When You Do (or Don’t) Have Anymore "Effs" To Give

What happens when you’ve got nothing left to give? In Episode 184 of The Empowered & Embodied Show, hosts Kim Romain and Louise Neil explore the complex relationship between caring, capacity, and emotional depletion. From world events to personal overwhelm, they unpack what it really means to reach your limits and why pulling your care back toward yourself can be the most loving act of all.

Kim shares her experience navigating global grief and burnout through the lens of embodiment and awareness, while Louise reflects on midlife disconnection, guilt, and the cultural conditioning that tells us we should always care more. Together, they remind us that self-care isn’t selfish... it’s sacred stewardship of your energy.

If you’ve ever felt drained, disconnected, or guilty for needing a break, this episode will offer you permission to pause, recalibrate, and reconnect with what truly matters.

Key Takeaways:

• Why emotional depletion isn’t failure—it’s feedback.
• How to discern between intentional and unintentional energy leaks.
• The power of awareness in rebuilding capacity.
• Why self-devotion is the foundation of sustainable leadership.

Key Moments:

00:00 – Opening reflection: When there’s nothing left to give
01:51 – Welcomes and setting the tone
02:14 – “Any Eff’s to give today?”
06:38 – Midlife disconnection and protecting energy
09:06 – Guilt, shame, and reclaiming capacity
10:22 – Acceptance and devotion
14:59 – Reparenting ourselves
19:23 – Intention, awareness, and energy
20:02 – The awareness–capacity–care circuit
21:17 – Where our energy is going today
23:46 – Invitation to reflect on your own capacity
25:18 – Closing reflections and farewell 

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

Transcript

No More Effs to Give

Episode: 184 Release Date: November 6, 2025
Kim (00:00) Some days there is just nothing left to give. The news, the external noise, the constant pull of expectations—it absolutely drains us. And when the jar of F's is empty, what then? In this episode, we dive into the tender truth of depletion, the shame, the permission, and the reclamation that happens when we stop forcing ourselves to care about everything. It's an honest exploration of our capacity limits, how much compassion we can hold, and how to choose when to care and when to turn inward. Consider sharing this one with someone you know who might be struggling with how many F's are left in their jar.
Kim (01:51) ...to those who are listening to us live, and hello to those who are catching us on the replay and on the repurposed podcast and all the good stuff.
Louise (01:58) Mm-hmm.
Kim (01:58) Louise, how are you doing today?
Louise (01:59) I'm doing all right. I got my booster yesterday. Did you? Yeah, my COVID and my flu booster.
Kim (02:07) We're going on Saturday to do that.
Louise (02:09) Yeah. Just a little icky, but pretty good otherwise.
Kim (02:14) Good. So, let me ask you this. Do you have any F's to give today?
Louise (02:18) Not a lot, actually. No.
Kim (02:19) Why not?
Louise (02:20) I think I'm feeling a little depleted. And I don't know if it's like I have a jar of f*cks to give away—it's empty. You do have a bag of fire, but yeah, I'm feeling a little bit depleted today, and I don't want to give any more away.
Kim (02:44) That makes sense. Where did they all go?
Louise (02:46) That's a good question. Well, some of them go to the news—like to the world. World events get some of them. Some of my close friends get some of them. I get a few of them, I think.
Kim (02:58) Well, that's good. I hope you give a f*ck about yourself.
Louise (03:00) Right? Like, occasionally, I'm intentional about it. Yeah, I think also, too, like, my clients, the work that I do, that's really important to me. And so I really do care about that kind of stuff that I'm putting out into the world—like this kind of stuff, this content. I care about that. But it feels like today, and maybe it's... maybe it's a little COVID booster hangover, but it does feel like I'm a little depleted, and that I just don't want to... I don't want to give any more away unintentionally, because that happens, right? Like there are intentional giveaways, and then there are unintentional, like when things steal my time and attention and my care. And I don't like it when I'm skewed over that way.
Kim (03:47) Sure. You used the word intentional. What causes us to be... this is like an interview session! So I thought, as we started, I was like, "Where am I on that scale today? Do I have any left? Do I not have any left?" And I'm squarely in the middle. I think I do have... I have plenty left, as I was seeing things from the place where I just lived for 21 years being literally under siege, and people being abducted from front lawns, and feeling all the feels, right? And having a lot of f*cks to give about that. Like, I care a lot. And then there's a whole lot else that I just don't care as much about. Like, I see people posting other things out in the world, and I'm like, "I just don't care about that." And I see... like, I was in a business mastermind a little earlier today, and great group of people, really enjoy the people in it, love the people who are running it, all of that. And I was sitting there listening to them. I was like, "Wow, I really wish I cared about what you were saying." And I kind of... of course, I felt like an a-hole in that moment, but it was like, "I really, really wish that the problems that you're focused on were something in this moment I could care about." Not that you shouldn't care about it. Like, this was what they were dealing with. So absolutely, I get why it was important to them. I didn't have any more to give to them. So it's that. And it's interesting because I wouldn't say I feel depleted. I feel activated.
Louise (05:24) Do you ever run out of that caring energy? Do you ever run out of it?
Kim (05:36) I mean, yeah, there have been times in my life where I did. I've dealt with severe chronic depression, and I didn't have any to give. I didn't have any caring to give to anybody, let alone myself. You know, the last time I dealt with that... well, that would have been a little over 20 years ago. Thankfully, that was the last time that I dealt with it. I know people who do deal with it ongoing, and I don't ever want to get to the place where I don't have any care left. Like, that does... that's... I was so dissociated from myself, so disconnected from myself, from the things that I do care about, and that I that I want to engage with in the world and in my lifetime. So yeah, I think, and I think because of dealing with it that way, I'm thinking of it that way. I always care about something. If nothing else, I care about myself enough to say there's something wrong. And so I still care.
Louise (06:38) Yeah, yeah. You know, and this happened to me not that long ago, and it happens to clients that I talk to, too, especially in midlife, going through perimenopause, is there sometimes is like this disconnection, like this inability to plug in like we used to. Like the world just becomes kind of muted in color, and there's not that kind of connection and energy that maybe we used to have. It's hopefully temporary, right? It's part of the transition, hopefully. And yet, I remember how that felt. And I wouldn't call it like depression necessarily, but I would call it like disconnection and just really being unable to plug into the things that I used to care about in that way, like with that magnitude, right? Or with that amount of energy. And it became a little bit more like, "Just, I need to withdraw a little bit. I need to, you know, protect myself." And that's what I find a lot with world events right now, too, is that I deeply care about like the people, and yet I can't consume my information on the news when it's like, you know, being thrown at me. I feel like I'm being yelled at sometimes when I see those things. And so I do need to kind of be more intentional about where I'm putting my energy and what I am caring about. And sometimes I do feel like it's okay to not care for a short period of time, to kind of just regroup and cocoon sometimes and get ready for whatever's coming next.
Kim (08:14) Well, it's so interesting because that was what you just said was the impetus for this conversation today. Yeah. Was you were saying, "Can we just talk about when it's okay to not care?" And the way you said it now... so when you first said that, I was like, "No." But I was also in the midst of deeply feeling something. Not odd—I deeply feel things a lot of the time. But the... yes, we absolutely, to give ourselves the grace and the space to say, "I can't care about that right now." It's, and to me, it's not that I don't care about anything, because that's what I was saying, where I deeply care about myself when I say, "I can't care about that," because it's outside of me. There's, in this moment, nothing I can do to affect it. The only thing I can do is to care about myself and, in that moment, to care enough to shut everything else down.
Louise (09:06) Right, yeah. You used the word deeply care. I wouldn't say I deeply care, but I do care enough to know that when I'm depleted that I need to find a way to kind of, I don't know, go around and collect more f*cks so that... right? Like, I need that time, I need that space, and I need the ability to like just disconnect from all of the noise—the noise of, right, of the world, but also like closer noise, right? Like you and I were talking about kiddos, right? Like sometimes, I need to disconnect a little bit from my 20-year-old son, who... there's just moments where, right, I do need that. And yet, a lot of times, shame comes with that, too, right? To say, "Well, I should be plugged in," or "I should be caring deeply," or "I should be like things should I should be," or "If I cared enough, right, I could make a difference." And there's shame that gets packaged in with that as well. And then it's even more depleting, because now I'm fighting shame, and I'm trying to be in a space where I just can't actually be in service at all to anyone. And it takes some time and maybe some therapy to disconnect from that shame. It does.
Kim (10:22) Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had that conversation this morning with a client of mine. She has some amazing opportunities that are actually taking her away from her family. And she's traveling a lot more. And she has two, not little, little kids, but she has two younger children. And this fear that she said... it was interesting because when I asked her, I said, "Is it that you are afraid of missing out on what's going on with the kids, or is it guilt?" And she said, "It's guilt. It's guilt that I want to go do something for myself." And like, here we are. And this is an intelligent... like, this is a woman who has had the opportunities to go do lots of things in her life, right? On paper, very successful. And in her life, very successful, feels very successful, and also is very challenged with this fact of this should, right? "I feel guilty that I... it's not that I don't care about my kiddos, it's that in this moment, I care more about this other thing." And we talked about this place of acceptance, right? This... when we work through...
Louise (11:23) Yeah.
Kim (11:28) ...our levels of consciousness as we're evolving towards higher consciousness, acceptance is a huge key to that because the world is f*cked up. Our lives can feel f*cked up from time to time. And for us to shut ourselves down and "should" on ourselves or say that, right, "this is wrong that I feel this way" isn't accepting the facts of our lives. The facts are what the facts are. And this is not cognitive behavioral therapy. This is not putting glitter on poop. This is not toxic bypassing. This is acceptance. This is accepting that sometimes it sucks, and I still want to do what I want to do, and there's an opportunity I could follow. And so understanding where our values, deeper than our values, where our devotions... what are we truly devoted to in this moment on this part of our journey? Is what allows us to come a little bit more into that place of acceptance and understanding that it is challenging for us to do all the things, be all the things that we want to in this lifetime, or that others have expectations of us on. I know if I said that right—that place of, right, it's internal and external expectations. And accepting that sometimes we have to say, "That can't happen right now, because this is happening." It is really, really important for us to be able to release and let go of the guilt, the shame, the fear, the worry. And I think that's where it gets to that place of care. But I'm not going to care about that right now.
Louise (13:05) Yeah, I think too, like, it's not a competition, right? Like, it's not like our devotion or the amount that we care. Like, it's not like I care more about this than that. Like, I think we get caught in that mislabeling of like how much I care for something. It's, care is infinite, right? And so we can still hold all of those things. We can still like love our career choices and our kiddos at the same time. It's not like... right? It's not... yeah, it's not a competition. If we're filling our own need, it's endless, right? Like if we're really following, we're following our values and we're following what really makes sense to us, then all of that works out, right? Somebody's going to be deprived or lacking in care if we're focusing on one thing right now.
Kim (13:58) I think that's true, except that we do live in a world in which society has a lot to say about us. Not that we have to follow it, but society has a lot to say about us and about what is expected of us. So as moms—you and I are both moms—as moms, it's expected that we care about our kids and likely will put our kids first. That's an expectation we were told and taught and conditioned towards. It's not necessarily one we always lived up to, nor does it always look the way that somebody else may have thought it should look. I can care very deeply about my daughter and say, "You got to go figure this out on your own," because that's my parenting style. And I did not read that in a book. It was me understanding my energy, me understanding her energy, and giving her space to explore what that is at this point in her journey. Clearly, I wouldn't do that when she was, you know... I did. Actually, I did. Yeah.
Louise (14:59) And that's a lesson for us, too, right? Is that, you know, sometimes we do, I think we do need to, much like we parent our children, we need to parent ourselves in the same way, too. And that sometimes is a letting go of something, letting go of an expectation that we've been carrying or letting go of a story that we've been carrying, so that we can kind of reparent ourselves and be able to trust in the fact that we do actually know what the heck we're doing. So, yeah.
Kim (15:31) Reparenting is such a cool concept and a cool practice because it's not... some of us had great parents, some of us had horrible parents, most of us had things in between, right? Just like with everything, the world is not binary. It's not just good, bad, you know? And this place of how would I want to be treated in this moment? How would I... how would my little self that is acting up right now, what does that little person inside of me still need? Because we're still the same person, even though we've evolved, even though we've grown, even though we've developed, we're still that same person, and we carried so much of that forward with us that it's a disservice to our own humanity to ignore that part of ourselves. And so allowing ourselves to reconnect with it in a way that we would parent... not to replace our parents, but how we would do it, gives us an exploration and a contemplation on something that is... that takes our experience into it. Right? That's again, it's not what's coming in from us. It's... it's not the societal stuff. It's internal.
Louise (16:32) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's a little bit of where this conversation kind of birthed from was, you know, sometimes I do feel like I'm pitching a tantrum a little bit just to say like, "I don't f*cking care." And that's okay. You know, it's not okay when I want to care and I don't, right, for an extended period of time. It's about paying attention to those kinds of things. I do feel, at least for myself, that occasionally it's okay not to care in that way, like in a deeply connected way, because I am looking after myself or I'm figuring myself out, right? Maybe I am pitching a tantrum, damn it. And I just need to... I just need to, right? Yeah, like get it out and let it go and then see what's on the other side of it. It's just never okay to get stuck there, right?
Kim (17:24) Yeah, I mean, well, I think it is okay to get stuck there if we, if at some point we are released from there because we're humans, we do get stuck. And so there's, and I'm thinking very personally about when I was dealing with the episodes of chronic depression, I was what you would call stuck. And it was okay that I was stuck because I needed that time, that space to go through that. I received help, I received support to move through it at my own pace. But I was absolutely what I would identify as stuck. But I think that right where you were talking about it's okay not to care, what came through for me is because we use the word deeply. Like I said deeply and then you were like, "I'm moving on deeply." But I think it's, right, this is again, it's all a spectrum. It's like, it's not either no f*cks or all f*cks. It's like, there's a spectrum and it's, it's, you can still have them and maybe there's just a few and maybe it's not deep. Maybe that's what your capacity is in that moment. And I know when I was... when I was going through my depressive episodes, it was very shallow. Like these were not... I did not care deeply or maybe I cared too deeply. I don't know what it was, but it was like, there was a different depth there than what I'm experiencing now. And it was also for sure it was a different breadth. Like I could not, I could not care beyond myself. The only thing I could do is say, right, "Did I brush my teeth today? Did I take a shower today?" And that's where I was. And that was me caring for myself, was thinking about those things, not even always doing those things. And so I, in this conversation, just want to honor that, right? Like, because we're all in different places. And so it may seem that somebody is stuck, and they're just working at their own pace. And so, right, I think that that... yeah, I've said enough about that.
Louise (19:23) I think it comes back to intention, right? Intentionality and awareness is really... right, is where are we intentionally? Are we giving our energy away to things that are robbing it? Or are we giving our energy away intentionally to those things that we deeply care about? And to be aware, to be aware of how full you feel, of how bright you feel, like all of those things. And to seek care for yourself, whatever that looks like, right? Let's not define it, but again, it comes with it, right? It comes with a self-awareness and some intentionality, yeah.
Kim (20:02) That word awareness is so key to all of our conversations, right? Because when we set out to start this podcast and came up with the words empowered and embodied, it was all about awareness, right? It's having the awareness of how much power are you experiencing, right? How much, quote unquote, control do you feel in your own life? What is that? And then, what is the awareness of what your body, with the wisdom of your body, is sharing with you. Because I know, and I know we've talked about this many, many times, is that was the catalyst of change for me, was connecting with my body. And it was slowly over time of like, "How can I be in connection with my body? What information, what data would it have for me in any given moment so that I could make different decisions?" And those different decisions were like, "Can I look at the news today? Can I have that conversation today? Can I..." like all of these things, really gets into the awareness allows us to understand capacity, and capacity allows us to understand how we care for ourselves. Just like this nice little circle, this little circuit that works.
Louise (21:17) Yeah. Yeah. It does. It does work. Yeah. Where is... where are your f*cks going today?
Kim (21:25) Heh. Definitely, definitely still in Evanston and Skokie in Illinois, in Chicagoland area. Obviously throughout the United States, but very much so. Target on that, on where I called home for 21 years and the people that I know that are simultaneously putting their bodies in potentially harm's way and protecting so many others while doing that and coming together as a community. Lots of f*cks there. Lots of them going for... I'm starting a cohort today and I'm really excited about that. Like on the other end of the spectrum. So, lots of f*cks that clearly like this deep sadness and anger that I feel. And then this joy that I have and excitement that I have for the nine people who are coming into this small cohort, this intimate cohort, that I'm starting inside of this, I called it the Manifestation Studio. And it's just so beautiful to see these people coming in and getting excited about connecting with themselves and connecting with the energy of the universe in a way that can allow them to see hope, see clarity, see joy, and to start bringing those things closer into, and money. Like I know a bunch of them are coming in for money, too. Like all of that is coming in. So, it's again, it's a spectrum. In this moment, that's where a lot of my f*cks are going. Always to my family, right? How about for you? Where are yours today?
Louise (22:49) I have a dear friend who's going through a diagnosis right now. And so that's really, really, really challenging for me to see her struggling with this back and forth, worst case, best case scenario that we go through when we just don't know what's going on. And so I care deeply about supporting her through that and what does that look like? And I care about some of the conversations and things that I'm having and the women that I'm talking to who are in this space of like, I call it the struggle bus, like really struggling with where their attention and intention and awareness and all of that is going. And so I do care about that. That's about my capacity today, to be honest. I do feel like it's just in a few places, a few bright spots. And the rest, I guess, is for me.
Kim (23:46) I like hearing that, though, that last part, right? It's like, yeah, yeah, there's a whole lot to turn back on you. And so for those of you who are live, for those of you who are catching the replay, we'd love to know where are your f*cks going today and how many do you have? Because we know it is hard, it is hard to keep caring right now. I know for me when we talk and again initially when Louise brought this idea to have this conversation, I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't want to have a conversation about not caring." And then it was a realization of, "Oh, yeah, I know it's actually a really healthy conversation to have, is how much capacity do I have to care and and understanding that and having that awareness." So I think this is an invitation for all of us, you know, for Louise and I for sure, and then for anybody who's tuning in, to understand where your capacity is to have that awareness of how much and how deeply, right, that depth and breadth of what you're capable of caring for right now. And it's okay to bring those in closer for the time that you need it in closer. And ultimately to care for yourself, as I shared, right, with my history with depression, like that had to get really close. Because if you don't care for yourself and you're not working through that process, it doesn't matter what's happening outside of you. It just doesn't.
Louise (25:06) Right, yeah. And you know what? What you feel today is different than what you feel tomorrow, or it's not, right? Like it's a moment in time. And to treat it as such, I think, is important, too.
Kim (25:18) Absolutely. Louise, thank you for bringing this conversation to the forefront and for saying, "No, no, I think it will be a good one."
Louise (25:26) It'll be a good one. Thank you. It was great and I look forward to hearing comments and whatever else folks you've got on your mind. Please let us know.
Kim (25:36) Take care, everyone.
Louise (25:37) Bye. Bye for now.