There She Goes Taking a Break (And Why I Don’t Regret It)

500 downloads. 15 episodes. 3 months in.

My podcast was gaining momentum…

and that’s exactly when I decided to take a break.

In this episode, I’m sharing why.

Not because I owed anyone an explanation; quite the opposite, actually.

But because the response to my “There She Goes Taking a Break” post made me realize something important: we spend so much time seeing the highlight reels online that we forget there are whole lives happening behind the scenes.

So this episode is a little different.

No script. No guest. No polished lesson.

Just a raw, honest conversation about what was happening behind the scenes in my life, how I chose rest over resentment, and why taking a break isn’t the same thing as quitting. 

In this episode, I share what was going on across my corporate career, podcast, businesses, health journey, fertility journey, and personal life, and why I ultimately chose to prioritize my well-being over checking another box.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, stretched too thin, stuck in comparison, or guilty for resting, this episode is for you 💖

Key Topics:

• Why I took my first break from the podcast after 15 episodes
• The difference between consistency and perfection
• Continuing when nobody is watching, listening, or clapping
• Why I created There She Goes and the community I hope to build
• Returning from vacation to postponed interviews, increased responsibilities, and competing priorities
• Navigating PCOS, fertility challenges, and prioritizing health
• Learning to regulate my nervous system instead of pushing through burnout
• The trap of comparing yourself to other women, especially on social media
• Why we need to normalize breaks and stop expecting explanations
• The possibility of betting on myself and pursuing entrepreneurship full-time
• A reminder that there are whole lives happening behind the highlight reel

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⏱️ Timestamps

0:31 This episode is completely unscripted

2:54 Keep going even when no one is clapping, watching, or listening

3:46 Why I created this podcast and the kind of community I want to build

6:15 Returning from vacation to real life, postponed interviews, and competing priorities

8:39 Health, fertility, PCOS, and receiving a wake-up call from my fertility specialist

11:11 Choosing rest, regulating my nervous system, and redefining priorities

11:53 Comparison, self-criticism, and the pressure of social media

13:14 Why we need to normalize breaks and remember we’re more than what we post online

14:37 Considering entrepreneurship full-time and betting on myself again

16:21 You’re probably doing better than you think

Follow @thereshegoesclub for updates and community events.

Join the There She Goes Club to activate joy, fun, and wonder back into your life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the There She Goes podcast. I'm your host, Grecia Ruiz, and I can't wait to dive into everyday stories where we find the magic in the mundane. This podcast is inspired by real stories, tiny steps, and brave women. For so long, I was looking for permission in songs, stories, and other people to trust myself, follow my dreams, and take the leap. If this podcast can be that tiny spark of permission for you, then here we go. Hello, hello. Welcome to this week's episode of the There She Goes podcast. This is going to be a completely and utterly off the cuff, no script episode. Yeah, so here we go. I had to take a few deep breaths because I felt a little nervous. But I have actually in my notes, in my iPhone notes, a very clear note to be more raw, vulnerable, specific in this podcast and really talk about what's going on. Talk about the kinds of things that I know I needed to hear when I first started listening to podcasts, especially around women empowerment, especially around self-improvement. So I want to share a little bit about why I took my very first break from posting a podcast episode. So I actually posted uh a graphic, a little reel that said, there she goes, taking a break, and it was cutesy little reel. And I wasn't expecting the kind of feedback that I received. So at the time of recording this episode, I am less than a week from the week that I did decide to take the break. And this is now at 15 episodes right before my three-month mark at 500 downloads. So, I mean, overall, you know, things are going well. I'm getting positive feedback, positive engagement. And it was a big deal to me to take a break because I spiraled into thinking does this mean that I'm breaking my consistency? Does this mean that I'm not going to return to the rhythm of recording, editing, show notes, posting, social media? It's a lot. Um, for those of you that don't have a podcast, uh, it's a fun adventure, but it is a lot and it's a long-term game. So, one of the main reasons I even started this is to prove to myself that I can be consistent even when the stats aren't there, even when no one's watching, even when no one's clapping or no one knows who I am yet or no one's listening. That's hard. It's hard to do. Uh, that, you know, you don't always get that immediate feedback loop. So because consistency was something so huge for me, I wanted to prove myself that I could be here, show up week after week after week, right? But I also think it's important that consistency doesn't equal perfection. And that taking a break and resting is also really important, and giving yourself grace is important. And so, what that looked like for me last week is if I had pushed through for the sake of consistency to say every single week I check the box, I have a podcast episode. I immediately started feeling like I was resenting podcasting, and that is not what this is about. I this is a space that I enjoy. This is a space that I love, this is a space that I created. Nobody asked me to create it. I created it. I want this space. I want to build this community. I want to use my voice in this format for good. I want to share with other women what's possible for them. I want to bring women on the show that inspire you, that show you what it looks like to live a life that is not the traditional path. Why? Because I'm craving that. So this space is super important to me. It's a space of creativity, of self-expression, uh, but it's also it provides me a lot of purpose and a sense of play and joy and fun, but it can also start becoming a source of stress when I've got all these other things going on. So I wanted to share with you just basically a little life update what's going on with me, where I'm at in life, in business, in um in work. So two weeks ago, I was on a cruise with my family. It was really fun. I got to go to the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos. And I got tan. I don't know if you could tell, maybe not because of the lighting, but also um, hello, spot the hair if you're on the YouTube version. Love my hair. Thanks, mom. My mom's a retired hairstylist. If you don't know my mom, um, you can also check out her episode. She's a retired hairstylist, but she is now a practicing licensed therapist and possibly pursuing her PhD. That's not gonna stop her just because she's in her 60s or gonna turn 60 this year. So that's besides the point. What I'm saying here is I was on vacation, and you wouldn't have even known that I was on vacation because I had actually like batched all of my podcast episodes early. I really, I mean, I was, I wouldn't say I was killing myself, but I put in some decent hours in getting enough content going, not just in the podcast episode, but the show notes and getting social media clips and captions. It's a lot, especially if it's in advance. On top of the podcast episodes, I'm also collaborating with my friend Tracy on a Disney collaboration event. So there's content for that too. So I'm over here like, okay, let me wrap up what I'm doing at work. So I do still have my corporate job right now, and it is still a relatively new position in communications and as a people manager. So I'm I'm wrapping things up, making sure that I'm leaving my team in a good enough position for them to cover for me and take over all of the week that I was gonna be gone. I'm batching content, I'm preemptively, you know, creating content for the Disney event as well as for the podcast. And then I go off on the cruise, which of course I'm not gonna have signal during the cruise for the most part. So it was very offline. I really got to relax and enjoy. What was also going on around this time is that I actually had scheduled a good like three guest interviews that every single one for one reason or another got postponed, canceled, for one reason or another. Uh, the content that I had banked on having, I didn't have. So now I came back from vacation after having done all that work to get myself prepared for vacation, but now I come back. I don't have any other content ready to go, nothing recorded as I had originally planned to. I just got back from vacation. So guess what? Work, corporate job, yeah, the load increased. I'm, you know, trying to just do the normal things, like get my house back in order, do the laundry, like, but more importantly, what's also been going on to show you just kind of, hey, I'm a well-rounded woman here. And I'm also very much working on my health and fertility journey. So, what that looks like for me specifically is that I have been struggling for a long time now, for many years now, with my eating habits and with my lifestyle, with the specifically fitness routine here. So, right after vacation, so I come back again, all this is going on, and I actually finally see for the first time ever a specialist, a reproductive uh endocrinologist, a fertility specialist. And he basically confirms part of the what I knew was becoming a challenge for me in becoming a mom. So I've actually been trying to become a mom for the past two years, like on the dot, May of 2024, and now it's May 2026. So I've been going through a lot of different challenges there, finding out that I have PCOS. So I know that's very common for a lot of us, PCOS girlies, um, finding out that I have insulin resistance, trying out different medications and different treatment plans, etc. And so this year I did get a lot better health insurance thanks to my husband. Um, he got a new job, and so he has really great health insurance, and now I get to go to the specialists and to all the different programs. So I'm trying a lot of different things, but point is he confirmed to me that um, you know, a very clear roadmap for me to get to a certain lower BMI than I'm at now. And once I get to that lower BMI, I actually have a much increased chance of pregnancy. So right now, um, apparently with that BMI, you know, not being at the ideal range, we're looking at a third less chance of getting pregnant, which is crazy. So that was a huge wake-up call and something that you would never know from just looking at my page or the highlight reels, right? That was huge for me. It made me feel like I really have to take this seriously. And so I started another, you know, I kind of started again. I do have a nutritionist, a dietitian um with me that I'm starting with in yeah, next week. So I've I'm kind of covering all my basis. I started going to different uh fitness classes, whether it's Zumba or yoga or the things that I like that I'm actually gonna stick to. Um, and I also started being very careful with what I'm eating uh here at home, cooking more often, using, in my case, hungry root. So if you're interested, I can put that in the show notes too if you want a referral code that wasn't planned. But um, yeah. So if you're interested in something like that, I it really helps me um not feel like I have to stress about meal prepping and knowing that I get it delivered to my home. I already know exactly what I need to make, and it's already uh with the right dietary restrictions and you know, the right sizing and all that kind of stuff. So that's what's that's everything that was going on. And I'm only back, by the way, I was back on Tuesday. So it was Tuesday, Wednesday. Yeah, there she goes. Thursdays, I would have had to record on Wednesday, and I immediately started feeling like I'm resenting this. I'm like, I can't keep up with all these different roles all at once. So I chose to rest, I chose to regulate my nervous system, I chose what my priorities were because I really am in this for the long term, for the long haul. And that's with my health as well, as well as this journey. I also am actively planning a wedding for uh a local Temecula bride. So I do have my Italy brides going. I also had a call with a potential bride for a destination wedding uh for Italy brides. So that's very much still up and going. It's a lot. And what's crazy, speaking of the kind of the raw and vulnerable here, is even with all those things going on, I still find myself criticizing myself, not feeling like I'm doing enough, constantly comparing myself to other female entrepreneurs, especially mothers. Girl, like I don't know how you do it. Mothers out there who are also business owners and or working or entrepreneurs like, or um, a marathon runner, mother entrepreneur, keep your house tidy. I I don't, I don't know. Um, but it's true. Like, I genuinely have been feeling a lot of comparison syndrome, and I think part of it is social media. So there's definitely that part, but it's also my own part of recognizing, hey, like stop the comparison game, stay in your lane, and only come if you're ever going to compare yourself, it's compare yourself to yourself. Um, but even then, like you can't really compare yourself even to a past version of yourself when you were in different circumstances than you are now. So at every point you're learning, at every point, it's a different season of life, different um load, different responsibilities, different tasks, different priorities. And you have to balance that out. So that's all. I know it's not it. This episode really is not meant to be like, let me explain why I took a break because I owe it to you to explain that break. That's not what it is. Um, because I genuinely did it, it was like I just I need to take this break, and I did it. And I was actually really proud of myself. But I noticed some people were like, like some were like, oh, concerned, like, are you okay? I'm like, oh, I'm okay. I just want to normalize this. Like, it's okay to take these breaks. And we're all well-rounded human beings going through a lot of other things that are not visible. And I just think it's important to share, shed some light on what it was that is all going on in my life. And I hope my boss isn't seeing this or anybody at work, but the other consideration that I've been going through a lot lately is going full-time into entrepreneurship. It's something that I continue to come back to over and over. And in previous episodes, I may have shared that I was really happy in this new role because it is much more aligned to what I like, which is communications. Hello, communicating, email, you know, writing email newsletters, things like that, people management, all skills that are way more aligned, but it's still a corporate job and trying to balance that full-time job with my other career interests, and more importantly, with my health and fertility journey. I am simply at a point right now where I am prioritizing different things. I'm prioritizing my health and well-being, and I'm prioritizing a slower pace, a slower lifestyle, and me just betting on me, getting to do these ventures full time, like getting to fully invest this time in myself and in my creative ventures and in my businesses. I just think that I'd be so excited to see them flourish and to see me flourish. So hopefully, this break and the breaks to come and the episodes to come only show you my continued growth in this area and show you uh agresia that keeps flourishing because I'm listening more and more to myself and being true to myself and not letting fear stop me. So hopefully this message was helpful to you if you're going through anything similar, if you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed, or you're putting too much on yourself, or you're criticizing yourself. This is a reminder that I needed, and hopefully it's a reminder that could help you as well. Be kind to yourself. You are probably doing way better than you think you are. Don't compare yourself to others. And you know what? Call a friend, be open and honest, call a friend or family member, be vulnerable, share what's going on. Don't be afraid to, you know, feel like you only have to show the highlight reels. We all want to know what's going on also behind the scenes and know that we are not alone. So thank you for holding space for this episode, for letting me be a little bit open, raw, vulnerable, authentic, and simply share what's going on and be off the cuff. So see you next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the There She Goes podcast. If this episode resonated with you, here's how you can be part of it. Subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a review. Your reviews don't just mean a lot, they help the community grow and reach other women who could be served by these conversations. I created this podcast to connect with women on this journey. So please reach out. I'm a real person. DM me on Instagram at There SheGoesClub or reply to my emails. I can't wait to celebrate your own There She Goes moments. Until next Thursday, let's see where she goes next.