what full capacity actually looks like
on capacity, what I've been building these last few months, and why you'll find me here instead of in your ears
I have had the unshakeable feeling lately that I am about to find out jusssssttttt how good it can get.
I’m the first woman in my lineage to own her own business.
The first to quit the “realistic path” and rebuild her life by choice.
Trust me I checked, there is no blueprint for what I’m doing. No older version of me ahead on the path saying, here’s what comes next.
I used to hide the learning curve that comes with this kinda life. Not by choice exactly, I probably don’t need to tell you that it’s just what women do.
We’re taught to smile through it. To never suffer publicly. To keep it together and hide the messy parts!
I got pretty good at it actually.
But a few years ago my body started telling a different story. Which brought me the autoimmune diagnosis. The gut issues. Years of doing everything “right” and still feeling like something was wrong underneath all of it.
You can’t hide that forever if you wanna be free yano!
Somewhere in the process of sharing my journey publicly — the real version, not the curated one — I realized that hiding parts had cost me way more than showing them ever could.
So I’m done with that. I cry on the internet. Take breaks when I need to. And I don’t want to be ashamed about needing or wanting to.
In order to sustainably build the life I want to build and create what I actually want to create, I have to be honest with myself about what I can hold.
About what has to wait. About what I’m willing to sacrifice and what I’m not.
what that looks like right now
You might have noticed it’s been quiet on the podcast feed over the last few weeks.
I had to take a break from producing eps for a sec.
Cause the truth is, I’m not a superhero and I’m not trying to be one anymore. But sometimes we feel like we gotta be. Like suffering is part of getting what you want.
I now, know my capacity. I know what happens when I ignore it.
The podcast is one of my great, big, loves. I LOVE creating for you guys. But an episode isn’t just pressing record even though it may seem like it — there’s the research, the prep, the recording, the editing, the show notes, the promotion. It’s a full production I do all by myself.
And when my plate is genuinely full, it’s the thing that has to wait. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because I’d rather show up for it fully than half-heartedly, yano?
what i’ve been working on
Some of you remember Michelle Obama’s former press secretary, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, from her episode on the pod a few months back.
Katie is the founder of MELD, a platform built for Gen Z women, who are stepping into their careers with ambition and drive but no real roadmap for what comes next.
Katie has spent thousands of hours doing the research — interviewing women across industries, levels, and life stages — mapping exactly where they fall off, where they feel unseen, where the traditional structures of the workplace fail them before they even get started.
She brought me in to take all of that and build something actionable with it.
I took her market research and architected a curriculum that not only closes those gaps, but accelerates what’s possible for the women going through it.
We’re focused on 4 pillars: whole woman readiness (wellness), financial confidence, personal brand, and the future of work. Thinking like an entrepreneur !
These modules have been intentionally designed around how women actually learn, grow, and build confidence.
These past 2 weeks, I just finished recording 49 modules for the MELD app that launches soon.
That’s not a typo lol. And if you know anything about the production side of content creation, you know that’s not something you can do halfway while also showing up everywhere else at full capacity.
So I made a choice.
I looked at my plate…. honestly.
I honored the commitment I’d made, and I let the podcast feed go quiet for a few weeks.
what I’ve also been working on
While I have been working on MELD since October, something else has been quietly taking shape in the last few months.
Some of you know Shannon — she’s been on the podcast and she’s also the functional nutritionist healing my gut right now.
What you might not know is that Shannon and I have been building something together.
What started as a working relationship (she hired me as a biz consultant) became something bigger when we both realized the same thing: the kind of root-cause, lab-based, actually-get-to-the-bottom-of-it care that Shannon provides? Most people can’t access it.
Not because it doesn’t exist, but because the traditional model of functional nutrition means you’re typically buying a practitioner’s time — and there’s only so much of that to go around.
So we built something to get around that.
I have been coding a first-of-its-kind functional nutrition and lifestyle platform that leverages her beautiful brain — with the tools available to us today — to scale the way Shannon works without scaling her hours.
She can support more people, at a fraction of the cost, without compromising the depth or the integrity of the protocol.
I’m SO EXCITED to be making functional health care accessible in a way that it has never been before.
Watching what a small team of two girlies can build in a matter of weeks right now has genuinely changed how I think about what’s possible. We’re not quite ready to share everything yet. But we’re close.
More very soon.
where you’ll find me
This Substack was never meant to be a backup plan for when the podcast goes quiet.
I have loved bringing this to you as an expansion of everything I’m already doing — the teaching, the sharing, the living it in real time.
It’s where I get to show up as a writer, go deeper than a podcast format sometimes allows, and stay connected to you while I’m sometimes in the middle of building things.
Cause the truth is I have a lot to say. I always have a lot to say.
But what goes into your ears I take seriously. Like, really seriously.
An episode needs to be fleshed out. I’m not going to show up in your podcast feed just to show up. So when I don’t have the space to give it what it deserves, I’m happy to wait until I do.
And honestly? On this note? I’m curious about you.
What’s going on in your life?
Have you been going through massive shifts and changes, too? What are you stepping into this year, the year of the horse?
Do you care about the audio feed episodes, or are these written posts and emails doing it for you?
Would you listen to something recorded more casually, less produced? What are you actually here for?
Hit reply and tell me. I genuinely want to know.
what’s coming !
I owe you another gut update — because things are shifting in ways I wasn’t expecting and I want to document it in real time.
I’m also working on a day in my life post — what it actually looks like to live and work the way I do.
Stay close. Things are realllllly getting good.
xx Cass