What does it take to grow something without burning the soil it grows in? Katara McCarty arrives at the Highland in the second episode of Season 2 with an answer shaped by both her flourishing and her depletion.

Katara McCarty is the founder and CEO of Exhale, an award-winning, inclusive well-being app and resource that centers the mental health and well-being of Black women. She also leads Exhale Cares, advancing mental health equity through advocacy, education, and research. Her honors include first place in the NBA Foundation All-Star Pitch and a Webby Award. She is an inaugural Highland Leader and now a coach to many leaders across the Highland.

In this conversation, Katara arrives slow and gentle, practicing a pace that does not shove her through the day. She names her lineage: daughter of Betty Waters, who opened her home to a foster baby in 1972, daughter of Mary Waters-Smith, daughter of Nellie Waters, daughter of community and collective care. She places a seed on the altar, a slower, more intentional pace of leadership that does not require depletion to prove impact. She reflects on what the Highland helped her remember about legacy, that it is not only what you leave behind but what you seed forward to flourish seven generations from now. She tells the truth about eighteen years as a pastor and nonprofit leader, holding space for everyone while few held space for her, and about the day in 2016 she landed on her bathroom floor, emptied, asking where to go from here, and the coach who told her to pour back into herself and to grieve. She offers the line that names the whole season: you can grow things, but you do not have to burn the soil. Gabrielle mirrors it back as wholeness, rest integrated with purpose rather than sacrificed to it, and names the difference between care as branding and care as a practice that actually holds us. Katara describes what Exhale really offers, not new care but remembered care, spaces that guide us home to ourselves. She names the vision she will not trade, I see us well, well resourced, well rested. She names what the systems do, deplete and extract, and frames rest and prioritization as refusal. And she closes with the mad lib that holds the arc in two lines: because of them, I can exhale, and because of me, they can exhale.

If Season Two of Meet Me at the Highland™ is an invitation to seed, then Katara McCarty tends the question of what the soil requires. Before the planting, the conditions. Before the harvest, the rest. Seed yourself first. Let this episode be a remembering that there is nothing wrong with us, that we are deserving of our own care, and that we can build a different way.

Connect with Katara
Website: exhale-app.com
Exhale Cares: exhalecares.com
Instagram: @kataramccarty
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kataramccarty

Connect with Meet Me at the Highland™
Full episode and companion content: meetmeatthehighland.substack.com
The Legacy Studio: https://meetmeatthehighland.place/
Instagram: @meetmeatthehighland
YouTube: @MeetMeatTheHighland

• (00:00) - Intro
• (02:23) - Arriving Slow and Gentle
• (03:56) - Lineage Daughter Of
• (06:38) - Seeding Slower Leadership
• (09:35) - Legacy Seven Generations
• (13:33) - Depletion and Turning Point
• (16:33) - Bathroom Floor Breakthrough
• (21:55) - Grow Without Burning
• (27:25) - Relearning Rest from Grandma
• (30:51) - Rest Fuels Creativity
• (34:25) - Care as Practice Now
• (36:11) - Pandemic Spark for Exhale
• (39:31) - Building Exhale From Frustration
• (43:08) - Wellness Spaces And Harm
• (46:05) - Remembered Care And Mirroring
• (48:41) - What Is Yours To Carry
• (54:33) - Discernment And Saying No
• (01:01:42) - Protecting The Seven Generation Vision
• (01:03:16) - Breath As Daily Resistance
• (01:07:32) - Support The Movement
• (01:13:35) - Mad Libs And Gratitude
• (01:16:03) - Closing Celebration And Farewell