A Season of Change: My Own Journey of Choosing Sustainability in a Culture of Constant Production
At Head & Heart, we consistently examine the systems that shape our lives and our relationships with ourselves and our bodies. We recognize that oppressive frameworks—whether diet culture, ableism, or capitalism itself—profoundly impact our wellbeing in ways both visible and invisible. Today, I’m sharing a personal decision that reflects this understanding.
After two transformative years as a Health Coach with Head & Heart, I’ve decided to step away from this role. This transition embodies both the difficulty and necessity of challenging the capitalist values that have shaped my relationship with work, productivity, and self-worth.
Recognizing Patterns of Systemic Harm
Since leaving higher education in 2019, I’ve been navigating a fragmented professional landscape—piecing together multiple commitments while pursuing my passion for weight-inclusive health and fitness. Under capitalism, particularly for those of us with marginalized identities, we’re often taught that our value lies in constant production, that precarious employment is simply the price of doing meaningful work, and that we should sacrifice our health at the altar of hustle culture.
Working with Caroline and the team at Head & Heart has been revolutionary in helping me understand these patterns. Here, I found a community that actively challenges these harmful frameworks—creating space for embodied wisdom, valuing relationships over productivity, and recognizing that health exists in social, economic, and political contexts. The work we’ve done together, particularly through Diet Culture Dropout Club, has been about dismantling oppressive narratives and creating liberatory alternatives.
The Interplay between the Personal and Political
Yet even as I’ve engaged in this critical work with clients, my own life has reflected capitalism’s extractive logic. I’ve tried to sustain an unsustainable pace—working multiple jobs while pursuing my PhD, extending myself beyond my capacity in ways that have increasingly affected my physical and mental health.
This pattern emerges from a complex interplay between systemic pressures and my lived experience as someone with CPTSD and AuDHD. My neurodivergent traits—including difficulty with task switching, time blindness, and the tendency to hyperfocus—create unique challenges within capitalist frameworks that demand consistent productivity regardless of neurotype. Similarly, my trauma responses often manifest as overworking and people-pleasing—adaptations that once served as survival mechanisms but now intersect with economic systems in ways that compromise my wellbeing.
My body has become a site of resistance, sending increasingly urgent signals: exhaustion, cognitive fog, diminished capacity. My support system has helped me recognize how these neurobiological realities interact with external demands, creating patterns that require both personal accommodation and systemic critique.
Strategic Resistance Through Sustainability
I’ve accepted a single, full-time position that, while not aligned with my passion for weight-inclusivity, provides the financial stability I need—a reality that reflects the economic constraints many of us face when doing justice-oriented work. This decision isn’t about abandoning my values but about creating material conditions that allow me to sustain myself and my personal and professional commitments.
Head & Heart has been exemplary in creating a workplace that challenges dominant paradigms. Caroline Thomas, Head & Heart’s owner, has consistently modeled what it means to lead with care and has done everything possible to support my work within weight-inclusive frameworks.
By consolidating my professional focus, I’m practicing a form of strategic resistance—refusing the fragmentation that capitalism demands, recognizing my embodied limits not as personal weaknesses but as appropriate responses to unsustainable expectations. I’m challenging the narrative that meaningful work must come at the expense of material security and wellbeing.
Carrying the Work Forward
I want to express profound gratitude to Caroline for her visionary leadership and unwavering support. Her commitment to creating therapeutic spaces that challenge oppressive frameworks has shaped not only my professional practice but my understanding of what healing can look like.
To my clients: our work together has been about honoring embodied wisdom and challenging harmful narratives. My decision, while difficult, reflects this same commitment to listening to what our bodies and spirits are telling us about what’s sustainable.
As I move into this next chapter, I carry with me Head & Heart’s liberatory vision—the understanding that our individual choices exist within systems, that creating sustainability in our lives is a radical act, and that sometimes our most powerful resistance comes through setting boundaries that honor our whole selves.
