Soul Story Mapping: from “I’m Fine” to “I’m Fully Alive”

This one’s a sacred pause. If you’ve been feeling restless, unclear, or unmoored—this one’s for you.

It’s a slow-down episode meant to meet you right where you are. 

Before we dive into logistics or client stories, I invite you to grab your tea, go for a walk, or settle in with a journal and let this be a moment to exhale.

In this episode, I reflect on the tension of being in the “valley of becoming,” that strange in-between where what used to fit doesn’t anymore — but what’s next still feels hazy. 

I talk about why I believe this season of life is not a crisis but an awakening, how the Conformity Corset shows up when you’ve outgrown your old map, and why that uncomfortable tug in your body is actually a sign you’re right on time.

I share why I created the 90-minute Soul Story Mapping session for ambitious, midlife, athlete-hearted women who’ve outgrown the old map but don’t want to torch their lives to find the new one. 

I trace my own pivots (swimmer → clinician → entrepreneur → Soul Story Guide), name the “Conformity Corset,” and explain why tension is a sign you’re right on time. You’ll hear two real-world vignettes—Holly (from “fine” to free) and Elena (manual therapist unlacing a gilded cage)—and I guide you through a brief somatic reflection to feel your next chapter. 

I close with a limited-time offer (two sessions for the price of one through Sept 2025) and exactly who this is for: women in healthcare, founders, and athlete-types in a midlife awakening who crave personalized, drop-in support.

• 00:00 — Sacred Pause & What’s New: Why Soul Story Mapping exists
  
  
  
• 05:15 — What It Is (and Isn’t): How the session actually works
  
  
  
• 07:06 — My Valley of Becoming: Athlete roots, pivots, and the Body-to-Soul line
  
  
  
• 11:20 — Who It’s For: Healthcare leaders, entrepreneurs, and athlete-hearted women (aka Midlife Awakening)
  
  
  
• 24:19 — Out in the Wild: Holly’s “fine” → freedom arc (titrated change, real results)
  
  
  
• 44:11 — How We Map: Session flow, Voxer support, and a guided visualization and drop in
  
  
  
• 49:10 —Session Invitation  & Next Steps (link in show notes)

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Transcript

Julie Granger (00:00)

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to this episode of Sink and Swim. Today's episode is a little bit different. It's a pause, it is a slow down, and it is a chance for you to really feel into where you are in this season of life. And it's an update. And I bring some announcements that I am so excited to share with you.

Last week, I quietly opened up a brand spanking new way of working with me, which is the soul story mapping session. And I

I'm so elated that the response has been incredible. I have my first session set up with the first person who grabbed the session actually will be today, the same day this episode comes out. So I'll have to report back on how it went.

I have been hearing from so many of you who are craving really deep personal support that doesn't require you to commit to a six, nine or 14 month program or be part of a group program where you have to wait your turn to talk to your coach for 10 minutes every few weeks. Women in the 35 to 55 ish life window are really shifting what type of support they want and

A lot of times it's more personal, more drop in when you need it type of support. And so that's why I created this container. And I created it for you. If you're the type of ambitious, maybe athletic type of woman who's been goal oriented and you've been following a map your whole life, you raise the bar, you check the boxes, you do the right things, you've built the career, you've raised the kids.

human, dog, cat, whatever your kids are. You might be running a business, you might be high up in a leadership position in an employee job, and you stay on top of your health. You're kind of doing everything right. And one day you pause and you say, huh, normally I know what's next, but right now I don't quite know what's next. Or, I do know what's next, but I'm not.

quite sure how to get there or when to press go and also who or what I might have to burn down in order to get to it. And with that comes this jarring realization that you, someone who usually knows exactly what's next and goes after it, you can't quite name what the next chapter is when you're going to get there and it feels nerve wracking to voice it out loud.

So you're in this weird in-between space, which I call the valley of becoming, where you know your life and career or your relationships or something that's important to you. It doesn't fit you anymore, but you don't quite know what is next or when is next or the specifics of how to get there. And what is compounding is at this life stage, your energy is limited, your body is changing, your attention is

precious and you don't just want to willy nilly jump into something new for the sake of feeling like you're moving. Only to then find out three or six months from now that it isn't right. And yet you can feel something stirring. There's something expanding and you can't quite wrap words around it, but you know it's taking you somewhere. And this feeling that women have told me about for

years now is exactly why I have created the Soul Story Mapping Session. It is a 90 minute deep dive for you to pause, get everything out of your head, not only onto paper but be witnessed in doing it so that you can see what your soul has been trying to tell you all along. And I wanted to make sure you got to hear what this work is really about from my mouth, not just by reading about it but by hearing me talk to you directly.

So in today's episode, I'm sharing a conversation I recorded for my website, but you get a lot more ins and outs from me here in the podcast episode. And I'm gonna walk you through my own story. I'm gonna walk you through who these sessions are for. I'm gonna walk you through why they work. And the way I'm gonna show you that is through real client stories, real people out in the wild who have paused to map out the story of their soul in these sessions already.

And at the end, I will guide you through a short reflection practice, something that I often guide my clients through in these types of sessions. You can actually get a feel for what it's like to work with me. So for that reflection part, if you are available to do so,

You can close your eyes and make sure to really ground and give yourself the space to feel into where you are now and also visualize where it is you could go. And in the spirit of mapping and just to orient you upfront, if you do feel called to explore more about signing up for one of these sessions, there is a link in the show notes, which takes you to my website where you can read more about it, get a feel for it. And of course, if you feel called, sign up for it.

Either way, my invitation is to treat this as a sacred pause. me with you on a walk. Sit down with your favorite cup of tea, grab a journal, take some notes. Because there's a lot of stuff that I am bringing into this episode that I teach my clients, but I don't always bring into the wild, into the public. And so I'm going to offer it to you as well.

So if you're ready, grab your swimsuit, your goggles and your snorkel and let's sink into the deep end.

Julie Granger (05:15)

Hello, my friends. Welcome. I am Dr. Julie Granger. the founder and owner of Illuminate Freedom Coaching and the developer of the Soul Story Mapping Session. Thank you for being here.

I wanna acknowledge that if you're here, you're probably on the precipice of some type of shift in your life,

And so it takes bravery, maybe even

a brazenness to show up here to consider getting support. and whatever it is you want to shift into might require you to make some changes that can feel tense and uncomfortable and so kudos to you for even being here in the first place.

I'm going to walk you through what this is, who this is for. And my main goal is to help you decide if this is right for you. And

This is really important to me because the whole point of Soul Story Mapping is for you to drop into your soul and really feel into via your body, which is the vehicle of getting messages from your soul how it feels to read this information, to hear what I have to say and make a choice on whether you're going to move forward with this

However,

there still might be something missing. So don't hesitate to reach out to me. My DMs are open, my emails are open, and I'm here for you. And I also want to acknowledge that maybe you'll go through all of this and it won't feel like it's the right fit and good for you for noticing that and listening to your heart and your soul and your body on that. However, if your soul is feeling the nudge, it would be so fun.

to go soul to soul with you be in your corner and witness you stepping into the version of you, the version of your life, the version of your career that helps you feel the most alive. So if that feels like a yes to you, I welcome you to sign up for the session and see where this takes

Julie Granger (07:06)

Before we dig into all the ins and outs of who this session is for and what it's about, I want to share a story from my own world because this work came from my own seasons of being right where you're sitting right now.

Before I ever moved into this type of coaching work going decades back, I was a swimmer. I swam growing up and became an NCAA Division I swimmer. And it was my first love. It was my whole life. It was my identity. It was always raising the bar in a race of one with myself, not just to win, but to just see how much I could challenge myself to grow.

and step into more and more. I always knew what the next goal was. I always had my eye on it and I always had a map and a plan to get me there. Then life threw me a series of pivots. A shoulder injury ended my college swimming career before I was ready but I pivoted into healthcare.

and pour all of my heart and energy into helping female athletes and swimmers reclaim and retain their identity and purpose as athletes. Then I built a successful practice of my own. helped people heal their bodies, then it came time to pivot out of healthcare entirely.

first I helped female athletes and women in general with their health and hormones. Then I became a business and marketing mentor for entrepreneurs. And now I've really put it all together in the work I do, helping to guide women through something even more intangible, the story of their soul.

And each of these pivots I went through was beautiful and brutal. They brought grief. They brought pain and a whole lot of tension. My body became my biggest teacher and it became the telephone line to my soul. And I learned this not only through these pivots, but also through a season of cancer. And now through a season

of perimenopause.

All of these seasons, all of these pivots, all of these identity and career shifts have ushered me into seasons of massive shedding of this layer of rules and expectations that I thought were what defined me. And instead into allowing the light and story of my soul to really shine in its fullest and most alive expression.

And this was maybe the hardest part.

because I'm deeply sensitive and empathetic, which maybe you can identify with, those shifts and seasons and pivots and sheddings came with people shifts too. The friendships, the colleagues, the mentors, who couldn't come with me into the next expression of myself.

Every pivot had a face down on the floor moment where I had to choose my fullest expression of aliveness or the people who were pulling me back into a less expressed version of myself. And I had this moment of, I know it's not that I don't want that, but also how do I get into what's next without burning everything down? There was risk.

The key for me that I've learned along the way through much trial and error is to always take the sacred pause, especially when you're in the tension and do exactly what you're doing now to sink in, to listen to the story of your soul.

I've learned time and time again that stepping into the fullest expression of myself is so vulnerable. It's not any less scary, but it's more seamless.

when someone is in my corner with me, and maybe that's the athlete who's been in me all along, I've always been the one walking the journey, swimming the laps, taking the steps, lifting the weights, deciding what's best for my body and my health and my life and my soul. But my best seasons came when I allowed myself to be seen and witnessed and guided and reflected back.

by a coach or a guide who really got me and genuinely wanted to see me in the most expressed version of myself at my definition of success. So if something I've said buzzed in your soul, stay with me because that nudge just might be the start of your next chapter.

Julie Granger (11:20)

In nearly 17 years of my career, I have worked a vast array of mostly people who identify as women or girls, and they tend to fall into three categories.

Julie Granger (11:35)

A woman in healthcare, an entrepreneur, an athlete, or some combination of all three categories.

Julie Granger (11:41)

For category one. You're a woman in healthcare. You're starting to realize you want to shift something, not just in your work, but how you actually walk the talk in your own life. It could be that your career interests have changed. energy is shifting in your body.

Maybe you feel like you're outgrowing the track you've built for yourself. Maybe you are burned out and you're done with whatever it is you are. And what's so tricky about healthcare is you have a reputation you might've built, And it can feel really risky to shift into something new, whether it's changing your line of work, changing your profession altogether, starting a business.

see things has changed. about the mind-body interaction, how you incorporate spirituality into your work, And something feels incongruent, like there's the version of you who's changed in your life, but it's not showing up in your work. And you just wanna...

make sure that this next chapter you're stepping into feels really aligned with who you are and what you're here to do.

And a note on the whole healthcare thing, I work with women who may not be in healthcare but are in service oriented professions. I've worked with attorneys, teachers, wellness studio owners like Pilates or yoga or dance. stay at home moms.

worked with women who are C-suite level, creatives, artists, everything in between. But the thing that brings everyone together is you have a heart to serve and lead

The next category, category two, is entrepreneur. So you may be a woman in healthcare who is an entrepreneur or you may be a woman who is an entrepreneur, in general. So maybe you're contemplating a big shift going from being an employee in a corporation or even in a small business to being your own boss.

Maybe you're already a business owner and you're wanting to scale up, get bigger, make a bigger impact, take your business to the next level. Maybe you're wanting to scale down. Maybe you've actually grown pretty big and made a pretty big impact and doesn't feel like it's your place anymore. And you actually want to bring it back down to a

sustainable level, maybe just like a one woman show. Yet you don't quite know how to go from there to where it is you're envisioning. Or maybe you're in category three, you're an athlete or you identify as someone who's just really active and athletic and really dedicated to training and staying in shape.

CrossFit, running, triathlete, swimmer, mountain biker, performing artist, And you're feeling a shift at this phase of life. You are shifting in how you approach training. You're shifting in how you approach your identity as an athlete. You've got other priorities. Maybe you have kids, maybe you're a dog mom, maybe you have taken up gardening,

Maybe you have aging parents. And all of this is coming together and starting to have you question how much, if any, you want to dedicate to your athletic endeavors. And maybe you want to dedicate more. Maybe it's time to turn the volume up, but you have all this stuff going on and you're like, I don't want to throw myself out of whack or out of balance.

And what I find with most of my clients is usually some combination of all three, like in healthcare, entrepreneur or entrepreneur to be, active and athletic woman. And the other identifying factor is you're in that millennial.

or younger Gen X generation. So women in the 35 to 55 age group where your priorities your identity your energy your body is shifting. And it's a ripe time to start asking a lot of questions about who you are, what you're here to do, and who your people are, which are the three main questions that I tend to work through with clients.

A lot of people would call that a midlife crisis, which is a cute name, and it may actually feel that way many times. I call it a midlife awakening because you're waking up to what's actually really true for you, what's actually really important to you and what's not. And you're also just getting clear on the fact that you have no more f*cks to give. In certain places, you just don't want to hang out with certain people or be in certain spaces or stay up past

9 p.m. anymore. It's just not your rhythm. It's not your tone. It's not your vibe. So if you find yourself in any of those places

and you're goal oriented, you're ambitious, you just have this internal drive to raise your own bar, to be a better version of yourself, to unlock that 1 % that gets you to more.

whatever the more is for you. And you've been this way your whole life. You sink yourself deep into what it is you love. You're really dedicated to it. And then sometimes you outgrow it. And so you move on to the next thing. You're really self-aware. You really listen to yourself to get there. you thrive in this place of constantly raising that bar and tweaking little things.

and improving yourself. It's such a beautiful testament of growth mindset. And at this stage in your life where you're kind of like, this place I'm at doesn't feel right for me anymore. The problem is you're kind of like, I don't know what is right. So normally you get the goal in mind, the vision, and you just go for it. But now you're hesitating. You might know what it is or you don't know what it is. You don't know what your next move is. You don't quite know what your next chapter is.

And that can feel really jarring, For someone who usually knows where they're going and what's right for them. And it feels tense. It's sort of like, ooh, I feel lost. I feel unmoored. I feel a little directionless. I feel stuck in in-between of who I was and who I'm becoming. And all that tension can build up. And you might do all you can to help yourself feel good in that tension. You might have done therapy.

you might have really dialed in your wellness routine. Counting protein has become a full-time job for you, maybe. You are looking at an exercise routine or a training regimen that feels really restorative but also challenging to you.

And then you're also looking inward. You've done nervous system regulation, gratitude journaling, breath work, you're looking on the soul and the spiritual level to just stay connected. But still you might be lying in bed at night scrolling your phone,

And you're wondering like, is this it for me? My life is actually pretty good. It looks good on paper. I've built a lot, but something doesn't feel like it's mine. It's not right. And maybe I can see what it is I want, or I can't see what it is I want. I feel like I'm made for so much more. And I want to harness the energy and youth I still have to

capture that. But I also have finite energy. have finite time. have finite resources. There's a lot of balls in the air. So I don't want to burn everything down. I don't want to hurt people. I don't want to hurt myself. I don't want to lose everything I've built because that would bring, guilt. would bring grief. It would, it would hurt. I just want you to know if you're in that place in any way, shape or form,

That's okay. And it's normal to feel unmoored, to feel lost, to feel directionless, to feel stuck, to feel kind of like you're walking through a valley, not sure which way is up. And the thing I really want you to know Is you're not doing anything wrong for feeling this way.

I would propose that the fact that you feel this tension, this brewing, these questions coming through your body and soul, it means that you're actually doing a lot right.

And in a world that tells you to calm your tension and tame it and regulate it, I would encourage you to lean in and listen and trust your capacity to hold it because what it means is your system, mind, body, and spirit is accurately clocking the importance of this moment to you. If it weren't important to you, it wouldn't feel tense and it wouldn't feel big.

And I want to tell you why this tension has come. So I call this the Conformity Corset The Conformity Corset is this invisible structure You can't touch it, but you can feel it. That's made up of all the expectations, conditioning, and rules you've followed throughout your life. Even well-meaning rules that seem healthy and seem like the right for you.

It's what got you here. But now it's wrapped around you. It's created this tension and you feel boxed in, you feel fenced in. You feel like you're expanding and you've outgrown it and it doesn't fit you anymore. And like a Corset, it's been supportive. but it can cinch in and make you feel like it robs you of your breath, your inability to digest and like really feel like you're showing yourself to the world.

In summary, you started to outgrow the conditioning patterns, the expectations, the people, practices, the identities that you've built until now. And what's really, really tricky about humans is we are wired to authentically express who we are. are wired to authentically go after what our soul wants us to do. We are authentically wired to follow our heart.

but we're also wired to maintain bonds of connection with people who see us and expect us to show up a certain way. And neurobiologically speaking, if one is up against the other, if I fully express and become the person I'm supposed to be and live the life I'm supposed to live, and I am wired for belonging and being looked up to or being depended on by my kids, my staff, my team,

my colleagues, my spouse, and also being the person who is depending on others,

what will happen is they go up against each other in your nervous system and the nervous system is wired to default to restoring and maintaining belonging and connection and bonds instead of being authentically you. And so over years all of the expectations of people and the conditioning of society and the way you're supposed to be in the rules all these things

that help you feel safe in a world where we are social beings and looked at and cared for by others. And it's wrapped around you. But what it's doing is it's closing in on your most authentic version of what your soul has designed for you to be, do, and have in this lifetime. And it's just a natural part of midlife where it happens at different ages and different stages for different people, but it's normal.

because your body's shifting, because your mind is shifting, because priorities are shifting, to start to feel that Corset wrapped around you and want to get out of it. And that's why it feels like a crisis because you're like needing to bust out of this thing. You're boxed in. So

The fact that you're here feeling this is good news. because it means your soul has planted seeds that you're starting to water because you're asking these questions, you're feeling that tension and those seeds are starting to outgrow the container box that they're in and they're looking for more room to grow.

So here's what most women try to do when they're at this place. They try regulating their nervous system, all of that tension, uneasiness, unsteadiness, Maybe you tried joining a career mastermind or a business mastermind Maybe

you'll do professional training like certifications or courses. Maybe you'll do more athletic training and even work with a coach Maybe you take up a new sport. Maybe you take up a new hobby like gardening

Or maybe you're muscling through, patching the uneasiness with supplements, with diet changes, with lifestyle changes, with performance enhancers. Maybe you've started menopause hormone therapy, all good things, And those are helping, but you're still not moving You still don't feel like that tension is unwrapping itself from you.

Corset. And that's because you're missing one thing. You're missing your Soul Story Map

You, a goal-oriented person who has always known where you're going, set the bar and gone after it, doesn't know where you're going, And the other thing that's missing,

to help you create that map, sign on the dotted line with yourself, like a notary, a witness to seeing you do it, and a witness to help you birth it, like a doula, So that's what Soul Story mapping is. This is not going to be a checklist or a framework that I give you to follow.

This is not me telling you what to do with your life. I will shine a flashlight and point out things I'm seeing that maybe you're not seeing. Like body language changes, tone of voice changes. I use a lot of somatic work in my client work

which helps us see and hear and feel things that sometimes you don't realize are coming through you. It's some of the most magical moments my clients tell me they have with me. We use a lot of internal family systems oriented type work to really get in and listen to what all the inner parts of you are saying. And this is a co-creative session. where you listen to your soul. You notice what's tugging.

And you start to draw the map on what's next, not just what, but when, where, how, and why, especially the why. what clients tell me who do these sessions, they tell me I am very much like their doula, their guide. They know they're the ones walking the trail. They know they're the one birthing the new version of themselves.

I'm the witness. I'm the one there to help you make it more fluid and let you do it with less friction.

Julie Granger (24:19)

Before we go any further, and definitely before we drop into a visualization and body practice and the logistics of this whole story mapping session, I want to ground this into a few real stories so you can feel what this looks like out in the wild. First up, I want to tell you the story of my beautiful client Holly.

This is one of my favorite stories of what happens when you give yourself permission to voice truth to your soul story. Holly was a woman who had done everything right. She was a collegiate athlete and she channeled that energy into her healthcare career. She worked in a large healthcare practice, corporate practice with multiple locations, and she had climbed into a leadership role.

She had a steady stream of client referrals, people who came just for her. She had a beautiful home. She had active kids. She had a husband who was doing well at work. So on paper, she was killing it. Channeling that athlete, go after the goal and just crush it mentality. But inside, she was whispering to herself, sometimes in the car, before she walked into the office, wiping tears from her eyes.

Sometimes late at night when she was scrolling her phone, this ain't it. And for upwards of about a year, she did all she could to make it go away. She hired a therapist and started working through her conflicting feelings. She cut out caffeine She meditated. She added walks with inspiring podcasts in her ears, She... ⁓

tried supplements to calm her system and balance her hormones. She cleaned up her diet. She did all the right things just as an athlete would. But that whisper inside of her got louder. And every time she whispered out loud to her husband or to a friend, and their eyebrows would raise when she said, isn't it. She would backpedal.

with nevermindneverminditsfineitsfineishouldbegrateful

I know what I have is good. And the truth is what she had was good. She was grateful, but it wasn't fine. Anyone who knows the word fine, it's a four letter F word. And almost never when we use that word is anything actually fine.

One night she went out for a glass of wine after work with her friend Carla, who's a former client of mine.

And Holly, as her inhibitions had lowered a little bit, let the truth slip out. And she hadn't had so much wine that she was unaware of what just happened. And she tried to backpedal again. I'm fine. I'm fine. It's actually all really good. I should be grateful. Because the same thing happened. Carla's eyebrows raised when Holly voiced that truth of, I don't think this is it for me.

And Carla saw her backpedaling and saw her trying to stuff it back in. And Carla said, Hey, I get it. I've been there. And I just want to ask you, is this how you really want your life to be? Do you want to keep saying it's fine?

And you know how when someone says something to you or reflects back to you something you said or says something to you you don't want to hear, it can just cut right through like a knife, right? And that happened to Holly. She burst into tears right there in the wine bar. Mascara running, snot coming out of her nose. She's like fiddling through her purse trying to grab a tissue. Can't find one, wipes her smeared mascara on her blouse, which thankfully was a dark color.

And she took some breaths, looked at Carla, and for the first time said, no, it's not fine.

And later on, Carla started a group chat between me and Holly and her, introduced us, and Holly eventually signed up for a soul story mapping session. And when she came, she was terrified to say the truth out loud again. There was no longer any wine to lubricate the tension. She was witnessed by a relative stranger, even though she had listened to my voice on a podcast and was reading blogs on my website.

She had hidden herself in a private room at work. She was sort of like leaning into the camera and the microphone on her computer, lowering her voice, looking over her shoulder and whispering. She had gone into this room on her lunch break. So there were people around at work that she didn't want to hear her say the truths that were coming out of her mouth because she was the one.

that held it all together at work. She was the glue. She was the one who was there for everyone else. And she was afraid that if they caught wind of her not being okay, that they wouldn't be okay.

We spent 90 minutes laughing, crying, scheming, and really just giving her space to sink in and map out her soul's GPS. And the whole point was not to rush to answers, but to hold space for her to be exactly where she was without judgment, without needing to fix it, without that eyebrow raise that brought what she could name as shame. She was ashamed of

not coming across as grateful for this thing that she built. And over the next year, after that session, quiet but seismic shifts happened for her. She started standing up to the bosses that were pressuring her to take on more than she had capacity for. She stopped needing a handful of ashwagandha just to get through the day.

she said no to over volunteering at church. Her husband noticed her energy come back and he even, I remember the story, she told me about how they stopped feeling like roommates and he just seemed to start intuiting when she needed help instead of her feeling invisible. And she told me about the day that he just pulled up a knife and started chopping apples beside her while she packed soccer snacks for a game.

that weekend. And she felt like she felt seen by him for the first time in a long time. And shifts began to come out for her one by one, career ideas began to flow. She started to drink coffee again, because she wanted to. She just a few weeks ago turned in her resignation. And she had been so afraid of that because she was afraid of pushback from

the members of her team that she led and mentored. And she was, of course, afraid of pushback from her bosses. And it didn't come. They accepted it. And three hours later, no joke, she put in a resignation and got an email from an old college friend for a new job that pays her the same, cuts her hours by 15 a week, and frees up her Mondays to do whatever she wants. What's so cool about this is when we did the Soul Story mapping session,

over a year ago, that friend hadn't started her business yet. And so had she ripped off the bandaid and left her job that day, followed her athlete mentality of I've got a goal and I'm just going to go do it, she wouldn't have had the opportunity. And I think that's something that the personal development world often gets wrong. It's great advice.

Do it scared, rip off the band-aid, just jump off and do it. But it's not necessarily what I call somatically ethical. It's not necessarily the pace at which your soul and your body need to move and can move in a sustainable way. It can feel really exhilarating and really sexy to just do the brave thing. But oftentimes you fall back into your old ways or you fall back into that conformity corset that it tightens tighter around you after a certain amount of time that you took the big leap. So ⁓

Holly was such a good example of letting things titrate bit by bit. And when she actually was able to voice within that soul mapping session, what it unlocked was permission to listen to and give breath to that voice every little step along the way. And in doing that, she knew by listening to her own voice, to her own soul story,

when it was time to actually resign from her job. Even though in the soul mapping session, she knew that's what she needed to do. She waited until her system was officially saying, go. And then on a soul level, on a spiritual level, of course, that opened up the door immediately for what was gonna happen. And had she jumped when we had that soul mapping session a year before, she wouldn't have had the opportunity. And she probably would have been more frazzled and panicked about how she was gonna support her family and...

what she was going to do with herself and who she was, that she probably would have either taken a choice to move into a role or a job that didn't align with who she was just to say that she had something or she would have ended up back in her job or she like would have regretted it, you know? So that's the story of Holly and that's the power of giving your soul story a voice. And then there's the story of Elena. Elena is a physical therapist.

who was brought up in a world of physical therapy that I'm so familiar with, basically teaches you that if you are a manual therapist, you use your hands and you use touch on a client's body, that this is what makes you the holiest of holy practitioners. And she built a multi-decade career around this practice and this identity as a manual therapist.

She loved it and clients got great results and there's nothing wrong with manual therapy. But lately, in the last couple of years, she's gotten a little bit more soulful, a little bit more spiritual in her own life. She's really changed to the way she orients towards her body and yet she hasn't changed the way she orients towards other people's body. And when she opens her laptop at 8 p.m. to actually finish her soap notes before she goes to bed,

and she hits that CPT code, that billing code, 97410, which is for anyone not in healthcare, that's just coding and billing for how we get paid. She hits that code and her chest goes tight. And she thinks to herself, that's not really what I'm doing, is it? And there's not really a code for what I'm actually doing. Because there's no code for the moment a client burst into tears.

when her palms pass over their C-section scar or their stretch marks. There's no code for the choked confession of a woman who's gone through breast cancer surgery and says, I don't know who I am anymore. There's no code for holding a woman through grief and helping her rebuild a relationship with a body she's only ever been taught to fix, shrink, control.

or train as an athlete. There's no code for naming the identity disorientation that rehab exercises can sometimes stir up after surgery. When you look down at your leg and it doesn't look like maybe the athletic leg that you once had.

So Elena comes to me and she's like, I keep entering this code, but it's not what I'm doing. And I'm realizing my work is not in congruent with who I've become. I realized that I'm touching people, but I'm actually touching something deeper and it feels dirty. It feels inauthentic to simply boil it down and call it manual therapy when it's so much more than that. And like in physical therapy,

She didn't feel authentic calling it physical therapy, but she also knew that it's not really her scope to bill for something that's not physical. Meanwhile, day to day, she's holding it all. She's the CEO of a practice she's built. She is the lunch packer for her two kids. She is the manager of the text thread for the women in the neighborhood who are sharing carpool to soccer practice. She manages slack pings when she wakes up first thing in the morning.

She has...

a body that she's optimized. Perimenopause is rolling in. She's constantly reading the latest research and following the gurus, trying to keep up with the fact that perimenopause is having a moment and she just wants to do the right thing for her body. She wants to balance the use of pharmaceuticals and hormones and more natural approaches.

She's measuring protein. She's checking her HRV. She's lining up magnesium, glycinate, and L-theanine on her nightstand. She's worshiping at the altar of sleep hygiene. She has her ring on her fingers. She has a tracker on her wrist. She's meditating. She's journaling. She's lifting heavy. She is cutting alcohol. And yet, in her personal life, she feels like managing everything on the outer surface is similar to manual therapy. She's like, it's this outer shell. It's not really what we're doing here.

And she walks into her work and she's like, I'm doing all this inner work on myself too. And yet I'm leading these patients to think that I'm leading them through this change in their outer shell, their muscles, their ability to move. And yet I'm doing deeper work with them. And she's just like, I can't keep doing it like this.

I built it though. I built this practice. have a team that I mentor and they practice how I do.

And she's just feeling like the thing she built to free her, which she built her business originally to leave a corporate employee job.

but that thing she built has become a gilded cage.

And when she's honest, she sees a pattern. She entered healthcare to serve versions of her that didn't get what they needed at some point in her own life. She was a collegiate athlete sidelined by injury. And so she went into physical therapy to help female athletes who'd been sidelined by injuries. She at some point was a mom who lost her body and her identity and was told, just be grateful for having kids. And so she wanted to serve women to get their bodies back.

and be grateful. She built a business to free other women who felt trapped in the corporate healthcare machine. And she also built it to free herself. But with all of that, that conformity corset, the rules, the rules, the expectations, it cinched tighter with every move she made. And now,

When someone asks, what do you do? She could name, yeah, I'm a PT and I own a practice. But she feels something tighten up around her throat because she can't name herself. And she sees the dissonance between titles, roles, responsibilities, certifications, the way she practices and who she's really becoming.

And so she sank into the invitation, a 90 minute session with me. And for the first time developed a language around a question that I asked her. I asked her, who's the version of you that built the life and the work that you're living compared to who's here now? And I remember her just going, I can answer all the questions around who built this.

which also answers the question of what I don't want anymore. And then she's like, I have no idea who's here now. I don't know how to find the words. And I really don't know how to tell you what it is I want. That's the choking feeling she got around her throat because we are so wired for sameness. We're so wired to maintain our identities and our roles in all the spaces and places where we belong that it can cut off the

the very deeply rooted human soul drive to step into your most authentic version of yourself. And that's biology. That's really, really smart wisdom of your nervous system to actually kind of cut you off from who it is you're becoming, what it is you want in service to keeping you safe and maintaining your bonds. And so together, very gently, we just started playing on the playground of creating this map of...

answering questions to three anchors of who is Elena now? Not her resume, not all the labels that describe her, but who is she independent of all those things? And it was like a brain bender for her, but when she started to wrap words around it, she was like, that corset around her neck, that sentient feeling, she felt like it really landed as home.

And then we took that and started answering questions. What is my purpose now? And then also the most important question of who are my people? Who are the ones who can hold the version of me that isn't defined by my tools and my titles and my roles and my labels who don't have all these preconceived expectations for what I should be to them or for them? And this includes her patients and her team and her spouse and her kids and her family. And we started to identify people who can hold

that version of who she really is and what her purpose really is without criticism, without trying to rush it along and make her get there quickly. And who couldn't? And it's that who could that gave her this permission to in small spaces start to express who she really was. She didn't leave the session with a 12 step plan. She didn't leave with like, okay, I know exactly what to do tomorrow, next week, next month. She left with an exhale. She left with

a written summary, a map with general themes and direction. She left not with her athlete mentality to rush through things. She left with permission to let it soak in, to sink in and trust that she could roll the map out bit by bit. Now, Elena decided to work with me privately on an ongoing basis

And so with that, those little bites rolling out bit by bit, we meet weekly to see where she's at and let her continue to listen to those voices and get direction from her own inner map versus all of the preconceived stories that everything around her.

or telling her she should be, do, have, how she should live, how she should lead, how she should parent, and everything in between.

For Elena, months later, 12 months later, the corset has really begun to unlace. She didn't rip it off in a blaze of glory. She unlaced it with care. Some of her relationships have changed shape. She went through the grief of recognizing that she needed to let a few of them fall away, or she needed to set some pretty badass boundaries with some people. And that's hard. It's hard to do that on your own.

when you're stepping into something new. So it was beautiful to be able to hold her in that space and know she's on the right track, even when it hurts to lose people. And that's something I can really relate to in my own story as well.

She started to bring people into her life. They just started to attract in. Who could hold all of her? Her spiciness, her complexity, her deep feeling intuitiveness. Her work, and I'll let you know, she's still in her practice, but her work has started to reorient towards her new identity. Or maybe I should say the identity that's been there all along, she just couldn't see it was hidden behind the corset of labels.

And she's still of service, but it's coming from joy and not being good at it. She's no longer looking at the clock when she walks into a client session and counting down the minutes until it's over before it's even begun.

And at home, life has also felt more whole and more like her. She wakes up on a Tuesday morning with the sun instead of with her alarm. She sits with bare feet on her porch, steam curling from a mug, staring at her garden that she's curated over the last year. And she's one who gardening was not just a hobby. was almost this thing she took up as a parallel

image and practice to mirror what she was going through, sinking in to the valley of uncertainty and planting seeds in the soil and knowing that the harvest is going to come way later and it's not a rushed process.

There's a lot of trust with gardening. There's a lot of waiting and watching and tending to. So it's not like she just sat back and her life became something. She had to tend to it and create fertile, healthy circumstances to grow crops and food and flowers and all of those things. But she did it bit by bit, one bite at a time, one step at a time.

She laughs now at how ordinary moments teach her such lessons about who she is and how it is to feel fully alive. And she looks back and she remembers the woman who once whispered, it's not this, but I don't know what it is. And she's now able to wrap her arms around that version of herself and remind her it's okay to sink in and listen and trust. It's okay to not know exactly what's coming.

Let's just take one step at a time listening to the story of your soul and you'll get where you're supposed to go. And she does. And she did. So if you felt a little me too tug while I shared either of these stories, I want to invite you to consider that that's your system being mirrored. That is your soul.

story being mirrored to you in some way shape or form. may not look exactly like Holly's or Elena's story, but the essence of it may be there and it's your system accurately clocking the importance of this moment. It may also feel squirmy. You might feel very seen and that's okay.

With that in mind, here's what it looks like to step into the support of the Soul Story Mapping session if you feel called to do so.

Julie Granger (44:11)

So if you have a background as a go-getter, as a really goal-oriented woman, as an athlete, you get this. You know that it's yours to walk. You know you have to be self-aware. You know you need to look at yourself holistically You also know that you can think about something. You can dream about it. You can calm your system. You can visualize. And that's great.

But at some point you have to step up to the plate, and swing the bat.

This is more like batting practice where you're doing the swinging, you're doing the movement, you're listening to your body and telling me how it feels. And we're honing your swing, we're honing your stance.

to maximize how it feels to show up in the next phase of whatever it is you're doing, And your swing, your stance, how you do things, the choices you make are gonna look really different from every other.

persons. And I'm here to guide you into you, not into anything that I would do, and not into a prefabricated way it should look or sound or feel or taste or smell. So we'll get clear on that for you. And

you get to feel how it feels to be witnessed in even the beginnings of naming and voicing what it is you want, who it is you are, what you're supposed to be doing and who your people are.

And I'm just going to help put the bumpers up on your bowling lane and keep you from wandering too far from yourself. If that makes sense. I'll be your mirror reflecting back what it is I'm hearing and seeing.

You also may have been in group coaching before you came here. You might have listened to podcasts. You may have joined live streams,

But this session allows you to truly have you mirrored back to you and for you to really develop a personalized plan

without rushing you, pressuring you, pushing you, or needing it to look any certain way that I expect it to look because that would be antithetical to trying to remove the Conformity Corset. It's about

walking beside you as you step forward into who you're becoming, because that can be such a tender and vulnerable place to stand. And so we're going to go at your pace.

And once we finish this session, you'll get follow-up support from me via Voxer, where we can do voice memos, texts, because things are gonna download and percolate after the session, and the last thing I want is to leave you hanging.

And so if you're feeling called to really be held one-on-one, this is the place to do it. Lastly,

if it feels accessible and you're able, I invite you to pause, keep the video playing, and drop into your body. Just take a breath, feel your feet on the ground.

and put your attention around your heart space. You can even put your hand on your heart if that helps.

and ask yourself.

First of all, what does it feel like to drop into my body and just be in my heart for a minute? Is there a temperature? Is there a sensation? Is there an image that comes to mind? Do I feel anything anywhere else in my body that comes up? Does it feel hard to access?

Just take some breaths into that as well.

Now imagine yourself trusting that you came here today on a nudge from your soul, even if it doesn't make like rational or logical sense or a part of you is going, Why are you here? You can figure this out. Do you really need help? Do you really need support? And just acknowledge that those voices might be present.

That's normal.

Now imagine how it would feel.

to say yes to listening to your soul and mapping out the Story of your soul, mapping out your next chapter.

I'm curious how that feels to you. might feel warm. It might feel squirmy. It might feel scary to imagine yourself being seen and actually putting pen to paper and putting words around it.

That's okay. This is normal. That's often the soul saying, pay attention to me. This is important.

Now imagine your self someplace in the future where you figured this out, you started taking action, you started creating the life that makes you feel fully alive. Imagine that future self looking back.

And how grateful she feels that you've leaned in, sank in, and listened.

What would she say to you right now sitting in this place?

What advice would she give you? What would she say about the energy you're feeling in your body?

And what would you say about trusting the nudge that brought you here today?

And just think about how it would feel to say yes. And I get it because you're not just saying yes to a session, you're saying yes to the next version of you and letting her actually start to come out and be expressed and be voiced and be felt and be heard. And you're investing money, of course.

which I know is no small thing. And it might feel...

big? One, because it's a financial stretch and I want to honor that. It might feel big because it's a soul stretch Sometimes it's hard to differentiate the two.

Either way, I really invite you to listen to that sacred yes. Listen to that deep voice that gave you some advice about what to do in this moment. Whatever she said, it could be, no, don't do it. That's okay. But if you're feeling the tug,

I would be so honored to walk this journey with you.

I trust that your soul brought you here for a reason. I can have all the trust in the world, obviously. You're welcome to borrow some of mine if you like. So if you're feeling that nudge, even if it feels squirmy, that's

Julie Granger (49:10)

All right, so if anything in your system has felt a tug today, even if it feels a little squirmy, which is completely normal, I'd love for you to follow it. If you've been curious about what it looks like to work with me privately, this is the way. And right now, through the end of September of 2025,

When you sign up for one Soul Story mapping session, you actually get two. You get a now session to name what's true for you and give it that voice and have it mirrored back to you in a super safe space. And then you get a later session to circle back once things have had time to percolate, much like Elena had. The second session is often where the integration clicks into place. It's where the ball really ⁓

starts rolling down the hill in the most beautiful way that makes you feel like you can actually keep up with it. It's not taking off without you, but it is sort of the action. if the guy, you know, in a movie where they have the little thing where they say, and action, and they click the, I don't even know what that's called, the thing in a movie set, that's sort of the second session. So the first one is really a,

reflection session and the second one for you if you are goal oriented and you do like to move into action, that's where the second one is. So check the link in the show notes of this episode that will take you to the sole story mapping session. You'll get a full prep guide. you'll have follow-up support so you never feel left hanging. And if you're listening to this after September of 2025, you can book one session and that will be glorious as well.

There's way more information in the website about the soul mapping session. So if you like to read and you want to learn more about it, the link in the show notes will absolutely take you.

to answer frequently asked questions, give you more client stories, and just give you a full feel of what's involved.

Julie Granger (51:07)

And if you're not sure about anything, DM, email me, I'm here for you. I'd love to help you discern if this is right for you, if it's the right time.

And if I'm the right person for you. And if not, I'll be honest about that. Either way, I am in your corner, And I can't wait to see what map your soul draws and what comes for you next. Thanks for being here.