How much are you actually carrying right now? Not the version you share when someone asks. The real version. The mental load that starts before you are fully awake. The financial pressure that never fully quiets. The people you are holding together. The old wounds you have gotten very skilled at stepping around. You are not too sensitive or too needy. Your cup is just too full. That distinction changes everything about where you look for a solution. If you are the problem, you keep trying to change yourself. If the cup is the problem, you start asking what is in it and what you are willing to do about that. This is exactly what I write about on Substack every week in The Turning Point. Come read it. Link below For more content and a free Clarity assessment go to Https://stan.store/Turning https://susantownsendts.substack.com/

I am Susan , founder and owner of Turning Stones Life Coaching I am a reinvention and identity coach with 25 years experience in education, teaching, coaching, and consulting people how to communicate and how language works. I earned a master's degree in Rhetoric and Argumentation living under conditions most people would consider insurmountable, and built a business on the other side of bankruptcy, full time caregiving, and subsequent widowhood. I write about what it actually takes, not motivationally but practically and honestly, to rebuild your identity and your professional life after a major loss strips away everything you thought you were. I know there's a trust recession. I am very real. I’m fueled by carbs, caffeine and chaos. I'm sarcastic and strong. I'm compassionate but challenging, and not only is there no filter on my picture, I'm often without a filter with my truths. I help women quiet the negative self-talk, avoid or heal from burnout, reduce stress, encourage resilience, and use inspirational philosophy in application, not just words because I have lived it, survived it, and come back stronger. When you are ready to talk. I'm here for you. https://stan.store/TurningStones

What playing soccer (badly) taught me If you are truly interested in what someone is saying to you, whether it be at a barbecue or at a networking event, put down your phone, turn your entire body toward them, not just your chest, not just your head, your entire body. I learned that if you want to have action and you want to have something, take direction and move in the right direction, you have to make your pelvis face the ball. If your entire body, the center and the core of your body, is not facing the ball …no matter how well you kick it… no matter how well placed your footwork is, the ball will not go where you want it to go. I joined a women's soccer league after watching my children participate in the youth soccer program in our town. Mom's came from everywhere to communicate, to compete, and to be just themselves on a soccer pitch. Children, parents, grandparents, spouses, and entire neighborhoods came to cheer on a group of mothers who, along the way, had been so swallowed in their daily tasks and being the doers for everyone that two 45 minute halves of a game gave them the freedom to be themselves.. not just moms, individuals, unique women… but they couldn't do it if they didn't put their entire body toward the ball… if they didn't turn their pelvis into focusing on the outcome. Let me know when you are ready to turn your pelvis toward the ball. https://stan.store/TurningStones

Be Bag Fries. Watch someone's face when they find bag fries. Not the food. The face. That involuntary flush across the cheeks until composure returns, pure unguarded dopamine firing through the synapses at a frequency so high, even dogs can't hear it.. it's the place where people decide how to feel, but don't always reveal. I want to walk into rooms and be seen like that. Gratitude that cuts through the facade of the daily grind…deep enough to change a room doesn't come from counting blessings…but it does count the warm, crispy and usually extra salty pieces of potato love. Gratitude grows from reaching back into the paper fast food bags of enough ordinary days and finding something warm and waiting to be discovered. Try to find the delicious moments often enough, and it stops being a practice. It settles into your soul You carry it. The Gratitude. The Joy in ordinary small moments. Rooms feel it when you arrive. Be someone's bag fries. Warm, a bit crispy on the edges, and a little bit salty sometimes.

There is a quiet breaking point that a lot of women educators are hitting right now. They still love teaching. That is not the problem. The problem is the constant overload, the invisible labor, and the pressure to hold everything together while running on empty. I work with women who are done pretending this is sustainable. With 26 years in education, I understand the system from the inside: classroom management, student diversity, planning, grading, volunteering or being voluntold, leadership, and everything in between. This is not theory. It's my lived experience. My STONES framework focuses on two paths. You either rebuild your personal systems so your work stops consuming you. Or you make a strategic shift into something that actually supports your life. Sometimes both. This is not about doing more with less. Clearly, you've already mastered that in education. It is about deciding what stays, what goes, and what finally works for you. If you are an educator, or an administrator carrying the same kind of pressure, you are not alone. And you are not stuck. You are more than capable, but your capacity is limited. You know something has to give. But you don't have to give in.