Redefining Enough When Your Energy Keeps Slipping Away

Is it burnout or a slow leak of energy you weren't expecting?

In this honest, unfiltered conversation, Kim Romain and Louise Neil explore what it really means to feel drained in midlife, how perimenopause and menopause shift our physical and energetic capacity, and why the old hustle-driven definitions of success no longer apply.

They dive into:

• Why reacting all day long isn’t the same as responding
• How to tell when your “plate” has actually gotten smaller
• The emotional and physical cost of pretending you still have the same bandwidth
• Learning to honor your energy instead of push through it
• What it means to redefine enough on your own terms

Whether you’re navigating midlife, shifting your pace in a world gone wild, or wondering why the drive you used to have just isn’t there anymore... this episode is a permission slip to slow down, tune in, and trust your own rhythm.

"Our brains are rewiring themselves. Estrogen was the fuel, and it’s no longer reliable." - Louise Neil

"When we honor what our bodies need… we stop pushing through things that are actually hurting us." - Kim Romain

Key Moments: 

00:00 - Welcome

03:12 – The difference between reacting and responding

04:50 – Burnout, Human Design & sacral fatigue

06:38 – Fireflies, distractions & energy drains

08:00 – Leaky buckets and where the energy goes

12:18 – Midlife, menopause, and the rewiring we don’t talk about

16:00 – Rejecting hustle culture & old expectations

21:52 – How to honor your energy (even when you can’t stop)

23:18 – Grace, seasons, and letting yourself off the hook

28:37 – Accepting your current capacity

33:37 – Discernment vs. responding: the language of self-trust

41:36 – Final takeaways: grace, difference, and your own rules

43:38 – What we’re up to and where to find us

Join a circle of changemakers committed to leading with purpose, presence and ease inside Kim's Rising Visionaries mentorship program.

Reclaim your career and confidence during midlife through Louise's Rise & Redefine program.

If you’re loving this show, come check out the Feminist Podcasters Collective, where creators like us are uplifting diverse voices and driving meaningful change. If you’re looking for new shows to fill your feed, head to https://feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything we have to offer.

Transcript

The Empowered & Embodied Show

Episode: 168

Release Date: July 15, 2025

Hosts: Kim Romain & Louise Neil

Title: Redefining Enough When Your Energy Keeps Slipping Away

Kim Romain (01:39) Hello, hello, hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Empowered and Embodied show. I am one of your co-hosts, Kim Romain, joined as always by my fellow co-host.

Louise (01:51) It's me, I'm Louise.

I love the way we start our podcast every week with this little routine that you and I have, right? Where you come in and you're saying who you are and I get to respond to you. It feels like we've got this groove and we've got this little routine and it sets the stage. It sets the stage for the listener, I hope, to know that we're jumping into our

Kim Romain (02:07) Yeah. Yeah.

Louise (02:22) our episode, it also sets the stage for me, where I get to say, whatever else is going on out there in the world, for the next half an hour or an hour, here we are, you and I or you and I and a guest, and the listener, could sit down and have a really good conversation about something that's mostly something that feels wobbly to me, or something that I'm deeply curious about. Those are the two things that we seem to talk about on the show. And I love that whole settling piece that you and I do and the responding piece. It feels grounding to me, but only here does it feel grounding.

Kim Romain (03:12) Really?

Louise (03:14) The responding piece? Absolutely. Yeah.

Kim Romain (03:16) Yeah! Ooh, that's interesting. Why does responding not feel grounding elsewhere?

Louise (03:25) It feels often outside of my control.

Kim Romain (03:30) Reacting.

Louise (03:32) Yeah, responding to something. To be in those moments where it's not just a response that I'm offering or that is offered, but it's a reaction to something that's going on in the world or going on in my business or on my calendar or on my phone or in the kitchen. I'm usually reacting or responding to something, and it doesn't always feel grounding.

Kim Romain (04:04) No, I will agree that reacting doesn't feel grounding to me. Responding can feel overwhelming to me if I don't have enough time to process between what I need to respond to. I was joking earlier with you, how the fuck did I used to have a job? I mean, it's so funny because I have so many more responsibilities now, so much more going on in my business than I ever had when I had a job. And I was responsible for a lot of things in my job, but I spent my time responding. I think I spent most of my time responding, sometimes reacting, but mostly just in response all day long. I'm going to pull a little human design in here. As a sacral being, both of us as sacral beings, we are designed to respond. So we're manifesting generators for those of you who don't, I feel like that lady who says, it's manifesting, look it up. If you don't know what a manifesting generator is, feel free to look it up. High level, sacral being means that our role is to respond. We also, as the manifesting part, we get to initiate and inform. But I feel like for me, that sacral part of me is really burnt out. It's tired of responding. It's spending my time reacting. And that I definitely did when I was practicing law. I was definitely more in reactionary mode when I was practicing law, though if had I been responding, I probably wouldn't have burned out so quickly. But spending all that time reacting was really taxing on my system. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating to think about how much of our days are spent. I don't even know what the options are. Spent doing something other than responding. Because I still feel like that's where I feel, when I feel crunchy in my work, it's like, I need people to stop giving me something to respond or react to. Stop giving me stimulus. So maybe that's what you mean by it doesn't feel as grounding, it's just a lot of stimulus.

Louise (06:38) Yeah, so I've been thinking a lot about where I'm spending my time and my energy because I do feel like I have a lot on my plate. There are, I call them fireflies, there are sparks and fireflies everywhere right now. I'm like, look at that. Look at that one. Let's just start collecting all of these things. And then before I know it, my jar's full of fireflies and I don't know what to do with any of them. And

Kim Romain (07:04) Mm-hmm.

Louise (07:08) And I'm finding that those things that are kind of really sucking my energy are things that are very, I guess, demand a response from me or demand, it's demanding something from me and I just don't want to give it anymore. Whereas those things that are less demanding, I don't feel like I'm necessarily responding. I feel like I'm grabbing it. I feel like I'm going for it. It's very different than just responding to something. There's action over here. There's reaction over here. So the listeners are like, you just said the same thing. But you could see my hands.

Kim Romain (07:59) If you can see her hands.

Louise (08:00) If you can see my hands, there's a space that very much feels so much more exciting and generating of energy versus just in that response or reaction place. So it's really understanding for me, where am I filling the bucket and where is the bucket leaking?

Kim Romain (08:30) I feel that one so deeply.

Louise (08:31) You...

Kim Romain (08:33) Like, I have a really leaky bucket. I have a really leaky bucket. Some days it's not so leaky. Some days I feel like I've gotten the sap or the tar in there or a plug and it's okay. It's starting to fill up again and it's good. It's not overflowing. It's good. It feels good. It's sloshing around. But man, the leaky bucket syndrome is real.

Louise (08:39) Yeah.

Kim Romain (09:01) And I don't know about you, I think about it, it's like, okay, what is depleting my energy? That's what I just want. It's like, I want to know what is actually depleting my energy. Is it the tasks that I'm doing? Is it the people that I'm working with? Is it the conversations that I'm having? Is it, is is is it? And I go through the list of things so I can say, okay, how is that myth aligned? How do I? But I feel like even going through that process depletes me sometimes now. Because it's just one more thing for me to have to figure out.

Louise (09:31) Mm-hmm. Sure.

Kim Romain (09:37) And I don't know if it's our age. I don't know if hormonal component of it. I mean, you've been studying that considerably more than I have. I know that it feels. It feels connected to my body in some way. I'm getting the signals from my body. And then I kind of lose the plot from there. It's like, I'm getting the signals. When I'm feeling that leaky bucket, it's like, what do I do?

Louise (10:09) Do you feel like you used to know and now it's different?

Kim Romain (10:13) I feel like I didn't used to care. I feel like if it was leaking, I'm like, well, I'll go find another bucket. Put it underneath it or I'll fill a new one, whatever. If it didn't, yeah, I feel like I care more about, it's funny, because I give zero fucks about other things right now that I used to care about. But like where my energy is going, I care. I wanna know where it's going. And why is it leaving?

Louise (10:41) Does it feel like it's finite? Like, do you have like a limited amount?

Kim Romain (10:46) I don't think so. I don't, I mean, sure. We can look around us and see that as people age, we have less energy. So sure, at a certain point, it's harder to nurture the energy that we have within ourselves and how we work with that. But I don't think we're at that. I think that's a good 30, 40 years from now. I don't think we're at that. So no, I... I don't think it's finite, and yet it feels like it. It really feels like it. It's like, whoo, I don't... I guess before I would just quickly get another bucket. I'm like, I don't, is there, did I leave that bucket somewhere? Where is it?

Louise (11:35) Where's the bucket store? Like, is there a store nearby? Can I go get some more? Like, I used to have a lot of buckets and now I'm out. I need...

Kim Romain (11:37) This. Yeah. I don't know where the fuck this went. I don't know, tell me what, tell me how this like, is this resonating with you at all?

Louise (11:52) Well, absolutely. And when we think about, I'm going to go all, I'm going to go menopausal here for a second, but no rage attached to it. So we need to remember that as we're going through perimenopause and menopause and even early post menopause.

Kim Romain (12:03) I was gonna say that it's really terrifying to hear somebody say, I'm going menopausal.

Louise (12:18) There is so much going on in our bodies that has not been going on before that there is, it might be an energy leak in the sense of like, we need extra energy right now. It's being used up in a different way, right? So all of the changes that are happening to us physically don't always manifest into things like hot flushes or even rage, like things that we can see. There's a lot of things that are happening. Like our brains are actually completely updating its operating system right now because it used to get estrogen as a fuel and it's not there anymore or it's very unreliable in that sense as well. And so our brains are trying to figure out how do I make these connections that estrogen actually helped facilitate before? And so we're going through this kind of like this rewiring. There's also a lot of rewiring that happens because like that, that no fuck fifties, like that, that's a real thing because we don't have to necessarily care for our offspring in the same way. We don't have to care for our, our, our lives in the same way. And so our brains are like saying, yeah, like let's, let's figure out like what we do need to care about. And so it's this huge transition. All organs in our bodies impacted by estrogen fluctuations. And so your liver is trying to figure out how to function. Your thyroid is like, what the fuck is going on now? All of these things are being updated. And so when you think about like, ooh, I used to have more energy or I used to have, I feel like I had this abundance of energy or I didn't care if there was a leak, it was fine. Now it makes a difference. Because if we don't plug up those leaks or if we don't understand what's going on, like we can feel really depleted. And that's all part of this transition place as well. So there is a bit of a black hole, right? That our energy isn't necessarily leaking. It's just being required by other things right now.

Kim Romain (14:40) So it's like when, and I know not everybody listening has had a pregnancy, right? Not everybody who has a womb has a pregnancy. I know in my full term pregnancy with our daughter, this brain of mine felt shut off for a lot of the time. And then I would have these spikes of like brilliance and spikes of energy.

Louise (14:58) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kim Romain (15:11) And when it would dip, I would say, that's okay, you're building a neural network. Like I could understand what I was building inside of me because there is a whole human being growing in there. And I feel like with what you just said, and I get the cool factor there is like, yeah, there's things happening. It doesn't feel like a quote unquote upgrade. It feels like, women of this age didn't used to live this long, so I'm dissolving into mush at this point.

Louise (15:49) Yeah.

Kim Romain (15:50) And that doesn't feel real good, because I'm not dissolving into mush. I'm not ready for that shit. But because we live so much longer.

Louise (16:00) Sure, and it's the messages that we're getting too, right? From the systems around us that like older women don't contribute like younger women did. Older women don't have the hustle or the drive like younger women did. Like there's all of these messages we get from society that are just like baked into our DNA. Let's be real, it's generational. And so yeah, those messages from society are saying like,

Kim Romain (16:09) Which is bullshit.

Louise (16:29) Guess what? As you can't procreate, then what good are you?

Kim Romain (16:35) Right, right. Yeah. And I feel like I would hustle. Would I hustle? Maybe I'd hustle. Maybe. I don't know. It's not in my design to hustle.

Louise (16:36) Right? Like so. But even if it was, like maybe that's not who you are now. Like hustle, like the way that we think and what we bring to the table now is so different than what we brought to the table when we were 25. Like it's different.

Kim Romain (17:03) When I was 25, I opted out of those systems. I was not, everyone's like, what ladder are you climbing? And you climb the ladder and I'm like, I don't want to be on, I don't like heights. I'm not climbing a ladder. That was not me. I was happy to, and I'm again, I had some high powered jobs with a lot of responsibility and I loved them, but I wasn't trying to go from my role to the next role up. I was like, yep, this is going to be good until I figure out whatever entirely new industry I'm going into and totally new job I'm going to take on. But so like that idea of hustle. I don't know that I've ever hustled. That's never been in my personality. But right now I'm like, man, I would kill for some drive. I would love it. Really? Because like the hour and a half that I have it each day is not enough. Yeah. And, and when I spend it, as we started the conversation, when I spend it responding.

Louise (18:13) Hmm.

Kim Romain (18:14) I'm like, well, that is not how I want to be operating. I'm a business owner. I'm not here. I mean, yes, as a sacral being, and I do understand that aspect of myself, responding in that way is fine. Responding to the etheric opportunities and real opportunities that come to me, fantastic. But responding to people and responding to emails and responding to text messages, fuck that. I don't want to do that.

Louise (18:20) Right. Right. Mm.

Kim Romain (18:44) That is not, that doesn't feel like a good use of my time.

Louise (18:49) So how do you make, like, so why do it? Like, why not do it differently?

Kim Romain (18:55) I, so I have like 14 answers to that. So today I turned off all my notifications. I was like, if you need me, I'm not available. I told my loved ones who, we always have this text chain at a certain time of day and everybody's all excited. And I'm like, I love you. This is not about you, but I cannot hear another notification. And I have it just on vibrate. And nothing on my computer pops up, but I know it's happening. I can see it enough. I turned off everything. And I'm like, no, no more. So absolutely, I do that. I have days that I've blocked off my calendar where it's like, this is a focus day, you and I do it at the same time. Like I put all of my stuff on Do Not Disturb. It is focus time. And so that I can be okay with. And I still feel like even when I turn everything off, I'm not guaranteed that's the time that I have the capacity right now to do what it is that I'm setting. And it's so funny, right? Because I have these conversations with my clients too, and we work through it and all of that 100%.

Louise (20:00) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kim Romain (20:10) And I'm glad we're talking about it so that people can hear how we deal with it for ourselves and how we do and how we are experiencing it ourselves. You know, we're not sitting up here on high like, no, I got this shit all figured out. I know what tools to use and it can be really fucking frustrating still.

Louise (20:20) Yeah. Great. Because I mean, it's not like you can map your energy all the time, right? Hour by hour, minute by minute. And as much as I do the same with my clients, too, right? Is like, pay attention to your energy. What are the patterns? Do you notice patterns? How can you maximize those patterns? If you always feel super depleted after lunch, answer your email then, right? Like, try to match your activities with your energy and see what you can do. A lot of times we don't have control over some meetings and stuff, but I think especially during this time in our lives and this transition that we're going through, it even becomes more, I can't even think of the word, right? Where what was working doesn't work anymore, right? Maybe we don't have drive or energy for days. Then what do we do? And then when we do have it, we were booked in, we have to sit in some stupid meeting or right and all we have is super like, antsy energy, where it's like, I just I just have to work on this. I can't believe I'm sitting in this meeting. I just have to work. Like, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Right? Like there's there's these energies that come and go now with complete unpredictability.

Kim Romain (21:52) And I think that the part that is really important here is honoring the energy to the best of our capacity. So if we have the ability to, if we get exhausted and fully depleted, right, the bucket has fully leaked. If we can, if we are working in a space that we can do this to go lay down, or if it feels aligned to go for a walk, right, usually one or the other is going to help. Or go move your body if the walk isn't available. If we don't have access to that, what are some of the things that we can do when we start to feel depleted but we know that we're in it in the moment? What are some of the things that you suggest to your clients?

Louise (22:40) Can I just say, and I'll say this to you too, like just give yourself some grace, please. Right? Like this isn't a forever thing. If you don't have drive or energy one day, like that doesn't mean like you're washed up, that you're never gonna get it back. It's like, this is a really tumultuous time with everything that's going on inside us as we go through midlife and this transition outside us as we go through that weird thing that's happening. Right? Even cosmically, right, Kim? You talk about transitions all the time and there's that layered on top of layers on top of layers. And so when we can just step back for a minute to say like this day today, if I needed to nap, I needed to nap. And that's okay. It got me through today. Right? Tomorrow is a different day. And you're a different person. And the world is a different place.

Kim Romain (23:18) Mm-hmm.

Louise (23:44) And so giving ourselves just some grace to say like, not every day do we have to be on, not every day do we have to be like looking at our calendars and trying to find like, where's that little bit of energy and how can I maximize my time and right, that's a cognitive load we just don't need.

Kim Romain (24:02) Yeah. That's what I'm talking about with the honoring. It's that place of grace. I used to work in Montessori, grace and courtesy. Give yourself a little bit of grace and courtesy. Because when we honor what our bodies need, whether taking a nap, whether going for a walk, whether just sitting there and saying, I don't have it right now. I have to work on this project. So I was working on a project for a client earlier. And I was feeling myself tank. I did some things to try and boost myself a little bit, but I knew cognitively I was still flooded. Like I just wasn't flowing the way I needed it to. So I sat there and I went, okay, if this is what I'm experiencing, what do I need to do? So I'm not zoning out, right?

Louise (25:08) I'm ready.

Kim Romain (25:21) And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with zoning out. It was, I didn't want to zone out because that would have damaged the project that I was working on. If I'm going to work on it, don't zone out. Like that's one of the things. And so I gave myself like this time period. It's like, I'm going to give it focus for 10 minutes. If I can't maintain it for 10 minutes, I'm going to disconnect. If I can maintain it for 10 minutes, let's take a little break and then come back and see if I can maintain it for any longer. I couldn't maintain it past those 10 minutes. So I went into a different project that if I was zoned out or if I flaked out or whatever, it wasn't going to be detrimental. And that's where it's honoring your energy. It's knowing, look, we all have more than one thing on our plate. We all do. It'd be great if we all only had one thing. We all have so much on our plates. Like that swapping out of what we're working on is huge. Because if something is feeling really like painful to try and get through, what other project do you have on your plates? What other task do you have that maybe won't feel quite so painful in that moment? And we're talking about this through the lens of, right, sharing a lot about menopause, about middle age. This can happen at any time for any gender.

Louise (26:23) Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you you talk about things on your plate. A lot of the things like oftentimes we don't look, we don't look at what's on our plate, right? Like we're just like, what?

Kim Romain (26:37) My god. I remember a conversation we had about the peas falling off the plate. Do you remember that one? Maybe not. We had a conversation about all the peas falling off the plate. And like, do we put the peas back on the plate or do we leave the peas on the table?

Louise (26:56) Are they even your peas?

Kim Romain (26:58) Well, that's just it. Whose peas are they?

Louise (27:00) Right? Like, yeah, maybe they're not yours. Maybe you don't actually need peas. Right? Like, and we often don't look at it. We just say like, it's full, I gotta keep on it. I'm gonna go from peas to the potatoes to, right? Like, and I'm just gonna keep moving. And it's like, ooh, like, let's also examine what's on our plates a little bit. We don't have to carry all of those things on our plate. We get to, sometimes it's an honor, right, to have those things on your plate. But sometimes they're not yours, or if they are yours, maybe they don't belong on your plate today. And we do get to put them down.

Kim Romain (27:44) Yeah. It's, this place of also, let's look at the plate, not just what's on the plate, but let's look at the plate. Are you operating with, you know, a saucer that goes under a teacup? Are you operating with a dessert dish? Are you operating with a salad dish? Are you operating, right, with a dinner size plate? Or are you operating with a platter, like a serving platter? Let's see what plate you're even working with before we start to decide what goes on the plate. Because right now, I'll tell you, my days feel like I have a saucer. And so for somebody who's used to working with a platter, it's very different. Right? So I'm going, okay, I don't have a platter.

Louise (28:19) Absolutely. Woo. Yeah.

Kim Romain (28:37) I'm a little pissed off I don't have the platter, because I really liked having the platter, but right now I'm operating with a saucer. So what am I going to put on my saucer today?

Louise (28:46) Absolutely.

Kim Romain (28:49) And does anybody else nearby have a plate I could put some of these leftovers on because I don't want them to go waste. Right.

Louise (28:56) Yeah. Yeah, our plate does change size.

Kim Romain (29:01) Totally change its size.

Louise (29:03) Yeah, and we often don't think like all of a sudden a full plate is like my plate is full. Didn't feel this full yesterday. Feels full today. And our plate is smaller.

Kim Romain (29:14) Yeah. Yeah. And it's okay that it's smaller. It's okay that it's smaller. There's nothing wrong with us. It may feel like, and I think that's at the beginning, Yeah, I can swear all I want and say how much I don't like it. And I know there's nothing wrong with me. I want to understand it. I do want to understand it. And I could point at all the different reasons, right? Sure, my age. So I'm affected by some menopause-esque thing. I don't know where I am in the process, but something there. That's absolutely there. Stress. I have some stress in my life. There's some stress that's happening systemically. So things that are happening outside of me, there's absolutely shifts in the cosmos. I talk about it all the time. And there's, you know, how much sleep did I get? There's what did I eat? There's what did I write? All of those different things all go into why I have a saucer right now.

Louise (30:25) Yeah.

Kim Romain (30:27) And it's okay. Doesn't feel good, but I can accept it. And that place of acceptance is hard to get to. It's really hard to get to. Acceptance doesn't mean we're not angry or frustrated by it. It doesn't mean that we're not feeling bitter or pissed off by it. We can accept it and still be pissed off. It just means that we understand that that's where we are.

Louise (30:50) Yeah, there's a big letting go, right, of that expectation that we all walk around with platters all the time.

Kim Romain (31:01) Well, those are the systems. That's right. Yeah. And that we all have the same size platter.

Louise (31:05) Right? Absolutely. And I think, you know, for me, as I as I think about, like, as I set up my business, but also as I set up my life, like, what is my life? I did some journaling today about like, what's the next 10 years like, right? Like, what is what is that? Who do I want to be at 63? Where do I want to be? What do I want to be doing? Like, what are those things? So that I can start to say, like, with reverse engineering, what are the things that need attention today? They get me to where I wanna go. Now, I don't know what size my plate's gonna be when I'm 63, but I can tell you it's not gonna be a platter. I'm done with platters. Platters are heavy and right. I don't want to eat that much. Right? But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna do or accomplish really big things. It means that I'm gonna be discerning about what I do and what I want to accomplish. And I'm gonna be a little ruthless in it so that I can make sure that I have that, right? I have what I want on my plate at 63. And I think there's this idea too is that I get to decide. Not just what's on my plate for the most part. I feel like I do. Maybe not today, but at 63 I will. But I get to decide how big my plate is. I get to decide what color it is. I get to decide the pattern that's on it. That plate is mine and I get to decide. And so it really is that. And I think right, with our systems and society, we think that we're carrying a platter through the rest of our lives, that we have to be filling it up, we have to be doing, we have to be, right, able to manage all of it, keep all the peas on the plate, because what happens if they fall off? Yeah, what happens if they fall off? Maybe I'm just tired of peas, right? And so there's a lot of that that's going on with me right now is kind of like this reclaiming as I'm trying to understand like who I am and who I want to be. I'm reclaiming a lot of who I am and I'm saying like no thank you to the platter. Like I'm tired of having, tired of eating that much.

Kim Romain (33:37) We started the conversation from the place of responding. You were celebrating that, right? We get to come in here and you get to respond. Hey, right? And that that feels grounding. There is, in what you just shared, in that place of discernment, discernment is a form of response. Like that just came through to me. When we're discerning, we are responding to the stimulus that is here. We get to respond to this is the path I'm gonna follow. This is the choice I'm gonna make. These are the peas I'm going to eat or not eat. This is what the shape of my plate is. Discernment is a, I think a, a super boosted or a super nuanced way to respond. What do think about that?

Louise (34:31) I don't know, because it doesn't feel like a response. It feels different, like response to me feels very much like it's the external and I'm still responding to something outside of me. Like I'm reacting to the environment, I'm reacting to what's going on.

Kim Romain (34:57) See, but that's the difference between reacting and responding. I respond to myself all the time. What I choose to respond to takes discernment.

Louise (35:05) Hmm. I don't know. I don't know if it's the same for me.

Kim Romain (35:09) It.

Louise (35:09) And if it is, I don't know that if it's that word that resonates. I don't know. I have to chew on that. So much food. I'm hungry. must be hungry. Food, buckets, water, leaks. We covered it all today.

Kim Romain (35:17) So much food today. So much food. I have a great recipe for a leek soup.

Louise (35:29) Hahaha!

Kim Romain (35:30) Yeah, I think we have these opportunities to recognize when we're reacting. Reacting is the place where we are not owning, right? We're just in reaction mode. We're not owning any of that for ourselves. We're not taking that self-responsibility. Responding is that place where there is a stimulus that we get to take action or not inaction on. What do we choose to do with that stimulus? That is, to me, what response is. Discernment is the choice that comes with response, is how I kind of see that, as you were sharing how I was seeing it in my head built out. And that place where I said, how the fuck did I used to have a job with all this responsibility when in my business, feel like this feels so overwhelming at times. I think the difference is the discernment for me feels more important. It's more important that I'm making and responding to the decisions in a way that does lead me to that 10 year vision. That does lead me to who I am, who I'm very aware of that I'm evolving into. Whereas when I was in response to everything, like this churn of response to everything when I was working for somebody else, some of that was reactionary as I said, but that churn of response, I didn't discern as much. It was, came to me, I responded. It came to me, I responded. I came to me, responded. Whereas now it comes to me, is that for me? I don't know. Is that right? So it is, and it's not cognitive. Some of it is, but it's not largely cognitive, but it is that place of taking on that the higher level of discernment and responsibility for what I am responding to.

Louise (37:42) I still don't think that word does not resonate with me. You said, apparently I do have my own experience and my own opinions too, believe it or not. The word that you said earlier that keeps coming back to me is like gestation, right? And I feel like that's a place where I'm in right now. And it's like,

Kim Romain (37:46) That's okay. You can have your own experience. Yeah, yeah. I love it.

Louise (38:10) I feel like I am in a place where I get to create what I want, what I see, like that vision, right? 10 years from now, I'm actually gonna create that. And today at 53, right? Like I am the creation of who I was at 43. And so I was less intentional about it. Let's be honest. But it's still, I still did that, right? I've done pretty cool things in the last 10 years. But it's that word gestation and that word that really feels like that's where I am right now is really in this creation place. And to me, that does not feel like responding. It feels like creating.

Kim Romain (38:40) Mm-hmm. I so wanna get into it with you. These are the types of conversations we have, though. We will sit here and spin for hours pulling apart, not because I don't need you to agree with me at all. That's not it. But it's that place of, yes, what you just said is what I said. We're just saying it in very different ways.

Louise (39:14) On words.

Kim Romain (39:29) But I don't need you to agree with the way that I said, like that, I don't need that at all. I just want to dig into it because it's so fun to start seeing through a little bit through your eyes. That's right. And I think we have fun doing that together is like, no, but tell me more. Like, how does that, right? And I think that's a gift that we have with each other, but we also have that for ourselves. Obviously we have that for who we serve for our clients.

Louise (39:34) Mm. Right. Right. Right.

Kim Romain (39:56) But that part for ourselves, we do have it. We get to find the language that works for us so that we are able to unpack and process and move through and respond and react and discern and gestate and create and do all the things that we've been talking about.

Louise (40:15) Yeah, and that's what, you know, that's the whole thread and the whole premise of our podcast, right? Not just this episode, but all of our episodes. It's really helping the listener pick up on those threads, like pick up on the words that like that you agree with or disagree with, like really like embody what's going on when you're listening to an episode. And if it's like, hell yeah. Or if it's like, fuck that, they don't know what they're talking about. own that, that is cool. Like we want that too. But we want you to be able to like go inside and start to deeply understand kind of like those feelings are telling you a lot about what's going on and to really like try to, I don't want to say settle in, but get deeply curious about those things.

Kim Romain (40:47) That's cool.

Louise (41:12) because it's through that that we actually get our power back, that we actually start to understand where our energy is going. And we start to understand that, no, there are leaks in the bucket that I wanna plug or you know what, it's fine, I'm gonna find another bucket. Like it comes with, right? Those feelings from the conversations that we're having.

Kim Romain (41:36) Yeah. So is that your takeaway for today?

Louise (41:39) Yes. What's your takeaway?

Kim Romain (41:41) Excellent. Louise doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. My takeaway, and sometimes I don't, we're humans. There's plenty of times that we're talking out of our asses, but we, it's like, we don't, I don't think we intentionally ever are going, no, I'm just gonna steer you the wrong way, right? It's just, we just don't know and we're figuring it out. And the way that we figure it out is by verbally processing, right? So, which makes us great for podcasting.

Louise (41:45) Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I don't. Sure.

Kim Romain (42:15) But my takeaway is the differential, is allowing ourselves to notice what we feel, find the difference, right? So we're feeling maybe different things. We're experiencing it differently. So we're using different words because it's not a same, same situation. So owning what you, what your feeling, what you're experiencing, and acknowledging that if somebody else has said that that's what they're sharing their experience, it doesn't have to match. It absolutely doesn't. And it likely won't. We're always trying to look for ways to put people in boxes so we understand better. But sometimes our boxes aren't the same size or same shape. And sometimes we don't need the boxes like we don't need the peas and we don't need the platters all the time. It's okay. Make up your own fucking rules. That's my real big takeaway from all this is make your own, give yourself some grace and make up your own rules.

Louise (43:16) Absolutely. Yes. Yep. Absolutely.

Kim Romain (43:23) I got there. Took me a second, but I got.

Louise (43:25) You.

Kim Romain (43:26) I'm tired, Louise, I know there's so many good things happening in your world. You're still working with your group program through the summer.

Louise (43:38) That is gonna wrap up before the summer, that group program, the cohort. So yeah, there'll be great things happening in the future for sure with that particularly. But in the meantime, like just head on over to Substack at the RAG. This is the RAG at Substack. Let's talk menopause and let's talk about...

Kim Romain (43:42) Okay.

Louise (44:06) how it's impacting our energy, what's happening inside. So with a little bit more information, we can actually steer the ship in the way we want to go instead of feeling like we're being tossed around at sea.

Kim Romain (44:20) Yeah, love it. Yep, I'm over on Substack as well. I'm talking all things energy, planets, owning your own worth and making up your own fucking rules. So that's what we talk about. In the alchemy of ease, it's absolutely true. The alchemy of ease, the end, we create ease by playing by our own rules, by stopping thinking that we have to play by everybody else's. Yeah.

Louise (44:32) The alchemy of ease, yes. Yeah, nice. Thank you for today.

Kim Romain (44:49) Yeah, as always, thank you and thank you listener for stopping by and for hanging out with us. And we'd love to hear from you as to what your takeaways are.

Louise (44:59) Absolutely. Take care everyone.

Kim Romain (45:01) Bye for now.

Kim Romain (45:02) And that's all for this week's episode of the Empowered and Embodied Show. We hope today's episode has sparked something within you. Remember, we're all on this journey together. If something did resonate with you today, why not share it with a friend who might need to hear it too? You can find us everywhere you listen to podcasts. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you're feeling generous, leave a review. Your feedback not only helps others find the show, but also helps us understand what's most valuable to you. Until next time, be kind to yourself, stay curious, and remember, we're walking right alongside you. Thanks for being part of our community.