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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Instagram: @thehoneytoastpodcast

Follow us personally:
Danielle: @danielleschleese
Brianna: @brianadonaldson

If this conversation resonated, consider following the podcast, sharing the episode, or leaving a review. Your support helps these conversations reach the people who need them.

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

Listen on Spotify Apple and YouTube

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Share this episode with a woman who is ready to remember the power of her own body

Leave a review and tell us what part of this conversation awakened something in you

The Body Was Never the Problem it’s where the feminine revolution begins.

Hosts Danielle & Briana of Honey Toast sit down with Rebecca Akat, creator of Blume Womb, for a deep dive into cyclical living, body wisdom, and the soft rebellion of slowing down.

They explore what happens when women stop treating their cycles as inconveniences and start honoring them as portals to creativity, intuition, and self-trust. From hormone awareness to somatic embodiment, this episode invites you back into relationship with your body—the way nature intended.

🌿 In this episode:

• The rise of burnout and the myth of the 24-hour woman
• Reclaiming rest and sensuality as sacred power
• Womb intelligence, emotional alchemy, and the art of embodiment
• How to live in tune with your inner seasons

💭 This episode is for the woman who’s tired of fixing herself, and ready to remember she was never broken.

🎧 Subscribe wherever you listen: Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Google, and more.
✨ Connect with us: [@thehoneytoastpodcast] | [honeytoastpodcast.com]

Your gut isn’t just about digestion, it’s where stress, burnout, and imbalance first take root. In this conversation with Clinical Specialist Devin Eliason, we explore how the principles of Ayurveda reveal the hidden links between your gut, your emotions, and the way you move through the world.

Devin shares how living out of rhythm with your body shows up as inflammation, anxiety, hormone swings, and chronic fatigue, and how simple shifts in food, routine, and daily awareness can transform survival mode into grounded vitality.

If you’ve ever wondered why your “gut feelings” are so often ignored in Western medicine, why your symptoms feel scattered but connected, or how to bring ancient practices into a modern lifestyle, this episode will leave you seeing your body in an entirely new way.

Tune in to this week’s Honey Toast episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and join us in re-imagining what gut health really means.

Devin (Hall) Eliason's Instagram + Website

Season 2 is here! Welcome back to Honey Toast Podcast. In this opening episode, we’re diving into the silent initiations women face, the unspoken identity shifts, cycles, and transformations that shape womanhood. From the epidemic of loneliness and craving for sisterhood, to the seasonal wisdom of fall as a time of release, change, and renewal, this season explores what women go through silently yet universally

Expect raw conversations on:
✨ Silent initiations of womanhood, from menstruation to motherhood and beyond
✨ Why loneliness is so pervasive for women today, and how sisterhood heals it
✨ Identity shifts and life transitions that deserve to be honored, not hidden
✨ Embodiment, feminine wisdom, and the rituals that bring us back to ourselves

🌍 This season features voices from around the globe, women in birthwork, embodiment, sensuality, and ancestral traditions, all sharing what it means to live fully in the body, in community, and in connection

For detailed show notes, navigate using the timestamps below:

[0:00] Introduction - What to expect from season 2

[1:30] Life updates from the hosts

[7:30] All of us have felt less than at some point or another

[9:23] Hosts share biggest difficulty going from the first season to now

[13:38] Insight on what is coming in season 2

[20:00] How this season will help women

Follow us!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@honeytoastpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehoneytoastpodcast/

What if your next creative breakthrough was already alive in your body, whispered through your breath or revealed in the way your hips moved? In this episode, we explore the deep connection between women’s sensuality and their creative power. From the pressure to always be productive, to redefining what it means to feel safe and expressive in your own skin, this conversation is a soft yet powerful invitation to reconnect with your inner rhythm.

We talk about balancing masculine and feminine energies, how sensuality deepens connection (yes, even in the bedroom), and why maybe…we all need to dance a little more.

For detailed show notes, navigate using the timestamps below:

[0:00] Introduction - the pressure to show up, to grind, and to produce

[4:17] Women sensuality unlocks their powerful selves

[10:30] Women don’t need to provide as much as men

[16:31] Masculinity and feminine need to be balanced

[21:54] Connected sensuality makes “making love” feel closer

[28:21] Accept yourself and be comfort within the sensual space you create

[34:17] We should all dance

Follow us!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@honeytoastpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehoneytoastpodcast/

Motherhood is life-changingm, beautiful, messy, and at times, identity-shifting. In today’s episode, we’re diving into the often unspoken journey of what it means to be a mom and a woman rediscovering herself. From the instinctual ways moms just seem to know what to do, to the challenge of reconnecting with who you are outside of parenting, this conversation is a reminder that your identity matters too. We also talk about the roles we adopt, how to network meaningfully as a mom, and offer encouragement and advice for anyone walking this path.

Whether you’re in the thick of raising littles or just starting out, this episode is for you.

For detailed show notes, navigate using the timestamps below:

[0:00] Motherhood is life-changing

[8:17] Moms just know what to do

[10:45] How to reconnect after being a Mom

[17:14] The roles we give ourselves

[23:56] Networking for Mothers

[25:00] Advice for Mothers

Follow us!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@honeytoastpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehoneytoastpodcast/