Zombies, Balance, and the Fight to Stay Human

In this episode, Raquel and Sarah explore the surprising connection between zombification, burnout, balance, and the millennial search for meaning. Starting with the Haitian origins of the word zombie, they trace how a concept rooted in soul‑loss and forced servitude evolved into a modern metaphor for exhaustion, numbness, and the extraction economy we’re all navigating.

Together, they unpack:

The erasure of humanity in modern work and culture

Why millennials feel like they’re “alive but not living”

How environment shapes mindset more than mindset shapes environment

COVID as a portal that revealed how disconnected we were from ourselves

The difference between humans and humanity

Political polarization, propaganda fatigue, and the grief of losing nuance

Vampires vs. zombies — and why some archetypes feel safer than others

The Five Survival Skills for staying human in a draining world

Rewilding vs. becoming feral

Boundaries as the antidote to numbness and soul‑loss

This episode is a deep, nonlinear, emotionally intelligent exploration of what it means to stay human in a world designed to drain us — and how to reclaim capacity, clarity, and connection.

The Great Capacity Paradox

Do we actually have the capacity to do all the things we want to do?

If you’ve been feeling chronically tired, stretched thin, or like you’re constantly “failing,” you aren’t alone.

In the third episode of Capacity Conversations, hosts Raquel Sands and Sarah Liljegren dive into the “polluted waters” of modern life to deconstruct the concept of deficiency and why our current systems are designed to make us feel perpetually “less than”.

Key Takeaways from the Episode

1. Deficiency is a “Falling Away,” Not a Personal Failure

Raquel explores the etymology of “deficiency,” which stems from the Latin deficere, meaning a failing or a “falling away from doing”.

* The Reframing: A deficiency isn’t an innate lack within you. It is often a natural part of balance—choosing not to do one thing so you can focus on another.

* The Systemic Root: Often, the lack is in our environment or structures, not our character. We have inherited systems of capitalism and extraction that are designed to keep us in a state of “continuous hunger”.

2. The Trap of “Hustle Culture” and Identity

In the U.S., identity is often wrapped up in professional titles. Sarah and Raquel discuss how we are conditioned to believe we should “do it all,” which Sarah identifies as a logical fallacy.

* The Natural Law: You cannot give more than you have.

* The Reckoning: Many millennials reach their 30s and realize they’ve been following a “funnel” of societal expectations without ever truly knowing themselves.

3. Reclaiming Self-Mastery and Boundaries

To possess yourself is to reclaim agency over your time and energy.

* The Power of Practice: Modern culture lacks a “practice of practice”—the dedication to honing a skill or routine (like meditation or writing) over a long period.

* The Truce: Raquel highlights that the word “trust” is rooted in the same origin as “tree” and “truce”. Finding capacity requires making a truce with yourself—accepting what you can actually do right now without shame.

4. Finding Nourishment in Nature

Sarah, a naturalist and real estate professional, emphasizes the need to bridge the gap between our modern lives and natural cycles.

* Mother Nature’s Mirror: Just as we feel burnt out, the earth is attempting to find its own reciprocity and balance.

* True Self-Care: Sometimes self-care is a bubble bath; other times, it is the discomfort of a hard conversation or setting a firm boundary at work.

The “Capacity” Action List

* Audit Your “Inheritance”: Recognize which pressures are yours and which were inherited from previous generations or systemic structures.

* Practice Personal Inquiry: Ask yourself daily: “What do I need in this moment?” Be honest and “naked” with your answer.

* Embrace the “Freefall”: Like a baby bird leaving the nest, you don’t always need to know how to fly before you take the leap. Trust that your curiosity and self-discovery have prepared you for the edge.

🎧 Listen to the Full Series: Check out our Spotify Playlist for music that is uplifting, nurturing, and nourishing to accompany your journey through these challenging dialogues.

Raquel Sands

Clarity Strategist | Writer | Systems DecoderExploring the intersection of identity, clarity, and capacity in modern life.

Sarah Liljegren

Holistic Realtor® | Nature Connection FacilitatorMapping how global events and ancestral trauma shape the nervous system and sense of self.

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Season 2 of The Clarity Shift was all about freedom, creativity, and navigating the messy middle. This wrap-up reflects on key themes, lessons learned, and what’s coming in Season 3—including new mini-series and collaborations.

What happened to the world that left an entire generation drained, overwhelmed, and under-resourced?

We move beyond self-blame and individual narratives to look at the global conditions that fractured our collective ability to thrive.

This is not about doom — it’s about context, and context creates compassion.

Why This Episode Matters

Because you cannot rebuild your personal capacity until you understand the collective wound around capacity.

This episode is designed to help listeners:

release shame around burnout

understand why they’re so tired

contextualize their emotional state

see their exhaustion as valid, not weak

reclaim agency by naming the forces shaping them

When you understand the world you inherited, you can make different choices about the world you want to build.

Every episode of The Clarity Shift is an exploration of what it really takes to change your life from the inside out. In this conversation, Gina Oliver—founder of Wave Enterprise Co. and host of Ripple FX—offers one of the clearest examples of what a true clarity shift looks like. She went from teaching third graders in Atlanta to helping women share their stories online… all while traveling the world as a digital nomad with her husband and their cat.

But the real story isn’t the travel. It’s the inner permission it takes to transition, to start over at any age, and to trust that a calling is worth following even when you don’t have the full map yet.

Today’s episode is a powerful one. I sat down with Danielle Marshall, an equity strategist and ICF-certified executive coach with more than 20 years of leadership experience across the nonprofit sector. Danielle is the founder of Culture Principles and a TEDx speaker whose work centers on leading across difference, navigating complex conversations, and building high-trust inclusive cultures. Her signature style blends compassion, candor, and deep clarity — and this conversation reflects all of that.

🌿 EPISODE 1 — Origin Story: What Shapes Our Capacity?

Capacity Conversations: A Podcast for the Millennial Soul

In our very first episode, we explore the question at the center of this entire series:

Where does our sense of capacity actually come from — and who taught us what we were allowed to want, need, or become?

This conversation begins with our origin stories:the identities we inherited, the roles we were shaped into, the cultural expectations we absorbed, and the silent rules of survival we learned before we ever understood the word “capacity.”

Together, Raquel and Sarah unpack:

🌱 What we inherit from our lineages

How our families, cultures, and early environments decide what we believe is “possible,” “too much,” or “not enough.”How immigrant stories, millennial pressures, and generational survival strategies shape our self-concept.

🌱 The gap between who we were told to be vs. who we actually are

The earliest moments where we learned to shrink, overperform, self-sacrifice, or hyper-independently cope.Why millennial identity feels fractured — and how to begin reclaiming the lost pieces.

🌱 The nervous system as storyteller

Why your capacity is not just emotional or mental — it’s physiological.How your body keeps track of your history even when your mind has moved on.

🌱 Identity as scaffolding

How our origin stories create the blueprint for how we show up in relationships, career, self-worth, money, creativity, and purpose.Why understanding your origin story is the first step toward expanding your capacity.

🌱 The myths we absorbed growing up

The “good girl,” the “responsible one,” the “fixer,” the “overachiever,” the “strong one,” the “first-gen achiever,” the “invisible one,” and more.How these identities protected us — and how they limit us now.

🌱 The real purpose of an origin story

Not to blame the past, but to understand why our present looks the way it does — and how to create a different future from a place of choice, not conditioning.

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Raquel Sands: Clarity Strategist & Digital Designer helping freedom-seekers create and sustain peace, purpose, and prosperity on their terms.Substack: raquelsands.substack.com

Sarah Liljegren: Holistic Realtor® and Nature Connection Facilitator exploring ancestral connection, nervous system capacity, and modern millennial survival.

Substack: rewildingrealestate.substack.com

TL;DR — A Day in the Life:

Endings, Cycles, and the Sent Folder That Became a Time Machine

This final 2025 installment of A Day in the Life reflects on how endings often happen quietly — long before we consciously “close the door.” Inspired by cleaning out your Gmail sent folder, you revisit 11 years of your life: your first freelance gig, Craigslist job applications, yoga studio front-desk shifts, rocky relationships, financial strain, student debt, and the emotional weight you carried into adulthood without support.

The sent folder becomes a scrapbook of your becoming and unbecoming — showing how each version of you kept trying, learning, surviving, positioning, and slowly forming the 3P framework (Purpose, Presence, Prosperity) long before you knew it existed.

The act of deleting becomes an energetic release: a way of thanking past versions of yourself, acknowledging resilience, and recognizing the seeds of entrepreneurship, freedom, and multi-hyphenate identity that were always there.

The episode ends with an invitation to listeners: reflect on your own cycles, honor your strengths, let go of what’s complete, and enter 2026 with clarity, spaciousness, and support — including your one-month support container for anyone ready to re-strategize their next chapter.

A Day in the Life: The Sent Folder That Became a Portal

There’s a moment in every cycle — every season, every identity, every chapter — when you realize that something ended long before you officially acknowledged it. You were already shifting. Already becoming someone else. Already done.

And sometimes, that realization comes from something as mundane as… cleaning your Gmail.

This is the final A Day in the Life episode of 2025 (don’t worry, the series will continue in 2026). I started this series back in the spring — not knowing what it would become, just knowing that I wanted to be transparent. I wanted to show the actual behind-the-scenes: the messiness of building a business, the emotional weight of job hopping, gig work, freelancing, quitting, pivoting, starting over, and refusing to let a job title define my entire identity.

I wanted to be the person I didn’t see enough of online: someone honest about the middle, not just the highlight reel.

The Sent Folder Moment

So here’s the story:I was cleaning out my inbox — something simple, something almost mindless — when I got curious and clicked into my Sent folder.

And there it was:

2,200+ emails dating back to 2014.

Eleven years of my life.Eleven years of becoming — and unbecoming.Eleven years of decisions, attempts, failures, leaps, and survival.

This folder wasn’t just digital storage.It was a portal.A time machine.A scrapbook that Gmail had been quietly curating for me.

Emails about…

* Craigslist job applications

* My first $600 freelance gig in 2016

* Yoga studio front desk shifts

* My accountant referring me to his client

* Proposal templates I made without knowing I was “doing business”

* Rocky family dynamics

* A painful romantic relationship

* Student loans

* Car loans

* Cold emails, cold calls, job boards, pivots, reinventions

* Helping coworkers with resumes and writing samples back in 2017

* Every version of me trying to breathe, trying to belong, trying to survive

I was stunned.I was emotional.And honestly? I was in awe of myself.

The Weight We Carry Before We’re Ready

There is so much pressure put on us in our early twenties — emotionally, financially, psychologically — and yet we’re not equipped, not supported, not guided.

I graduated into debt.Into unstable family dynamics.Into relationship turmoil.Into a career landscape that demanded experience I didn’t have.Into a system that was never designed for someone multi-hyphenate, intuitive, cyclical, creative, or freedom-oriented.

Looking through those emails reminded me:I wasn’t just job hunting — I was fighting for air.

And still, I kept going.

The Seeds Were Always There

Every single version of me — even the overwhelmed 21-year-old trying to figure out whether I needed a master’s degree — was doing something that future-me still uses.

I saw:

* The early signs of my entrepreneurial muscle

* The first moments of my “freelancer identity”

* My instinct to coach, guide, edit, and support

* My ability to position myself, no matter the industry

* The beginnings of what would later become my 3P Framework:Purpose, Presence, Prosperity

Years before I knew the language for it, I was already living it.

Decluttering as a Ritual of Closure

As I deleted emails one by one, I felt myself releasing…The pressure.The fear.The mistakes.The confusion.The survival mode.The versions of me who didn’t know they were allowed to want more.

I said thank you to every past me — because she got me here.

This is what I mean when I say everything is cyclical.

We don’t know what seeds we’re planting until years later.We don’t know what cycles we’re closing until we’re already standing in the next chapter.

Try Everything. Let Go Often. Trust the Rhythm.

One thing that became clear?I tried everything in my twenties.Grant writing.Technical writing.Communications.Yoga studio management.Freelancing.Cold pitching.Cold emailing.Quitting jobs.Landing jobs.Reinventing.

And while it felt chaotic, it was actually building resilience, clarity, and identity.

You don’t know what you want until you try what you don’t want.

It’s the ice cream sample method of life.

Use the 3P Framework to Close the Year

If you want to explore your own cycles, use the 3P Framework I shared earlier this year:

1. Purpose – What was the intention of your past actions? What is the purpose of your present season?

Not existential meaning — just:What am I needing?What am I building toward?

2. Presence – How are you positioning yourself now? How do you need to show up next?

Presence = positioning.It’s brand, clarity, identity.

3. Prosperity – How have you defined it? How do you define it now? How do you want to define it next?

Prosperity evolves.It grows with you.

My Invitation to You

As we close 2025, sit with your own cycles.Your own endings.Your own forgotten sent folder — literal or metaphorical.

And if you need support, I’m offering a One-Month Support Container to help you step into 2026 with clarity, strategy, and groundedness:

* 2 hours live

* Asset review (resume, LinkedIn, website, portfolio)

* Asynchronous support for one week

* Career Map Template

* Full recordings

If you’re in a season of transition — career, business, identity, lifestyle — this container is designed for you.

Thank You for Being Here!

Thank you for listening to this series.For being part of my journey.For letting me be part of yours.For reading, commenting, supporting, and sharing.

If I don’t see you in Notes or the chat before the holidays — I hope you’re resting, nourishing yourself, finding softness, finding sweetness. (Eat a cookie for me.)

Here’s to closing the chapter with intention.And opening the next one with clarity.

With purpose, presence, and prosperity,Raquel

Welcome back to A Day in the Life — a behind-the-scenes letter, a voice memo, a living reflection on what it really looks like to pivot, build, survive, thrive, and everything in between.

This isn’t a productivity podcast.

This is a presence podcast — a space for exhaling, for truth, for all of us navigating multiple realities all the time and in all the ways: virtually, emotionally, mentally, physically, financially, culturally, and professionally.

While still trying to create a life and work that feel real. Or at least real enough to us.

Part 1 — The Pause and the Pivot

It’s been a little while.

I took a pause back in early September, and since then… everything’s shifted.

A Day in the Life is now a monthly series, part of The Clarity Shift podcast — which officially lives here on Substack, my home for everything: the newsletter, the blog, the frameworks, the reflections, and the behind-the-scenes.

For anyone new here — yes, I used to host The Clarity Shift on Spotify, and all of those episodes, transcripts, and reflections have now migrated here. You can still listen to the archives on Spotify if you prefer, but this is where the future of it all lives.

And, if you see A Day in the Life, know it’s the behind-the-scenes — my raw reflections on the business, the pivots, the growth, the grace, and the grit.

Part 2 — My Season of Flight

So here’s what’s new: I’m officially full-time in my business.

No more 9-to-5. No more contracting. No more splitting my energy between someone else’s deadlines and my own.

This moment didn’t arrive the way I thought it would.

I imagined having more money saved, a neater plan, more certainty — but that’s never how life actually works.

Instead, it showed up in the form of trust. And timing.

October 10th marked my last day as a contractor — exactly eight months after that contract began. Eight is the number of cycles, of infinity, of completion. And that feels right.

I’ve been practicing what I preach all along — shifting from being the pursuer to being the magnet, aligning my purpose, presence, and prosperity so that they finally support each other.

Part 3 — A Note for My Listeners

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know this: I don’t edit.

Not my voice, not my thoughts, not my guests.

What you hear is what it is — the pauses, the rawness, the real-time evolution.

That’s the point. Because this isn’t about polish, it’s about presence.

Part 4 — What’s Ahead (and an Invitation)

Currently, I have three spots available for new clients in November.

These are 90-minute Clarity Sessions — a deep-dive strategy experience where we look at what’s next for you in your work, your business, or your path.

It’s not surface-level coaching — it’s hands-on, brains-on.

We’ll work through your frameworks, update your materials, and map your next steps.

It’s $400 — and it saves you months of spinning your wheels.

If that feels like your next step, you can learn more and book through the link in the show notes or on Substack.

Closing Reflection

So that’s where I am. Between the endings and beginnings, the calm and the unknown — learning to fly again.

If you’re in your own season of pivot or pause, I hope this space helps you breathe a little deeper, think a little clearer, and remember: you don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to take the next true step.

I’m so glad you’re here! Welcome back to A Day in the Life.

Let’s shift together. 🌊

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In this episode, Raquel sits down with organizational culture and teamwork specialist Faith Clarke to explore how her immigrant story, parenting neurodistinct kids, and love of people shaped her work in building inclusive, values-driven workplaces. Faith shares how asking better questions changes outcomes, how parenting became a spiritual portal that transformed her, and why she sees neurodiversity as a natural state rather than a deficit.

They discuss immigrant and first-gen dynamics, the mother archetype, deconstructing identity (woman, mother, leader, entrepreneur), and how integration—not juggling—is the real goal. Faith explains how she started her first business to reclaim autonomy, competence, and meaningful relationships while caring for her autistic son.

Together, they unpack invisible labor, why people of color are overburdened by rigged systems, and how real change starts in tiny pockets—small teams and honest relationships—rather than just policies. Faith offers guidance for women of color navigating hostile or extractive work cultures, emphasizing self-care, body honesty, and building multigenerational, supportive relationships. The conversation closes with reflections on story, media, and recommendations like The Wild Robot and Outlander, along with how listeners can connect with Faith and her work.