Elevating Good Podcast

Episode 6 is on the way! Listen and subscribe. Link in chat👇🏾

Today is Memorial Day. Before the parades, before the cookouts, before the long weekend — there was this. Sacrifice.

This verse is spoken at Arlington National Cemetery. Read at gravesites across this country. Whispered by Gold Star families who understand it differently than most of us ever will:

'Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.' — John 15:13

This Memorial Day, I'm choosing to reflect on this. To appreciate this.

Wherever you are, take a moment to stop. Remember those who gave so we can be.

Will you stop with me?

🎙️ Listen to Elevating Good wherever you get your podcasts. Link in bio.

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Can I ask you something?

What if the things you've been struggling to do — show up consistently, rest without guilt, focus, feel okay — aren't about discipline at all?

In the latest episode of Elevating Good, Cendrine Hosoda said something that reframes everything:
"Everything becomes so much easier when your nervous system isn't pushing on the brakes."

Think about driving with the parking brake on. You can press the gas harder. You can try more. But the car still won't move the way it should — because something underneath is working against you.

That's what a dysregulated nervous system does. It doesn't mean you're lazy or broken or not trying hard enough. It means your system is still in protection mode.
And protection mode has an off switch. That's what this episode is about.

🎙️ Link in comments— go listen. And drop a 💜 below if this one hit home.

"Your nervous system doesn't speak English. It speaks body."
— Cendrine Hosoda, Elevating Good

This one line reframed everything for me so I had to call it out.
It's why you can do all the therapy, read all the books, understand exactly where your patterns came from — and still feel like something isn't moving.

The body is holding what the mind already knows. And until we learn to listen in the language it actually speaks — sensation, breath, tension, rest — we're only healing part way.

Cendrine Hosoda of Pursuing Wholesome Health joined me on Elevating Good to talk about exactly this. If you haven't listened yet, today is a good day to start. 💜

🎙️ Link in comments.

I don't usually share things like this. But this episode gave me the space to, and something in me felt like you needed to know.

Last year was the hardest year of my life.

My father passed away. I lost four close relatives in six months. My daughter was diagnosed with a progressive eye condition. And my job our family relies onwas uncertain in ways that kept me up at night.

I came out of that year feeling like a deer in the headlights. Not okay. Not processing well. Struggling.

And I did what I could with what I had. I went to the doctor. I went to the dentist. I started paying attention to my health in the most basic ways. And I leaned hard on my God. On faith, my family, and on the prayers of others.

In this clip of Elevating Good Episode 5, when I shared this with Cendrine Hosoda, she said something beautiful: "You're doing what you have capacity for. And that is enough."

Just doing what's right in front of you — one small thing — is regulating to your nervous system. You don't have to have the full plan. You just have to take the next step that's available.

I'm still in some of it. The job uncertainty. The caregiving. The ongoing life transition.

But I'm here. And I'm grateful for conversations like this one that remind me — wholeness isn't behind me. It's still ahead.

🎙️ Full episode with Cendrine Hosoda — link in comments .

Next time you catch yourself doing the thing you've been trying to stop — try this instead of criticizing yourself.

In Season 5 Episode 5 of Elevating Good, Cendrine Hosoda offered a compassionate reframe. She calls it the “nervous system bucket.”

Picture your nervous system as a bucket. Throughout the day — through stress, unresolved things, overwhelm, uncertainty — the bucket fills up. And when it gets too full, it overflows. That overflow might look like eating too much, doom-scrolling, snapping at someone, a migraine, or shutting down.

Most of us respond to the overflow by beating ourselves up. Calling it weakness. Lack of discipline.

But Cendrine says: what if instead, you saw it as your nervous system sending you a message? What if, when you notice the overflow, you turn toward yourself and say — "Oh. You must need some attention."

And then you pause. Take a breath. Ask: what is actually stressing me out right now?

That shift from criticism to compassion isn't just kinder. It's more effective. Because the inner critic doesn't regulate your nervous system. Compassion does.

Which "overflow" do you recognize most in yourself?👇🏾

🎙️ Full episode with Cendrine Hosoda — link in comments.

Your nervous system didn't fail you. It protected you — the best way it knew how.

In this week's Elevating Good, Cendrine Hosoda broke down what a dysregulated nervous system actually looks like — and she named four survival responses that many of us are living in right now without realizing it:

✦ Fight — anger, reactivity, conflict
✦ Flight — constant busyness, inability to be still, always running
✦ Freeze — numbness, depression, feeling stuck
✦ Fawn — people-pleasing, shrinking yourself to keep the peace

She said something that really stuck with me: "Your nervous system just picks what's available. You don't really choose."

Especially for those of us who learned these patterns in childhood — they made complete sense at the time. They were survival. The problem is when they follow us into adulthood and become the only way we know how to respond.

Which one resonates most with you? You don't have to answer out loud — but I'd gently invite you to sit with it. 💜

🎙️ Full episode with Cendrine Hosoda — link in comments and bio.

Can't sleep at 2am? Try this. 👀

In our latest episode of Elevating Good, trauma-informed life consultant Cendrine Hosoda shared something that helped me — a simple eye movement technique you can do with your eyes closed, right in bed, when your mind won't let you rest.

Here's how it works: move your eyes slowly from right to left, and back again. Just 20 times or so.

Why does it help? Cendrine explains that horizontal eye movement has a particularly calming effect on the autonomic nervous system — it actually mimics what your eyes do during deep REM sleep, when your brain processes and releases what happened during the day.

It's the same principle behind EMDR therapy. And I tried it live on the podcast. My reaction? "Oh my gosh, it really actually feels like I want to rest."

🎙️ Listen to the full conversation — link in

Which part of this surprised you most? Drop it below ⬇️