Finding Your Voice in a World That Won’t Stop Talking

In this candid and deeply personal episode of The Empowered & Embodied Show, Kim Romain and Louise Neil explore what it means to find and use your voice, especially in midlife, in leadership, and in systems that were never built with us in mind.

From perimenopause to purpose, silence to self-expression, they unpack the physical, emotional, and energetic ways our voices get stifled... and how to reclaim them with intention and integrity.

If you’re ready to stop swallowing your truth and start speaking in ways that feel real, grounded, and powerful... this episode is for you.

“You’re not too quiet. You’re discerning.” — Kim Romain

“I’m tired of being told how to do life by people who don’t know me.” — Louise Neil

Key Takeaways:

• You don’t have to be loud to be powerful
• Midlife can spark a deeper connection to your voice
• Feeling stuck in your throat is often a sign of misalignment
• Your body gives you clues when your voice isn’t being heard
• Human Design can help explain how your voice works
• You get to choose how, when, and where to speak
• Reclaiming your voice is an act of alignment and power

Key Moments:

00:00 – Welcomes and Introductions

05:05 – Using Your Voice with Intention

09:57 – Shifting from Public Sharing to Intimate Conversations

13:05 – When Leaders Don’t Want to Add to the Noise

14:30 – Listening vs. Speaking: The Midlife Reclamation

17:44 – The No-F*cks Fifties and Finding Your Fire

20:16 – The Power of Saying What’s on Your Mind

21:11 – Human Design, Throat Centers, and Communication Blocks

24:51 – Aligning the Head, Throat, and Body

29:18 – Slowing Down and Staying Intentional

33:58 – Why Some Spaces Feel Unsafe to Speak In

38:14 – Finding the Right Room and Doing the Inner Work

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

Empowered and Embodied Show

Episode 172 - Finding Your Voice in a World That Won’t Stop Talking

Kim Romain (00:35) Hi there, welcome to the Empowered and Embodied show. I'm Kim Romain. And I'm Louise Neil. We're two transformational coaches who are also fellow travelers on the path of growth and self-discovery. And we're inviting you along for the ride. That's right. We're right here in the trenches with you navigating the ups and downs of life. And each week we'll be sharing our own experiences, bringing you conversations with amazing guests, and exploring insights and strategies that have helped us find more clarity, confidence and ease in our lives. And trust us, we do not have it all figured out. We're learning and growing right alongside you. So if you're ready to rise above the chaos, doubt and confusion that sometimes life throws our way and step into a more empowered and embodied version of yourself, then you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Kim Romain (01:42) 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 us always by the beautiful and wonderful.

Louise Neil (01:53) It's me, Louise. Beautiful and wonderful. I got two adjectives. Those are adjectives, right? Did you see that? Right. Not my strong suit, English.

Kim Romain (01:59) You did think about it. Those are edgy. You are a noun. So yes. I was gonna say being a noun is not your strong suit.

Louise Neil (02:12) Yeah, interesting. It should be, it should be a struggle. I'm going to be practicing my English and my writing, because I'm going to, I'm going to co-author a book later on this year.

Kim Romain (02:23) That's so cool. That's so cool. What made you want to do that?

Louise Neil (02:25) I know. I am finding myself in a place right now where I have things I want to say to people, folks, the world. And I'm trying to find my voice and the way I want to say it. So, you know, we were talking earlier today kind of about like, what does that feel like or look like? And for me, I got really excited to think about like, am I taking what's bouncing around inside my head and that I'm really connected and passionate about and putting it out there in a, I was gonna say platform, but like in a way that really resonates with me so that it doesn't feel like it's, I don't know, markety or like that I'm just saying things for the sake of saying things. I'm saying things because I have something to say and I think it's really important. We're not talking about perimenopause and menopause in a way that I feel is aligned with actually being empowered through this transition. And I want to be putting that out into the world. So when an opportunity came to me to co-author a book, I was like, yes, please, let's try that. I've never done anything like that before. I don't think I'm a very good writer, so there's a little of that going on too, but yeah.

Kim Romain (03:53) Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. We're in such different stages, phases, zones at this moment because it's so funny. I'm like, yeah, you do that. And I fully support you. I mean, you know that. Fully support you, excited for you. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. And fuck it's loud in the. And sure, I put my voice out into the world too right now, but I'm being very specific about how I'm doing. Being part of a book would definitely be very specific about how you're doing it. I am... I'm bothered by how loud it is. And what is showing up for me is I find myself overwhelmed by all of the input. I don't always know where I fit within it, and so I step out of spaces that feel overwhelming. I'm still using my voice, very much so, but I'm using my voice in very specific spaces and in very specific ways. But I have no interest in having a loud voice right now.

Louise Neil (05:05) Is that... is that aligned with who you are or is it more of a reaction to what's going on?

Kim Romain (05:15) Yes. Next question? No.

Louise Neil (05:18) You

Kim Romain (05:20) Yeah, it, it's both. I think, I think part of it is, so the part of it that's me, I am very much a listen. And then I'm saying that and I'm like, that's not a hundred percent true in crowded spaces. I am very much a listen. And then if I feel my voice can add something, I will. If I feel like it's not going to add anything to the space, I won't. And sometimes that's discernment of they're not ready to hear it. They don't want to hear it. But most often it's they're too busy hearing themselves talk. And I'm not interested in playing. I played that game for decades. I played that game for sure. As an attorney, I played that game absolutely in the nonprofit sector as a leader. It was, everybody was talking to hear themselves talk and I would join in, right? It's like, no, but you have to, right. And that was coming from this place of I need to prove that I, that you know, that I know what I'm talking about, that I have a seat, there's a reason why I have a seat at this table. And I don't feel that anymore. And I don't want to be a part of a bunch of people talking just to talk. So that's the part that feels like... that feels like it's inherent to who I am. I'm also recognizing that my head, both in terms of human design, my, my head, energetic head, and then my brain, my physical brain is oversaturated. There's too much input. And so for me to be able to know if it's my voice that's coming out, I'm very aware of that. And a lot of that has been doing my own deconditioning work, doing my own work around having an open head, having an open Ajna, having all of this information come in and, and realizing that my role, part of my role, any of us with open head and open Ajna, my role is to not have my own in a sense, not have my own thoughts, but to bring together other people's thoughts and create something new from it. And so being in that space and being aware of that also then slows down what I actually want to be sharing.

Louise Neil (08:00) Right. And yet, you know, when you're talking, I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, this is the time that people need your voice. When I think about really loud rooms, and when people are talking over one another and nobody's really listening, because nobody can really hear, and it's really loud and crowded. There's so much noise, nobody is getting anything from those conversations, like at all. And it might seem like they are, but they're not. It's surface level, right? It's loud, it doesn't go deep, it's just above the water. And I feel like in this time that we're in, a voice that brings people back to themselves, which is what you talk about all of the time, is such a needed thing. It's a, I don't know, it's like acoustical tile in the room. It actually like quiets things down where people can hopefully recognize to say, That's not serving me. This conversation isn't one that really is what I want to be a part of. I get swept away in the moment. But it's like, see you as acoustical tile. Like I see you as like, what you have to say really is super important, especially in a loud.

Kim Romain (09:32) Wasp awesome. I think I appreciate that. No, I do it because I understand, right? Having done a lot of recording and having been in a lot of recording booths, I know what that does. And absolutely that is my energy, right? It is the, let's just, right? And...

Louise Neil (09:53) Right?

Kim Romain (09:57) I am bringing that, I am still bringing that forward, but like I said, I'm bringing it forward on such smaller level than, so I used to be on every social media platform. I used to like, I'm gonna share this and share that and here's my thoughts and da da da and just like, little, little, little, and. I'm not in a position to do that right now. I am more than happy to be a part of any speaking panels or doing podcasts or doing, right, having these more intimate conversations within my groups, right? For sure, I'm still having these conversations one-on-one, but more intimate conversations allows people to come to that place that you're talking about, of saying, okay, I can take a breath. When you're in that cacophony of noise, which to me that is, is social media, that is marketing, that a lot of it to me, it's, it feels. Not quite unsafe. That was the initial word that came through, but that's not quite right. It feels unpleasant. It feels... dangerous, again, not like something bad could happen to me, like, we are where we are in the world where people aren't actually listening to each other and are feeling really disconnected from themselves and disconnected from their work and from their families and from, they're craving a deeper level of connection, because it, my opinion is, because it is so loud in the world that we can't even hear ourselves breathe. And spending 15 or 20 minutes every morning meditating, it's a beautiful practice, that's not what's gonna fix it. People have been talking about, in my world, people talk about slow living and talk about going off grid and talk about all these different aspects of pulling things back and pulling things down just a little bit. That's not out there in the world for people to connect. That's the epitome of living in acoustic tile because now you've completely removed yourself. I'm trying to exist in this space where I still am connected because a lot of the work that I do is connect to social impact. You can't really do that work if you're not connected to the social part.

Louise Neil (12:30) You

Kim Romain (12:31) And the other part is, right, it is removing myself from my own care, from my own wellbeing, but also helping other people get to that place of stillness. And so, yeah, I don't disagree that it is something that the vast majority of people could utilize right now. And I, what I would rather do is share that wisdom, share that knowledge intimately with people who are then taking that information out further. So it's still sharing my voice, it's just in a very different way.

Louise Neil (13:05) Sure, and I think this is an interesting conversation because I hear this from leaders as well, right? From people who get into a space where it's like, I don't want to just say something for the sake of saying something, that it is not in alignment with who I am. It adds, like you said, to the cacophony of verbal diarrhea that happens. We're talking globally right now and all kinds of things, but it happens in all kinds of intimate spaces. It happens in meeting rooms and boardrooms and all kinds of places where we can, we, and I'm saying this, we as middle-aged white women, we can sometimes find ourselves being extra quiet because we just don't want to get swept away into that world and it doesn't serve us and yet we are in that world. And so how do we rewrite the story where we can be in service, we can be able to speak our truth, we can be authentic to who we are in a way that still allows us like not to be quiet in the corner, right? Because that's what happens.

Kim Romain (14:30) Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's a big difference between how I'm saying I feel aligned and showing up to share my wisdom and sitting in a corner. Big difference because I've been in the corner, right? When I said before, right, I got caught up in just being another talking head in the room. And my first break with that was to be the one sitting in the corner to listen, and not say anything for a multitude of reasons, right? Imposter syndrome for sure. Like, am I okay to even be at this table? Are they even gonna listen? I'm just gonna, right? The abuse that was happening, the toxicity that was happening, it was just safer for me to not be a part of it. This is very different energy because that for sure is, and I do wanna have that conversation, like how do we find our voice when we've been experiencing that? Because I think there, what I've noticed, particularly those who identify as women, probably between the ages of mid 40s, early to mid 40s to 60 at this point. So elder millennials, Gen X, right?

Louise Neil (15:43) Premenopausal women.

Kim Romain (15:46) And post, right? Yes. So around the time of menopause, for sure. There is a desire to reclaim our voices. There is a desire to say, this ain't right. There's something wrong. I've spent my whole life, career, et cetera, doing X, Y, and Z. And this can show up personally or professionally. Our values don't necessarily change, but they definitely deepen to a place where I feel like we're not willing to set them aside. And some of that is what's going on in the world, right? And that's pushing that even further. And that place of saying, I'm not going to be silenced, right? People are like... This I do see on social media is like, what's going on with Gen X women? Why are they so spicy? And I'm like, no, we've always been that way. You just didn't know what was going on in our brains. You just don't know. But that is very, very different, right? Because I too had to go through that of saying, it's OK for me to share what's in my brain and like spew it out and share it versus I don't. I don't want to be in those spaces that are just loud. There's no, like I could stand there quietly and continue to say what I have to say and maybe somebody would eventually be quiet and listen. It's not more my energy is best spent at this point, but that's intentional. And I may return to that space at some point. So I don't know. But for you, what was that, if you remember, and I don't know that it was just a moment, but what caused you to stop holding your tongue.

Louise Neil (17:44) Hmm. So the first thing that came to mind was like the no fuck fifties. Like there's, there's, really is like that's something we don't talk about as a, as a meta-pause symptom is right. Like, like I started to care less about what other people were going to say about what I had to say because I'm in a place where it's like, What I have to say about how we transition through our midlife careers, how we transition through menopause, I have something to say that we're just actually not talking about at all. And so I'm feeling more connected to my voice than I ever have before. And so, I don't know, like. I to, you and I, I think we used to talk a lot about the throat chakra, right? I even, had, I've had a lot of therapy even around like, what is, what is this in my throat? Because I could physically feel a pain in my throat when I went to say something that was maybe against the norm or I thought maybe might ruffle some feathers in a, a particular space. So that wasn't who I always was when I was like in corporate as a project manager, I could get into rolling up my sleeves with the best of them. But in a lot of places where I started talking about something that was more connected to me and I felt more personally connected to the words, it started to really, I started to hold back a lot. So for me, working on that throat chakra, finding my voice, being okay with saying some things,

Practicing those things, being in a relationship that allows me to say things that I wasn't able to say before, has helped me. But really, I don't know, sometimes it feels like a switch that just went off. And I'm like, you know what? I'm so tired. I'm so tired of people telling me how to handle my menopause. I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of people telling me how to build my business. I'm tired of people telling me how to be a mom. I'm tired of being told what to do by people who just don't know me. Right? And so I'm just tired. And so maybe I'm tired of being quiet. Maybe I'm tired of being put in the corner. Whoever put me there.

Kim Romain (20:16) Mm-hmm.

Louise Neil (20:16) Me, I put myself there, but I'm just tired of it. And so that's, that's where I'm at is like, you know what, I, I don't feel like I'm adding to the noise necessarily, but I feel like I have something to say that's just not being said enough and If one person, here's what I have to say, if one person goes from that big, loud, noisy room to say, what's going on? What's going on over here? And they come a little bit closer because they're tired too. They're tired of being swept up in all of that cacophony of nothingness. And they want something more. And so I want to just be there. And so in order to do that, I need to say what's going on in my head. I need to put it into words and get it out of there.

Kim Romain (21:11) Yeah, it's so interesting. I had a visualization or visual in my head while you were talking. And it was like all of these different human design charts that I have read over the years. And the number of people, women, who have some sort of break at their throat. So whether they're defined in their head and their ajna, but it's not connected to their throat. Or if they're undefined in their head and the Ajna and their throat is connected to some other aspect. One client who has every center connected except for there's a break between the head and the Ajna and the throat. Like the throat down is a center is connected as a circuit and the head and the Ajna are a separate circuit. I'm like, we can have the thoughts we can have, right? We can come up with concepts and the ideas, but it's harder to share them because that connection is coming from somewhere else or we have a completely open throat center. And so admittedly, I haven't read a lot of charts from those who don't identify as women or were born women. So it is interesting to think about, hmm, I wonder how much that's just a societal thing and how we are, what is our relationship to our throat. And then I started thinking about like Mercury and how fast we go through, not just Mercury retrograde and how that feels like communications are always fucked up, right? But the, idea that Mercury is so important to how we communicate to ourselves and others, but it's moved so quickly, like the planet moves so quickly. So we go through that energy super fast, that we're not always sure how to communicate, right? Because it can change. Like we have our core design, but then we get different flavors of it as it goes through the transits throughout the year. But there is so much work to be done for most people around the throat, around the energy of being able to speak. The number of people that I've worked with somatically where it gets stuck, I can't physically move it. I feel like there's a lump in my throat. I feel nauseous. I feel, right? The number of people that talk about the energy of using their throat from this really constricted, tight and restrictive place, that it's not, yes, I do believe there is that.

Louise Neil (23:36) Yeah.

Kim Romain (23:58) That place that comes online for us when we did get into our late 40s and early 50s and then beyond where we're just done. We've been around the block 15 times and it's like, you know what? You're not listening. You're not hearing. I don't whatever. It's my life. I'm going to reclaim it. Bada boom. I do believe there's definite energy there. I do believe that, right, as you're talking about menopause and perimenopause, there's a physiological shift that kind of supports that as well. And that whole thing around our throat chakra and the energy there, if we haven't done the work to start to move that and to start to feel the connection of self, then I don't wait. No amount of menopause and no fuck fifties is going to move that.

Louise Neil (24:51) Sure, right? And it's so interesting, right? Because as you're talking, it's like, we talk a lot about like, how do we align, right, what's going on up here in our heads with the wisdom of our bodies, right? And like, what's going on below the shoulders. And it's like, ooh, guess what's right in the middle of that, right? What sticks those two things together? Our throats, right? And it is very interesting about like, how do we think about the not just the words that we're saying or not saying, but how do we think about our throat and who we are in a way that actually does start to connect? I think for it's not just the words that are coming out of our mouth. I think our throat gets in the way of like our head and our body connection too. It can jam things up in there. But whatever it is, it keeps us quiet for a long time.

Kim Romain (25:12) Yep. Yep.

Kim Romain (25:56) Or it keeps us loud, right? Like that's the, right? Cause there are plenty of people that are using their voices in the world, but they're not actually hearing themselves and they're not processing what they're saying. They're just bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh constantly.

Louise Neil (25:58) Or keeps us loud. Right. Yeah. So do you feel like, you know, for you and where you're at, is it like, are you are you jammed up at your throat? Or is this just an intentional way or intentional spaces that you're finding yourself towards?

Kim Romain (26:28) I don't think I'm jammed up at my throat. I think the places that are... Let me think. I know, 100%. So I get jammed up in my head. I don't get jammed up in my throat. I get jammed up in my head and I get jammed up in my head. It's 100 % alignment. This was the first thing that when I learned about human design and I saw this and I went, holy fuck. All right. So...

Louise Neil (26:41) Mm.

Kim Romain (26:58) I have this open head and this open ajna, which means that I collect things in, I don't have my own regenerative energy in those spaces. And so, right, I grab things out of the sky and make shit up. That's not exactly what happens, but it sounds cool. So, and my conscious sun, which is my purpose, and my conscious earth, which is what grounds me in my purpose, how I'm going to bring my purpose to light, are the gates of doubt and confusion. My North node and my South node, what I have brought into this lifetime and what I lived up until about 40 years, what was the like life lesson I was dragging through? Confusion. What, what, cause that's that the same gate. And what is my North node? What is the thing that I have to, my big life lesson that I'm going to learn this in this lifetime? Doubt. Same gate. So, and those gates play out several times. So I'm like, I'm fucking tastic. What I've learned about that is that I've learned, yes, when I am in misalignment, I get stuck in doubt and confusion. So that's where I get jammed up. When I can work with myself and be in alignment, I'm able to come to a place of curiosity, inquiry, imagination, which really is around consciousness and looking at things in a different way. But I have to continue to come back to that. It's not like just because I learned that and I know that and I know what it feels like that I can live there all the time. No friends, my life lesson, and once again, my life lesson is doubt and confusion. So I have to keep coming back to doubt and confusion. So a hundred percent, that's where I get jammed up. Once I can get through that, I'm absolutely able to process it through my throat, but I had to do a lot of work on my own throat, even though mine is defined and I'm a manifesting generator. So.

Louise Neil (28:25) You

Kim Romain (28:51) I have my solar plexus is directly connected. So I have a motor connected to my throat and I'm able to speak into the world, but that's not always easy. And so I had to really learn to work with it. There's a reason why I like wearing glue near my throat center because I like to encourage it to continue to stay open. How about you? Is it always, I mean, I know that you said that you've done a lot of work and even, you know improv was a big part of that as well. Do you feel like that's flowing and open all the time now?

Louise Neil (29:18) It was, yeah. No, no, no. What I recognize though is that when it does get clogged up, like that is in a misalignment with who I am. And it's a struggle sometimes to be able to find those spaces. You know, just because I said, yeah, I got something to say and I'm going to say it, it's like, that doesn't mean that I'm like tip top all the time. I wonder how I'm saying it, right? What's going to resonate? Those kinds of things. And so it's, is a intentionality that comes along with that for sure. But I don't see it as a, I don't see it as like a clog anymore, right? Like it used to feel very much like a block. Now it just feels like I've come across maybe a bit of a speed bump and I just, I slow down, which is great. I want to slow down. I don't want to be going so fast that I forget to hear what I'm saying, right? Like we talked about, I think that's part of what, yeah, just what kind of keeps me in alignment a little bit too. But it's not like none of this stuff that we're talking about is like, I get it. Let's, it's, we're not fixing anything, right? It's not like,

Kim Romain (30:51) You're not broken.

Louise Neil (30:53) Right, right. And so I, because I hear this a lot, almost on a daily basis, right? Like, I want to, I want to do better at this, right? I want to I want to be a better leader. I want to be I want to be able to navigate what's going on. I, I feel broken. Lots of people I talked to about perimenopause, we start to feel broken, because things feel like they're breaking down.

Kim Romain (31:18) We actually physically feel broken.

Louise Neil (31:20) Right? So, so there's, there's a lot of that. And it's like, that's not really what's happening. Right? Like we're going through a phase or a transition where we want something different than what we had. And so it does feel like it's a, there's a letting go, but it does feel a little bit like, well, because that didn't, that doesn't work anymore for me. I must be broken. And that's the same with a lot of things that I hear around leadership too is like, that's not working for me, I must be broken. And it's like, well, but maybe that thing that you're trying to do is just not the thing that is meant for you. And so it has nothing to do with your brokenness. It has to do with like what you're trying to achieve. That's flawed.

Kim Romain (32:19) Yeah. Well, the systems have definitely taught us, conditioned us to believe that it's us. When none of these systems have been actually built for the majority of individuals, they've been created for a very small group of individuals to find success, to find satisfaction, to find joy in. And yeah, it's, can be really, really hard when we start to feel like it's us. And that's, that's the whole thing you were talking about earlier about, right? Why it's so important that I speak now because it is. We need, we need to know that there's freedom in returning to ourselves and understand that it's not, it's not you. It's not you. It's, it's, it is the systems. It is. The world that we find ourselves in is not meant, it's not that it's not meant for you. It just wasn't built for you to find the level of success that we all deserve. Right. Yeah. And, that, that encompasses also using our voice, right. And, and many, many, many of us for lots of different reasons. Well, there's lots of different reasons for many reasons also. It's not safe for us to use our voices and, or we don't feel it's safe. And so finding.

Louise Neil (33:30) Yeah. Yeah.

Kim Romain (33:58) Ways for us to, you know, like right now when I said it's dangerous, or, you know, for me to step into certain places, it's the reason it feels dangerous to me is because I notice very clearly immediately what happens to my nervous system. I go into fight or flight, right? I don't go into freeze even. I go into fight or flight. And that is not where I want to be. I feel like it's dangerous. So I'm going to show up in a way that's misaligned. A lot of that is I'm picking up on the energy that's already in that space and that what's in that space is dysregulated. And so that's not a place that I want to spend a lot of time. Right? So again, finding where we can use our, where we can use our voices, how we can use our voices, and why that, you know, I, you talked about, you have something to say. Yeah. You have something to say. It's not that I don't have anything to say. I have plenty to say, and I am saying plenty of things. It's just the where and how that are different.

Louise Neil (35:08) Yes, right? And I think that's like the message or the thread that I'm hearing in this conversation is that when we feel like, when that gets jammed up in our throats or we feel like we're not speaking our truth or we feel like we have to swallow our words or bite our time or whatever that is, it's a feeling of misalignment.

Kim Romain (35:09) Right?

Louise Neil (35:38) Right? Like that's what we're talking about. If you are comfortable in a place where it's not so loud, in a room that's not so crowded, it's like, yes, please be there. Because guess what? Other people are there too. Right? And so that alignment is really what we're talking about. But to be able to... to recognize what that is and not sit there with a sore throat or a bleeding tongue because you're swallowing that. What we're talking about is how do you find your way through that so that you can say what you need to say in the room that you're in because it's a room you want to be in. You are there.

Kim Romain (36:29) Yeah, I love that. Just a really quick story. I have a client who had been silenced at work. She had actually been told, she worked for an organization who was actually telling her to stop talking. Stop sharing your advice, your vision, just stop. That's a misalignment with the organization. And she didn't want to stop because she was there, that was... her role, her role was to stir shit up. That's why she was there and she was told not to do her job. What ended up happening is she ended up getting so many mouth sores that like she actually feared she had, she had mouth cancer. She had it tested, had biopsy, and it cleared up when she left that job. Our bodies tell us, right? So even when we're using our voices, our bodies will tell us when something is misaligned. And what was misaligned was she kept trying to push in a space that she wasn't meant to push in, that no matter what she did, even if she showed up the way that they wanted her to, they weren't going to hear her. And so the invitation there is to find the spaces that, and I'm not, please hear me on this, I'm not talking about only going to spaces that everybody's saying the same thing. Please don't do that. That's an echo chamber and that's not healthy for anybody. I'm talking about being in spaces where you can have divergent view. points of view where you can have robust conversations that allow you to use your voice in a way that doesn't dysregulate you.

Louise Neil (38:14) Right, right. Yeah, and doing the work, right? Like really understanding, because there's two things that hold us back, right? The outside world and the rooms that we're in and us.

Kim Romain (38:14) That's what I'm saying. Yep. Yep.

Louise Neil (38:30) Right? And so really understanding before you leave the room, like who's, what's holding you back and really deeply understanding that. And if you're holding yourself back, what's the work that you need to do? Because maybe you're in the right room. Right?

Kim Romain (38:46) Now I love that. Louise, this has been great. This has been really wonderful to have a conversation about the importance of using our voices. And it's been really exciting to explore from a place of there's nothing wrong with me because I'm changing where my voice is. Right? Likewise, there's nothing wrong with you for changing where your voice is. Yeah.

Louise Neil (39:10) Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it was a great conversation today. Thank you. Yeah, and thank you listener for tuning in and we would love to hear your comments, your outbursts. So be sure to do that, please use your voice.

Kim Romain (39:33) Use your voice, indoor or outdoor, it doesn't really matter. Please don't actually yell at us, that would be great.

Louise Neil (39:33) Us know. Yes. Hahaha! We would love to hear your voice. We would love to hear from you. So thanks everyone for tuning in today. We appreciate you.

Kim Romain (39:50) Take care, everyone.

Louise Neil (39:52) Bye for now.

Kim Romain (39:53) 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.