Send us a text

Forget the sprint. We’re starting the year steady, grounded, and honest about capacity. Instead of chasing a dazzling future self, we look at what’s here now- what worked, what didn’t, and how to build change that outlasts a January dopamine hit. In this episode I share why integrity beats motivation, how to regulate your nervous system in real life, and what it means to show up in the messy middle with devotion and mercy rather than perfection.

This is also your invitation to join Steady January, halfway through the month- a free broadcast channel with short love notes, somatic practices, and thoughtful prompts designed to fit into the margins of motherhood and work. No feed to keep up with, no pressure to share- just simple guidance that respects your time and energy. If you’re tired of quick fixes, you’ll hear how tiny, consistent micro-shifts compound into durable habits and a calmer baseline you can actually feel.

I'm also opening the doors to deeper support: one-on-one coaching for women who want a focused, fit-first space to metabolize stress, set aligned goals, and expand capacity without the urgency spiral. Then we dive into our spring retreat-why co-regulation is a force multiplier for healing, how workshops translate into daily life, and the joy of being well-fed, well-rested, and well-held in a room where growth is contagious. You’ll leave with tools you can use at home and a felt sense of ease that doesn’t evaporate on the tarmac.

If this resonates, join Steady January, explore coaching, or apply for the retreat while early-bird spots last. And if the podcast supports you, follow and leave a quick review on Apple or Spotify—it helps more women find a steadier way forward.

Join Steady January Here: https://themotherhoodmentor.myflodesk.com/steadyjanuary

Want to sneak peak the Spring Retreat: https://themotherhoodmentor.myflodesk.com/steadyretreat

Book an interest call here: https://calendly.com/themotherhoodmentor/exploration-call

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

What if survival mode saved your life, and then quietly held you back once you were safe? That's the tension we unpack with coach, veteran, and mother of five Chonda Costin, whose journey from domestic violence recovery to military service to purpose-driven coaching reveals the hidden cost of operating in crisis long after the crisis ends.

The story is raw and generous: leaving an abusive marriage, joining the military at 25 with three little girls, twin beds and hand-me-down furniture, nursing through boot camp, and the sobering calculus of choosing safety for your children while learning, much later, to choose yourself too. This is trauma healing for mothers who built everything from nothing-and now face the harder question: who am I when I'm finally safe?

We dig into how survival patterns morph into professional habits for the high-functioning woman: constant firefighting, over-functioning, perfectionism recovery that never quite lands, and defining success by boxes checked instead of a life felt. Chonda breaks down the difference between reactive living and proactive design, using the same rigor she brought to program management—risk mitigation, clear milestones, and systems that actually fit a human nervous system. This is career reinvention meets emotional capacity building.

We talk about burnout masked by accolades, the limits of strategy without somatic awareness, and why blueprints fail without the inner work to implement them. Then we go deeper: self-permission as a daily practice, community as a stabilizer for the over-functioning mom, and honest feedback as the fastest route to self-awareness when you've spent decades performing strength.

Motherhood and identity crisis run through every chapter-early years defined by survival and post-traumatic growth, parenting teens that demand new leadership, and the often ignored earthquake of empty nest syndrome.

We share practical ways to redefine success through life transitions, from evolving boundaries with your kids to business models that respect your healing journey. This is for the military mom transitioning home, the veteran mother finding purpose beyond service, and any woman navigating midlife pivot after years of putting everyone else first.

Expect a mix of hard-won wisdom and pragmatic steps for leaving corporate, reinventing yourself, and mothering through seasons: questions to spot whether work still feeds you, a simple framework to exit survival mode, and ways to align goals with values so your time feels as good as it looks on the calendar. This is raising teenagers, parenting adult children, and finding yourself again—all at once.

If you're ready to move from reactive to proactive, from crisis to clarity, this conversation offers the messy map that only you can make. This is healing from abuse that doesn't erase your strength—it redirects it.

About Chanda:

Chanda Coston is a Business Strategist, Navy Veteran, and devoted mom of five who helps women move from chaos to clarity in life and business. As the founder of Chanda Co., she guides high-capacity women, especially those in midlife transitions, t

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

Our bodies have unconscious patterns of responding to perceived threats that happen without conscious control, ranging from simple to complex defensive reactions.

• Fight response involves mobilizing energy against a threat with aggressive outbursts, criticism, or controlling behaviors

• Flight response means moving away from threats through anxiety, overthinking, or intellectual distancing

• Freeze response feels like "one foot on gas, one on brake" – internal activation with external immobilization

• Functional freeze allows you to operate normally while feeling detached from yourself and others

• Shutdown/collapse response creates complete disconnection, numbness, and loss of muscle tone

• Fawning response involves pleasing others while disconnecting from your authentic needs and feelings

• These responses aren't defects but natural protections that can become problematic when chronically activated

• Healing involves metabolizing these energies rather than eliminating them

• The goal is creating a nervous system that's both strong and flexible in its responses

• Understanding your default patterns helps you respond more authentically in relationships

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

What if the thing sabotaging your communication isn't your words, but your body's stuck survival strategy just trying to keep you safe? We go deep with Enneagram coach Michelle McDonald to explore the instinct layer of enneagram-self-preservation, social, and one-to-one—and how these fast, automatic behavior patterns quietly steer your relationships, leadership, and daily choices. This is personal development that bridges the gap between insight and embodied change.

Instead of stopping at personality types, we map motivation to somatic awareness so you can notice dysregulation, pause, and choose a different path in the moments that matter. This is self-awareness tools meets nervous system regulation for women who've done the therapy and read the books but still get caught in the same loops.

Michelle shares how the Enneagram outperforms other typologies as a practical growth tool by revealing protective patterns and giving each Enneagram type a unique, actionable route to change. We break down the Enneagram instincts and Enneagram subtypes with vivid anchors—a vigilant rabbit (self-preservation), a cohesive herd (social), and bonded macaws (one-to-one)—and translate them into real life for conscious leadership and relationship repair.

You'll hear: the partner who withdraws to protect autonomy (classic pursue-withdraw pattern), the parent who pursues repair to protect belonging (attachment styles in action), the business owner who craves intensity to feel alive and effective. This is conflict resolution through the lens of fight flight freeze, not just better communication scripts.

We dig into why "just communicate" fails when you're dysregulated, how to spot your instinct's telltale moves through body-based healing cues, and what a simple pause can do to bring your body, head, and heart back online. This is emotional intelligence that respects your window of tolerance—self-regulation for the over-functioning woman who leads at work and home.

This conversation is rich with marriage communication examples, team dynamics insights, and grounded takeaways for breaking cycles: identify your lead instinct, strengthen the neglected one, and right-size the one that overdrives your system. You'll leave with a clear framework to navigate conflict in marriage more skillfully, set cleaner boundaries with somatic awareness, and feel more like yourself—present, resourced, and able to choose. This is inner work that translates to outer results.

If you've mastered the concepts but still feel the pursue-withdraw cycle in your relationship, if you lead teams but struggle with authentic leadership in conflict, if you're craving conscious awareness that lands in your body—this is your bridge from thought patterns to embodied change. This is mindfulness practice meets Enneagram subtypes, polyvagal theory meets real-life relationships.

Find Michelle:

Instagram @ origins_enneagram_consulting

Website

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

We guide a short morning practice to center attention, reclaim energy, and choose how to move through the day with grace and clarity. Gratitude, body awareness, and gentle course-correction help build presence without pressure.

• orienting to day, time, and season
• sensory check-in with the world outside
• body scan from head to feet
• deep breathing to build calm energy
• naming agency, choice, and intention
• calling energy back and setting boundaries
• releasing what is not ours to carry
• practicing pause, forgiveness, and reset
• ending with gratitude and a slower pace

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

We guide a grounded practice to meet your emotions, feel where you end and others begin, and build flexible boundaries that protect your energy while keeping connection possible. Through imagery, breath, and simple prompts, you restore right distance, agency, and choice.

• orienting to room, time, age, and body
• mapping emotion by location, speed, and color
• sensing others’ presence and the space between
• calling your energy back, sending others’ back
• building soft yet strong barriers of light or water
• adjusting distance to restore right relationship
• journaling wants, needs, limits, and capacity
• releasing what is not yours with respect
• walking forward with clear, bright energy

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

Burnout doesn't have to be the cost of ambition. In this conversation with repeat guest and facilitator Camille Leek, we explore somatic healing and cyclical living for entrepreneurs balancing work and motherhood. Learn how to restore sustainable productivity by aligning with natural cycles- birth, growth, decay, and death-so your nervous system can support big work without collapse.

Instead of chasing forever-summer energy, we map real rhythms for the working mom across a day, week, month, and year: ramp-up mornings that build capacity, focused midweek production, deliberate wind-down evenings, and honest wintering that composts what no longer serves. This is energy management for the creative entrepreneur who refuses to choose between presence and impact. But this isn't about following our exact business or life blueprint, it's about experiencing and then fine tuning your own,

Camille shares how she left a "successful" corporate path after years of chronic fatigue from 60–80 hour weeks and began designing boundaries that fit her biology: no Monday or Friday meetings, session windows that honor nervous system regulation, and planned hibernation months. We unpack the difference between agency and control, the social pressure to perform like a machine, and the quiet violence of self-colonization when worth equals output.

You'll hear concrete examples for mothers and creatives navigating matrescence—how to swap "can't do the park" for "movie cuddle," how to plan launches around menstrual cycle awareness and true energy, and why ramp-down is the missing link between action and real rest. This is holistic health meets sustainable business strategy.

If burnout has you oscillating between go and collapse, this conversation on embodiment and seasonal living offers a map to smoother waves. Expect practical routines for work-life balance, clear boundary scripts, and compassionate language that reframes PMS/PMDD, seasonal lows, and late-year contraction as natural, intelligent responses. The result is fewer, richer outputs; better sleep; more presence at home; and a grounded sense of enoughness that doesn't disappear when your calendar empties.

This is self-care that actually builds capacity-boundaries that create agency in both motherhood and entrepreneurship.

About Camille:

Camille Leak (she/her) is a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Facilitator & Somatic Trauma Healing Educator. Via her practice, Real Talk & Brave Spaces, she provides group facilitation, workshops, and one-on-one coaching about a variety of DEI topics and trauma healing, cultivating spaces where individuals and groups can fearlessly confront the most uncomfortable elements of life's realities.

4-part course: Living & Working Seasonally: Unearthing Your Unique Rhythm & Flow to Circumvent Burnout

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.

Send us a text

We guide a short morning practice to ground your body, soften your breath, and let the earth hold what’s too heavy so you can meet the day with steadiness. The session blends breathwork, body scan, orientation to time and place, and a gentle reminder to carry presence forward.

• grounding through feet and seat
• slow nose inhales, mouth exhales
• releasing past weight and future fear
• visualizing worries composting into soil
• full-body scan for wholeness and calm
• orienting to place, time, people, tasks
• returning to breath as a home base
• closing with intention to carry presence

If you’re ready to stop living on autopilot and start leading your life with deep presence, I’d love to work with you. Book a free interest call here: Click Here

💌 Want more? Follow me on Instagram @themotherhoodmentor for somatic tools, nervous system support, and real-talk on high-functioning burnout, ambition, healing perfectionism, and motherhood. And also pretty epic meme drops.

🎧 Did you love this episode? Be sure to follow and please take a quick moment to leave a review and send this episode to a friend. I'd love to hear from you on how this podcast impacted you, send me a DM or an email.