Teaser: High-Load Seasons: How to Carry a Lot Without Losing Yourself

Life has a way of piling everything on at once.

Work deadlines. Family responsibilities. Volunteering. Grief. Caregiving. Unexpected curveballs.

In this teaser for next week's episode, Johanna introduces the concept of a "high-load season" - those stretches of life where the demands seem to stack up all at once - and shares a glimpse into her own recent experience navigating one.

Here’s a taste of what’s coming up next week, where we'll explore why meaning matters, how our brains interpret stress, and practical strategies for carrying a heavy load without losing yourself in the process.

🎧 Full episode drops next Monday.

🎶 Music: “Back Roads” by Will Harrison, via Epidemic Sound.

Transcript

Hey — missing me already?

If you’re catching an in-between week of the podcast, here’s a little taste of what I’ve got coming for you next Monday.

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I’m going to be talking about something I think most of us experience from time to time, but maybe don't always have a name for.

What I call a "high-load season."

Those stretches in life where if feels like way too much stuff seems to be happening in a kind of short window of time... all at once.

They're hard. Really hard.

In fact, sometimes they're downright shitty.

And whether you saw it coming... or it hits you like a tornado ripping through your life... we can find ourselves searching in the distance for the hope of a dim light at the end of the tunnel.

I just passed through one of those seasons myself. And I actually did see some of it coming.

Multiple out-of-town volunteer presentations for Threads of Life.

During a crazy-busy time at my day job.

Podcast planning, writing, recording and editing.

But as Murphy's Law would have it...

Some of it I didn't see coming at all.

Right at the very end, one of our pets got sick, so I was stressed and worried about that... and then grieving because we ended up losing her.

Needless to say, between long drives, poor sleep in hotels, the emotional weight of the presentations I do, and the juggling act I was trying to perform to make sure my podcasts were dropping on time...

All while working full-time...

I was exhausted.

It was a lot.

And I wasn't just physically exhausted.

I was becoming cognitively and emotionally overloaded too.

Your version of this might not look exactly like mine – but I bet you’ve experienced some.

Maybe yours has to do with a workload around a deadline at work.

Maybe it's caregiving.

Maybe it's helping someone who is ill.

Maybe it's parenting.

Maybe it's grief.

Maybe it's relationship stress.

But most of us go through something, sometime, where the load just feels heavier than usual.

And for me, there were times when I was really struggling to maintain both my balance... and the energy needed to keep going until I could get to the other side of it.

But the commitments I'd made mattered deeply to me.

So it became really important for me to figure out what I could do to make that season more manageable to carry...

Without a total crash and burn at the end.

Or gawd-forbid... Right in the middle of it.

A few weeks ago I was driving home from one of those presentations.

It was about a three-hour drive. 

I was exhausted.

It had been my fourth presentation in a month.

My third that week.

And I still had one more to go the next day.

I was in that sort of... "Just a couple more days and I can rest..." state of mind.

And while I was driving, I started thinking about something.

The fact that sometimes when life gets heavy, it’s not realistic to eliminate the load – so we need to move our goal-post and negotiate a short-term strategy to help us get to the end of the game… still standing.

Because sometimes dropping the load isn’t and option for us.

Sometimes the commitments matter.

Sometimes the responsibility matters.

Sometimes the thing we're carrying is important to us.

So the goal becomes figuring out how to carry it differently... So it doesn't take us down with it.

And that's really what this episode is about.

Because high-load seasons are different than chronic stress.

They're different than burnout.

They're different than being stuck in a place or time where you’re forced to live outside of your values.

A high-load season is temporary.

It's time-bound. It has beginning. It is for a reasonable length of time. And it has an endpoint.

It's often connected to something meaningful.

But the truth is - even meaningful things can be exhausting.

And at some point during those seasons, I think most of us end up asking ourselves a question.

Is this actually worth it?

And what's interesting is that there are often two voices answering.

One says: "Yes. This matters. What you're doing is important."

And the other says: "Why did I say yes to this? I don't know if I can keep doing this."

And here's the something else I've been thinking about... Sometimes the weight we're carrying doesn't just come from what we're doing.

Sometimes a huge component of it comes from whether our brains believe that what we're doing matters.

Because our brains actually interpret stress differently when there is meaning attached to it.

And sometimes the answer isn't that the cost is too high.

Sometimes the answer is that we've forgotten why we're paying it.

So in the full episode, I'm going to talk about:

• what high-load seasons are 
• what they aren't 
• why meaning matters 
• how our brains interpret stress 
• and some of the very practical things I personally do to navigate these seasons without completely burning myself out. 

Things like decision management.

Lowering the bar strategically.

Protecting my energy.

Building what I call "rest in motion."

And figuring out how to keep moving forward without letting a temporary season become a permanent state of depletion.

Because sometimes life really is heavy.

And when it is...

The goal isn't necessarily to feel amazing through it.

The goal is to figure out how to move through it...

While keeping yourself intact.

Full episode drops next Monday.
I’ll meet you there.

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