When You’re Tired of Being Strong

There’s a kind of tired that doesn’t show up on the outside.

It’s the kind that comes from holding everything together…
being the one others rely on…
and carrying more than anyone realizes.

In this episode of At the Counter with the Baking Pastor, I’m sitting down with Heidi Blackie for a conversation about what it feels like when strength starts to feel heavy.

Not dramatic.
Not loud.
Just quietly exhausting.

Heidi shares from her own experience—what it looked like to reach a place where pushing through no longer worked, and how that became the beginning of something different.

This isn’t a conversation about giving up.

It’s about:

• recognizing when you’ve been carrying too much 
• gently letting go without feeling like you’re failing 
• and discovering a different kind of strength—one that doesn’t require you to hold everything together 

If you’ve been the strong one for a long time…
If you’re feeling worn down, stretched thin, or unsure how to keep going…

This conversation will meet you right where you are. 

In This Episode

• What it really feels like to be “the strong one” 
• The quiet weight of always holding everything together 
• Recognizing when strength becomes too much 
• Letting go without guilt or failure 
• Redefining strength in a slower, more sustainable way 

A Gentle Pause

As you listen…

You don’t have to fix anything today.

Just notice:

• where you feel tired
• what you’ve been carrying
• what might need a little more care

You’re allowed to take this slowly.

Continue the Conversation

If something in today’s conversation resonated with you, Heidi has created a space where you can continue exploring that gently and at your own pace. Here website is https://www.unshakableme.com or on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UnshakableMe

You’ll find resources for women navigating burnout, chronic illness, and seasons of change—spaces to reconnect with yourself and begin again without pressure.

 Gentle Reminder

You don’t have to keep proving your strength.

You don’t have to carry everything alone.

You are allowed to rest…
even in the middle of it all.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to At the Counter with the Baking Pastor. I'm Laura. Pull up a chair. There's no rush here. This season, we're sitting with the hard days. The ones that don't resolve quickly. The ones that uh change us in ways we we didn't ask for. Here at the counter, nothing needs to be fixed. You don't have to have the right words. You don't have to have it all figured out. You can just come as you are and stay a while. This is hard days at the counter. Pull up a chair. Whether you're driving, holding laundry, or just sitting in a quiet moment. Today's conversation is for the one who's been holding it together for a long time. The one people rely on. The one who shows up. The one who keeps going even when it's heavy. And maybe lately there's a quiet thought underneath it all. I'm tired. I don't know if I can keep doing this. What happens if I'm not the strong one anymore? If that's you, you are not alone. Today we're not going to fix that feeling. We're just going to sit with it. Honestly, gently, together. Today I'm joined at the counter by Heidi Blackie. Heidi is someone who understands what it feels like to keep going, even when your body and your life are asking you to slow down. After years of showing up for others as an occupational therapist, a season of chronic illness brought her to a place she couldn't push through in the same way anymore. It was a quiet and difficult turning point, one that asked her to begin listening differently, both to her body and to herself. Over time, that experience reshaped how she understands strength, healing, and what it means to trust yourself again. Today, Heidi walks alongside women who feel worn down, stretched thin, or unsure how to keep caring what they've been holding for so long. Her work gently invites people to reconnect with themselves, notice the stories they've been living inside, and begin again at a slower, more honest pace. Heidi, welcome to the counter. Thanks so much for having me, Laura. I'm excited to be here. I really like that last line of your bio at a honest pace. How many of us are actually living at a slower, more honest pace?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

I don't see a lot of people around me at the slow pace, and it takes its toll. It does.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

When did you first begin to feel tired of being the strong one?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

I think it probably was going on in the background long before I recognized it. Probably tw 2019. And I had been carrying a lot of heaviness in my life for two decades by that point. And and I didn't have any resources. I didn't have any agency or capacity to carry it anymore. What does that feel like inside? It feels terrifying. It feels lonely. It feels like there's no ground. It feels like I'm kind of a shell of a person that I once was. Kind of empty and afraid.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Often I think strength becomes something that we carry, not necessarily something that is chosen. What do you think you were holding together during that season?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Well, I grew up in kind of a pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep going, no matter what kind of household. I mean, I think that's a pretty common one for people who are Gen Xers. And we didn't talk about emotions. We don't really talk about the deep stuff. And and I think it was about feeling like I can I can do it. I can keep going. And I I was with my mom the last three months of her life. And it was like I was falling apart, but at the same time I had to be strong for her, which showed up as I don't want to sit and cry with her. I want to be there for her for what she's going through. And I want to, I I handled her medical care and a lot of the decisions that needed to be brought forth to her providers, were kind of on my shoulders, pushing for those. But it just it was this need to be not show the weakness, not show the cracks that I was feeling, because I had this vision of what it means to be strong, which is, you know, I'm not falling apart. I'm here. I would fall apart when I'd leave the house. But it was, it was this feeling like you just swallow it and you and you hold it. But through my experience of hitting the rock bottom, it completely changed my perspective on what strength really is, and not trying to swallow it, but actually trying to sit with it, kind of like what we were talking about before when you said the counter is a place to sit with things and to let them be, and to not really focus on fixing or changing them, but to just be with them, to acknowledge them and to let them be there in whatever capacity you can.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

And something inside you realized you were gonna have to change, that you couldn't keep caring things the way you had been. How did that feel and and what steps did you take?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

I ended up at a point where I felt really alone and I I didn't have any doctors that could diagnose me. I didn't have a treatment plan, I didn't have anything moving forward. And that was a moment where I came to terms with what I was believing about being able to recover and live a functional life. And I actually was believing I wouldn't recover, which was a sobering finding within myself. And that was the point where I kind of made a vow to myself to believe in myself and believe in my capacity to heal and to recover. And it was the first time that I ever really looked inward and started that partnership with myself, which sounds kind of funny. But I feel like I've been living all these other roles before. And I was stripped of those because I couldn't do those anymore. And it was this commitment every day to I did meditation, I did a lot of mindfulness and journaling, and acceptance was a huge piece of it, accepting all the parts of me and what was happening in my life. And those were the steps that created that new strength in me that allowed me to sit with the difficult things and to give me the agency to redefine that strength that was that was always there, but I never I never slowed down to find it, and I never really had to find it. I was kind of going off that just power through it. But when you can't power through it anymore, then you have to kind of shift that perspective, shift that lens and see what is another way I can look at it. So that was the beginning of the creation of that kind of new self, but old self in a in a new way.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Wow. Just just thinking about having all of that inside and not even being able to tap into it. I know you were not alone in that. So I know you had a chronic illness, and chronic illnesses can be really challenging because they're they're usually not visible. They don't show up a wheelchair, crutches, or a cast. You're not coughing necessarily and sniffling, but you're suddenly weak, exhausted. And you know, you it it's it's an invisible illness that people don't see, don't understand, don't, don't get. How did you navigate learning that you had one? And if you would, would you share what it is that you you were dealing with?

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah, it was not all of a sudden, it was a slow decline that started with chronic injuries that were just random that wouldn't heal. And I was racing my bike at the time, and I just got therapy and acupuncture and kept kept going. And and then I started having illnesses. They were always the same: exhaustion, fatigue, barbed wire, sore throat, felt like you were swallowing, barbed wire, nausea, GI symptoms, and that would level me for weeks. And those became more frequent, but I sort of could recover a bit between episodes and be semi-functional. I had to scale back. I stopped racing my bike. I cut, I had three jobs for a very long time, and I cut back to what one job and then a part part-time job. And in 2016, I had a series of really big stressors, starting with the the death of my soulmate of a dog to cancer two months after that. I lost my sister to suicide, and then I got married six weeks after that, and then my mom was a year after, and I had a lot of other life-changing stressors, and those were kind of like a lit match to all the things that were going on in my body, and I became really sick where my episodes were more intense, they were longer, I eventually couldn't drive, I lost the capacity to be able to work. Everything kind of pared down to survival every day. And I had gone to several doctors and I worked in the medical field for 20 years, and I also did a lot on my own, but I knew there was a missing piece, and that was me. When I did find a doctor, I was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease. I had chronic Epstein bar, which that one they had known about. I had massive sinus infections. I had other viruses and parasites and metals, and just what happens when you have chronic illness is everything downstream kind of goes off the rails. It's very different from just going after a bug. You have pneumonia, we we get it. When chronic it changes your body, it changes everything, and it changes your mind and what you believe when you've been told we can't see anything wrong on your labs, or yes, this is positive for Lyme in 2015, but I don't really believe it. So um, so it so it was this, and and because I look fine on the outside, that is almost more isolating because nobody can see it. And even my patients would say, Oh, you you're so fit, you're so healthy, you're this and that. And and I'm just like, I'm sleeping at lunch to make it through the afternoon, and you have no idea. But it was just kind of this tunnel vision of what I need to do to get through the day. And then I would go home and lie down and and then you know, the next day go back to work and make it through. It was this gradual, but then once all those stressors happened, it was it was much more intense. And then I couldn't, I was reacting to foods and different treatments that doctors would try with me that completely backfired and made me worse. And my husband would say, you know, maybe this is just how you are. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not functioning because we we had a very active life together. We biked around New Zealand, we're both competitive cyclists, all our vacations were active, and I couldn't do any of that, and I couldn't travel. So it was a it was just this kind of shrinking of my life and and myself within that.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

How did the chronic illness impact your marriage?

SPEAKER_01 14:35

It was really, it was really difficult because I was just in this survival mode and nobody gets it unless they've gone through it. And that's if you've lost a loved one who's very close to you, nobody understands unless they've lost that. So it was very hard. My husband has been a healthy person his whole life. He did break his neck back in 2012 or 13. So he had a little bit of a sense of what it's like to not be able to do the things that you normally do. But it had been so long. I mean, it was even in our wedding vows in 2016 that he would read to me and rub my feet. But as part of the the grief of what I was losing was the grief of what he was losing and what we were losing, because our relationship was so strong on the shared interest, the shared paths of movement and the community that we built around that. I was not, it was only when I got better and I would burst into song that he realized how bad I was. Because you get used to it day in and day out. And he's at work, he doesn't know what I'm doing during the day. And I managed to have dinner on the table most nights when I was not able to work and I was leaving the stove on. So it wasn't as visible even to him, but he could he could tell. But in my experience as a therapist with over you know a couple thousand patients over my career, most men leave. And most men, he is very rare that he stayed and was that a source of strength for me. But it was also this guilt that I had too, because I felt like I had run myself into the ground by the way that I was living, and I caused a lot of what I was feeling because I pushed my body when I knew I didn't have much to push. And so there were all these crazy feelings about that and the shame and and recognizing you know, here's this person who I'm not the person that he I kind of am the person he married, but not I I got so much worse by five years later. So, and now I'm a totally different person. So I I keep changing on him. But that keeps things exciting, right? It does. I mean, we've been together this summer summer, it'll be 20 years, and it's it's this evolution of growth. And and I I love it, and I think it's you have to grow. You're going to grow or you're going to fall apart, I think, or drift apart if you're not awake and aware and really kind of coming together. So it was a huge strain on our relationship.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

You said a couple things that I I want to highlight. Um, earlier you said you lost your soulmate doggy. And I remember when my doggie, one of them passed away, and I was heartbroken. I mean, it a grief is a grief. It's a hundred percent grief to me, whether it's a dog, it's an aunt, a mother, a spouse. It's still a grief. And people are like, and what was so ironic at that point, I went to school that I was teaching special needs, and I went to school that day, and the teacher in the next room, her father-in-law, had passed away. The school came around, took up a collection, got her a card, gave her time off. And I'm grieving my fur baby of 10 years who died pretty fast with an illness, and it's just a dog. It was like, oh and I think people don't realize again, a grief is a hundred percent grief. So then later, when my first husband died, people came to the funeral home and were telling me about their aunt or their sister's mother-in-law or their parakeet, and and in the line, the greeting line, and I'm thinking, what is wrong with people? Or they have to share a story, and I'm just like, wow, people, this is not the time to play catch up, come through, greet me, say I'm sorry for your loss. But that's the challenge. Society has taught people you have to share a favorite story to comfort the other person, or you have to to tell them all you know, and the family's just standing there going, Oh my gosh, just keep going through, let's get through and not be here for three more hours. Society did not know how to handle my doggy, and it didn't know how to handle when at a young age I became a widow, and it was really a struggle because people look like with an illness. You can't be sick, you look fine. You can't be a widow, you're young. I didn't realize there was a an age limit on that.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah, and we're uncomfortable. We don't talk about death, we don't talk about grief, we don't know how to sit with it, we don't know what to say, we want to fix it, we want to make it go away, and it's people don't understand. I think that discomfort is I've got to say something, I've got to say I know somebody who's this or who's that, and really it's I'm holding space, I'm praying for you, I'm here for you, and and that's big. And and on the dog, I I don't have kids. My animals are my kids, and it is like ripping my heart out to lose one. And I think what's different about an animal is that you've you've arranged your life around this animal, they're ever present. Every morning, she's my dog is there, she's ready to go, let's go. I come down, she's at my side all the time. And my husband will say, Oh, let's go here. And immediately I'm thinking, what about the dog? What about the dog? And when you have that giant vacancy in your life, you come home and there's nothing and where the bowl was or the bed was, and it's you just have constant reminders. And that's probably the same with your husband, too. I mean, he was he was there in your house all the time, and you saw him every day, and having that absence is is huge versus someone who's In another state that you occasionally saw. I think there's such a difference there. And what pets can do for us. Their unconditional love.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

They're all love. They are. And they love us. They know our innermost secrets. They know where we hide their treats and their toys. And and you you find yourself second guessing where with a spouse, it was somebody that you shared meals with, you shared a bed with, you expected to call at a certain time and say, hey, I'm I'm heading home. People do not understand the silence. That silence is okay. One of the other things I hear a lot of my people said they'd be there for me. And then when I asked for help, they weren't. I was like, oh, I I guess I want people to mean what they say and say what they mean. And if you really don't plan on helping, then then then don't. But it happens. Sadly, it happens.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Well, and I think the closer it is to memorial or the service, there's there are people around. And then it's after that when they stop reaching out and the reality sets in, and you've lost that support, is when it can be really hard.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, they're you know, they're so overwhelmed by so much family and people in and out, and then after the service, everybody goes back to work or home, and they're not. I typically don't send sympathy cards. I usually wait till after and send a thinking of you card. I don't always go visit. Uh I go to a visitation, but I don't go to the house when everybody and the whole family's there. I I'd rather go when there's a time when I know they're gonna not have a lot of visitors. Make it more more meaningful for people. For people listening, they may recognize themselves in some of this. Maybe they didn't handle that grief episode the best. Maybe they've been the one who everyone always tried to lean on. And you don't have to be the one to keep it all together. You do not have to be strong. But if that's you, people take a breath. You don't have to hold everything right now, and you don't have to have everything figured out today. Notice what feels heavy and let yourself sit with it for a moment. So, Heidi, as you started to move forward with your life as it took a different path, what did you have to let go? And how did it feel as you let things go? What was it failure? Was it shame? Was it you still had to do it all to prove to everybody?

SPEAKER_01 24:46

I had to let that go when I when I hit the bottom, although I did still kind of show up for my husband with the house stuff. I think letting go of the person that I was, one of the things that we talked about that my husband said is, Where's the old Heidi? I miss the old Heidi. And I said, I miss the old Heidi too. And it's it's like in the pandemic, we wanted to get back to where we were. We wanted to get back to normal, but there is no going back. And letting go of the person that I was was rough and a long process of kind of shedding layers to find the person that I was underneath that, and realizing that I'm creating my life with what I think about and I focus on, that I'm creating all the time, the mood, the beliefs, not everything that happens to me, but that I have such a bigger role than I ever thought. And that was exciting and really empowering. And so it was letting go of these old stories of not enoughness, going through all of those. Where do they come from? Why am I believing that? Why am I letting that shape my choices? I was 52 when I hit rock bottom. And it's like, why is that still driving my life? These childhood things. So it was letting go of a lot of the things that accumulated over my life. And when it there were parts that I was sad to lose, but I also it's so worth it for what I've gained through it. And I do believe that they all happen to me for a reason, everything, the whole of it, to get me where I am right now, which is a completely different person with a different perspective on life. And I wouldn't say that in the thick of it and would have told you you have no idea what you're talking about. But I frequently say, just let go, put it out there, do the things that feel right to me and feel aligned with me, and let go of the outcome, let go of the expectations. And I was a very driven person, ambitious before, and very high expectations of myself and others. And letting that go has been something that is kind of a a common thing to let go of. Oh, I didn't get to the things I wanted to get to today. I'm letting them go. I'm not gonna feel bad about it. I can't do anything about them in the in retrospect. So what going forward, what can I do so that I do the most important things, focus on the most important things. And a lot doesn't really matter in the big picture that we think matters.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Exactly. So I think often we think strength means we have to hold everything together. And you shared that your understanding of strength has changed.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Actually, it's good to fall apart and not feel like you have to hold it together. Because what happens when we try and hold it together is that it creates that tension in our bodies that we've got to be something for others or for ourselves, and it disallows us to really feel what it is that we're going through in the moment. And the only way to get through it is to go through it. It's not the more that you distract or try and control or hold it, is the harder it is to move through it and get past it. And there is this discomfort that we can say in our bodies, this is okay. It's not danger. I can feel this. And sometimes, like with my mom, there were times where I couldn't, I had to put a lid on what I was feeling because I had to be functional and I had to show up in this role. But then I would get out of the house and I would take a walk every day. And that's when I would just feel it and just let it out, just let it go, let it move through you. And I think to heal anything and to be able to grow, we have to be able to feel it. And that sends a message to our nervous system that we're not in danger when we when we hold on and hold it and try and control the outcomes. That signals danger in our nervous system, which actually reduces our ability to heal. It keeps us in our fight or flight part of our nervous system, which makes our thinking, creative, collaborative part of our brain less accessible. And we're more likely an emotional regulation part of our brain. So we're more likely to snap at people or not be able to handle things. And when you allow it, then you have this capacity for the things that are unexpected. I couldn't handle the unexpected things. But when you've kind of worked through and let it kind of move through you and you've sat with it, it's like I've been here before. It's not fun, but I can do this and I've got support, or I know what I but I don't have to hold everybody's stuff. And so having boundaries is really important. And boundaries for yourself, for what you kind of assign to yourself to be able to do or handle.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

A lot of people tell me I don't want to feel what what I'm feeling. Well, if I don't feel kind of like the ostrich, if it's under sand, I I don't know what's going on. If I don't feel it, then I'm not really feeling it. But you actually need to feel it and process what you're feeling where you can feel safe, as you said. Your body is not held so tight. Because I think people, if they just stay in that state all the time, anytime anything comes that they aren't expecting an illness, a bill, a rocky friendship. It's gonna throw them off and set them back. Would you agree? I do.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

But our cultural narrative is that you don't need to feel it. You can pick up your phone. There's all these ways to distract yourself from feeling it. And we have, you know, pharmacies around I don't want to feel a headache, I don't want to feel this or feel that physical and the emotional is the same way. But there is so much truth to the body keeps the score. And at some point, in some way, I think, and the research shows it too, that that you will it will take a toll if you keep kind of stuffing it down, stuffing it down, stuffing it down. It doesn't feel great. I don't like to have days where I feel sad or upset. It's not fun. But it doesn't mean that you sit around and play sad music in the dark. It just means that one of the things that was so pivotal for me because my symptoms were so all-encompassing for so long, is that I could only see the symptoms. I couldn't see what else was there. And it's the same thing. If we accept this feeling of sadness, then that's going to engulf me and swallow me up. But in reality, we're a whole beach, and that sadness is one grain of sand. There's a ton of other grains of sand that are us. There's the nature, there's my dog, there's my husband, there's, you know, the good, there's so much good in the world, even though we only hear the news of the bad. And being open to what else is here? You're not ignoring that sadness or that negative feeling. You're accepting it, but you're also saying, okay, what else is around? What else can I observe in my life today? And maybe what's something I could feel grateful for? And that you can feel great. I don't care who you are or what's going on, you can feel gratitude. And it can feel hard to reach sometimes, but we take so much for granted. I mean, just a house, food, being able to put a spoon to my mouth and not have it shake, or just being able to use my hands, being able to see, which means I can drive and I can walk and hike and do all the things. So there's so many things that we forget about because we're so focused on this one negative.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

I keep a daily gratitude journal, and and some days it's thank you for the amazing hot coffee. Thank you for the beans and uh our well that was dug so that I could have water and whoever made the curry so I could have coffee. I mean, sometimes you gotta stretch because you feel overwhelmed. I've had people compare their emotions to a snowball that started at the highest peak and as it rolled, it collected everything and then eventually just rolls them over. Then you need to start working on some of your stuff because you're gonna continue to roll, and the more you roll, the more you're gonna collect. But moments of gratitude can help with that and even help you sidestep for a minute and say, hey, I've got this thing chasing me down, but I am grateful for to see or to drive or to be able to get out. There are things I I'm grateful for, their pets, their friends, and people are like, Really? It's like, yes, you need to journal, please. Please journal.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

And I think people who don't have a gratitude practice think it has to be these big things. And it could be a smile, it could be a bumblebee and a flower. And it can also be me showing up for me today.

unknown 35:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

I'm gratit, I'm grateful for myself to be able to sit with this difficult thing. And gratitude is incredibly powerful. I I have a a friend and a woman that I met at a happiness summit last year in Costa Rica, and she's a gratitude teacher, travels all around the world teaching joy shops, and it changes your brain, it changes your chemistry, and it's so easy and it's free and it's accessible. And once you get into it, then you start looking for things and it gets easier. And then marinating in that gratitude, we don't realize what we have until it's gone. And we have so much, so much more than so many people. And yes, there are other people who have more than we do, but there will always be people who have more and people who have less. And just having that that gratitude for the abundance that we have as a daily practice is really powerful. It's so powerful, people think it can't be that big of a deal. But there is so much research on the benefits of it. And fast, it doesn't take years of doing a gratitude journal. It can take a couple weeks to change how you feel. And it's not bypassing the bad feelings. It's it's not an either or, it's a both. They can both be true at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

I started gratitude journaling when I was going through breast cancer. And I remember one day I wrote, I am thankful for my body fighting cancer. Yes. That was all I could get out because that was a really rough day. And then the next day I went back, I'm like, Well, I'm still grateful that my body's fighting cancer today. So it got added a couple times, but it it doesn't take a whole lot to do that.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

No, and I think we it's so easy to be hard on ourselves that we're probably the last people we would think to thank ourselves. And having that gratitude for yourself and what you're going through, and being able to sit with it and be with it, is also a huge compassion practice, in addition to gratitude practice that can really change your nervous system and the structure and chemistry in your brain and your body.

SPEAKER_00 39:59

And I can hold on to that. To me, it just makes it so much uh more powerful. So for listeners who feel like they can't keep doing all that they're doing right now, Heidi, what would you want to hear today?

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Well, the first thing is to be kind to yourself for where you are and what you're going through. And that means the way that you talk to yourself. I think looking at what matters most, what's most important, and focusing on those things. I think when we look at it, really look at it and look at the stories attached to the expectations that we have of ourselves for everything. There are some that we can let go. So we don't have so much that we have to do. And setting some boundaries, and that's boundaries of with other people. And it's also boundaries around yourself of what you're expecting of yourself. And that can be a hard one to set, to readjust those. But really trying to take the smallest, tiniest step that you can toward reclaiming more of your life and what is the most important that you're spending your time on. I think we have a lot of distractions. I mean, we have a lot of distractions, and oftentimes we don't realize we're reaching for the phone or reaching for something that's distracting because we don't want to feel what we are feeling. But realize that that's also where you spend your time if that's happening to you, and that time that you can never get back that could be spent on something else that you do for yourself. That's kind for yourself. I think really that that kindness, that self-compassion, that that gentle voice is important and living from that and not the high expectations, which is hard if that's a pattern we've been in for our lives.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Boundaries are an important thing to use, and it's not a naughty word. It's okay to have boundaries.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

And realize people who, if they have been, you've been doing a lot for them and you start saying no, expect some unhappy people. And that just means you're doing it right. I have to explain why and feel bad about it, and it's easier said than done in some cases, but that's you know, you matter, and and setting that boundary is because if you're not taking, if you're not really showing up for yourself and taking care of yourself, you're going to that well is going to run dry and you won't be able to show up for other people in the same way either. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

An empty vessel cannot pour into anyone else. Yes. If something in today's conversation resonated with you, Heidi created a space where you can continue exploring that gently at your own pace. You can visit her website at unshakableme.com or her YouTube channel. You'll find resources, programs, videos that are designed for women navigating burnout, chronic illness, or seasons of change, spaces that help you reconnect with yourself so that you can notice what's been weighing on you and begin to move forward with a little more clarity and care. As always, there's no pressure, just an invitation to take that next step when you're ready. We'll make sure to link Heidi's resources in the show notes. Before we go, I just want to speak gently to the one. Who's tired. My friend, hear this blessing. The one who keeps showing up, even when no one sees how hard it is. If that's you, you don't have to prove your strength. You don't have to carry everything alone. You are allowed to rest, even in the middle of it. God is not asking you to be stronger. He is already holding you, even here, especially here. Heidi, thank you so much for sitting at the counter with us today. Thanks for having me, Laura. It's been a great conversation. Thank you. I'm sure people are going to gleam so many cool nuggets out of this. I hope so. Until next time, I'll meet you back here. Thank you for sitting at the counter with me today. If something in this conversation stayed with you, you might want to carry it gently into your day. No need to rush past it. And if you need a place to pause, reflect, or simply breathe, you can find more at daretoliveagain.com. Until next time, take a breath, notice what's in front of you, and remember, you're always welcome here at the counter.