Threshold Moments

This week is a little different.

Instead of interviewing a guest, Sarah shares a deeply personal reflection adapted from her newsletter. This one was called, The Gap. Inspired by her daughter's missing tooth and ever-widening empty space in her smile, Sarah explores the seasons of life when something has fallen away, but what comes next hasn't fully arrived.

Through stories of leaving a successful business, navigating parenthood, grief, identity shifts, the pandemic, and years of rebuilding, she reflects on what can be learned in the uncomfortable space between endings and beginnings.

If you're in a season of uncertainty, waiting, or wondering when the next chapter will finally emerge, this episode is an invitation to trust the process of becoming. Please pass this along to someone who could use the metaphor of "the gap."

In this episode:

• Why Sarah decided to share her own threshold stories
• The metaphor of losing baby teeth and growing adult teeth
• Letting go of a business, identity, and old ways of being
• What the "gap" years taught about boundaries, resilience, and self-trust
• The hidden gifts that emerge during seasons of uncertainty
• Why small steps matter more than certainty
• Trusting the timing of what is trying to emerge in your life

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

How do you know when it's time to let go of a version of yourself that once worked?

In this rich and deeply reflective conversation, Sarah sits down with returning guest Sara Avant Stover to discuss the seasons of life that require us to slow down, dismantle old identities, and listen more closely to what wants to emerge.

Since their last conversation, Sara has experienced a profound period of transformation. She stepped away from a thriving business, deleted social media, got married, moved to France, navigated grief, and entered perimenopause—all while learning to trust a slower, more sustainable pace.

Together, Sarah and Sara explore Internal Family Systems (IFS), intuition, nervous system regulation, entrepreneurship, self-trust, and why healing often looks far less dramatic than we imagine.

They also discuss the cultural differences between American productivity and the French art de vivre—the art of living—and how learning to value rest, pleasure, and spaciousness can become its own form of healing.

If today's episode resonates, go back and listen to witness the earlier threshold where this journey began.

065 - Sara Avant Stover: Navigating the Depths of Heartbreak

• Why Sara dismantled a successful business
• Finding stability through unexpected seasons
• Internal Family Systems (IFS) and healing the inner critic
• Learning to trust the next right step
• Moving through fear without bulldozing yourself
• Perimenopause and changing capacity
• The French art of living versus American productivity culture
• Why slowing down often accelerates healing
• Living with uncertainty and self-trust
• Creating a relationship with urgency that serves life instead of running it

⭐️ If you enjoy this episode, sign up for my free 3-day nervous system workshop — Opting Out of Urgency — happening live on Zoom September 10-17. RSVP here: https://www.sarahtacy.com/opting-out-of-urgency

Sara Avant Stover (she/her) is the author of three books; an intuitive business strategist; expert in women's spiritual leadership; and a Level 3 Certified Internal Family Systems Practitioner. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa cum Laude from Columbia University's all-women's Barnard College, she had a cancer scare, moved to Thailand, and embarked on a decade-long healing and spiritual odyssey throughout Asia. Since then, she's gone on to uplift tens of thousands of women worldwide. Through her work with spiritual women entrepreneurs, she creates transformative containers that blend practical business strategy with deep inner healing work. Sara has been featured in The New Yorker, Yoga Journal, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, and on ABC, NBC, and CBS. She lives in France, and is online at SaraAvantStover.com.

• Opting Out of Urgency — A free 3-day nervous system workshop to help you move beyond urgency and reconnect with your energy, clarity, and rhythm.
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What do a child's missing tooth, a broken steering wheel in the middle of the ocean, and nervous system regulation have in common?

In this Mini Musing, Sarah explores one of the most foundational nervous system tools: orientation.

When we're activated, our world tends to shrink. We become convinced that what's happening now will last forever, that there are only bad options available, or that we need to fix everything immediately. Orientation helps widen our perspective and reconnect us to what's true, stable, and supportive in the present moment.

Through stories of parenting, personal transformation, and an unexpected boating mishap off the coast of Maine, Sarah shares how orienting can help us move from panic and overwhelm into possibility and grounded action.

Whether you're navigating a major life transition, feeling stuck in uncertainty, or simply looking for practical nervous system tools, this episode offers a simple practice that can help you find your footing.

• What "orientation" means in nervous system work
• Why activation narrows our perspective
• The surprising wisdom of a gap-toothed child
• How life transitions often mirror natural cycles
• A real-life story of losing steering at sea
• Learning to identify layers of support during uncertainty
• How childhood experiences shape what we perceive as danger
• Moving from all-or-nothing thinking into possibility
• Practical ways to orient to safety, support, and stability
• A closing prayer for widening perspective and trusting ourselves

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
• Learn more about Sarah's work
• Join Sarah's email list
• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

What happens when you stop outsourcing your worth and finally learn to trust your own voice?

In this deeply honest conversation, Sarah sits down with voice trainer, author, and podcast host Vasavi Kumar to explore the transformative power of speaking your truth. Together they unpack the hidden cost of suffering in silence, emotional perfectionism, people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, grief, recovery, and the journey back to self-trust.

Vasavi shares her personal story—from childhood bullying and addiction to recovery, relationships, loss, and ultimately finding the freedom that comes from radical self-honesty. She offers practical tools for moving through rumination, regulating emotions, navigating conflict, and accessing what she calls the "Feeling, Friend, and Sage" voices within.

This conversation is an invitation to stop abandoning yourself, start listening to your inner wisdom, and discover the clarity that emerges when you finally say it out loud.

• Why suffering in silence keeps us disconnected from ourselves
• The difference between rumination and healthy processing
• How speaking out loud can help regulate emotions
• Emotional perfectionism and conflict avoidance
• Learning to identify and interrupt old patterns
• The connection between voice, nervous system regulation, and self-trust
• Healing people-pleasing and validation-seeking behaviors
• Grief, identity shifts, and reclaiming personal power
• The "Feeling, Friend, and Sage" framework for self-awareness
• Why clarity grows when we stop emotionally babysitting others

Vasavi Kumar is a Voice Trainer, Therapist, and Founder of The Out Loud School — a training ground helping entrepreneurs sell, speak, and show up on camera without shrinking. She is also the author of Say It Out Loud and a former TV host with 16 years of entrepreneurship behind her.

Her work sits at the intersection of identity, voice, and revenue. Clients come to Vasavi when they're done being the best-kept secret in their industry, and leave knowing exactly how to say it out loud.

Resource: Stop Watering Yourself Down On Camera: https://www.vasavikumar.com/training

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

• Learn more about Vasavi
• Resource: Stop Watering Yourself Down On Camera

In this solo episode of Threshold Moments, we explore the powerful relationship between vision and the nervous system. Most of the sensory information entering our brains is visual, yet stress can dramatically narrow our field of awareness, creating both physical and psychological tunnel vision.

When we enter fight-or-flight states, our gaze often becomes fixed, our attention narrows, and our ability to perceive new options decreases. This episode offers three simple practices designed to help expand awareness, support nervous system regulation, and create a greater sense of safety and possibility.

You'll learn:

• Why the brain filters the vast majority of incoming sensory information
• How stress affects visual perception and attention
• The connection between peripheral vision and nervous system regulation
• A calming eye-palming practice to reduce sensory input
• How widening your visual field can shift emotional and mental perspective
• A simple eye, head, and vestibular reset that promotes orientation and presence

These practices can be used throughout the day, especially during periods of stress, overwhelm, screen fatigue, or when you feel stuck in repetitive thinking patterns.

Take a breath, expand your view, and discover how changing what—and how—you see can influence the way you feel.

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

In this deeply expansive conversation, Sarah Tacy sits down with creative director and co-founder of the Prism House, Kristin Burgess, to trace the long arc of a relationship that began at the very start of Kristin's wedding planning career and unfolds into a story of identity, creativity, partnership, motherhood, and personal truth.

What begins as a nostalgic return to Kristin planning Sarah's wedding quickly opens into a much larger exploration of thresholds—those quiet, often disorienting moments where life asks us to outgrow who we've been.

Kristin reflects on the early days of building her wedding business while working full-time, the instinctive trust that shaped her creative path, and the evolution from wedding design into storytelling for brands through The Prism House. Along the way, she shares how motherhood, partnership, and creative expansion reshaped everything she thought she knew about capacity, identity, and leadership.

The conversation deepens as Kristin speaks candidly about burnout, over-functioning, and the long process of shifting out of survival-driven patterns shaped in childhood. She names the moment she began to move from constant doing into creative clarity—and how that shift quietly changed her marriage, her work, and her sense of self.

A pivotal part of this episode is Kristin's time in a remote A-frame in Vermont, a self-imposed retreat that became a turning point for reflection, grief, and truth-telling. From there, she shares the unfolding of a major life transition, including divorce, the complexity of love, and what it means to choose alignment even when it disrupts everything familiar.

At its core, this episode is about:

• Listening to inner knowing when it contradicts external stability
• The nervous system cost of over-functioning and urgency
• Moving from survival patterns into creative and emotional truth
• The grief and expansion that come with outgrowing a long relationship
• What it means to rebuild a life from self-trust

Sarah and Kristin also explore the tension between truth and belonging, and how identity shifts can reshape relationships, community, and creativity in unexpected ways.

This is a conversation about endings that are also beginnings—and the quiet, irreversible moment when you start living from what is real now.

Topics covered:

• The early days of wedding planning and creative intuition
• Building and evolving a creative business while working full-time
• Motherhood and the breaking point of overwork
• Transition from By Emily B to The Prism House
• Feminine/masculine balance and nervous system patterns
• The A-frame retreat in Vermont and inner reckoning
• Divorce, grief, and relational transformation
• Self-trust, truth, and rebuilding identity

If this episode resonates, it may be pointing you toward your own threshold—where something in your life is asking to be seen, felt, and reoriented.

Kristin Burgess is a Creative Director, stylist, and co-owner of The Prism House, a Boston-based creative agency known for immersive brand storytelling, event production, and visual worlds that feel as transportive as they are strategic. With 17 years of experience in styling and art direction, she leads end-to-end creative for photo and video shoots, helping lifestyle brands, hotels, and restaurants translate their identity into meaningful, high-impact visual narratives.

Her work is grounded in a narrative-first approach shaped by a decade in editorial as a photo editor, overseeing copywriting, sourcing, and visual production across more than 15 magazines annually. Earlier in her career, she was named among Martha Stewart's Top 50 Wedding Designers, quickly establishing a reputation for creating unforgettable, highly crafted visual experiences. Alongside her creative work, Kristin is known for a life lived in full expression—rooted in movement, nature, motherhood, and a willingness to evolve through both ambition and personal transformation.

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• The Prism House
• Follow Kristin on Instagram

When people hear nervous system work, they often imagine something slow, dry, or even boring. But what if healing wasn't about forcing yourself to sit still—and what if regulation could actually feel alive?

In this solo episode, Sarah Tacy demystifies nervous system work and shares why slowing down isn't the opposite of vitality—it's the pathway to it. Drawing from her weekly movement class inside Juice, Sarah walks through the practices that help women move from depletion and over-functioning into greater expression, stability, and joy.

From lubrication and balance work to playful release, receiving, and community, she explains why nervous system healing doesn't have to be serious to be transformative.

Sarah also explores why many of us resist slowing down, how our default patterns lead to burnout, and why small, doable steps matter more than getting it "right."

• Why slowing down can feel uncomfortable—and why that matters
• How fast-paced living reinforces old patterns
• The connection between people-pleasing and burnout
• Why nervous system work doesn't have to be boring
• The role of movement, expression, and pleasure in healing
• Building stability when life feels uncertain
• Learning to receive support instead of always giving
• Moving from "I'm okay when you're okay" to "I'm okay when I'm okay"
• Why boundaries become easier when you're resourced
• How small, sustainable practices create lasting change

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

What if understanding your menstrual cycle could transform not only your relationship with yourself—but your parenting, partnership, and entire household?

In this deeply practical and eye-opening conversation, Sarah sits down with women's hormone health practitioner Kate Nguy to explore how chronic stress, the invisible mental load, and nervous system dysregulation impact women's hormones throughout midlife.

Kate shares her personal journey through burnout, perimenopause, grief, and overwhelm, and how those experiences led her to create a radically different way of living—one that honors the natural rhythms of the female body instead of fighting against them.

Together, Sarah and Kate discuss cyclical living beyond the clichés, including the color-coded family calendar that helps Kate's children understand her changing needs, supports healthier communication at home, and teaches body literacy from an early age.

This episode is a powerful invitation to stop treating yourself as a machine and start listening to the wisdom your body has been offering all along.

• Why burnout is often rooted in chronic stress and invisible labor
• The connection between hormones, nervous system regulation, and emotional capacity
• What cyclical living actually looks like in everyday family life
• How different phases of the menstrual cycle affect communication, energy, and boundaries
• Why ovulation can be an ideal time for difficult conversations
• The hidden gifts of the luteal phase and the role of discernment
• Raising hormone-literate children and normalizing conversations about periods
• Supporting daughters through puberty with body awareness instead of shame
• Teaching sons emotional literacy through cycle awareness
• The "invisible agreements" many women carry in relationships—and why they often surface in perimenopause
• How grief, caregiving, and stress can accelerate burnout
• Creating practical systems of support that honor changing needs throughout the month

Kate Nguy is a Certified Women's Hormone Health Practitioner and the founder of Shee Revival, a women's hormone health practice specializing in helping women in midlife understand that the chronic stress and invisible load they carry are the primary drivers of their PMS, perimenopause, and burnout. She is the creator of the Hormone R.E.S.T. Method, the host of the What the HORMONES podcast, and a burnout survivor who rebuilt her own hormonal health from the inside out. Her work bridges clinical hormone science with nervous system regulation and cyclical living frameworks in a way that helps women finally understand what has been happening in their bodies — and what to actually do about it.

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

• Follow me on Instagram @hormoneswithkate
• Living In FLOW Course - https://www.sheerevival.com/livinginflow
• Website - Sheerevival.com
• Podcast - What the HORMONES

What if more is supporting you than you realize?

In this mini-musing, Sarah reflects on an art installation she encountered over twenty years ago that transformed the way she understands effort, support, and nervous system regulation. Inspired by an assignment asking students to notice what was "75% done without their effort," this episode becomes an exploration of the unseen forces that sustain us every day. In a world where we are often asked to do more than we feel is possible, widening out to include all that is being done without our effort can be wildly stabilizing.

Through stories of lint in the dryer, changing seasons, organ systems, pregnancy, spring growth, and the intelligence of the natural world, Sarah invites listeners to widen their perspective beyond survival mode and hyper-responsibility.

When we live as though everything depends entirely on us, our nervous systems tighten, our stress increases, and our perception narrows. But when we begin noticing the "unearned majority" — the countless processes already unfolding without our management — something in the body softens.

This episode is a gentle reminder that while responsibility is real, we are not alone in carrying life.

• The nervous system impact of believing "it's all on me"
• An art project that changed Sarah's perspective on effort and support
• The "unearned majority" happening all around us
• How widening perception can help regulate the body
• Reticular activating systems and survival-based attention
• The miracle of bodily processes we never consciously manage
• Nature, seasons, and the intelligence already unfolding around us
• The balance between personal responsibility and surrender
• Simple orienting practices for grounding and regulation
• Finding your own everyday reminder that you are supported

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

In this deeply reflective conversation, Sarah Tacy sits down with Therese Jornlin to explore a life shaped by threshold moments—those irreversible openings that change how reality is perceived and lived.

Therese shares her early experiences of profound awakening following the sudden death of her father at age 15, describing a piercing sense of love, continuity, and the dissolution of fear around death. From there, her life unfolds as a series of inner calls that eventually lead her to Calcutta at age 21, where she lives and serves alongside the Missionaries of Charity.

In Calcutta, Therese encounters the raw edges of human suffering and devotion—an experience that strips away narrative, identity, and mental certainty. What remains is presence, service, and an embodied confrontation with what it means to be alive in a world of profound disparity.

Together, Sarah and Therese explore:

• The difference between "seeing truth" and integrating it into daily life
• What happens when identity and narrative structures collapse
• The role of the body as an intelligence system and guide
• Coherence, collective fields, and the power of shared intention
• The feminine principle, "the Mother," as creative source and organizing intelligence
• Why simplicity, practice, and presence matter more than conceptual understanding
• How service becomes a form of spiritual stabilization

This episode weaves together mysticism and embodiment, service and systems, collapse and coherence—returning again and again to one central thread: learning by living.

If today's episode resonates, go back and listen to witness the earlier threshold where this journey began.

086 - Therese Jornlin: Taking Care Of Your Birth

Therese Jornlin is a holistic health educator, transformational coach, and therapeutic bodywork practitioner with more than 35 years of experience exploring the connection between body, energy, spirit, and matter. Guided by extensive study, global travel, and deep personal practice, she integrates teachings from both Eastern and Western traditions to support embodied empowerment, self-healing, and meaningful connection with others and the earth. She holds a BA from Duke University and an MA from Loyola University, along with numerous certifications in therapeutic modalities including massage therapy, craniosacral work, Reiki, Zero Balancing, Svastha Yoga, QiGong, and integrative wellness programs. Influenced early by service with Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity and later by advanced studies in yoga and women's embodiment, Therese developed the transformational program Women Awake, focused on healing and empowering individuals and communities. A devoted mother of three, her experience as a single parent deeply informs her compassionate, practical, and heart-centered approach to teaching and healing.

• Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahtacyt
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• If this episode resonated and you're wanting deeper support, come join us inside Juice — Sarah's monthly membership where we practice this work together in real time. This is a space to build capacity, stay connected, and integrate what you're learning—week by week.

• Visit Therese's Website
• Follow Therese on Instagram
• Return to the Womb of the Mother Retreat