In a time when so much of our connection happens through screens, Garside wants the tour to create opportunities for people to sit together in real spaces and engage with one another beyond surface-level interactions.
More than self-care
Although conversations about pausing are often categorized as self-care, Garside believes the concept reaches much further. Learning to pause can influence how people lead, parent, work, communicate, make decisions, establish boundaries, navigate relationships, and respond during seasons of change. It can also create an opportunity to recognize when the pace of life is no longer sustainable.
“The pause gives us information,” Garside explains. “Sometimes it confirms that we are aligned with where we are going. Other times, it shows us that something needs to shift. But we cannot hear ourselves clearly when everything around us, and within us, is constantly moving.”
That is why community is such an important component of the tour.
Garside does not want attendees simply to listen to her talk about the importance of slowing down. She wants them to participate in the conversation, hear the experiences of others, reflect on their own lives, and leave thinking differently about what it means to live intentionally.
Atlanta was just the beginning
The Atlanta launch may have celebrated the release of a book, but it also revealed the beginning of something larger. Now, as The Power of Your Pause travels from Atlanta to Chicago, Houston, Tampa, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Raleigh/Durham, and Washington, D.C., the mission continues to evolve. The tour is about books, but it is also about people. It is about creating rooms where achievement does not have to be the first thing discussed. Where people can acknowledge that they are tired without feeling as though they have failed. Where boundaries, rest, reflection, and intentionality can exist alongside ambition, leadership, success, and growth. Where community reminds us that we do not have to navigate every season alone.
“My hope is that people leave these experiences feeling like they gave themselves permission to be present,” Garside says. “Maybe they leave with a new boundary. Maybe they recognize something they need to release. Maybe they reconnect with a part of themselves they have ignored. Or maybe, for a couple of hours, they simply allow themselves to stop moving so fast. That matters too.”
For Garside, that is ultimately what The Power of Your Pause is about. Not escaping life. Not abandoning ambition. Not adding another wellness task to an already overwhelming list. It is about learning to create enough space within our lives to actually experience them. Atlanta was only the beginning.
About Dr. Moniek Garside
Dr. Moniek Garside is a psychotherapist, mental health expert, professor, author, speaker, and founder of FitLife Wellness. With more than 20 years of experience in social work, healthcare, mental health, and education, her work centers on helping individuals move beyond survival mode and toward greater awareness, alignment, and intentional living.
She is the author of The Power of Your Pause: From Autopilot to Awareness – The Transformative Power of Stillness and founder of The Social Work Collective, a professional community supporting emerging social workers as they transition toward clinical licensure. Through her clinical work, writing, teaching, speaking, and community initiatives, Dr. Garside continues to advocate for mental wellness, sustainable self-care, healthy boundaries, and creating space for people to live and lead with greater intention.
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Dr. Moniek Garside
