Taking a Break (Before Life Forces One) - A Picture Love Minisode

Today’s episode is a little different—because I’m giving myself permission to pause before life forces me into one.

Behind the scenes, I’ve been pouring heart and hours into the new Spirit Guide interview series (Riven, Elira, Soraya…). These stories take 12–18 hours each to birth, and while I love them deeply, my family and my body are asking me to slow down.

So this minisode is my reminder (to myself, and maybe to you too): rest is part of the work. We don’t need to force what’s unfolding naturally. Just like we don’t rush a child to walk before they’re ready, we can honor the pace of our own becoming.

In this minisode, I share:
 ✨ The truth about how much time these episodes take
 ✨ Why I refuse to release Soraya’s story before it’s ready
 ✨ What it means to take a chosen break instead of a forced one
 ✨ How presence with family can be the greatest gift of love

If you’re new here, scroll back through over 100 episodes of Picture Love Podcast, including the Spirit Guide conversations that began in spring 2025. Each one is part of this unfolding journey of love, growth, and remembrance.

From my heart to yours—thank you for being here. I’m cheering for you. 💗

New day - marking the 2500 download milestone it was time for a fresh evergreen intro

a refresh! 

Transcript

Kris LeDonne: 0:38

Welcome back to Picture Love Friends. For those watching me on YouTube, you may notice I'm in a new space. That's because our new home is well underway as far as renovation went, and I'm about to move into my dedicated podcast studio, AKA walk-in closet with a window, and it's not set up yet, but I'm coming to you from the room where that podcast studio is. Naked with no furniture and who knows, maybe I'll be recording cross-legged in there but until that point, I've just run into a few loving boundaries with myself. And that is, I have been working on these spirit guide interviews, and I'll be honest, working on them is very labor intensive. I will spend anywhere from 12 to 18 hours just to write and record and edit and piece back together. These works of my heart and I love them very much, but right now my family is going through transitions. I've got two young adults who are adulting and the home renovation, and I need to spend some family time. So I'm here to share with you the episode I thought was going to drop this week. Is just not ready and I love it too much to release it prematurely. So you'll get to hear from Soraya who is the bestie of Riven and Elira and if you don't know who I'm talking about, I will drop the links in the description here wherever you are catching this. And I'm gonna encourage you to listen with an open heart and an open mind, and please share with me what, if anything, has been stirred up since hearing from any of my Spirit guide characters inspired by what if our emotions were people. So I chose to start this progress because I wanted to work on different parts of myself. And what if each of my emotions or lessons or principles had a consciousness, what would they be called? What would they say to me? And that was the inspiration behind starting this series. And they really are, it's, it's really taken on a life of their own. And I am starting to understand what I think it's like to be an author of a book where you have these characters that grow up maybe even in a series of books, and there's a deep relationship that's taken place with these characters that I've given names to and some of the most recent ones invited other people to step and then put their voice on the words I wrote. So for that, this is a lot of growth going on and for any of you, identifying with periods in your life of rapid growth and rapid change, maybe you'll understand. I am going to take a little vacation, not a forced one. I'm not going to run myself into the ground like I have done in years past where I go and go and go and go and go until my body shuts down and I get sick. Well, this time I decided I'm gonna give myself a pleasurable intentional break. But if you are new to me, I hope that you will scroll back through the over a hundred episodes that we have shared in Picture Love podcast. But the spring into summer of 2025 is when my spirit guide interviews started and. It's been such a growth journey, not just producing them, but doing the work inside my heart in order to be able to write such stories and characters and lessons that I am living. I am not do, as I say, not as I do. I am living the work that I'm sharing with you now. So I hope that that gives somebody else permission to give yourself a vacation from something that you're pushing If you don't have a deadline, there's no reason why we need to force something that is organically happening in its own beautiful time. Just like a child. We don't wanna force them to be taking those first steps too early. We wanna enjoy the journey of them crawling and stumbling and, and climbing and eventually chasing the momentum of their first steps. I think each one of us deserves to give ourselves permission to slow down when it's really important to slow down and speed up when we're ready to speed up. As I give myself a break. I'm going to take a little road trip down to Atlanta to deliver a family heirloom. It is a cradle that my father-in-law made for his grand babies. And now I am going to be the proud auntie, to pass it on to the next generation. And, uh, celebrate the upcoming newest baby, and I'm just going to be present and I'm not going to be worrying about did I get that edited and scheduled on time. I'm going to give myself the gift of showing up fully and know that by being fully present, I'm being the best version of myself for my family as well. And. If you are learning any of these things right now, I would love to see, give me a comment, give me a share, uh, respond to some of the links in the show notes to let me hear what's going on with you. And until next time, from my heart to ears. Thank you. I love you. I'm cheering for you. I'm cheering for all of us, so let's keep. Picturing love right now, right where we are. And love it. See you next time.