078: Redefining Resilience: The Strength in Softness

Have you ever been praised for being “so strong”… but inside, you felt anything but?

In this soulful episode, Carly shares a deeply personal story about how breathwork, timing, and a simple flower (yes, a daffodil!) reshaped her definition of resilience. As we move through midlife, many of us carry the weight of “holding it all together,” but what if that’s not the only way to be strong?

You’ll hear: 

💛 Why "coping" isn’t the same as healing
 💛 How softness, rest, and breath can be radical acts of strength
 💛 The daffodil metaphor that may just shift how you see your own growth
 💛 A reminder that true resilience isn't always loud — sometimes it's in the quietest exhale

This episode is for every woman who has been holding it all together and is now ready to exhale. It’s not about giving up — it’s about letting go of what no longer serves and discovering a new way to stand strong.

🌼 Resources & Support:
Book a free 30-minute Clarity Call with Carly to explore breathwork or personalised support for your midlife wellbeing journey → www.carlykillen.com

Thanks for listening to the Strong Bones Coach Podcast

If you'd like to get in touch to ask a question about today's episode or to find out how you can get support from my coaching, reach out on the following links:

hello@carlykillencoaching.com

https://www.instagram.com/thestrongbonescoach

Thanks for listening to The Strong Bones Coach Podcast!

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: hello@carlykillencoaching.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit—your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
👉 Click here to learn more and access today

🌟 Stay connected and inspired with daily wellness tips on Instagram @thestrongbonescoach.
🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at hello@carlykillencoaching.com.

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

Carly: 0:37

Hello and welcome back to the Strong Bones Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Carly Killen, and here to support you in staying strong, vibrant, and grounded through your menopause and beyond. This week's episode is a topic that has run through my life like a bit of a thread, so I have noticed recently this week we are talking about redefining resilience that often overlooked strength that we find within our softness and how my views have changed over the years. I always like to share my learning as I go, and I'm so glad that you're here on this journey with me too. So if you've ever felt like you have to keep it all together or stay strong by pushing through, I want to invite you into a new way of thinking. One that honors your softness, your emotions, and your humanness, especially in midlife when so much is shifting. So wherever you are walking, driving. Folding laundry or just taking a moment to breathe. I invite you to settle in and listen. This one is for you, so gonna take you back to a recent moment As I was setting up a space for a breathwork group, I was facilitating. This one happens to be themed around resilience. As I said, something close to my heart that I have given a lot of focus to over the years, and as I was laying at the mats softening the lighting. Loading up the playlist and just letting the energy of the room shift from what it usually is, a gym space for lifting weights, building physical strength into something different, feeling the energy shifting and changing, removing between that reps and resistance goal to allow people to have. A place of stillness and softness. And then I heard in the background the radio announcing that that day March, five years since the first UK lockdown due to the pandemic. And I'm sorry if that's triggering or if it brings up memories, it does for me too. So if talking about this. It's feeling a little too much right now. Feel free to skip this episode, but I don't go into too much detail on this. It's more about the date. The date that made me stop realizing it was March the 23rd, 2025. That date landed in my body. That's why it made me stop. I just felt the weight of it as I hadn't realized that I had planned that breath work workshop. On resilience, as I said on the exact anniversary of a moment, that completely changed the trajectory of my life. So let me take you back to 2020 briefly. This was as I had just taken a huge leap after 10 years as a dietician in the NHS in my employed career, I left my stable, well trodden path to launch my own coaching business. It was scary but exciting. I had started working with my clients in the gym, starting to build some momentum, making those connections. For the first time in a long time, I thought maybe I can actually do this. maybe I wasn't completely unrealistic for trying to follow what truly lit me up. And then that announcement hit. The gyms were closing along with many other services. There had been rumors, but I ignored them. I didn't want fear to get in the way. I just didn't wanna believe that that's something that could happen. When I heard that news, it was like the rug was just pulled out from underneath me. I had just made the biggest leap of my life, and now it felt like everything was over Before it had really begun. I was in total shock, paralyzed, and then came the wave, the panic, the shame. What was I thinking was I an idiot to believe I could do this? Maybe people like me just didn't get to be successful. I didn't have the answers and I didn't just suddenly bounce back, but I did keep showing up and that required me to just keep breathing, following one breath to the next one step at a time, and now, five years later, in a similar place to where all that fear had initially hit me. I'm guiding women back to their breath, back to their bodies, back to their strength in a way that isn't all about pushing through. About coming home to themselves. So to give you some background, most of my life I've been praised for being the strong one. Can you relate? And for a long time. My vision of strength was built purely on grits, pushing through coping, carrying gone, and honestly, I've been doing this for years. I mean, I lost my mom to lung cancer. I attended her funeral, sat my final exam, moved house all within the space of three days. That is a lot for anyone to handle in a year, a lifetime perhaps. Nevermind in the space of a weekend. And I insisted I was fine. People said, you're so strong. And I believed them because I was still standing. Right? but inside I was secretly wondering, when do I get to fall apart? When do I get to stop? And the world didn't stop. I didn't stop. It doesn't stop does it? But slowly, I'm surely I disconnected from myself. But in this last year. Something has shifted and I realized it on that day as I was setting up that breath work. It hasn't been a big dramatic breakdown and rebuild, but just a quiet, steady invitation inward. And yes, there has been a little bit of drama along the way, but sometimes the most important things don't always land with a big bang. You slowly realize them. That's kind of how Breathworks entered my life in that new way as well. It's given me space to pause, to listen, to notice when I'm performing strength rather than living it. And it helped me redefine what resilience really means to me. So now I see resilience not as how much you can carry or how long you can hold it together, perhaps is something you're doing for yourself between your career, menopause experience, other family members, children. I hear you. I see you. I see this every day, and my heart goes out to you. But remember, it's your ability to stay connected to yourself in the middle of all this. That really matters. It's your presence, your ability to remain soft and strong. It's tapping into that deep knowing that says, whenever comes, I'll meet it with presence, love, and with breath too. The support I've perceived with breath work, with the strength work I've done over the years, it's not just for all of those big emotional moments, it's the breath I take before recording this podcast. It's the pause before making a big decision. It's the space I can hold for myself to feel instead of forcing my way into my next step. It's what allows me to show up for my clients fully so they can tap into their own resilience, their own rhythm, their own sovereignty. So in that recent Breathwork session, we worked. Conscious connected breathing and coherence breathing. Two different types of breath works. The first one being quite activating The second one, the coherence breathing, being a breath of calm, so moving between activation and calming breaths. We also focused on the metaphor of the daffodil, one of my favorite flowers, not just because it's my birth flower, but because of what it represents. Here in the uk, you might notice if you are in the UK here, springtime is pretty unpredictable. You'll get a burst of sunshine, and then the next day is frosty, but still the daffodil rises. It stays bold, bright, but flexible and soft at the same time. Doesn't wait for perfect conditions. It just shows up anyway, and so can we. We don't have to be hard and tough to be strong. We don't have to wait for the world to settle down before we can bloom. We can stay rooted, we can keep breathing, we can learn to trust ourselves, and that is a new kind of strength. That's the kind of strength I want to introduce my clients to. So if you're in a season that feels uncertain, or you're carrying more than you want to admit, you're not alone. Whether you're new to breath work or just starting your strength journey and you feel curious about what this all might unlock for you, or maybe you're already. And want some further guidance and companionship on the next part of your journey. I'm here and I'd love to support you. You don't have to do it all alone. We can do this together. So thank you for listening. I hope this episode gave you a new way to see yourself, not just as someone who has to keep pushing through, but as someone who is allowed to rest, soften, and still be strong. And if you found this episode helpful or it's brought you some comfort, I would love to hear from you. Drop me a message or share this episode with a friend who might need this reminder to. And if you're looking for more support or guidance through your menopause journey, you can book a free clarity call with me via the link in the show notes, or head to carly killen.com. so until next time, stay strong and take care.