Cyclical Living with Camille Leek: Restoring Ambition Through Seasons, Boundaries, and Somatics

Burnout doesn't have to be the cost of ambition. In this conversation with repeat guest and facilitator Camille Leek, we explore somatic healing and cyclical living for entrepreneurs balancing work and motherhood. Learn how to restore sustainable productivity by aligning with natural cycles- birth, growth, decay, and death-so your nervous system can support big work without collapse.

Instead of chasing forever-summer energy, we map real rhythms for the working mom across a day, week, month, and year: ramp-up mornings that build capacity, focused midweek production, deliberate wind-down evenings, and honest wintering that composts what no longer serves. This is energy management for the creative entrepreneur who refuses to choose between presence and impact. But this isn't about following our exact business or life blueprint, it's about experiencing and then fine tuning your own, 

Camille shares how she left a "successful" corporate path after years of chronic fatigue from 60–80 hour weeks and began designing boundaries that fit her biology: no Monday or Friday meetings, session windows that honor nervous system regulation, and planned hibernation months. We unpack the difference between agency and control, the social pressure to perform like a machine, and the quiet violence of self-colonization when worth equals output.

You'll hear concrete examples for mothers and creatives navigating matrescence—how to swap "can't do the park" for "movie cuddle," how to plan launches around menstrual cycle awareness and true energy, and why ramp-down is the missing link between action and real rest. This is holistic health meets sustainable business strategy.

If burnout has you oscillating between go and collapse, this conversation on embodiment and seasonal living offers a map to smoother waves. Expect practical routines for work-life balance, clear boundary scripts, and compassionate language that reframes PMS/PMDD, seasonal lows, and late-year contraction as natural, intelligent responses. The result is fewer, richer outputs; better sleep; more presence at home; and a grounded sense of enoughness that doesn't disappear when your calendar empties.

This is self-care that actually builds capacity-boundaries that create agency in both motherhood and entrepreneurship.

About Camille:

Camille Leak (she/her) is a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Facilitator & Somatic Trauma Healing Educator. Via her practice, Real Talk & Brave Spaces, she provides group facilitation, workshops, and one-on-one coaching about a variety of DEI topics and trauma healing, cultivating spaces where individuals and groups can fearlessly confront the most uncomfortable elements of life's realities. 

 4-part course: Living & Working Seasonally: Unearthing Your Unique Rhythm & Flow to Circumvent Burnout  

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Table: Ambition With Care
• 1:15 Camille’s Pivot From Corporate Burnout
• 3:10 Nature’s Blueprint: Birth Growth Decay Death
• 6:40 Desire For Forever-Summer And Its Cost
• 9:40 Reframing PMS And Seasonal Energy
• 12:10 Embracing Darkness And Planned Hibernation
• 15:40 Orienting To Self: Capacity Over Identity
• 19:20 Four Phases Explained With Real Routines
• 25:40 Growth Days Vs Ramp Days: Weekly Design
• 29:10 Winding Down: How We Actually Fall Asleep
• 33:20 Summer Energy Isn’t Always For Work
• 35:20 Agency, Boundaries, And Saying No
• 41:20 Releasing Self-Punishment And Control
• 46:10 Letting Decay Be A Valid Season
• 49:40 Capacity With Kids And Honoring Limits
• 53:20 Self-Colonization And Worth Beyond Output

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a somatic healing practitioner and a holistic life coach for moms, and this podcast is for you. You can expect honest conversations and incredible guests that speak to health healing and growth in every area of our lives. This isn't just strategy for what we do, it's support for who we are. I believe we can be wildly ambitious while still holding all of our self and hard humidity as. I love combining deep inner healing with strategic systems and no-nonsense talk about what this season is really like. So grab whatever weird health beverage you're currently into and let's get into it. Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor podcast. Today I have a repeat guest with me who I'm just so excited to have back, Camille Leek. I have just loved our conversations and connection. I first met Camille in the HLN Holistic Life Navigation course and then some of their small groups. And I just, I love the way that you teach, the way that you facilitate. I just, I love your embodiment though, and just being in your presence. You are just so you. And I'm just so excited for our conversation today, especially about cycles and living without burnout and how things need to shift and even just that like superwoman, I can do it all mentality and embodiment, which I am super familiar with. So will you introduce yourself and just this work a little bit that we're gonna dig into today?

SPEAKER_02: 1:40

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so so happy to be back. I really dig the space. So thank you for letting me join you again. And yeah, I'm I'm I work now with holistic life navigation, uh helping folks, because I was also helping myself with the trauma navigation as well as stress management. But part of what brought me to this phase of work, this phase of life was I had a 15-year, quote unquote successful career in corporate America. But there came a point where that just wasn't sustainable for me anymore. Working 60, 70, sometimes 80 hour weeks and just all the other things that that went along with it, it hit a point where my body and my spirit just couldn't keep going. I didn't like the way I was showing up as a mother, as a wife, as a person. And the idea of, well, I just gotta make it to retirement. It wasn't, it wasn't working anymore. The idea of doing that another 15 year, well, even the idea of doing that another five years, let alone another 15 years or trying to make it to retirement, just put me in so much overwhelm. So I I I knew I needed to leave. Uh, but it wasn't just leaving that I needed to do differently. I could start doing my own thing and put myself back in burnout again.

SPEAKER_01: 3:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 3:04

By simply doing the same practices. Uh and that's this, this is where cyclical and seasonal living came in. And to give you all a sense of where I am in my annual cycle, I am in the midst of full-on ramp down, decay. I am autumn mode. We are slowing down, no new things are starting here. This is this is a very slow energy for me. But one of the things that I noticed within myself and within other people is that we have this expectation that if I can do a certain thing at a certain level, at a certain intensity one time, then that means I should be able to do it like that all the time. And if I can't, that means something's wrong. And then we get because of that mindset, we get into this habit of go, go, go, crash, go, go, go, crash, go, go, go, crash, where we're oscillating between these really high highs and these really low lows. And we wonder why we sink into these depressions, or we wonder why we go into collapse and we have no energy. But as soon as we start to get a little energy back, what do we do? We go straight into full-on trying to do everything, all the things, and then that cycle just continues. And it occurred to me one day, like, what if we just smooth out that process? And it really was it was really simple. I just looked at the seasons where I live in the northern hemisphere, like winter, spring, summer, fall. What if those four seasons, what if those four phases were built into my day, my week, my month, my year? What if there were dedicated phases for ramping up, for producing, for ramping down and rest? And that I go through each of those phases in a smooth way rather than jumping from the binary of a really high high and a really low low. And again, like I said, I really just looked to nature. And I it actually even took me back to uh the life cycle that many of us learned in biology class and freshman year of high school or sophomore year of high school, where it was birth, growth, decay, death, birth, growth, decay, death, birth, growth, decay, death. This is a cycle that all living things grow through. So why should I, as a human being, think I am outside of that cycle? So there was a level of humility to come into relationship with that cycle, but also a level of recognition that, hey, yeah, bad news, nothing lasts forever. But hey, good news, nothing lasts forever. Like just because I go into a death rest phase doesn't mean I'm gonna be stuck there because that death rest phase gives me the time that I need to then go back into a birth phase, a ramp up phase. And that ramp up phase prepares me for a full-on execution, production, growth phase. But that can't last forever. I'm gonna have to begin to ramp down a little bit to prepare myself for so it just continuously feeds into one another. And I've loved really integrating that for myself professionally as well as personally.

SPEAKER_00: 6:08

You just said so much good stuff. I know I rambled my phone. No, that was the best ramble. I was like, just keep going. I'll just be here sipping my coffee. You keep talking, I'll keep just like drinking this in. You it takes so much humility, I think. And this is one of the things that I have loved that like I feel like somatics has given me an invitation back into humanity in a way that I thought I needed to outrun it, outheal it. And I think, you know, I'm a big fan of like the personal growth and development world. But the more time I've spent in, I guess you could say the somatics world, the more I have seen there's just this intensity of always growing and expansion. And no one's ever talking about the contraction or the decay and the death, and how that's not some, that's not a part we're supposed to skip by some fancy blueprint of success. And in fact, I work with a lot of women who have had massive amounts of success and their lives look really, really shiny. And all of a sudden, life puts them in this position where they're like, I literally can't be in this summer anymore. And there is so much shame and guilt because I think there's so much messaging out there to all people. But again, this podcast is mostly for women and mothers. So I'm gonna speak to that life experience of you can do it all, you can have it all, and it looks really easy and it's always consistent and pretty. And it's like that that that there's not like this, like, oh, that's not possible for you. It is this like, okay, but that's not the full picture. And we're not talking about the seasons and like what it takes to get there and the reality that even once you're quote unquote there, you're still gonna maybe have moments where you want or need to contract or slow down. And I don't know about you, but I'm a metaphor girl. And I had this metaphor of burnout for me where I was like, it was like I was driving this car, and the only options my body knew were every time I hit the gas, I go 75. And every time I hit the brakes, it's like full collapse and burnout. And it's like my like my soma personally and professionally, it's like I only knew this like all out or nothing. Right. And for me, it's like, okay, going 75 on the highway with some loud, like millennial rap, like beautiful, love it. Going 75 in a school zone when my kids freaking out in the back, like, not ideal. Like, I need to be able to slow down and speed up. And the more I think about success and safety and nervous system regulation, which like I know you have a thing with buzzwords. I loved the podcast episodes where you and Luis like talked about all of the like healing words. One of my favorite episodes. But that like how you stay out of burnout is not that you have to slam the brakes. It's that you learn how to use the gas and the brakes appropriately when needed. And I have to laugh because just this morning I was thinking to myself, I'm in my follicular like ovulation phase right now, and I am like high vibing. I have all this creative energy. I like, I feel like I could conquer the world. I'm like so sturdy and stable, and I feel so shiny and happy and sexy. And I had this moment of like, oh, I just want to feel like this all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 9:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:40

But that's not reality. It's not, it's just like, yeah, great ideal, great desire, but like that's just that's just not what life is.

SPEAKER_02: 9:47

Yeah, yeah. No, no, it's not. And and I it's nice to have that desire. It's not like, oh, this is this is this is amazing. I wish it could last forever. It's not, but it doesn't mean that it won't come back around again. Like I I personally I'm not a doctor, so y'all don't come for me. This is just my personal opinion. But even when we put labels on things like seasonal affective disorder or even PMS, like I don't think it's necessarily seasonal affective disorder. I don't even think it's PMS. Our bodies are responding appropriate to that particular situation. That is, our bodies are slowing down because it is getting colder, because the the days are getting shorter. We are going to sleep more because it's darker and colder. I don't think that's a disorder. I don't even think it's necessarily a syndrome that when I'm in my luteal phase, about to go into my menstrual phase, that I'm a little bit more tired, I'm crampy. That's just the cycle. And we have to put these these words, these conditions, these disorders on things when we're not quote unquote outside of our prime. But I gotta say, I have really loved, loved, loved embracing my phases of decay and death or my phases of ramp down and rest. I have instituted a practice of having annual depression hibernation periods. And I just embrace the fact that, yeah, November, December, January, it's those are very contracting periods of the year for me. I tell all my Capricorn friends, I love you, but no, I'm not coming to your birthday parties. I'm not coming. That's just not what I do in January. I don't do external things. That is a very, very dark month for me. But because I embrace the darkness of that month, because I embrace the solitude of that month, I there comes a point where I start to feel myself like, you know, actually, I kind of want to start going out. I want to start seeing people, I want to start doing things rather than just lamenting the fact, like, what's wrong with me? How come you don't want to go to the party? Just get up, Camille, do the things. No, that's just not where we are right now. And the key part is right now that if I can embrace where I am right now, there will come another phase.

SPEAKER_00: 11:58

Yeah, it's like you're finding safety and success right there in your body and where you are. Like you're orienting to where am I? Who am I in this moment? I know I used to have every month when I would get luteal or when I'd have those seasons and a slowdown, I would get that like internal meaning making of I don't know who I am, or you're like, I don't feel like myself. And I remember one of my retreats, I was super luteal. And I have like a pretty intense PMDD luteal phase where like I get real dark, real emotional, real sensitive. And it's hard to explain to people how learning to embrace that, learning to realize, like, oh wait, actually today, this is me. This is these are my bones, this is my body, this is my heart, this is my breath. Where is my capacity? What is my actual energy and compassion? And that's how I led and started the retreat is literally in tears telling everyone, like, hey, hi, I don't feel like shiny Becca. And I'm not gonna make that mean anything because if you walked in the door and you were just a mess, I would be like, good, I love you, messy, bring your mess. But then when it's myself, I tend to have a lot of judgment and like I should be this certain way. But I think I have started to make meaning that my humanity is just as worthy and wonderful and not so terrifying. Like it's it's really like, but did you die? It's like, no, like I'm still alive. Can I find the aliveness even in those, even in those dark, hard winter or fall months? It's like that composting is such an important part. And I still panic a little. I still have a little bit of resistance or fear in me of like, oh wait, no, but this is just the life cycle.

SPEAKER_02: 13:58

Yeah, yeah. And I and I really love that part. This is just a life cycle. Sometimes we think of decay and death as being the opposite of life. For me, it is a part of life, it is a part of the life cycle. I I cannot give birth without death. If it is my desire to birth something, to grow something, I also need to go through periods of decay and death in order for that to come about. So it's really for me been an imperative not to think of these as mutually exclusive opposites, but really phases that feed into one another, that support one another. And by doing that, and people are kind of surprised, like when I describe uh working and living seasonally and cyclically, that I am actually much, much more productive by doing less because I have these dedicated phases, these dedicated uh times in my rhythm where I am producing, but I have these other phases that help to cultivate so that what does come out of those production and growth phases is so rich, is so potent, but it doesn't have to be where I am all the time. And you know, cyclical living isn't completely alien to us, you know. When I talk to people about this, and they're like, I don't get it, this doesn't make any sense. At the very least, what most people can understand is that the capacity I have at 3 p.m. in the afternoon is not the same capacity I have at 3 a.m. in the morning. And you generally wouldn't expect me to show up and be doing the same things at 3 a.m. as I would at as you would at 3 p.m. Most people can like, yeah, that makes sense. All it is then is expanding that to the week, to the month, to the year. So even if it seems a little alien to you, the idea of living seasonally or cyclically or getting into a rhythm, think even just about 3 a.m. versus 3 p.m. Oh, generally we are doing different things at those times. And then what would it be like to apply that same mindset to your week, your month, or your year?

SPEAKER_00: 16:11

Yeah, and I'm even thinking seasons of motherhood, because I know I've worked with a lot of women who, especially women who built a lot of like it sounds like you experienced this like corporate success or business success, and like a lot of their identity was tied into that, not just of success, but I think underneath that there's a security and safety. And I think they get into this motherhood season. And for some women, their capacity, their desire, that piece is so big. There's some women who lose some capacity for business or for work or for their creative outlets in motherhood. But I think there's also some women who lose their desire or their desire shifts. It's not that it's gone, it's just that it's shifted to something else. And I think it's so beautiful to witness like this is just a season, and maybe it changes for good, but it will be for your good. It will be for the good and it's okay. But I think it brings, I our culture has such a selling of sustained success, and this is what it looks like. And I don't know about you, but I am so tired of seeing here's the perfect blueprint for success and what it looks like for me. And it's like one, it's almost always this very rigid, consumeristic, here's a perfect 10-step process. But I think a lot of times what they don't what they're not saying, but that what people are hearing and feeling, because I work with women who are very smart and they're still comparing themselves to these blueprints or these people selling it, where there's some way that I can skip the part where there's composting, where there's decay, where there's death, where there's struggle, where there's a fall or a winter, or a birth season, which by the way, like I had I had a pretty beautiful birth. Like I think especially of my second birth, it was a beautiful birth. It was like, couldn't ask for better. That was a shit ton of work. And I thought my butthole was gonna rip open and I was in pain and I had to face parts of myself that were overwhelming and activating, and I was crying and yelling, and I thought I was gonna die. And I was looking at my midwife, was like, is the baby ever gonna come? And it was so funny because I looked at her and I was like, is the baby really coming? She was like, if not, this is a pretty weird party. Like you're naked in a bathtub, your husband's here, there's two women, like this is weird if there's no baby coming. And I was like, You're right. But I think, I think we're always looking for a way to opt out of the human experience. Yes, instead of being in the human experience. It's like, wait, no, no, no. What if we like sunk into it? And I love this concept of seasonal living. And I'm curious, like, if we want to go in the direction of like talking about those different seasons, what they look like and how we embrace them. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_02: 19:09

And yeah, that that idea of okay. So let me back up. I was saying, yeah, yeah. Uh so there are generally like four seasons I I work with, like I said, birth, growth, decay, and death, if you're thinking about it in terms of the life cycle. I also talk about it in terms of like a capacity life cycle. So you can think of that in terms of like a phase to ramp up, a phase to produce and execute, a phase to ramp down, and a phase to rest. And then if you love analogies as I do, um, you can just think of the four seasons that we generally experience, like in the in the northern hemisphere, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. And the how these look for each of us is going to be different on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly space or basis. And it's going to look different for each person. And I wanted to bring this in, especially to your point around a blueprint. Because whenever I teach living seasonally and cyclically, well, just tell me what I'm supposed to do on Monday and at 6 a.m. And what am I supposed to be doing? Tell me what to do in winter. Talk what am I supposed to be doing in winter? What is it? I can't tell you because each of us are going to have different rhythms. Each of us are going to have different cycles. What I do like to support people in doing is coming into relationship with what your particular cycle may be, but I can't tell you. Even for women who menstruate, they think, okay, so when I'm menstruating, I'm supposed to be doing this. And when I'm ovulating, this is what no, I can't tell you that. For some people during menstruation week, that is going to be their winter week. That's going to be their rest week. But for some people, that's actually their growth week. That's when they feel at their highest capacity. And neither one is right, neither one is wrong. It's about understanding which one works for you.

unknown: 20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:50

So less I love I just want to pause there, have everyone take that in because I think that I think so many women need that permission because we are looking for some expert, some therapist, some coach, some podcast, some book to tell us what to do. And it's like you and your body and your babies and your home and your relationships are fundamentally different. And slowing down to pay attention and have a relationship to where are you? What are you experiencing? And what does health look like right here and now? What does honoring the life in you, the desire in you, the capacity, what does it look like right here and now? And how can you get to know some of your cycles, your highs, your lows, the middles, the betweens? I think that's so important. And I love that that's like the place where we start.

SPEAKER_02: 21:50

Yes. Yes. And so what I'll share is kind of a description of the four phases. And then I can even give some examples of how they manifest for me on different timescales, as well as professionally and personally. So let's start with my personal favorite: the death and rest phase. So this is when we're so if you kind of think about it as a wave, this would be the lower trough. So this is when our capacity might be its lowest. And for many of us, this is what we can overcouple with being bad, like this is the bad time. But what if we just look at it for what it is? This is when our capacity is generally its lowest. And by capacity, I'm going to mean say, like, you know, energy and time, because I'll also talk about capacity and another concept in a little bit. But so this is generally when our capacity is going to be the lowest. So death, our death phase, our rest phase. Then we can move into our birth phase, our ramp up phase. And this is a really important phase that we generally skip over because most of us go from zero to a hundred. Either we're in death or we're in production. We jump where we're asleep or we jump out of bed and we do all the things. Yeah. But we really want to institute transition phases. This birth phase is important because we are easing out of rest and death, but we're not, and we're preparing ourselves for that growth, for that production phase, but we're not fully there yet. This is the phase where we actually get to cultivate our capacity. That is, what are the things we need to put in place in order for that production, in order for that growth to actually happen? So you can think of this, this is what might be the brainstorming phase. You can also think of this as somewhat of a self-care phase. Um, so for example, if I think about this on my my daily schedule, for me, my birth phase, my ramp up phase is 4 a.m. Yes, I like to work at wake up at 4 a.m. That's just me. I'm not telling y'all, y'all gotta get up at 4 a.m.

SPEAKER_00: 23:51

This is my cycle. Thank God, because immediately I was like, immediately no.

SPEAKER_02: 23:56

So my ramp up phase is from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. So I take those six hours out of the day to prepare myself for the growth, the production. So in those four hours, like even the first four hours of that six hours from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. That's just my time. Forget my husband, forget my kids, forget work. That's just me. That is my time to get up and I might go to the gym, I might do some yoga, I might write in my journal, I might do some meditation and prayer, I might just sit in the dark and be with myself. I might take a bath, what I might make myself some breakfast. And those four hours, that is my time to tend to my container, nobody else. Like I said, no work, no husband, no kids, no phone, no email, nothing. That sounds magic. It is, it is my favorite time of the day. I love it. It's my favorite time of day. People are freaked out when I tell them my favorite time of day is 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. They're like, what are you talking about? But I love it. It is absolute magic. And I need that phase in order to then prepare me for the next phase. So that's why you could think of it as a self-care, but this is also gonna be a brainstorming phase. So if I think about it on my annual cycle, this kind of for me aligns with like springtime, so the March, April, May period. This is when I'm starting like brainstorming things I might want to put into fruition, maybe even just starting to put some things into fruit to fruition, making connections with people, talking, setting up the bones of events that will be later to come. But again, like just setting up the foundation, putting helping to create the container. But then after ramp up, after our birth phase, now we get to go into growth, we get to go into production. And like I say, this is when we're doing all the things. This is when when we're we're clicking on all cylinders. And so for me, like if I was to give you my weekly schedule, this is Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for me. So Monday, I like to ramp up. Like I might check some emails, look at my schedule, but I'm not really doing all the things on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. That's when I'm giving presentations and workshops. That's this is when I'm doing one-on-one sessions. This is might be what I'm doing in-person events. So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that is my time of the week where I'm just kind of like doing doing the most. But I need Monday to be different. I need Monday to be that ramp up to prepare me for Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. And this is how I knew I was doing something different and magical because I used to, I'm about to curse again. I love it. I used to fucking hate Mondays at work when I was in the corporate space. I hated them. I hate I even hated Sundays because I would just spend Sunday, like Monday is coming. Monday scary, yeah. Hated it because 8 a.m. Monday jumped right into doing all the things. It was just like, oh my God, it just never stops. But to consciously create a day of the week that isn't the most, that isn't at the height of everything, that allows me to ease into it, creates capacity for me to do all those things on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And you know, for if I think about it on my sort of my monthly for me, that I whether it's like with the moon, sometimes I track the moon, it can be with the full moon, or even with my my my inner moon schedule or or or rhythm that could be my ovulation time. That's when I'm a bit more extroverted. A girlfriend calls is like, hey, you want to go to this event? Yes, this is the time. Let's do it. Like this is when I'm feeling it. Like I'm a bit more engaged. So that's when I might plan more social events, more networking events. But this does not last forever. And thank God, because it's exhausting. It's a lot. Because then we want to start to ramp down. And again, just like ramp up, ramp down and decay is an important transition period. And it's a period we think we don't need, but we really do. And this is particularly important if we think about it, even on a daily schedule. When we say, like, I just can't seem to fall asleep. Well, part of the reason we can't seem to fall asleep is we actually don't have this transition phase. We don't have this phase from doing all the things to actually going to sleep. The body needs space to transition, even if it's just not seeing screens for a little bit, not having lights at their full brightness. So really creating a container, a phase of the day where I transition out of doing all the things, running around, to preparing my body for rest. It seems like sleep would just be easy. And yeah, many of us collapse, but actually letting ourselves fall asleep, there has to be a transition period. And so whether it's in the day, which is really important. So for me, that's going to be 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. And during that time, there's sort of like this domino of things that I like to do of turning off the computer or dimming the lights. There's time to cook dinner, time for me to reconnect with my husband and my kids, reading a book or listening to a podcast before I actually fall asleep. Those kinds of things. Or if I think about it within, like I shared earlier, within the year, like right now, this is I'm in my decay phase where I'm still working, but not at the same intensity I was over the summer. So this is a time of year where generally I'm no, I'm not going to be traveling for events. I'm not going to be doing retreats out of the country. Um, I'm not starting new projects. I'm finishing projects that were already in place. And I'm not even really thinking necessarily about projects for next year, but taking a little time to reflect on this year and just make notes of some things I might want to carry into next year, things I may want to do differently. But this is really an opportunity for me to bring some things to a close and allow myself then to enter into my depression and hibernation period. So I know that was a lot. I'm gonna pause, check in with you.

SPEAKER_00: 29:57

I love that. And I think the pacing of that. Was so great. And I loved hearing all of it in sync. It's making me reflect on my own cycles and how they're different. And I think that's what's beautiful too, is like there's similarities in like the seasons we experience. But like even when you were talking about like when you experience them, like my fall and winter are pretty normal. But like for me, summer is not productive when I think of work. Now there's a lot of extrovert and like fun, playful energy for summer. But when it comes to my business, that shit goes on the back burner. Like one from capacity, two, just like my desire to work is less in the summer. But I know that season now. So now I know like don't plan a bunch of launches or like new programs in the summer. And I think too, honoring, honoring that cycle is so delicious. And I think one of the things I was thinking of is there's going to be people who hear this and they immediately feel permission to use that privilege of being able to shape their lives and their businesses. And I think there's going to be people who are going, my work doesn't account for that, right? Like I'm thinking of like clients who are real estate agents for a perfect example, where there's like there is, there is no work life balance. They're like they're in a business where there is a lot of intensity. I'm using their phrasing with those work-life balance. There, there's a constant need and vision of what I have to do for success. For you, how do you help those women and those people figure out their cyclical living within where they have a little bit less choice or agency or privilege there? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 31:44

Cause I would even gently, gently and with so much compassion, challenge whether or not you don't have as much agency as you think you do. Whenever we use the term have to, you gotta get curious. There's there's very, very, very few things in this life. There's very few things. Like I I always go back to this quote from uh there's this movie. Morgan Freeman was the actor in it, and there's a scene. He's this great principal, and but you know, he makes a choice uh to to uh uh in regards to school anyway. He gets thrown in jail because he was doing something at the school, not bad, but just against like what other people would have would have done. And his friend is there and he's more of like a politician, and he's just like, Why can't you just say you were sorry? They'll let you out of jail. You just you have to do this. And Warrior Freeman jumps up out of the jail bed and says, I ain't gotta do shit but stay black and die. There is nothing, he doesn't, he doesn't have to do anything. We don't have to do anything. He was making a choice, he was making a choice not to acquiesce and he was making a choice to stay in jail. He could have made a different choice and he could have been released from jail, but he made a choice. So we want to get curious about our choice because even before I left corporate America, I started integrating some of this work. So, like I said, like I used to hate Mondays, and with that awareness, I decided I'm gonna start blocking Mondays and Fridays. No meetings. I need time because what I knew, I needed time to actually work, to create, to like center within myself all the expectations, da-da-da-da-da. And so I blocked my calendar. And when people said, like, hey, are you free to meet on Monday? I would say, nope, I'm not. And if they said why, I said I'm busy. Because I was. But there was a time where I said, like, no, I couldn't do that. I can't do that. I can't block my calendar. But I could. So to those folks who like it, like in real estate, I would get curious about that. Like, what do you have to do? Because even now, as a somatic experiencing practitioner, I've cultivated my schedule and I choose to do one-on-one engagements Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Eastern. Now I get people all the time who say, Well, that doesn't work for me. Are you available at 8 a.m.? Do you do Saturday sessions? I do not. But there could be a part of me that there's a need. You need to be there for people. Or the if I'm being real honest, but there's money. You just gonna let that money sit out there? You need to go get that money. I don't have to. I don't have to. I can make a choice to set these boundaries. And the real question is what is my capacity to be with the discomfort that comes with setting those boundaries? The discomfort that it can trigger in other people, but even the discomfort that it causes within me. So that would be the first place I'd start.

SPEAKER_00: 34:42

Whole body goosebumps, because I think that is such a fundamental skill that I don't think women have accessed in their body. They have not. And we're constantly looking again for that blueprint or that permission or someone else tell me what to do, how to do it, when to do it. And I are you a Harry Potter fan? This is so random. This is a little side quest. We are my son and I have started reading it, and then we were watching it, and we were reading and watching about Dobby. Do you remember Dobby?

SPEAKER_02: 35:19

Yes, one of my favorite characters.

SPEAKER_00: 35:21

And I started having tears go down my face because all of a sudden I was like, I used to be like Dobby because he would do something quote unquote wrong against his masters, and he would self-punish himself. And I had this thing in my body go, that's what you used to do. You were so under this illusion of control that you controlled yourself so fiercely and harshly by masters that one you didn't agree with, and two, that didn't actually own power over you anymore. There was a time in my life, right, when you're when I was a kid, when I was in these victim situations, and that's been a huge part of my healing is recognizing and realizing I have agency and choice here, and I'm allowed to do whatever the fuck I want. I on a regular basis in my mind go, I remind myself, you are a grown-ass adult. No one is telling you what to do, no one is going to come punish you. And if they do, you have a backbone, you have a fist, you have keys to a car. You could literally do whatever the hell you want. And one of my favorite things is like, what's the most random, offhanded thing I could do right now? I could go do it. I could go do it. I don't want to do it. But all of a sudden, when I say that, it brings me back into this. What is it that I actually want to do? And what is it that I actually need? And it brings us back into that choice. And I think that's so important for looking at these seasons because we we live in a culture that I think is so counter to what we're talking about. It is this always go, here is what success looks like, here's the blueprint for success. And we never even slow down to go, who told me this? And do I even want to take their advice?

SPEAKER_02: 37:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 37:05

Like, absolutely. What? I I'm I'm doing a little experiment in my business of like, I'm literally allowed to do whatever the hell I want. That's scary. There's a little scary. There's a little bit of Dobby energy of like, do I need to go punish myself now? Like, am I gonna get in trouble? Is my business gonna fail? And it's like, you know what? Maybe it's a decay season. I think I'm in a decay season for work and I like it. You know, it's like I've learned to like it. I've learned to like the decay and the winter of I don't know, I guess it's slow right now. Why don't I just embrace it instead of forcing and going against it or trying to manifest something else? It's like, no, no, no, like what if this is right where you're supposed to be? And I mean, how many women talk about how they want presence? Right. They want they want to be present with their kids. And I think so many women are going to miss presence with their kids, especially we look at the quote. I'm using quotes here, the holidays coming up. I want to throw up every time I have to go in a store right now. I'm just like, can we simmer the fuck down, first of all, at the expectations and the like new themes for the season? And it's like, what do you actually want? Because last night we had the Aurora Borealis. You could see it from Colorado. Oh, beautiful. I am going on the most ADHD thing ever. I am just off the rails right now. We were outside looking at the Aurora Borealis, and I was in so much awe, and it was cold, and I was like, This, this is what I want more of this winter season. Right.

unknown: 38:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 38:44

Staring outside at the Aurora Borealis. I don't care about what color Christmas is popular this year. Like, who, I don't know. All that to say, I think that agency piece with if you couple that with you have choice and where, where, where do you have that? Yeah, maybe you don't want to go quit your job tomorrow. Okay, but if you stay, how do you want to stay? What can you change? And can you at least? I think a lot of people get scared to give themselves permission because they think I just have to go jump. And it's like that's a choice. Some people do that. You can also pendulate and take small little steps towards it and see how it feels. That's also an okay option. And I think there's some women who will avoid taking that and telling themselves the truth and healing from burnout because they're so terrified that my only two options are stay the same or burn it all down. And it's like sometimes burning it all down is great. And sometimes some women need a little bit more incremental building of self-trust and capacity before they go and do that.

SPEAKER_02: 39:50

Yeah. Yeah. You know, like I said, I mean, I did I take the big jump. Yeah, but I titrated into it by blocking my schedule by experimenting with that. And I want to say, even if you don't feel like you have capacity to do it within your job to start working cyclically, start outside of your job, like you said, with the decor. Even now coming into the holiday season, I want you to play with that. I have to, I have to. There are some things that I like to do. I like to put up decorations, they're great. I love it. What I'm not gonna do, what I don't have the capacity to do, is do damn elf on the shelf. I don't have capacity for it, so we're not gonna do it. It's just not gonna happen. And so even my kids understand that mom is not able to do all the things all the time. There are boundaries I have to set with my kids. I may have the desire, I don't really have the desire to do elf on the shelf, but there is a desire to do other things, but I don't always have the capacity. It doesn't mean I won't have the capacity, but I don't have it right now. And sometimes I have to tell them no, or I have to tell them not right now. There are going to be days where they ask me, hey mom, can we go to the park? And I have to say, no, mom can't take you to the to the park right now, but how about we watch Moana together? That's what I can do. So instead of trying to do, like we were talking about earlier, trying to do all the things, be all the things, really drop in and get curious about, no, I don't have the capacity for that right now. But this is what I do have the capacity for. And yeah, I don't have the desire to do all the things all the time. I don't want to be every woman. I don't want to be a superwoman. Y'all can have that. Good luck with that. I wish you the best. But rather, I'm much, much, much more content in working with the rhythms, the seasons, the waves of my personal and professional life. And to what you were talking about earlier, I do want to acknowledge, yes, the outside forces of colonization are real. The outside expectations are real. They are not going anywhere, they are there. The real question though, and this is the question I had to ask myself that I find that really started to get that sort of made you go, you know, mind explode, was not just like the outside forces of colonization, but I asked myself, how am I colonizing myself? How am I dominating myself every day? And do I fundamentally do I want to be in relationship with myself, in relationship with my body and my being, or do I want to be in domination of it? And if I want to be in relationship with it, there are going to be some things that have to change. And yes, that means I am going to be different than the way some other people are. I am going to be different than the expectations other people have of me. Now the question is, what is my capacity to be with the discomfort of not meeting their expectations? And that's been been very, very interesting to be with when it when it when it comes to this work. Because like you were saying, we have agency. We have so much agency, so much choice, more than we realize. But what we don't have is control. And the difference is agency is choice. Control is a guaranteed outcome. I cannot control how other people and organizations respond to my cyclical and seasonal living. But I do have agency. I do have choice as to how I choose to be in relationship with them. I have choice as to how I choose to navigate.

SPEAKER_00: 43:17

Yeah. Well, and there's there's all these forces of nature. And, you know, again, I think we've been sold this message that there's some way that we can control or prevent or sometimes mitigate the death and decay parts of life. And that we can always just be, I mean, even if you look at birth, there's like, here's how we like mitigate. And it's like, I it's inherently dangerous, it's inherently magical, it's inherently like there are no guarantees. Even if you give all the right good girl steps, you follow the rules, you do all the right things, it's like you still might not get the outcome. That's control. And I think so many of us were so intensely perfectionistic and performance-based. And you know, I'm speaking of myself here, and I consistently have to remind myself like that, this is what it is. This is what it is. And coming back to letting go of control, it feels terrifying. And sometimes for me, there's a little the more I've healed, the less it's external expectations, and it's more they're either the externalized expectations that become internalized, and now it sounds like me, or it's my own expectations of I thought this is how I would be as a mother. This is how I thought I would take care of the house. And you know what? Sometimes there's a little part of me who's also disappointed. There's a little part of me who would like to be better at that. There's a part of me that would love it if everything was shiny and happy. And also I know that when that part of me was leading my life, it was more protective control. Right. And that stole so much presence and connection from my life. We decided that we're hosting Thanksgiving for the first time ever. And it was wild because the first responses in my body was like absolute pressure and panic of like all the shit I had, like instant pressure, instant pressure. And it wasn't in my mind, it was like in my body. And all of a sudden, I was like, this gets to look however it wants to look. And I truly want to do this, but I really had to like slow down and remember like so many of these outside pressures and masters, and like, here's what you have to do, and here's how to do it. It's like none of that matters. And I looked around my house and I was like, I literally could leave my house just like this and host Thanksgiving if I wanted to. If you dirty dishes everywhere, I don't have to clean first. And you know what? I had this permission of you know what? Some of my favorite people had some messy houses, and when I went, I cared not a single lick because they were so present and connected and they were the most kind people. And I was like, none of my family actually cares either. We have really great family, and so it's like, but I had to slow that down of okay, what actually matters, what actually will feel good. And I think that's so important in each season because success is going to look different in every season. Personally, in motherhood. I mean, I know like I've hit seasons of motherhood where I'm like, we are golden, we are doing so good. I've got this. And then sometimes within a week, and I'm in this phase right now, where all of a sudden I'm like, oh, we in a different ballgame. We are like the season has changed. What was working, it's no longer working. And so now we're in this transition where it goes, okay, what's not working anymore? Can we allow that to pass away? Can we transition in some new things? And transitions have a lot of tension to them. I'm I'm not a huge science person, but it's so interesting. I was looking at this like resistance and tension, and all of a sudden I remembered that like the law of motion, every object in motion stays in motion. An object at rest stays at rest unless it's acted upon by an unequal force. How true is that with life? There's a transition, it takes more energy to start and stop. But so often we just expect ourselves to just be able to go on and off, and we skip that part where there's a building or a slowing of the tension and the movement.

SPEAKER_02: 47:29

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, like you said, we just expect ourselves to go on and off. And it's just not the way the human body works. And I mean, uh I'll I'll acknowledge like the culture of where this came from, you know, particularly within the United States, or really just uh the West, the West, if you want to refer to it that way. Post-industrialization, post-colonization, like, oh, we can just have lights on all the time, like we don't need rest. If we can make a little, if a little is good, more must be better. And as as as nations, it was actually a trauma response. It was like, if we can just keep working, we'll keep making money and we'll be safe. And do we need money? Yeah, we do. But with anything, if we put our safety outside of ourselves, whether it's in in money, certain level of production, it's conditional and never enough. That's why if a little is good, more must be better. Well, if I if I produce at 85, then I'll be even safer if I produce at 95. Well, if I produce at 95, I'll be even produ better, safer if I produce, it'll just keep going and going and going. And so that's what's gotten us in the place where we are now, where we try to trim the fat, so to speak, of those unnecessary parts, those transitions. You know, like even if we think about literally the the the birthing process, if we it's become like a factory model, we're just trying to do it as quickly and quote unquote efficiently as possible, to really uh suck out as much time because time is money and money is time. But this that is what has that is what has gotten us in the position where we are now, yeah, where many of us are chronically, chronically burnt out, we are in collapse, we are not content, but we don't know why, and we don't know another way of being. But I'll I'll I'll close with saying as individuals and also as nations, communities, groups, if our safety, if our sense of self, if our value, if our worth is tied to productivity any form of slowing down, any form of rest will inherently be a threat.

SPEAKER_00: 49:56

Yeah, it's like when is enough enough? And can you feel enoughness? Like what is contentment, or recently, like I've been talking to my kids a lot about like play that is boredom, like a puzzle. Like I think so many of us are over and underwhelmed at the same time.

SPEAKER_02: 50:16

Correct.

SPEAKER_00: 50:17

It's I think there's so many people who are in the type of burnout where their foot is both on the gas and the brake at the same time. And it's like there's no semblance of peace or connection or safety in body or connection or family. And what you are talking about is just such a beautiful gift. I think, especially right now in this transitional season, I think in so many ways, I just I have I've loved this conversation with you. It is just so life-giving to me. And I hope it will be to everyone else. I'm curious, like, what is the best place for I know people will love this to learn more about you, to follow you. Like, where is the best place to like get connected with Camille these days?

SPEAKER_02: 51:06

Yeah, yeah. Well, if you want to sort of just get connected with me, I am on Instagram, Camille.leak. You can find me there. But also come check me out at Holistic Life Navigation, all up and through there at different webinars and retreats. We'll actually be doing a retreat out in Costa Rica at the end of February, if you want to come hang out with us there. But in particular, if you're really interested around the cyclical and seasonal leave living and working, again, go to Holistic Life Navigation, the website, and go to on-demand learning. And there's a 90-minute webinar if you just want to put your toe, dip your toe in, hear a little bit more about it. But if you really, really want to go a little bit deeper into it, I have a four-part recorded course. So it's to take you through helping you identify your cycles, your rhythms on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. So you could check out that that course. And then if you're really, really, really into this stuff, keep keep an eye out on my my Instagram page as well as HLN stuff, because next year I'm going to do a six-month uh slow group. So this will be a live session. We'll meet once a week a group of people who just want to work with other people and myself to over the course of six months to really go slow and deep into identifying their daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rhythms. And this will be a slow group and a space where we can experiment, we can reflect, we can observe, we can share what we're playing with, not to just know because sometimes we think we, well, I should just know what my rhythms are. It's an iterative process. And so we'll have this container to support you as you go through those iterations, as you go through the experimentation, the observation, the iteration pivot, and then you do it again. So those are three different ways in particular when it comes to seasonal and cyclical living and working, if you want to explore it a bit further.

SPEAKER_00: 52:59

I mean, that just sounds amazing. And I just have to say, like, I I send people to HLN all the time. What you guys, each of you there, like Luis, you, I just it has been such a gift to me personally and professionally. And I think what's so beautiful is that it is truly connected and relational. And the slowness part, I think is actually so important because I think there's a million places you can go to get information. Very few places, I think, where you can go and get integration and actual building of the skill in your own body, not just of the, oh, Camille or Luis is going to give you a 10-step blueprint. It's like they are going to help you connect to the relationship of you, yourself, your life. And it's just such a gift, and it has just been such a beautiful thing for me. And just having you on the podcast again has just been such a joy. So thank you so much for being with me today. And if you guys love this podcast, if you'll take a moment, leave a review, share it with a friend. If you want to message me on social, definitely go follow Camille. We'd we'd love to hear from you and definitely share it about with your friends. So thank you so much for being here, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Make sure you have subscribed below so that you see all of the upcoming podcasts that are coming soon. I hope you take today's episode and you take one aha moment, one small tangible piece of work that you can bring into your life to get your hands a little dirty, to get your skin in the game. Don't forget to take up audacious space in your life. If this podcast moved you, if it inspired you, if it encouraged you, please do me a favor and leave a review. Send an episode to a friend. This helps the show gain more traction. It helps us to support more moms, more women. And that's what we're doing here. So I hope you have an awesome day. Take really good care of yourself, and I'll see you next time.