45. Slowing Down Is the Work (Nervous System Healing, Midlife Burnout & Finding Presence in Uncertain Times)

What if slowing down isn’t something you do after you fix your life — but the very thing that allows you to live it?

In this episode, Kate Garland explores why so many women feel stuck in constant urgency, overdrive, and emotional exhaustion — and why slowing down isn’t about doing less, opting out, or “calming down,” but about reclaiming presence, capacity, and aliveness in a world that no longer offers a clear map.

Blending lived experience, nervous system wisdom, midlife insight, and a few very human stories (including grief, sourdough, and rage-vacuuming), this episode reframes slowing down as the work — not a reward for getting everything right.

If you’re navigating midlife, burnout, anxiety, or the sense that the old ways of pushing through just don’t work anymore, this conversation will meet you where you are.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why women speed up — emotional labor, overfunctioning, hypervigilance, and the pressure to be everything to everyone
• How the nervous system calibrates to constant urgency — and why it becomes your “normal”
• The difference between pausing and truly slowing down
• Why midlife forces a reckoning with speed, burnout, and capacity
• How slowing down builds nervous system capacity instead of shrinking your life
• Slowing down as quiet resistance and embodied leadership
• Why presence — not productivity — is what helps us navigate uncertainty and no-map land
• Simple, tangible ways to slow down without overhauling your life

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Hi Love!

I want you to know how grateful I am that you’re here. . . and I would love to invite you to journey even further with me.

If you’re craving a steady place to land while life is shifting and reshaping you, come sit with us at The Hearth. It’s a gentle, grounded space for women in navigating change—an oasis of rhythm, reflection, and real support when the world feels loud or uncertain.

And if midlife has felt less like a problem to solve and more an initiation, it is! Join our waitlist for The Second Firing. This work is for women who know something meaningful is happening—even if they can’t quite name it yet—and are ready to meet who they’re becoming on the other side. We begin soon!

And finally, if anxiety has been looping in your body or mind, I have a simple gift for you. My FREE 54321 Anxiety Reset is a 7-minute, guided practice you can return to anytime you need to interrupt the spiral and come back into breath, body, and presence.

However you’re walking with this work—thank you. I’m so glad our paths have crossed. Don't forget to Subscribe/Follow (and maybe drop a review!)

xx.

Kate

GO DEEPER

• The Hearth → https://www.radicallykate.com/store/p/hearth-monthly
• The Second Firing → www.radicallykate.com/sf-waitlist
• FREE Reset Anxiety in 7 Minutes → https://radicallykate.kit.com/a2207ff482
• WEBSITE: https://www.radicallykate.com/
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