Woo hoo! Episode 50.

Be the Fly-on-the-Wall while my friend and fellow coach, Janellea Macbeth, talk about coaching, growth, and support

Fifty marks something quietly significant for me. Less waiting for perfection. Less negotiating with myself over the place of my voice in the world.

More willingness to let what IS alive, be heard

So for this milestone, I chose something different. A real conversation.

Together we explore:

• what coaching actually is
• why coaching and therapy are not the same thing
• support, growth, nervous systems, and personal responsibility
• the beauty and complexity of an industry that is still evolving
• why growth often asks more of us than comfort wants to give

This is not a interview. It is thought unfolding in real time.

Gift from Janellea:

Go grab your copy of Get Out of Your Head and Into the Creative Life

The emotion wheel is a useful tool.

It expands emotional vocabulary. Helps people move beyond broad labels like anger, sadness, fear, or happiness into greater nuance.

But emotional language is only part of the story because emotions don't begin with language.

They begin as sensation in the body.

Before applying language, there is a physical experience.

Tightness, heat, heaviness, fluttering, pressure, a lump in the throat, a sinking in the stomach.

In this Hot Flash, I explore why the emotion wheel is helpful, but also why it's only a starting point on which to build.

Building connection with one's feelings is somatic work. It's embodiment. and it means learning to stay curious about sensation before rushing to label.

Not every sensation needs immediate interpretation. Sometimes sensations simply need witnessing.

Witnessing, curiosity, and learning to use the language of the emotion wheel from the body up is exactly what builds self-trust and deeper connection to your lived experience.

Pleasing often looks beautiful from the outside.

Attentive. Devoted.

Which is exactly why so many women mistake it for love.

It's often painfully to come to the realization that what was once believed to be love was also shaped by something else... Fear.

Fear of conflict. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of losing connection. Fear of being experienced as difficult.

In this episode, I explore why people pleasing can look deeply loving from the outside, and why it often develops as a brilliant nervous system adaptation designed to protect belonging and attachment.

But protecting connection and nurturing love are not the same thing.

In this conversation, I explore:

• why pleasing becomes identity
• why it is reinforced by family, culture, and systemic messaging
• why love requires presence instead of disappearance
• why midlife often makes the cost of pleasing impossible to ignore

Because pleasing may keep things calm…

But love creates the conditions where expansive growth becomes possible.