In the opening episode of Season 7 of Embracing Enough, host Dina Scippa pulls back the curtain on what women in leadership are actually carrying - and why so many are exhausted despite doing everything “right.”

This episode isn’t about fixing confidence or pushing resilience harder. It’s about naming the deeper, systemic patterns that make leadership feel heavy, isolating, and emotionally taxing for women - especially those who are competent, committed, and conscientious.

Dina reflects on the evolution of the podcast and introduces a season rooted in honesty over polish, truth over platitudes. She speaks directly to the quiet exhaustion women leaders feel but rarely say out loud - the fear of sounding ungrateful, weak, or incapable if they admit how hard it really is.

This season moves the conversation away from individual shortcomings and toward the unspoken realities of leadership culture: the emotional labor, the silence, the pressure to perform composure while absorbing the weight of expectations that were never part of the job description.

Embracing Enough becomes what it’s always meant to be - the group chat, the hallway conversation, the truth-telling space where women don’t have to pretend anymore.

Key Takeaways

• Leadership exhaustion is widespread among women—and it’s not a personal failure

• The fatigue many women feel is rooted in systemic expectations, not workload alone

• Women leaders often feel stuck despite being capable, successful, and qualified

• There is a silence problem around naming the emotional cost of leadership

• This season prioritizes honest, unpolished conversations over performative confidence

• The focus is shifting from “fixing women” to examining leadership systems