Why does rest still feel exhausting, even when we’re doing all the “right” things?

In this episode of Honey Toast, we unpack burnout from a different angle. Not as a productivity problem, but as an identity one. We explore how being self-aware, informed, and committed to healing can quietly become another form of output, and why so many women feel overwhelmed even when they’re slowing down.

This conversation is about the gap between awareness and embodiment. About why slowness can feel unsafe. About how nervous system burnout often shows up as constant motion, over-functioning, and the inability to simply land in ourselves without a role to perform.

Danielle shares openly about her recent health wake-up call, nervous system dysregulation, and beginning somatic work, including a powerful first session that revealed how deeply ingrained performance and self-monitoring can be. Brianna reflects on identity shifts, pressure, and how change requires more than insight. Together, they explore why burnout isn’t a lack of resilience, but grief for the parts of us that don’t get to exist unless they’re useful.

This episode is for anyone who feels tired of performing their own life, even in the name of healing.

Topics we cover:
• Why burnout isn’t about doing too much, but being too many things at once
• The difference between awareness and embodiment
• Why slowing down can feel unsafe
• How healing can turn into another task
• Nervous system regulation and identity loss
• Performance, shame, and early survival strategies
• Why consistency matters more than transformation
• Asking for help and relearning rest

Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome back + season pause reflections
03:00 – Life transitions, moves, and nervous system overload
07:30 – Why rest doesn’t actually feel restful
10:00 – Awareness vs embodiment
14:30 – When healing becomes another form of output
18:30 – Burnout, busyness, and the fear of stillness
22:00 – Asking for help and community support
25:30 – Creating space for nervous system regulation
28:00 – Danielle’s first somatic coaching session
33:00 – Shame, performance, and early survival patterns
36:30 – Why burnout is grief, not failure
39:00 – Integration, consistency, and closing reflections

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Danielle: @danielleschleese
Brianna: @brianadonaldson

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Birth is not the trauma, the system is.
This week on Honey Toast, Danielle and Briana sit down with birth worker, somatic trauma coach, and best-selling author Emmy Robbin to talk about birth as initiation, power, lineage, and the remembering of what women have always known.

From fear-based systems and disassociation to sovereign birth and nervous-system trust, this episode explores how trauma is often systemic, not personal, and how true healing begins when we restore faith in our bodies.

A must-listen for anyone navigating pregnancy, postpartum, or the lifelong relationship with the feminine body.

✨ Follow Emmy on Instagram @emmyrobbindoula

📖 Get her book Faithful Beginnings
🎧 Listen to her podcast Empowered Birth, Love & Life

What if the very thing women are taught to hide holds the key to their deepest power

In this conversation with Marieke Bodyn artist philosopher midwife and cyclical living guide we unravel the centuries of shame that have buried the feminine body under patriarchy’s logic and the medical system’s quick fixes. Together we trace the lineage of womanhood through blood and soil from red tents and ancient priestesses to the modern woman’s quiet rebellion of tracking bleeding resting and listening

This episode explores:
• The lost initiations of the first bleed and how their absence shapes generational disconnection
• The ancient practice of returning menstrual blood to the earth as nourishment and ceremony
• The emotional and energetic language of cramps PMS and cyclical pain what your body is actually trying to say
• How the patriarchy rebranded the sacred feminine into something messy and how women are rewriting that story through ritual
• The biological poetry of maternal lineage how your grandmother’s eggs live within you
• Why reclaiming cyclical living is not regression but the most radical form of evolution

This is not a conversation about periods It is a conversation about power The kind that cannot be sterilized outsourced or systematized

Listen if you have ever felt at war with your own body and are ready to remember that she has been on your side all along

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