Brandon Torres Declet didn't begin his career expecting to spend the next two decades building companies around drones, robotics, and autonomous technology. In fact, when he started working in national security, the commercial drone industry as we know it today barely existed. His early career took him into places where technology was viewed through a very different lens. As counsel with the NYPD Counter Terrorism Bureau and later as National Security Counsel in the U.S. Congress, Torres Declet worked on questions involving security, intelligence, policy, and emerging technology. The work taught him to think beyond whether something was technically possible. He had to consider how technology would actually be used, what could go wrong, and how institutions would respond when innovation moved faster than existing rules. Years later, those same questions would follow him into entrepreneurship. “I think I learned pretty early that technology does not exist by itself,” Torres Declet says. “You can have an extraordinary piece of technology, but somebody still has to figure out where it fits, who needs it, how it gets used, and whether it actually solves a problem.” That idea has become a recurring theme in his career. Brandon Torres Declet saw more than a flying machine As Torres Declet moved deeper into the commercial drone industry, drones attracted plenty of attention. What interested him was not simply the aircraft. He was thinking about what businesses could actually accomplish with them. That distinction eventually helped shape MEASURE, the company he founded in 2014. Instead of expecting businesses to become drone experts, MEASURE focused on using drones to do useful work across industries such as energy, infrastructure, agriculture, and insurance. The idea sounds fairly straightforward today. At the time, it required convincing companies to think differently about a technology many were still trying to understand. “There was a lot of excitement around drones, but excitement does not create a business model,” Torres Declet says. “We had to get past the novelty of the aircraft and understand what the customer was trying to accomplish. If the customer needs an inspection or better information about an asset, the drone is only part of the answer.” That experience changed how he thought about emerging technology. Being early could create an advantage, but it could also mean spending years educating a market. A founder could be right about where an industry was heading and still be wrong about how quickly customers would get there. The work therefore became as much about timing, operations, and customer behavior as it was about technology. Building the company was harder than proving the idea As MEASURE grew, Torres Declet encountered a problem familiar to many founders. The challenges changed as the company became larger. The question was no longer simply whether customers wanted drone services. The company had to hire people, develop repeatable processes, manage increasingly complicated operations, and determine which parts of the business could scale. MEASURE also developed Ground Control, software designed to help manage drone missions and the information they produced. Torres Declet saw a significant difference between proving that an idea could work and building an organization capable of delivering it repeatedly. “A founder can spend a lot of time thinking about the product, and that makes sense because the product has to work,” he says. “But eventually you realize that you are also building a company. You are building teams, processes, customer relationships, and a way of making decisions. If those pieces do not work, having a great product does not rescue you.” His later experiences leading and advising other drone and technology companies reinforced that lesson. Growth brought more resources and opportunities, but it also brought more complexity. That has made Torres Declet more cautious about treating size as a measure of success. Growth can solve problems and create new ones After years of operating companies, Torres Declet still believes in ambitious growth. What has changed is how he evaluates it. Adding employees can give a company capabilities it desperately needs. It can also create more layers of communication and management. Raising capital can allow a business to invest in products and opportunities that were previously out of reach. It can also make it easier to spend money around problems that should have been solved another way. Acquisitions create the same tension. Torres Declet has acquired and integrated businesses, and the experience taught him that the most visible part of a transaction is often the easiest to understand. “People see the announcement, but that is not where the value gets created,” he says. “Afterward, you have employees who need direction, customers who have questions, different systems, different products, and sometimes very different ways of working. You have to make all of that function as one company.” That experience has made him more interested in organizational capacity. A company may have enough capital to make an acquisition without having enough management attention to integrate it properly. It may be able to afford another 20 employees without the structure needed to make them effective. For Torres Declet, growth is valuable when it makes the company more capable, not simply larger. Robotics has brought him back to an old question Today, Torres Declet's work in autonomous robotics has brought him back to a question familiar from his national security years: What happens when the technology encounters conditions its creators cannot completely control? This matters because autonomous systems are increasingly being designed for difficult environments. Robots may need to operate underground, inside complex structures, around industrial sites, or in defense settings where GPS and reliable communications aren't guaranteed. For Torres Declet, this is where robotics becomes particularly interesting. A machine that performs well when every system around it is functioning correctly has demonstrated something useful. A machine that can recognize uncertainty and respond intelligently when those systems disappear has demonstrated something more. “I am always interested in what happens when the conditions change,” he says. “If GPS is no longer available or communications drop, what does the machine do? Does it understand enough about its environment to keep operating safely? Does it know when it should stop or return? Those situations tell you whether autonomy is actually useful.” The same thinking applies to companies. Business plans are built on assumptions, just as autonomous systems operate on information about their surroundings. Eventually, reality changes something. A market moves more slowly than expected. An acquisition proves harder to integrate. A product needs to change. Capital becomes more expensive, or a customer behaves differently than the model predicted. The organization's quality becomes visible in how it responds. Experience has changed what Brandon Torres Declet looks for Torres Declet's career has now taken him from government and national security into entrepreneurship, public-company leadership, drones, and autonomous robotics. He has been a founder, CEO, board director, investor, and operator. Yet the years have not made him more certain that there is a formula for building successful technology companies. If anything, they have made him more interested in the questions that come after the big idea. He wants to know whether customers will actually use the technology, whether the organization can deliver what it promises, and whether growth makes the company stronger or simply larger. He also wants to know what happens when the assumptions behind a plan prove wrong. “I think experience makes you a little less impressed by the announcement and a lot more interested in what happens afterward,” Torres Declet says. “The idea matters, and the technology matters, but then you have to build something around it that can survive the real world.” That may be the most consistent thread running through Brandon Torres Declet's career. He has spent years working with ambitious ideas, but his attention keeps returning to execution. The interesting part is not simply imagining what new technology could make possible. It is doing the much less glamorous work required to make that possibility useful.

An idea planted on a baseball field. Some careers start with a plan. Daniel A Ruhl's started with an injury. He was a junior at Jenks High School, playing varsity baseball, when he hurt his shoulder. The months that followed, spent in physical therapy rebuilding strength and range of motion, gave him a front-row seat to something he hadn't expected: rehabilitation wasn't just about fixing pain, it was about giving someone their confidence back. That idea, small as it seemed at the time, became the thread running through everything he has built since. Ruhl is now a physical therapist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, working in outpatient orthopedic rehabilitation. But the big idea he carried out of high school wasn't a business plan or a growth strategy. It was a conviction about what recovery is actually for. Turning a personal experience into a professional philosophy Plenty of people go through physical therapy and simply move on. Ruhl went the other direction. He enrolled at the University of Oklahoma to study health and exercise science, then spent his undergraduate years volunteering in sports medicine clinics and shadowing orthopedic surgeons, athletic trainers, and physical therapists across central Oklahoma. He wanted to understand the whole system a patient moves through, not just the part he had personally experienced. That decision to look beyond his own case is part of what shaped his later approach. He didn't want to treat injuries the way a textbook describes them. He wanted to treat the person in front of him, because he remembered being that person. He carried the idea further at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, where he completed his Doctor of Physical Therapy degree. His clinical rotations covered orthopedic rehabilitation, sports medicine, neurological rehabilitation, acute hospital care, and more. Each rotation added a different lens to the same original question: how does a person get their life back after something goes wrong with their body? Bringing the idea into practice After finishing his doctorate, Ruhl came back to the Tulsa area to start his career. The idea he'd been building since high school, that rehabilitation is about restoring a life and not just repairing a joint, became the operating principle of his daily work. It shows up in how he structures a treatment plan. A teenager recovering from an ACL tear and a retiree recovering from hip replacement surgery are not on the same protocol, even if parts of their anatomy overlap. Ruhl builds each plan around what the patient actually wants to return to: a starting lineup, a golf swing, or simply the ability to get down on the floor and play with a grandchild. The clinical techniques, manual therapy, functional movement analysis, and the rest are tools in service of that goal, not the goal itself. He has also taken the idea into teaching. As a clinical instructor for Doctor of Physical Therapy students completing internships, Ruhl passes along more than technique. He works with students on clinical reasoning, patient communication, and documentation, the parts of the job that don't show up in a textbook diagram but shape whether a patient actually trusts the process. Several of his former students have gone on to open practices of their own across Oklahoma and neighboring states, which means the original idea that recovery is personal keeps traveling well past his own clinic. Why the idea still holds It would have been easy for Ruhl to let his early experience fade into a nice origin story he mentions once and moves past. Instead, it still shapes decisions he makes with patients today, decades later. He works with people managing shoulder injuries, rotator cuff recovery, low back pain, and balance disorders, among other conditions, and he treats each one as a variation on the same question he asked as a teenager on crutches: what does this person need in order to get back to their life? Outside the clinic, Ruhl keeps a version of that same restoration instinct alive in his own time. He and his father have spent years restoring classic pickup trucks together, a hobby built on patience and small, visible progress, not unlike the work he does with patients five days a week. The idea he brought to life wasn't a single invention or a company. It was a way of thinking about a job that most people assume is purely clinical. For Daniel A Ruhl, it started with a sore shoulder and a good therapist, and it has quietly shaped every patient he has treated since.

Karmen is a Speech Pathologist, business owner, and reflective practitioner exploring what sustainable service looks like at the intersection of allied health, leadership, motherhood, and faith. In this interview, she shares her journey of redefining success, learning the importance of boundaries and compassionate systems, and exploring how people-focused leaders can create meaningful work without losing themselves in the process. Karmen Fairall, Speech Pathologist and Reflective Practitioner You describe this season as redefining what sustainable service looks like. What led you to question the way you had been working and leading? The turning point came through two significant moments close together. First, my body forced me to slow down through an unexpected hospital admission. Shortly afterward, I realised that the business I had worked so hard to build had moved from a healthy surplus into a place where it was no longer financially sustainable. My first response was fear, followed by disappointment and frustration with myself. I felt deeply disappointed because something I cared so much about was no longer operating the way I had hoped. The hardest part was that my decisions had always come from a place of care. I wanted to create the kind of workplace I would have wanted to be part of, so I invested heavily in my team, their development, and creating a supportive environment. What I learned was that generosity and sustainability are not the same thing. Caring for people well requires more than good intentions. It requires clear boundaries, healthy systems, and wise stewardship. This season has reshaped how I understand leadership, not as carrying everything, but as creating something that can continue to serve people well. Looking back, what were the earliest signs that serving others was starting to come at too great a personal cost? Looking back, the earliest signs were not simply that I was tired. They were that I had tied too much of my identity to being productive, dependable, and needed by others. Ten days after giving birth to my second son, I experienced complications that resulted in an unexpected and sustained hospital admission. But what stands out most to me is what was happening before that moment. I gave birth on a Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning, I was already messaging my team. I had not even told them I had welcomed my baby because I felt I could not step away. At the time, I did not recognise this as a warning sign. I saw it as a commitment. I was struggling to understand how to be both a mother and a business owner, and I carried an unrecognised belief that if I was not actively contributing, I was letting people down. Looking back, I feel sad that I didn't give myself more permission to fully enter that season. What I wish I had understood then was that the business could wait, my recovery, my health, and my connection with my baby mattered too. That experience became a turning point. It showed me that sustainable leadership requires more than commitment and responsibility. It requires the humility to recognise our own humanity, our seasons, and our need for support. You often say that healthy boundaries are only part of the solution. Why do compassionate systems matter just as much? Boundaries are essential because they help us understand what we are responsible for and what we are not. However, I have learned that boundaries alone are difficult to sustain without compassionate systems around them. This became one of my biggest leadership lessons while building my allied health practice. I created the business from a place of genuine care. I wanted my team to feel valued, supported, and to have the kind of workplace I would have wanted myself. What I underestimated was that care also requires clarity. I had built a business heavily reliant on my ability to provide support, but I had not created enough shared understanding around expectations, accountability, and how each person contributed to the sustainability of the organisation. Compassionate systems are not about control. They create the clarity and structure that allow people to thrive. In clinical practice, when a client is not progressing toward a goal, we do not ask, "Who has failed?" We review the supports, the environment, and what needs adjusting. I now believe organisations deserve the same compassion. When something is not working, the question is not, "Who is the problem?" but, "What structure or support is missing?" How has leading an allied health practice changed your perspective on what good leadership looks like? Leading an allied health practice has changed my understanding of leadership in many ways. When I first started my business, my motivation was simple. I wanted to help people. I wanted to create a workplace where clinicians felt supported, valued, and able to do meaningful work. One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that good leadership requires both compassion and clarity. My natural tendency has always been to support people and maintain harmony. However, I learned that avoiding difficult conversations or allowing unclear expectations does not ultimately serve anyone well. Sometimes the most caring thing a leader can do is create clarity, even when that clarity feels uncomfortable. This experience also changed my understanding of the kind of leadership I want to offer in the future. I no longer believe sustainable leadership is about one person carrying the weight of everyone else's success. It also taught me that being liked and being an effective leader are not always the same thing. It is about creating shared responsibility, healthy systems, and environments where people understand how they contribute. I still deeply value leadership, but I see it differently now. Leadership is not about being responsible for everything. It is about creating the conditions where people can contribute, grow, and flourish together. Motherhood, leadership, and clinical work all place different demands on you. How have those experiences shaped the way you approach service today? Motherhood has probably challenged my understanding of service more than anything else. Before becoming a parent, I was very comfortable being the person who gave, supported, and solved problems. Motherhood showed me that my capacity is finite and that this is not a weakness. My children have also become incredible mirrors. They remind me that presence matters more than productivity. They do not measure me by my achievements, my inbox, or how much I have accomplished. They experience me through connection. Clinical work has reinforced the importance of meeting people where they are rather than where we think they should be. Motherhood has deepened that understanding. Together, these experiences have shaped my belief that sustainable service requires compassion, not only toward others, but toward ourselves. We cannot create environments where people flourish if we are constantly operating beyond our own limits. What does reflective practice look like in everyday life, and how has it helped you make more sustainable decisions? Reflective practice has always been part of my clinical identity as a Speech Pathologist, but I have learned that it is just as important personally. For me, reflection is creating space to pause and ask better questions before simply reacting. It looks different depending on the season, sometimes it is prayer, conversations with my husband, gardening, working with my psychologist, or simply creating quiet moments where I can process what is happening internally. I have always been someone who thinks deeply and analyses situations carefully. That can be a strength, but I am also learning that reflection needs to lead toward self-compassion and action, rather than becoming another place to criticise myself. The question I return to most often now is, "How am I showing up for the people I love, whilst also honouring what I need to remain healthy and present?" That question has helped me reconsider success, work, and service. Sustainable decisions are not just about what I can do. They are about what allows me to continue showing up well. For someone working in a helping profession who feels stretched too thin, what is one practical change that can make the biggest difference? The practical change I would encourage is creating a pause between feeling responsible and taking action. For many people in helping professions, the instinct to respond is incredibly strong. We notice needs, we want to help, and we often move quickly into problem-solving mode. But before adding another strategy, commitment, or responsibility, I think we need to pause and ask better questions. "Is this actually mine to carry?" "Does this expectation fit the season I am currently in?" "What support do I need to sustain this?" One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that our capacity changes across seasons. The goals and expectations we set for ourselves need to reflect our current reality, not an idealised version of ourselves. Sometimes the most sustainable choice is to do less. It is letting go of the expectation that we need to be everything for everyone. Care is not measured by how much we carry. It is measured by how intentionally we show up. Your faith is an important part of your leadership philosophy. How has it influenced the way you define purpose and success? My faith has significantly shaped the way I understand purpose, leadership, and success. One concept I have been reflecting on is the biblical tradition of Sabbath and rest. In Jewish tradition, the day begins at evening, with rest coming before work and productivity. This challenges the way I naturally approach life because my instinct has often been to achieve first and rest afterward. My faith continues to remind me that my worth is not found in what I accomplish, but in who I am. It has shifted my understanding of success from simply achieving outcomes to considering the people, relationships, and values impacted along the way. At the same time, I have learned that caring about people also requires stewardship. Compassion and sustainability need to go hand in hand. For me, purpose is not about doing more. It is about being intentional with what I have been given, my time, relationships, gifts, and opportunities, and asking whether the way I am living reflects what truly matters in the long term. As you continue exploring coaching, nonprofit leadership, and strengths-based practice, what kind of impact do you hope to have on the future of service-based leadership? As I continue exploring coaching, nonprofit leadership, and strengths-based approaches, I hope to help people who serve others create healthier, more sustainable ways of working. My own journey has shown me that passion and commitment are not always enough. People can care deeply and still become overwhelmed when there is not enough clarity, support, or structure around that care. I am particularly interested in supporting allied health leaders, nonprofit teams, and purpose-driven organisations who want to create cultures where both people and outcomes can flourish. I am continuing to discern what this next chapter will look like, but I know the thread that matters to me is helping people feel better equipped. Whether through writing, coaching, leadership development, or future consulting work, I want to contribute to conversations around sustainable service, where compassion and accountability can exist together, and where people do not have to lose themselves in order to make a meaningful difference. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Karmen Fairall

Written by Sarah Maynard, Wellness & Health Coach for Moms Sarah Maynard is a BGN-certified lifestyle coach for tired and overwhelmed mothers. She is the founder of Body & Mind in Harmony and creator of a group program, built on her belief that nervous system regulation comes before any other wellness goal. If you've ever felt guilty for taking twenty minutes to yourself, you've probably also heard the word that makes it worse–selfish. It's one of the most damaging words in modern motherhood, because it quietly convinces mothers that their own needs are a threat to everyone else's. As a Beroepsvereniging Gewichtsconsulenten Nederland-certified lifestyle coach who works with overwhelmed mothers every week, I want to challenge that word directly. Self-care isn't selfish. It's maintenance, the same kind of maintenance you'd never skip on anything else that has to keep running day after day. Self-care is maintenance, not a reward Most mothers only think about self-care once they've completely run out of gas. It becomes the emergency bubble bath after a meltdown, the last-resort coffee alone in the car. But treating self-care as an emergency measure is like changing your car's oil only after the engine has already seized. Maintenance works because it happens before the breakdown, not after it. Your nervous system needs the same logic. Small, regular moments of rest, breath, movement, and connection keep you running. They're not a reward you earn once everyone else's needs are met. What happens when maintenance gets skipped The scale of what's at stake here is bigger than most mothers realize. A recent workplace mental health analysis found that 93% of mothers report feeling burned out, a rate far higher than fathers report. Research keeps confirming what that number suggests. A review of burnout prevention strategies found that self-care directly mediates the relationship between stress and burnout, meaning it's not just a nice add-on. It's one of the actual mechanisms that determines whether chronic stress turns into full burnout or not. Add to that the guilt layer. A BabyCenter survey found 94% of mothers experience parenting-related guilt, and a large share of that guilt shows up specifically around self-care itself. In other words, most mothers are running on empty and feeling bad about trying to refill the tank. That combination is exactly why burnout among mothers has become so normalized, not because mothers don't know self-care matters, but because guilt keeps talking them out of it. Why "selfish" is the wrong word Selfish implies taking something away from someone else. But a mother who is regulated, rested, and has some sense of herself outside of her role has more patience, more presence, and more capacity for the people she loves, not less. The opposite is actually true. Running on empty is what takes something away. It's what shows up as snapping at your kids over nothing, feeling resentful toward your partner, or going through the motions of a bedtime routine without actually being present for it. Self-care doesn't compete with taking care of your family. It's what helps you do it well, consistently, without quietly falling apart in the background. What self-care actually looks like day to day Self-care doesn't need to be big, like a spa day or a solo weekend away. Those things are nice, but they're not realistic maintenance for most mothers' actual lives, and waiting for them means going long stretches without any maintenance at all. Real, sustainable self-care looks smaller and more frequent: a daily check-in with yourself before the day takes over, a few minutes of conscious breathing when you feel your body tense up, stepping outside for air before you respond to something that upsets you. These aren't complex extras. They're the small, repeatable habits that keep your nervous system from tipping into overwhelm in the first place, which is exactly the approach I walk through in the first episode of my YouTube series, How to Mom, Guilt Free. The ripple effect: How your regulation affects your kids One more piece of this often gets missed. Your children are learning what self-care looks like by watching you, not by hearing you talk about it. A mother who never takes a moment for herself is quietly teaching her kids that this is what being a grown-up, or being a mother, requires. A mother who protects small pockets of rest and regulation, even imperfectly, models something different: that taking care of yourself isn't optional, and it isn't something you apologize for. That lesson tends to matter more, long-term, than almost anything else you could teach. The takeaway Self-care isn't a luxury, and it isn't selfish. It's maintenance, the ongoing, unglamorous upkeep that keeps you able to show up for the people who depend on you. The guilt that tells you otherwise isn't protecting your family. It's just keeping you depleted. If you want to go deeper into why this matters and how to actually start practicing it, I unpacked all of this in the first episode of my YouTube series, How to Mom, Guilt Free. Watch the episode here. It's short, honest, and made for exactly the mother reading this. You matter too. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Maynard Sarah Maynard, Wellness & Health Coach for Moms Sarah Maynard is a BGN-certified lifestyle coach who helps overwhelmed mothers reconnect with themselves before trying to fix anything else. After navigating motherhood without a nearby support network and drawing on 8 years as a youth care facilitator, she built her practice around one contrarian idea. Nervous system regulation has to come first before diet, fitness, or any habit change can stick. She founded Body & Mind in Harmony to guide mothers aged 25-45 through this shift, offering 1-on-1 coaching, a group program, and in-person community events. Her message to every mother she works with is simple. You matter too.

Melinda Thomas is an Empowerment Coach for Women, Sacred Activations Practitioner, and founder of Rise Within, Glow Without, a movement for women in mind, body, and soul. She is passionate about helping women get unstuck, reclaim their inner power, and rise beyond survival mode while creating space for growth and new possibilities in their lives. In this interview, Melinda explores the practical, energetic, and intuitive layers of her work, why feeling stuck may have more beneath it than we realise, and the role identity can play in creating lasting change. She also shares what empowerment can look like as layers begin to shift, creating space to grow and thrive. Melinda Thomas, Empowerment Coach for Women What inspired you to return to coaching with a specific focus on helping women to reclaim their inner power? My inspiration came from my own lived experiences and my desire to keep other women from feeling as broken or alone as I once did. At one of my lowest points, I reached out for professional support, only to find providers were full. I remember thinking, “If no one else can have my back right now, I need to have my own back.” Personal growth has been a big part of my life. I explored various modalities and undertook practitioner training. When I returned to Sacred Activations, which I first crossed paths with in 2011, something felt different. It felt like coming home. I began experiencing lasting shifts and a sense of inner contentment, even on challenging days. Working with women feels like a calling, a strong intuitive pull. Through women's stories and conversations, I recognised parts of my own experiences: losing confidence and a sense of identity within motherhood, carrying more than they reveal, feeling alone or living in survival mode. I knew I needed to share what I had learned. At the heart of my work is something I want women to understand: you are not broken, even if you feel like you are in the moment. What you have experienced does not have to define who you are or the life you desire to live. “There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are holding experiences that were never fully processed or cleared.” – Melinda Thomas How do Sacred Activations and intuitive guidance complement the empowerment coaching you offer women? Sacred Activations, intuitive guidance, and empowerment coaching work together across three different layers: practical, energetic, and intuitive. Empowerment coaching is the practical layer. It gives women skills, tools, techniques and processes they can learn and implement in their everyday lives. But we can have all the practical tools and still find ourselves unable to shift what may be happening beneath the surface or holding us back. Sacred Activations complements my coaching by working with the energetic layers, the unseen energetic imprints of past experiences we may not consciously be aware of. As a practitioner, I act as a channel for the energy while running the activations. Intuitive guidance adds another layer. Information and messages come through that can offer insight into what may be contributing to why the client is feeling stuck. It also overlaps with Sacred Activations, as I receive intuitive guidance on which activations to run, or sometimes when not to run an activation at all. Together, the practical, energetic and intuitive layers allow me to support women on multiple levels. What does helping women move forward without repeatedly retelling or reliving past pain look like in practice? The Sacred Activations process is the same whether I’m working one-to-one or with a group, and sessions can be done online from the comfort of their own homes. Clients can sit comfortably, close their eyes and take some slow, deep breaths while I ground them and begin running the activations. They don't need to retell their story, relive painful experiences, or dig into their past. There are also no processes or techniques for them to learn. They don't need to get anything right or worry about doing anything wrong. They can sit quietly and have their own experience. They can even fall asleep if they want to. There are periods of silence, or if an intuitive question comes through, I may ask it. At the end of the session, I share any intuitive guidance or messages that have come through, with the client's permission. Clients are then invited to share their experiences with me if they choose. People may notice different sensations, emotions or responses during a session, while others may notice very little at the time. Each person’s experience is individual, and there is no right or wrong way to experience a session or to feel afterward. With Sacred Activations, the energy is understood to continue running for up to 30 days after a session, allowing the process to continue while clients go about their everyday lives. How can a woman recognise when she is genuinely thriving rather than simply becoming very good at surviving? In my experience, when you're surviving, most of your energy goes into getting through day to day, and it can feel like life is happening to you. You're getting everything done, and you appear to be coping. Underneath, you're running on empty. Your own needs can fall to the bottom of the list. Boundaries can become harder to hold, and there can be little energy left for the things that bring you joy. When you're thriving, you have the energy to live your life, be more intentional about how you spend your time, and choose what brings you joy. You're more inclined to take care of your own health and personal wellbeing. You begin to hold your boundaries more confidently. Your dreams come back into focus, and life begins to feel like it's happening for you, not to you. That shift doesn’t only affect you. It can create a ripple effect. The way you show up in life shifts. The energy you bring changes, and in doing so, you can inspire others to rise and create change in their lives too. What do you think is most often overlooked when women feel stuck despite understanding what they want to change? I think what is often overlooked is that feeling stuck may have a purpose. We can know exactly what we want to change or where we want to go, but something may still need our attention before we can move forward. It could be a limiting belief we're not consciously aware of, past conditioning, a repeated pattern that needs to be addressed, an energetic imprint from a past experience, a lesson we haven't yet recognised, or even an opportunity for growth. Sometimes the question isn't, “Why can't I move forward?” but rather, “What is this stuckness trying to show me or communicate to me?” When we become curious about what may be underneath the stuckness, rather than becoming frustrated with ourselves for not being able to move forward, we can begin to see things from a different perspective and perhaps even see opportunities for growth. When you talk about subtle shifts creating profound change, what might a woman begin noticing first in her everyday life? The women I have worked with often say, “I can't explain it, but I just feel that something has shifted.” She may notice it in how she responds to everyday situations. Something that would normally leave her irritated, upset, or frustrated suddenly doesn't affect her in the same way. Overwhelm can begin to lift, bringing greater clarity around what is happening in her life. She can start to feel more optimistic about her life, more open to exploring what she wants and more willing to try new things. She may also notice unexpected shifts in other areas of her life, including within her relationships. That's often how profound change shows up, through shifts in how we feel, respond, and experience everyday life. What role does identity play in creating lasting change, and how do you help women reclaim who they are beyond what they have been through? Identity plays an important role in creating lasting change because how we see ourselves can influence what we believe is possible for us. But the beautiful thing is that our identity isn't fixed. It can evolve, expand, and change as we do the inner work. Through Sacred Activations, I can run activations around things such as confidence and self-belief, while working with limiting beliefs, past conditioning, patterns and energetic imprints that may be holding them back. This can create space for women to expand beyond an identity shaped by what they have been through and reclaim more of who they came here to be. “The beautiful thing is that our identity isn’t fixed. It can evolve, expand, and change as we do the inner work." – Melinda Thomas How have your own experiences with adversity shaped what empowerment means to you today? My experiences have shaped what empowerment means to me in so many ways. I see an empowered woman as someone who holds her own boundaries and makes decisions she knows are right for her, even when they may not be the most popular decisions with those around her. She uses her voice, no longer shrinks herself to fit in, and becomes less concerned about what others may think of her. She stands tall, stands out, and stays true to herself. Empowerment also means having her own back during challenging times and trusting that she will find her way through a difficult season, while also recognising that she doesn’t have to carry everything alone. It’s knowing she has skills, tools and modalities she can draw on to help her move through those times, as well as the courage to reach out for support when she needs it. For me, empowerment is also about recognising and acknowledging the power we already hold within ourselves, while being conscious of how we choose to use that power. What do you hope women ultimately understand about themselves through the Rise Within, Glow Without, Movement for Women? Ultimately, I want women to understand that even when they feel broken, they are not broken. The power they are looking for already exists within them. Their past does not define them, and neither do the experiences, beliefs, or conditioning they may be carrying. As long as we are here on this planet, there is always an opportunity for change and to create the life we truly desire to live. I want women to recognise that they don't have to dim their light, shrink to fit in or spend their lives surviving. Sacred Activations can support them in shifting limiting beliefs, past conditioning, and energetic imprints, creating space to reclaim their inner power and rise. My vision for Rise Within, Glow Without is for it to continue to grow globally, a movement and community where women rise and uplift one another, feel supported and empowered, and know they don't have to carry their struggles alone. Rise Within, Glow Without is about awakening, uncovering and honouring that power within, in mind, body and soul, so women can stand tall, stand out and stay true to themselves, and create a life they truly desire to live. Follow me on Facebook for more info! Read more from Melinda Thomas

Written by Lovisa Engstrand, Nervous System & Stress Specialist Lovisa Engstrand is a Nervous System & Stress Specialist and founder of The Exhale Collective, dedicated to helping high-functioning women rebuild their internal capacity and overcome chronic burnout. Combining psychology, breath science, and her own health recovery, she guides global clients to regulate their stress through her integrative framework and targeted lifestyle design. It is a Tuesday morning. I am crouched over my husband's groin with my reading glasses on, forensically examining the surgical stitches covering his penis. We have been married for nine months. My mother-in-law is leaning over my shoulder, she wants a better look too. Joel shuts his eyes. He does not flinch. "Looking good," I say, and I mean every word. This is what our first year of marriage looked like. It is the best thing that ever happened to us. The man who lied about being 6 feet on Tinder Joel and I met on a dating app in Sydney a decade ago. He lied about being six feet tall on his profile. On one of our very first dates, though, he told me the truth about something considerably more significant: he had been born with a condition called hypospadias, a urological condition in which the urethra does not sit where it should. Multiple surgeries as a child had given him a functional life, but they had not held. By his late twenties, scar tissue had begun narrowing his urethra again, making it increasingly difficult to urinate. The childhood surgeries had failed. What is hypospadias and why most men suffer in silence For the next seven years, Joel sought eight different medical opinions. Some recommended reconstructive surgery, others urged him to wait. A full urethroplasty, a complete reconstruction of the urethra, was the only permanent solution. But with almost no surgeons experienced in complex cases, and almost no one publicly sharing what success and recovery looked like, he spent years feeling alone with his issue and postponing the inevitable. Eight years of friendship before we became us Although our romance did not take off in those early years, our friendship deepened. We regularly spoke from opposite sides of the world. In 2019, even though we had not seen each other in five years, I was the first person Joel called from a car park after an upsetting doctor's appointment. I did not think much of it at the time. In retrospect, it tells you everything about what we were to each other. It was not until 2023, when I found myself single and completed a writing exercise describing the qualities I wanted in a partner, that I had a startling realization. I was not describing some imaginary future husband. I was describing Joel. We reunited in Los Angeles and fell back in love almost instantly. We married in June 2025 on a tiny Swedish island. Five months after our wedding, the surgery began. What a sexless marriage actually looks like: From the inside Conventional wisdom says a sexless marriage spells trouble. By that logic, Joel and I should have spent our first year bickering over the dishwasher. Instead, we have never felt closer. We train together at the gym, tackle escape rooms, dance in the kitchen while making dinner. We kiss and cuddle with no expectation that it needs to lead anywhere else. If we are intimate, it is focused on my pleasure, which, I joke, has its perks. We have learned, through necessity, that penetrative sex is not the only way to have a fulfilling intimate life. There are more ways to be close to someone than the ones we typically default to when they are available. But I want to be honest, because the honest version is more useful than the tidy one. This year has also genuinely been one of the most demanding of both of our lives. Joel has been through surgery, pain, fear, and the particular kind of loss that comes with having something taken from you, however temporarily, that is tied to identity, intimacy, and manhood. Because of the shame and silence that surround conditions like hypospadias, he spent years feeling completely alone in this experience. Until recently, he had never met another man who had it. He has since started an online support group, and hundreds of men have reached out to share stories they had never told anyone. I have been his primary support through all of it, while building a business, navigating painstakingly slow visa processes, living out of a suitcase across three continents, and trying to process my own experience of a year neither of us chose. No version of this is easy. That's exactly why I want to talk about what made it navigable. What chronic stress does to a relationship Because of the work I do as a nervous system specialist, Joel and I spent more than two years before the surgery preparing, not just practically, but physiologically. Sleep, nutrition, breathwork, stress regulation. Not because any of it could change the surgery itself, but because it meant Joel went into it calmer, stronger, and more resilient than he would otherwise have been. The window of tolerance and what happens when sustained stress narrows it His nervous system was regulated enough to face something genuinely frightening without being completely destabilised by it. That groundwork has mattered more than I can adequately explain during the recovery itself. Here is why. When your nervous system is under sustained load, when cortisol has been elevated for weeks or months, when sleep is disrupted, when there is ongoing physical and emotional stress, your window of tolerance narrows. Things you could previously absorb without reacting now land differently. Small irritations become arguments. Silences become loaded. The person you love most becomes, in certain moments, the person you are least patient with. This is not a character flaw. Co-regulation: Why your partner's nervous system directly affects yours It is physiology. It compounds, because nervous systems are contagious. This is what we call co-regulation: when one person in a relationship is dysregulated, the other person's system picks it up. Two chronically activated nervous systems in a small space during a surgical recovery is not a formula for connection. It is a formula for two people who love each other saying things they do not mean and having to find their way back. The most regulated person in the room has the most influence. I have come back to that sentence more times than I can count this year. Choosing, as often as possible, to be the one who responds rather than reacts, who comes back rather than escalates, is not suppressing your own experience. It is what makes the relationship a safe place when everything outside it is not. Real teamwork is not always 50/50. This year it has sometimes been 80/20, occasionally 90/10. The capacity to carry more when your partner cannot, without resentment calcifying into the load, requires a regulated nervous system underneath the relationship. Without it, the imbalance becomes the story. With it, it is just a season. What this year has actually taught us about marriage It was not a surgeon who ultimately convinced Joel to have this surgery. It was our relationship, and knowing that whatever happened afterward, we would face it together. That is worth naming, because it speaks to the thing I believe matters most in a partnership: safety. Not romance. Not chemistry. The deep, cellular experience of knowing that this person is not going anywhere. Judge your relationship by how you treat each other when things are hard, not when things are easy. Everyone has a good relationship when things are easy. The question is what you find when the ease is gone. What we have found this year, in its least glamorous, least Instagram-friendly moments, is that we genuinely like each other. We make each other laugh. We still choose each other every morning, including the mornings when choosing is a conscious decision rather than an effortless one. This was not the first year of marriage I had imagined. It was something better, it was the year I learned what marriage actually is. Not candlelit dinners or honeymoon stages. Being in a king-sized bed at 9 am with reading glasses on, looking at surgical stitches covering a graft on a penis, and saying 'looking good' and meaning every word. What nervous system regulation looks like when life is actually hard Living through the hardest season of my own life has made the value of this work impossible to overstate. A regulated nervous system does not mean the hard things stop being hard. It means you have something to come back to when they are. That is the difference. I have never been more certain that it matters. This work is available to you If you want to become the most regulated person in the room and stay steady even when things are hard, I am opening two small cohorts: one for my Swedish community and one for my English-speaking community across the US, Canada, and Australia. Small groups, real support, a structured plan, and accountability across three months. This is not a course you do alone. This is a group of women moving through the work together, with me alongside them the whole way. Swedish cohort starts on September 29: Apply here! English cohort (US/Canada/Australia) starts on October 3: Apply here! Both are by application only. Enroll before September 15 for an early bird discount. Learn more about the framework and programme here. You can follow Joel's and my journey on Instagram. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Lovisa Engstrand Lovisa Engstrand, Nervous System & Stress Specialist Lovisa Engstrand is a Nervous System & Stress Specialist and breathwork practitioner working at the intersection of psychology, physiology, and behaviour change. She specialises in helping high-functioning women who feel exhausted, overstimulated, anxious, or stuck in survival mode. Her work is grounded in her own lived experience of training, eating well, and still waking up anxious, bloated, and depleted - until she understood her nervous system. Through her Regulate & Restore Framework, Lovisa addresses stress regulation, sleep, movement, nutrition, and identity to help women rebuild capacity from the body up. She lives between Australia, Sweden, Canada, and the USA and works with clients globally through 1:1 containers & online programs. Please note: This article reflects personal experience and is for informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for medical or psychological professional support. Hypospadias and urethroplasty are complex medical conditions - if you or someone you know is affected, please seek guidance from a qualified urologist. Related articles: Why You Feel Like a Teenager Around Your Family and What Your Nervous System Has to Do with It Why Stress Is Causing Your Constipation and Bloating — And Why Fiber Alone Won't Fix It You're Not Bad at Sleep, Your Nervous System Has Never Been Told It's Safe to Rest

Written by Dr. Hussein H. Rifai, Thought Leader and Chairman Dr Hussein H. Rifai is a global business leader, investor, and company chairman with more than four decades of experience across 85 countries. He writes on leadership, corporate governance, private equity, artificial intelligence, and international business. My own cultural journey has been a slightly complicated one. I was born in Nablus, grew up mainly in Amman, and left Jordan at seventeen. From there, I went to the United States, returned to the Arab world in Saudi Arabia, later spent time in Canada, and eventually made Australia home. Much later, I also spent eight years living in Dubai. Along the way, I worked with people from dozens of countries and travelled through many more. I mention this only because each move required something more complicated than learning where to live, what to eat, or how to get to work. Every country had its own unwritten rules. How you speak to your boss. How you disagree. What family means. How much of your private life belongs to your relatives. What is considered rude, funny, respectable, offensive, or none of anybody else's business. The mistake migrants sometimes make is believing that migration is mainly geographic. You leave Jordan, Palestine, India, China, or Lebanon and move to Sydney, Toronto, or Los Angeles. Your body has certainly migrated. Whether the rest of you has moved is another question entirely. America was my first major cultural adjustment. The individual mattered more than the family unit I had grown up with. Young people were expected to become independent earlier. People spoke to professors and bosses with a casualness that would have seemed strange in Jordan. Ambition was not something to hide. Americans were comfortable telling you what they had achieved and what they planned to achieve next. Canada had similarities, but the edges were softer. Saudi Arabia then moved me back into an Arab environment, but certainly not the same Arab environment I had left. That itself was an education. We often speak about “Arab culture” as though several hundred million people from Morocco to Iraq received the same operating manual. They didn't. Then came Australia. By then, I had learned one useful lesson, when you enter another culture, don't immediately decide that everything they do differently is wrong. That sounds obvious. In practice, it is much harder. Every culture has characteristics that affect work, family, and personal relationships. Australians tend to be informal, direct, egalitarian, and suspicious of anyone who takes rank or status too seriously. Jordanians tend to place greater importance on family, relationships, hospitality, respect, reputation, and social obligations. Neither description applies to everyone, and neither culture is better, but pretending those differences don't exist is equally silly. At work, the differences become obvious very quickly. An Australian employee may openly disagree with the boss in a meeting and think absolutely nothing of it. A Jordanian employee may regard doing that publicly as disrespectful and instead raise the issue privately, or perhaps not raise it at all. The Australian manager can interpret silence as agreement. The Jordanian employee can interpret the manager's bluntness as arrogance. Both go home convinced the other person has a problem. Australians also separate hierarchy from personal dignity more easily. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and the junior employee may call each other by their first names. Someone can challenge my idea without challenging me. In much of the Arab world, relationships, seniority, and the manner in which disagreement is expressed can be just as important as the disagreement itself. Neither approach is automatically right. In Australia, excessive directness can become unnecessarily insensitive. In Jordan, excessive concern about hierarchy can stop people telling the boss something he desperately needs to hear. Having worked in both cultures, I would rather understand the strengths and weaknesses of each than pretend one has discovered the perfect management system. Family life is where adaptation becomes much more personal. Jordanian family culture can be wonderful. Families are close. People show up. Parents remain involved in their children's lives well into adulthood. Hospitality is genuine. If something goes wrong, you can suddenly discover relatives you didn't even know you had offering to help. There is another side. Family involvement can become family interference. Concern can become control. Everybody can know everybody else's business. Privacy sometimes appears to be a suspicious Western invention. A family disagreement can rapidly acquire advisers, commentators, historians, and several people who were not present but nevertheless know exactly what happened. Australia is different. Families can be extremely close, but adulthood usually carries a stronger expectation of independence. Your adult child's decisions are ultimately their decisions. Your neighbour does not need to know where your daughter went last night. Your cousin does not automatically acquire voting rights over whom your son marries. For a migrant, this is where things become complicated because you don't simply observe the difference. You have to decide which rules you are actually going to live by. I have watched immigrants move to Australia and then spend decades recreating the country they left. This is not particularly Jordanian or Palestinian. Almost every migrant community does some version of it, but I know my own community best, so I can make fun of us with greater authority. Some Jordanians and Palestinians effectively build a small Jordan or Palestine in Sydney. They live near each other, socialise almost exclusively with each other, eat the same food, watch Arab television, follow Jordanian or Palestinian politics, use Arabic at home, shop at the same businesses, and sometimes know more about what happened in Amman yesterday than what happened in Australia. The neighbours change, but the neighbourhood in their heads doesn't. Then comes the gossip. Who married whom? Who divorced? Whose daughter was seen with somebody? Whose son is earning what? Who bought a house and how much did it cost? Why wasn't someone invited to a wedding? Why was somebody invited and seated at table seventeen rather than table twelve? We have successfully transported an ancient communications system across continents without requiring fibre-optic cable. The food, incidentally, should absolutely survive migration. I am strongly in favour of cultural integration, but there are limits. Nobody needs to abandon mansaf to prove commitment to Australia. The problem is not keeping your food, language, traditions, or friendships. Those are part of who you are. The problem begins when you move to another country but construct your life so carefully that you never really have to encounter it. There is an enormous difference between living in “Jordan-Australia” and living in Australia. If almost everyone you see socially shares your background, values, and assumptions, adaptation becomes optional. You can live in Sydney while continuing to apply Amman's social rules. Your children, however, cannot. They go to Australian schools. Their friends are Australian, Chinese, Indian, Lebanese, Korean, Greek, Vietnamese, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, and everything in between. They absorb Australian humour, attitudes, and expectations. Then they come home to parents who occasionally appear surprised that Australia has somehow entered the house. This is where migrant parents can make life unnecessarily difficult for their children. Adaptation means accepting that your host society will contain behaviour you don't like. Sometimes behaviour you strongly dislike. You may come from a conservative society and see teenagers kissing in the street. You may see young women wearing clothes you would never have imagined your daughter wearing in Jordan. Your children may date in ways you did not grow up with. Young people may speak to adults with a level of informality that initially feels disrespectful. You don't have to like any of it. That distinction matters. Integration does not require you to personally adopt every Australian habit. I can live happily in Australia without getting a tattoo, wearing shorts to a business meeting, or developing an emotional attachment to Vegemite, but living here does require me to accept that other Australians are entitled to make choices I would not make myself. You cannot move voluntarily into another society and then demand that the society stop offending you. That is part of the bargain of migration. This does not mean abandoning your own values. It means understanding the difference between values you choose for yourself and rules you are entitled to impose on everybody around you. That was particularly important to me in raising children. I never wanted to raise Jordanian children who happened to live in Australia. I wanted to raise Australians who understood and were proud of their heritage. There is a big difference. Heritage gives children roots. It gives them family history, language, food, stories, and an understanding of where their parents and grandparents came from. It should enrich their identity, not imprison it. My children did not grow up in the Jordan I grew up in. Why would I expect them to behave exactly as though they had? They were growing up in Australia and preparing for an Australian future. They needed to be able to form friendships across cultures, operate comfortably in Australian workplaces, make independent decisions, and develop their own identities. If I had insisted that they live according to the social rules of the Amman of my childhood, I would not have preserved their heritage. I would simply have made their lives more difficult. This is perhaps the hardest adjustment for first-generation migrants. We sometimes confuse preserving culture with preserving time. The Jordan I left at seventeen no longer exists exactly as I remember it anyway. Jordanian teenagers today are not growing up as I did. Amman itself has changed enormously. Yet an immigrant can preserve an idealised version of the country from the year he left and then attempt to impose it on children born twenty or thirty years later on the other side of the world. There is something slightly absurd about being more culturally conservative in Sydney in 2026 than your relatives are in Amman. Successful integration, to me, is not assimilation. I don't believe people should erase themselves when they migrate. Australia would be a poorer country if every immigrant arrived and immediately abandoned their language, food, history, and traditions. The better outcome is addition rather than subtraction. Keep the mansaf. Keep the Arabic. Keep the family stories, hospitality, generosity, and connection to where you came from. Teach your children about Nablus, Amman, Jerusalem, or wherever their family story began. Take them there. Let them understand their grandparents and the history that produced them, but also let them belong completely to the country that is actually theirs. After living across Arab, American, Canadian, and Australian cultures, I have become increasingly suspicious of anyone who tells me one culture has all the answers. Each has given me something. Each also has habits I could happily live without. The real advantage of living across cultures is that eventually you realise you are allowed to choose. You can keep the warmth of Arab family life without importing every piece of family interference. You can embrace Australian independence without becoming disconnected from family. You can admire American ambition without needing to announce every achievement before dessert. You can respect tradition without allowing it to dictate your children's future. Perhaps that is what genuine multiculturalism should mean. Not different communities living beside each other while remaining culturally sealed from one another, but people confident enough in where they came from to participate fully in where they are. Migration changes your address almost immediately. Changing your habits takes longer. Changing your assumptions takes longer still. Allowing your children to build an identity different from your own may be the hardest move of all, but if you chose another country to build a future, particularly for your children, then surely that was the point. Give them the roots. Then let them grow in the country you chose for them. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Hussein H. Rifai Dr. Hussein H. Rifai, Thought Leader and Chairman Dr Hussein H. Rifai is a global business leader, investor, company chairman, and thought leader with more than four decades of experience across 85 countries. His career spans multinational corporations, entrepreneurship, investment banking, private equity and corporate governance, advising boards and business leaders on strategy, mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, business transformation and international growth. Holding a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Business Administration, Hussein writes on leadership, corporate governance, artificial intelligence, international business and global competitiveness, combining academic insight with practical experience gained at the highest levels of global business.

Written by Jamie Alexander, CEO, Certified Online Fitness Trainer, and Author Jamie Alexander is the CEO of Living Well With Jamie, a Certified Online Fitness Trainer, and author of the Mind, Body & Soul Fitness Journal, helping high-performing women transform through holistic wellness, fitness, and mindset coaching. What if getting fit didn't require overhauling your life? Most women are stuck believing it's all or nothing when the truth is, small changes done consistently can create big results. If your schedule is jam-packed, but you're tired of putting yourself last, these hacks are made for you. Why do so many women struggle to prioritize their health? Between careers, caregiving, and constantly pouring into everyone else, high-performing women often find themselves burned out and out of balance. The pressure to do it all leaves little time or energy for self-care. And when it comes to fitness, we're often told that success means long workouts, strict routines, and endless discipline. But that's just not realistic. According to the CDC, only 24% of women in the U.S. meet the recommended physical activity guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity. This tells us the problem isn't motivation, it's time, structure, and flexibility. The truth? Fitness can work for your life, not against it – Here's how 1. Start your day with movement, before the chaos begins You don't need to wake up an hour early, just 10 to 15 minutes of intentional movement can activate your body and shift your mindset. A power walk, a set of bodyweight exercises, or a quick dance session can help you take ownership of your day before it gets away from you. 2. Turn phone time into step time Whether you're on a Zoom call, talking to your best friend, or listening to a podcast, use that time to pace around your house or step outside. Walking while talking can easily help you hit 7,000-10,000 steps a day without ever setting foot on a treadmill. 3. Use the "trigger habit" method This technique is simple but powerful: stack a new habit on top of something you already do. Try squats while brushing your teeth, calf raises while waiting on your coffee, or glute bridges before bed. These micro-movements add up to major results over time. 4. Keep dumbbells where you can see them If you keep your weights hidden in a closet, you're less likely to use them. Keep resistance bands or dumbbells in the living room or next to your desk. That visual reminder makes it easy to squeeze in a quick set between emails or during your favorite show. 5. Drink 16 oz of water first thing in the morning Hydration isn't just about skin and digestion – it affects energy, hunger, and even metabolism. Studies show that drinking 500 ml of water can increase metabolic rate by 30% for up to 40 minutes. Start your day hydrated, and your body will thank you all day long. 6. Don't skip strength training Cardio burns calories, but strength training builds lean muscle that helps you burn fat even at rest. If you're short on time, prioritize two or three full-body strength sessions each week. It's one of the most efficient and transformative things you can do for your metabolism, body composition, and confidence. 7. Progress over perfection, always Real talk: you're not going to hit every goal every week, and that's okay. What matters is that you keep showing up, even when it's messy. One imperfect workout is better than none. One mindful meal is better than giving up for the day. Give yourself grace, and keep going. 8. Walk after a meal to support digestion and blood sugar One of the simplest, most overlooked fat-loss hacks? Walking for 10-20 minutes after a meal. This helps regulate blood sugar, improve digestion, and reduce bloating. A 2022 meta-analysis found that post-meal walking significantly lowers glucose levels compared to being sedentary. Bonus: it helps fight that midday energy crash and supports weight loss goals over time. You don't need hours in the gym or a flawless plan to see progress. You need a few smart strategies that align with your life, and the consistency to show up for yourself every day. Start small. Stay consistent. And watch how your energy, body, and confidence shift. Want more strategies like these? Subscribe to my YouTube channel where I share quick workouts, mindset tips, and real-life wellness strategies for women who are ready to transform. Ready to create a fitness and wellness plan that actually fits your life? Let's talk. Click here to book a free discovery call! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Jamie Alexander Jamie Alexander, CEO, Certified Online Fitness Trainer, and Author Jamie Alexander is the founder of the Elite Transformation Accountability Program, helping high-performing, busy moms all around the world prioritize their health and create lasting change. She’s the CEO of Living Well With Jamie, a Certified Online Fitness Trainer, and author of the Mind, Body & Soul Fitness Journal. Jamie’s mission is to help women thrive from the inside out through holistic wellness, fitness, mindset, and sustainable habits. Her work empowers women to feel strong, confident, and in control of their health, no matter how full their plates are. Follow Jamie for real-life strategies, expert insights, and inspiration to live well in every season of life.

Written by Sarah Pearce, Certified Doula Sarah Pearce is a nationally recognized full-spectrum doula, former pediatric nurse, placenta specialist, and midwifery student. With nearly a decade of experience, she supports families through fertility, birth, postpartum, and newborn care. She is the founder of Trinity Doula Services, one of the largest doula agencies in the St. Louis region. Right now, with the Lindsay Clancy trial bringing postpartum mental health into the national conversation once again, many people are hearing terms like postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis and asking questions they may have never considered before, but these conversations shouldn't only happen when there is a tragedy in the headlines. We spend months preparing for a baby. We create registries. We choose car seats. We decorate nurseries. We discuss feeding, diapers, swaddles, pediatricians, and birth plans, but somewhere in all of that preparation, we often forget to make a plan for the person who is about to give birth. Who is going to take care of the mother? Postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and postpartum psychosis are very different conditions, but they have something important in common, families deserve to know about them before they are experiencing them. Maternal mental health shouldn't become a conversation only after someone is already struggling. The postpartum period is more than six weeks There is still a tendency to treat postpartum recovery like a short chapter. Have the baby. Go home. Attend a postpartum appointment. Resume normal life. The postpartum period is a massive physical, hormonal, emotional, relational, and social transition. Perinatal mental health conditions can begin during pregnancy or emerge during the first year postpartum. While we often use the phrase "postpartum depression" as a catch-all, maternal mental health is much broader than depression. A mother may experience depression. She may experience overwhelming anxiety. She may have intrusive thoughts that terrify her. She may experience panic attacks. She may develop obsessive or compulsive behaviors. Much more rarely, she may develop postpartum psychosis. Knowing the difference matters. Postpartum depression doesn't always look like sadness When people picture postpartum depression, they often imagine a mother crying while holding her newborn. Sometimes it looks exactly like that, but sometimes it doesn't. It can look like anger and irritability. It can look like feeling completely disconnected from the baby. It can look like going through the motions of caring for everyone while privately feeling empty. It can look like guilt, hopelessness, loss of interest in things she previously enjoyed, difficulty concentrating, changes in appetite, or feeling like everyone would be better off without her. This is also different from the "baby blues." Mood changes, tearfulness, overwhelm, and emotional sensitivity are extremely common during the first days after birth. Symptoms that are severe, worsening, interfering with daily functioning, or simply making a mother feel like something isn't right deserve attention. A mother does not have to wait until she is suicidal or unable to care for her baby before she deserves help. Postpartum anxiety can hide in plain sight Postpartum anxiety can be especially difficult to recognize because some anxiety after having a baby feels almost socially expected. Of course you're checking whether the baby is breathing. Of course you're worried about germs. Of course you're researching everything, but there is a point where vigilance becomes debilitating. Postpartum anxiety can include racing thoughts, constant feelings of dread, panic attacks, physical tension, inability to relax, difficulty sleeping even when given the opportunity, repeatedly checking the baby, or becoming consumed by fears that something terrible will happen. Some parents also experience intrusive thoughts. This is an incredibly important distinction, having an intrusive thought is not the same as wanting to act on that thought. Intrusive thoughts can be unwanted, frightening, and completely inconsistent with what a mother actually wants. Parents can become so horrified or ashamed by them that they are afraid to tell anyone. That silence can make an already frightening experience even more isolating. We need to create an environment where mothers can tell their providers what is happening inside their heads without immediately fearing judgment. Postpartum psychosis is different, and it is an emergency Postpartum psychosis is rare, but every family should know what it looks like because it requires immediate medical attention. Symptoms can include hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, severe confusion, bizarre or dramatically changed behavior, extreme mood changes, disorganized thinking, and significant insomnia. A person experiencing psychosis may not recognize that what they are experiencing isn't real. That is one of the major differences between frightening intrusive thoughts and psychosis. If a postpartum parent appears to be experiencing hallucinations, delusions, severe confusion, mania, or a significant break from reality, this is not something a family should simply monitor at home. Postpartum psychosis is a medical emergency. Immediate professional evaluation is necessary. If there is an imminent danger to the parent, baby, or anyone else, call emergency services. Can we prevent postpartum mental health conditions? Not entirely. I think it is important to say that clearly. Postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis are medical conditions influenced by many factors. No amount of meal trains, sleep schedules, doulas, supportive partners, or prenatal education can guarantee that someone won't experience them. There is a lot we can do to reduce some risk factors, recognize symptoms earlier, and make sure a mother isn't left to deteriorate unnoticed. Instead of asking only, "What will we do if Mom develops postpartum depression?" we should also ask, "What can we put into place now to protect and support her mental health after this baby arrives?" Protect her sleep Sleep is not a luxury. Yet extreme sleep deprivation is treated almost like an initiation into parenthood. "Just wait. You'll never sleep again." We joke about it. Perhaps we shouldn't. Before the baby arrives, families should discuss what nighttime care will actually look like. Who can take a feeding? Who can settle the baby afterward? Can a partner handle diaper changes and bring the baby to a breastfeeding parent? Can family members take a shift? Could the family hire an overnight postpartum doula if that's financially accessible? Could responsibilities be divided so that each parent gets a protected stretch of sleep? "Sleep when the baby sleeps" is often useless advice. A better question is: How are we going to make sure you actually get opportunities to sleep? Sleep protection becomes particularly important when someone has a history that puts them at higher risk for serious postpartum psychiatric illness. A history of bipolar disorder or previous postpartum psychosis, for example, warrants proactive conversations with qualified medical and mental health providers during pregnancy. Don't wait until the baby is born to figure out what the plan will be. Stop making Mom manage her own help "Let me know if you need anything." It's one of the most common things we say to a new mother. We mean well. We've just given an exhausted person another job, identifying what she needs, figuring out who can do it, reaching out, and asking. Try something different. Bring dinner. Wash the dishes. Refill her water. Walk the dog. Fold the laundry. Take the older children somewhere fun. Hold the baby while she showers. Ask whether she'd like to sleep while you care for the baby. Support should reduce her workload rather than require her to coordinate it. When you visit a postpartum family, remember that you're not only visiting a new baby. You're visiting someone who just gave birth. Take care of her, too. Create a postpartum plan, not just a birth plan Families can spend weeks creating detailed birth plans while giving almost no thought to what happens after they bring the baby home. Before birth, talk about it. Who will provide meals? Who can help overnight? Who are the people Mom feels emotionally safe calling? How will household responsibilities change? What happens when a partner returns to work? Who will notice if Mom stops acting like herself? Does she already have a therapist or mental health provider? Does she have a history of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, trauma, or previous postpartum mental health challenges? What symptoms should prompt a phone call to her provider? What symptoms mean the family should seek emergency care? Where are those phone numbers? Put them somewhere everyone can find them. The person experiencing a mental health crisis should not have to research resources while experiencing that crisis. Screen and then actually follow up Mental health screening should be a routine part of prenatal and postpartum healthcare. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends screening for depression and anxiety at the initial prenatal visit, later in pregnancy, and at postpartum visits using standardized, validated tools. Tools such as the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ 9), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item scale (GAD 7) can help identify people who may need further evaluation. Screening only works when something happens after a positive screen. A checkbox isn't treatment. Families need pathways to further evaluation, therapy, medication when appropriate, community resources, follow-up, and emergency care when necessary. Mental health also shouldn't be assessed at one postpartum appointment and then forgotten. The transition into parenthood continues long after that appointment. We need to ask better questions Sometimes "How are you doing?" is too easy to answer with "fine." Ask something more specific. Are you sleeping when someone else has the baby? Are you able to eat? Do you feel like yourself? Are you enjoying anything right now? Do you feel connected to your baby? Are your thoughts ever frightening you? Do you feel safe being alone? Do you feel like you're constantly waiting for something bad to happen? Perhaps most importantly, "Do you want to tell me how you're really doing without me trying to fix it or judge you?" Then listen to the answer. Don't immediately minimize it. Don't tell her every new mom feels that way. Don't remind her how lucky she is. Listen. If what she's telling you concerns you, help her connect with someone qualified to help. National resources every family should know National Maternal Mental Health Hotline: Call or text 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262). The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline provides free, confidential mental health support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for pregnant and postpartum people and their families. Counselors can provide support, information, and referrals to local or telehealth providers. Postpartum Support International (PSI): Call 1-800-944-4773 or text HELP to 800-944-4773 for English language support. Spanish language text support is available at 971-203-7773. PSI provides information, peer support, online support groups, and connections to perinatal mental health providers. The PSI HelpLine is not an emergency crisis line. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 for free and confidential crisis support throughout the United States. If someone is experiencing symptoms of postpartum psychosis, appears disconnected from reality, is in immediate danger, or may harm themselves or someone else, seek emergency medical care. Taking care of the baby means taking care of the mother Our culture is remarkably good at rallying around a new baby. Everyone wants to meet the baby. Everyone asks how the baby is sleeping, how the baby is eating, how much the baby weighs, and whether the baby is "good." I want us to become just as interested in the person who brought that baby into the world. How is she sleeping? Has she eaten? When did she last shower? Does she feel supported? Does she recognize herself right now? Does someone know what to do if the answer is no? Supporting maternal mental health isn't simply telling mothers to practice self-care. We cannot bubble bath our way out of a postpartum environment where someone is chronically sleep deprived, isolated, overwhelmed, unsupported, or afraid to admit that she is struggling. Sometimes self-care looks like therapy. Sometimes it looks like medication. Sometimes it looks like an uninterrupted stretch of sleep. Sometimes it looks like someone else washing the bottles. Sometimes it looks like a postpartum doula walking through the door at 10 p.m. and saying, "I've got the baby. Go sleep." Sometimes it means recognizing that what we're seeing is an emergency and helping a mother access care immediately. We cannot promise that every case of postpartum depression, anxiety, or psychosis can be prevented, but we can build families and communities where mothers are educated before birth, screened appropriately, supported practically, protected from unnecessary exhaustion, taken seriously when something feels wrong, and connected with treatment before they reach a breaking point. We spend so much time preparing mothers to take care of their babies. Maybe it's time we put just as much effort into preparing to take care of them. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Pearce Sarah Pearce, Certified Doula Sarah Pearce is a highly sought-after birth and postpartum expert, a former Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) specialising pediatrics, a placenta encapsulation specialist, and the founder of Trinity Doula Services, a rapidly growing full-spectrum doula agency serving Missouri and Illinois. With over a decade of hands-on experience in fertility, labor support, physiologic birth, postpartum recovery, newborn care, and high-pressure pediatric nursing, she has become known for combining evidence-based education with deeply intuitive support. Sarah has supported families through all types of birth settings and is working towards becoming a Certified Professional Midwife. Her work empowers families during life's most transformative moments. Sources and Further Reading: American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Screening and Diagnosis of Mental Health Conditions During Pregnancy and Postpartum and Patient Screening: Perinatal Mental Health. ACOG recommends standardized screening for depression and anxiety during pregnancy and postpartum, systems for appropriate assessment and follow-up, and immediate medical attention for postpartum psychosis. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Maternal and Child Health Bureau. National Maternal Mental Health Hotline. Free and confidential 24/7 support for pregnant and postpartum people and their families: 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262). Postpartum Support International (PSI). Provides perinatal mental health education, support, provider referrals, peer resources, and online support groups. HelpLine: 1-800-944-4773. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Free, confidential 24/7 crisis and emotional support throughout the United States. Call or text 988. WBUR, Associated Press, Reuters (August 2026). Current reporting regarding the Lindsay Clancy trial and the ongoing discussion surrounding postpartum psychosis and maternal mental healthcare.

Written by Beth Rohani, Entrepreneur, Speaker, and Creator Beth Rohani leads the No. 1 moving company serving the Houston Multi-Family Industry, and her company is considered one of the Top 3 Best Rated Moving Companies in Houston. As a first-generation Iranian-American, former TV news assignments editor, and CEO of a transportation and logistics-based business in a male-dominated industry. Here’s the truth, vulnerability isn’t weakness. Vulnerability is courage repackaged. Every time I put myself out there, sharing my story, opening up about my past, or speaking on something I know people may disagree with, I’m taking a risk. I’m exposing a part of myself that could be judged, criticized, or misunderstood. Yes, sometimes that criticism stings. Sometimes it hurts more than I want to admit. But over time, I’ve learned to see it differently. I’ve learned to repackage it. When you choose to be vulnerable, you are declaring that your growth and your message are more important than your comfort. You’re showing yourself that you can handle feedback, take hits, and still stand tall. Some of what comes at you is noise, you dismiss it. Some of it is valuable, you take it, reflect on it, and use it to grow. That necessary filtering process is where the power lies. The resiliency you build when you’re exposed The decision to share your vulnerability, whether it's admitting a business failure or talking about a personal hardship like divorce or loss, is the first step in building true resiliency. You are giving yourself the evidence that you can survive exposure. Early in my career, I shared a bold operational idea at a leadership meeting. A few people dismissed it outright, almost condescendingly. My first reaction was embarrassment, followed immediately by doubt. I wanted to retreat and never speak up again. But instead of retreating, I paused. I separated the delivery, the harshness, from the content, the actual idea. I asked clarifying questions, focused on the operational flaws they identified, and adjusted my approach based on what made logical sense, not what hurt my feelings. The result? That same core idea, refined through necessary criticism, eventually became one of the most successful initiatives our team launched that year. I could only have reached that successful outcome by leaning into vulnerability, listening to criticism without instantly taking it personally, and using it as fuel instead of fear. Vulnerability forced the conversation, and resilience allowed me to stay in it. The leader’s filter: Noise vs. Signal Let’s be honest, people will always talk. They’ll always have opinions. But the moment you stop fearing the noise and start filtering it, everything changes. As a leader, you must become an expert at filtering. You start to see criticism as a tool, not a threat. This involves a crucial, direct process: Acknowledge and separate: Acknowledge the emotional sting, but immediately separate the person's emotion from the information. Don't react to the anger, react only to the data. Check the source: Is the feedback coming from someone whose opinion you respect, whose core values align with yours, or who has achieved the results you are seeking? If not, it’s highly likely to be noise, a distraction rooted in their own insecurity. Discard it. Find the signal: If the feedback is coming from a trusted source, or if you hear the same critique from multiple, unrelated sources, it is a signal. It means your blind spot has been exposed. Use this data to refine your plan, your process, or your approach. The criticism is not about you, it’s about the flaw in the current system. That’s where growth actually happens, in the space between hearing the feedback and choosing a thoughtful, intentional response. Vulnerability as an act of service I won’t sugarcoat it, putting your personal experiences into the world is uncomfortable. It makes you feel exposed. It goes against the conventional wisdom that leaders must maintain a perfect image. But here’s what I’ve realized, the act of sharing your vulnerability isn’t just about you. It’s about the impact it can have on someone else. By being open about the difficult parts of my journey, whether it’s managing death, divorce, or major business setbacks, I give others permission to face their own struggles without shame. If my story gives one person the courage to face their own challenges, to speak up, or to make a necessary change, then the discomfort was worth it. If my transparency helps a team member feel safe enough to admit they made a mistake, which allows us to fix a critical process, the discomfort was absolutely worth it. Vulnerability in leadership builds trust and loyalty, because it proves you are human, just like them. It closes the gap between the perfect facade and the real person running the show. The courage to keep moving So the next time you face feedback, criticism, or judgment, resist the instinct to shrink back. Take it in. Sort it. Decide what serves you and what doesn’t. Repackage what strengthens you, discard what doesn’t, and keep moving forward. This is the Do It & Prove It™ mindset applied to emotional resilience. Vulnerability isn’t a liability. It’s a choice. The people who choose it consistently, who put themselves out there despite the risk, are the ones who grow the most. They build not just resilience, but self-trust and confidence. They build a life of authentic impact. Criticism doesn’t have to hurt. It can teach. It can sharpen. It can transform you into a better leader. That’s not weakness. That’s courage. The kind that builds leaders. The kind that builds strength. The kind that builds a life worth living. For similar content, consider following me on any of my social media platforms: TikTok X Threads YouTube Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Beth Rohani Beth Rohani, Entrepreneur Beth Rohani leads the No. 1 moving company serving the Houston Multi-Family Industry, and her company is considered one of the Top 3 Best Rated Moving Companies in Houston. As a first-generation Iranian-American, former TV news assignments editor, and CEO of a transportation and logistics-based business in a male-dominated industry, Beth embraces the stereotypes while inspiring and mentoring others to build a successful business with a balance to live their best life.

Written by Amanda L. Neiley, Founder of StillGrounded Labs & Creator of Return to North™ framework Amanda Neiley is the founder of StillGrounded Labs and creator of the Return to North™ framework. Drawing on her experience as an educator and school leader, she helps high-capacity women and leaders recognize overwhelm earlier, reconnect with what they need, and make more intentional choices before depletion becomes burnout. There is a particular kind of woman I recognize almost immediately. She is capable, and people rely on her for it. She remembers the appointments, answers the emails, solves the problem, notices what everyone else needs, keeps the project moving, makes the decision, and somehow figures out what to do when the plan falls apart. She might be a leader, a mother, a business owner, a caregiver, a professional, or several of those at once, and from the outside, she often looks like she's doing remarkably well. Sometimes she is. But there's something very capable women can become exceptionally good at, functioning while no longer noticing themselves. I know because I've done it. For much of my life, I thought strength meant being able to handle things. I loved goals and loved challenging myself. I trained for endurance events, built a career in education and leadership, raised children, kept pursuing my own education, and navigated some genuinely difficult personal seasons. When something was hard, my instinct was always the same, keep going, solve it, adjust, do what needs to be done. There are wonderful qualities inside that kind of strength, and I still value ambition, responsibility, discipline, and resilience. The problem wasn't that I was strong. The problem came when strength stopped including the ability to hear myself. When "I'm fine" becomes a habit There have been seasons in my life when my calendar was full from morning until night. I was accomplishing things I genuinely cared about, showing up for people I loved, doing meaningful work, and yet somewhere inside all that functioning, I had stopped asking some very basic questions, "How am I actually doing? What's happening in my body? How much capacity do I have today? What do I need?" Eventually, my body began answering those questions for me. I went through a period of significant physical depletion that forced me to stop and recover. At the time, I experienced that as something going wrong. Looking back, I see it differently. My body had been communicating for a long time. I simply hadn't learned to listen early enough. That experience changed how I understood strength. I didn't need to become less ambitious. I needed a different relationship with my own capacity, and I needed to notice sooner. That became one of the beginnings of what I now call Return to North™. What if stress is information, not failure? One of the things that troubles me about some modern wellness messaging is the idea that calm is the goal. It can subtly create one more standard for women to fail at. You're already managing work, relationships, family responsibilities, deadlines, and the completely unpredictable nature of life, and now you're supposed to remain perfectly regulated while doing it? That isn't realistic. Life activates us. We become anxious, frustrated, tired, and overwhelmed. We move through grief, conflict, uncertainty, responsibility, and change. The goal isn't to eliminate those states. The goal is to become better at recognizing them. That's why I began imagining our internal state as a compass. The return to North compass At the top of the compass is North. North doesn't mean blissful, stress-free, or perfectly calm. It simply means you're steady enough to choose. You have enough capacity to respond rather than react. You can think, connect, make decisions, and hear yourself. But no human being stays North all day. Sometimes we move East. East is activation. Your mind is racing. You're rushing even though no one is actually rushing you, and your shoulders creep up toward your ears. You replay conversations, check your phone repeatedly, and may be physically exhausted while still unable to switch your brain off. Sometimes we move South. South is where emotions get bigger, frustration, fear, anger, sadness, and overwhelm. You might snap at someone and immediately realize your reaction was larger than the moment. Tears sit unexpectedly close to the surface. Then there's West. West is depletion, flat, drained, disconnected. It's the state where you catch yourself thinking, "Please don't ask me for one more thing." Here's the part I believe we need to talk about more, you can still be extremely functional in West. You can attend meetings, answer emails, parent, lead, organize, smile, and help everyone else. That's exactly why depletion is so hard to recognize in highly capable people. Everyone around you may think you're fine. You may even think you're fine because you're still getting things done. None of these directions are bad This may be the most important part of the framework. East is not failure. South is not failure. West is not failure. They're information. Your internal state is giving you clues, and instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?" we can learn to ask, "Where am I right now?" and then, "What might I need?" That shift sounds deceptively small, but judgment and curiosity take us in completely different directions. If I notice I'm irritable and immediately tell myself I shouldn't feel like this, I've added another layer of pressure. If I get curious instead, I have somewhere to go. Maybe I haven't eaten, maybe I've had six difficult conversations back to back, maybe I need movement, ten quiet minutes, sleep, or help. Maybe something genuinely hurt me. Maybe I've said yes too many times. The answer isn't always a three-minute breathing exercise. Sometimes what you need is a boundary. Sometimes you need support. Sometimes the problem isn't your ability to cope with an unsustainable situation. Sometimes the situation needs to change. The question is not always "How do I get back to North?" This is where I want Return to North to be different. When you notice you're struggling, the immediate goal doesn't have to be to get calm. If you're depleted, you don't necessarily need another productivity strategy. If you're overwhelmed, you don't need to shame yourself into becoming more resilient. If you're angry, that emotion might be telling you something important. Before fixing anything, notice, "Where am I? What do I need?" There are days when you won't be able to return to North immediately, and that's okay. Sometimes a small choice simply changes the direction you're traveling, three minutes outside, a glass of water, movement between meetings, calling someone, canceling something, closing the laptop, eating lunch before 3 p.m., taking five slow breaths before you walk through the front door, saying, "I can't take that on right now," or going to bed instead of pushing through. Small choices interrupt momentum. Over time, those choices build something far more valuable than constant calm, they build self-trust. Returning, not arriving North isn't a destination, and that idea matters enormously to me. We aren't supposed to become perfectly regulated people who never feel anxious, depleted, or emotional again. A compass is useful precisely because we move. Life changes, we drift, something happens, we orient again, we adjust, and eventually we drift again. That's not failure. That's being human. Progress might mean that ten years ago, you lived in an activated state for three weeks before realizing something was wrong. Today, maybe you recognize it after three days. Eventually, you might notice it after three hours. Sometimes you'll catch yourself in the moment and think, "There I am, I'm moving East." That's awareness. Awareness creates choice. A two-question practice For the next week, try asking yourself two questions three times a day, "Where am I right now?" and "What do I need?" You don't even need to act on the answer right away. Simply notice. You may start to see patterns. Maybe you begin most mornings North and drift East by lunchtime. Maybe you operate in East all workday and crash into West the moment you walk in the door. Maybe certain environments reliably pull you South, or you notice you feel more like yourself outdoors, after movement, when you've slept enough, or around certain people. This isn't data to judge. It's information to use, because you can't respond to something you haven't noticed. Strong women need to be included in their own lives There is something I want capable women to hear clearly, you do not have to become less strong. You don't have to stop pursuing meaningful goals, and you don't have to abandon ambition, leadership, motherhood, business, or whatever matters deeply to you. But you do need to exist inside the life you're working so hard to create. You can be capable and tired. Grateful and overwhelmed. Strong and in need of support. You can love your work and still need boundaries around it. You can adore your family and still need an hour when nobody needs you. Two things can be true at once. For years, strength meant seeing how much I could carry. Now I think strength includes knowing what I'm carrying, noticing what it's costing me, and trusting myself enough to decide what should happen next. Sometimes the journey back to yourself begins much earlier than we imagine, not with a dramatic life change, not with a retreat, not with becoming a completely different person. Sometimes it begins with one quiet question, "Where am I right now?" And then another, "What do I need?" Because you don't need to know the whole way back. You just need to know where you are before you can begin finding your way North. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Amanda L. Neiley Amanda L. Neiley, Founder of StillGrounded Labs & Creator of Return to North™ framework Amanda Neiley is the founder of StillGrounded Labs and creator of the Return to North™ framework. Drawing on more than two decades in education and leadership, along with her own experience of endurance training, burnout, recovery, and caregiving, she helps high-capacity women recognize what they need before stress becomes depletion. Her work focuses on self-trust, sustainable leadership, boundaries, and practical tools that help women care for themselves without stepping away from the lives and ambitions that matter to them.

Written by Sass Allard, Strategic Coach & Change Consultant Sass Allard is a strategic coach and change consultant helping leaders and high-performing women navigate complex change with clarity and resilience. She brings over 20 years of experience in global organisations, offering practical insights to support meaningful transformation and growth. Women in their fifties are being removed from the workforce at the point of their greatest professional value, and the reasons given are so vague as to be unfalsifiable. Press anyone for detail and the answer circles around adaptability. There exists a belief, never stated in a form that could be tested, that women of this age have hardened into their methods and will falter at whatever arrives next. I have spent twenty years moving organisations through change. I have never worked with a group holding a stronger claim to adaptive capacity, or a weaker ability to evidence it. The evidence is missing for reasons that have nothing to do with the women concerned. We were trained to make adaptation invisible. The adaptation was never narrated, because narration read as struggle. Three decades of that produces a generation whose adaptive history went entirely unrecorded, and a market that has taken us at our word. The consequences show up in the data now. An American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) survey published this year found 64 percent of workers over fifty had seen or experienced age discrimination, with around a quarter feeling pushed out of jobs they had not chosen to leave. Research from Brookings found that of the workers most exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) displacement and least equipped to move on, 86 percent are women. There is a layer beneath this that the workforce conversation never touches. Many of the women being written off as unable to handle change are, at that moment, in the middle of the most demanding physiological adaptation of their adult lives. Perimenopause reorganises sleep, memory, emotional regulation, and confidence in one's own judgement over a period of years, with no timetable and very little acknowledgement. Women are doing this while running teams and hitting their numbers. Whatever else that is, it is not evidence of diminished adaptive capacity. Nobody tells you it was your age, because that would be actionable. You are handed a gap where a reason should sit, and capable women fill that gap with themselves. I hear the same sentence from women who have never met one another, which is that they think they have lost their edge. It survives on almost no evidence, mainly because there is nothing to compare it against. Say some of it aloud to another woman who will recognise it, and listen to what comes back, because what returns is almost always a version of your own account. The isolation is doing more damage here than the bias. A pattern that thousands experience separately will go on looking, to every one of them, like a personal failing. None of this will be argued out of the people making these decisions by an article. What it can do is settle the account in your own mind, which is where the real erosion happens and where it can be stopped. You have spent thirty years demonstrating the exact capability you are now presumed to lack. That nobody wrote it down does not make it untrue. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sass Allard Sass Allard, Strategic Coach & Change Consultant Sass Allard works at the intersection of leadership, behaviour, and wellbeing, supporting individuals and organisations as they navigate demanding periods of change. Her background spans two decades in global companies, where she has helped senior leaders strengthen culture, clarity, and capability. She brings a grounded understanding of how hormonal shifts shape women’s experience at work without limiting the broader conversation. As a UN Women delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women, she brings a global lens to agency and progress. Sass writes about adaptation, resilience, and the practical shifts that create real movement in work and life.