CAN WE JUST BE HUMAN AGAIN?

And Is Healing Becoming Your Full-Time Job? | Village Voice Podcast with Alli G

You can be deeply self-aware and still completely exhausted.

In this episode of Village Voice, Alli G unpacks the weird reality of modern healing culture: burnout disguised as productivity, self-awareness turned into performance, and the pressure to become an “optimized” human before you’re allowed to simply rest.

This is a conversation about emotional exhaustion, survival mode, over-functioning, and the quiet ways people abandon themselves while still looking successful on the outside.

This Episode Is For You If…

You’re emotionally exhausted but still highly functional

You feel guilty resting

You’ve consumed all the self-help content and still feel overwhelmed

You’re tired of performing healing instead of actually living

You want honesty more than optimization

What’s happening In This Episode

Why burnout often hides behind high-functioning behavior

The problem with turning healing into performance art

How self-help culture became another exhausting job

The emotional cost of always being “regulated”

Why rest is not something you earn

The pressure to package your pain into content

The difference between healing and over-analyzing yourself

Letting yourself be human before becoming “better”

And yes, Alli aggressively recommends taking a nap.

Today’s Favorite Lines

“You can explain every attachment theory and still feel like a drunk raccoon fighting for its life in a Waffle House parking lot.”

“Rest is not a trophy.”

“Sometimes a bad week is just a bad week.”

“Healing became another performance.”

“You’re allowed to be human before you become a better one.”

Links, References & Sponsors

Published Article

Online Writers Village: The Written Identity

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Social Media Find @alligatlin on:

Instagram • Facebook • Threads • Skool

YouTube • LinkedIn

Final Reminder

Stop trying to earn rest.

Drink water.Eat something.Touch grass.Take the nap.

And stay radically curious.more importantly … stay fucking human.

— Alli G

VILLAGE VOICE PODCAST

Fuck Shit Up Friday: Grace for the Mid Versions of Ourselves

This episode is a caffeine-fueled reminder that being human is messy as hell.

We talk shame, bad choices, emotional spirals, and the difference between accountability and turning yourself into a permanent crime scene over one rough moment.

Inside this Friday note from the Village:

“name it, don’t shame it”

giving yourself grace without dodging responsibility

surviving the painfully mid days

and why trying again still counts

Also:George Michael gets accidentally involved.There’s chaos.There’s yelling.There’s emotional support for exhausted people.

If your brain’s been chewing on guilt lately, this one’s for you.

I disappeared for a minute because, honestly?I’ve been pissed off.

Not in a dramatic “burn my life down” kind of way. More like… disappointed. Tired. Watching people slowly lose their ability to hold nuance, humor, softness, contradiction … all of it.

Everybody’s either performing enlightenment or performing outrage, and somewhere in the middle we forgot how to just be people together.

VILLAGE VOICE PODCAST - Alli Gatlin | Home of the The Written Identity a reader-supported publication.

This episode is basically me climbing onto the metaphorical kitchen counter to remind you that you are allowed to laugh while your life is hard. In fact, I think you need to.

We talk about:

* Why whimsy matters more than people think

* The difference between reacting and actually living

* How confusion should lead to curiosity instead of panic

* Why being “more than one thing” is actually the point

* Tiny moments that reconnect you to yourself

* The nervous system benefits of laughter, presence, and play

* Why I think some of y’all take “chess not checkers” way too seriously

* Dirt patches, watering cans, grocery carts, Fran Drescher, and existential clarity

* The fact that joy and grief are not opposites … they’re rhythm

I also go on several side quests.Respectfully.

This one feels like sitting on the floor with me while I rant, philosophize, and accidentally yell motivational things at you like a loving menace, yup that’s the most honest version of this podcast.

If you’ve been exhausted by the heaviness of the internet, the pressure to optimize yourself into a productivity robot, or the feeling that everyone forgot how to giggle… this episode’s for you.

Yelling with so much love-Alli G.

NOW! Go find your fucking whimsy again… play some checkers, frolic in a mud pit, commit to the bit, get flirty with being a little feral.

UNTIL THE NEXT CHAT

LOVE BUCKETS 🖤 always yours, The Menace of Mischief, Chaos & Clarity.

P.S.

Put the whim back in whimsy and enjoy that cinematic masterpiece mentioned in the episode HERE

Somebody in your life needs a little more whimsy and a little less existential doom. Share so they know they can have both.

I’m baaaaackkkkkk. Took a couple weeks off, damn I sure needed it, and my goodness I missed this.

So we’re not easing in. We’re going straight into it. Shame.

How many of us have some….

By the way it’s your favorite blind authors birthday week, which always puts me in reflection mode. Looking back at the year, everything I did, everything I didn’t do, all of it.

And it’s wild how fast that turns into thinking about everything I should’ve done better.

Not the wins. Not the growth. Just the moments where I dropped the ball.

Here’s the problem. Sitting there replaying it over and over feels like reflection, but it’s not. It’s just me being a jerk for no reason.

I’m not fixing anything. I’m keeping a blend of shame and maybe even a little procrastination pity medley alive.

Ew, I’m going to pinky promise not to keep falling for it. Hope you do too.

Yeah, there are things I could’ve done better. That’s true. I avoided some things. I didn’t show up the way I could have in certain moments.

But dragging myself for it doesn’t do anything.

The only thing that actually matters is this. I didn’t know then what I know now.

That’s it.

Not that I was worse. Not that I wasn’t enough. I just didn’t have the version of myself I have now.

So of course I’d do things differently.

What doesn’t make sense is expecting past me to have the clarity I have now. And yeah, there are things I wish I handled differently.

But also, look at what did happen.

Six months of Written Identity. Over 200 people inside the Village. Amazing people showing up all over the world.

Skipping over that just because some shame goblin wants to focus on what went wrong. Nahh

Own the things you already know are true.

I didn’t show up the way I could have.

I avoided that. Pretending things were comfortable when I knew better.

I also did amazing things.

So I dare you to write at least one uncomfortable true sentence, then let it be just that, information without shame.

Write it - or - just say it.

No overthinking it. A couple honest words.

No turning it into something bigger than it is.

Allow yourself to move forward as the current version of you and keep going.

Next episode we’re getting into boundaries. Because a lot of this comes back to what you didn’t say, what you didn’t hold, and then you end up replaying it later.

Thanks for hanging in there as I shake the dust of my microphone, can’t wait to chat again soon.

-Alli G.

Can we call it for what it is?

Let’s talk about the fallacy we keep lying about… that “fear of failure… “

“I’d try the thing but I’m scared of failing.”

“I’m just a perfectionist.”

“Maybe later.”

Sounds reasonable. Polite.

But we are old enough and getting better at having real convos so I’m lovingly calling bullshit today.

Most of the time it isn’t fear of failure at all.

It’s fear of what happens if something actually works.

That part people don’t want to say out loud.

Trying something real forces you to confront yourself.

If you try and it works…

suddenly you don’t get to hide behind the version of you that “almost did it.”

And if it doesn’t work?

maybe it’s time to test that story.

You might just be afraid of what happens if you actually show up.

If you want a place to explore that with other people doing the same messy work,

come join us in The Written Identity it’s our Village.

The door’s open.

Just one house rule.

Don’t be a dick.

Chat soon love buckets, Alli🖤

Here’s the truth:

That critical voice? It’s not you.

It’s an impersonator you’ve listened to for so long that it started sounding real.

Inside this episode:

I share a joke that somehow turns into a sharp breakdown of anxiety, identity, and the voice in your head that keeps trying to sabotage your momentum.

Why self-doubt feels convincing (and why it’s not)

How internalized criticism becomes your “normal”

The difference between reflection and self-bullying

A simple way to separate your real voice from the hater

How humor can dismantle fear faster than force

If you’ve ever:

• Second-guessed yourself

• Talked yourself out of something bold

• Felt like your own biggest critic

You don’t need to silence your thoughts.

Only the ones that aren’t yours.

Commit to the bit.

Til next time love buckets. 🖤Love Alli

Presence isn’t the same as connection.

I reread an old essay called You Forgot About Me.

It’s about the quiet moment when your life clears its throat and reminds you that you’ve been living in the glow too long.

Not burnout. Not disappearing.

Just recalibrating.

Silence isn’t a threat.

Sometimes it’s rehab.

If you’ve been running on airplane mode, this one’s for you.

🎙 Blinded with Insecurity

In this episode of Village Voice, I read an essay I memorized… because I’m blind and I can’t visually read my own formatting.

Essay- “The Words I’ll Never Read.”

What I Cover

What it’s like building a writing platform without sight

Navigating Substack by sound instead of vision

The irony of coaching writers while using assistive technology

Why trying to “fix” insecurity can actually reinforce it

Choosing permission over perfection

I talk about what it’s like publishing in a visually curated world when you can’t see the layout.

For a long time, I thought insecurity was something I needed to overcome.

Now I’m questioning that.

Because I can’t remove my blindness.

But I can remove the shame around it.

This episode is about permission.

Continue the Conversation inside

The Written Identity

A Question I’m Sitting With

What insecurity are you constantly trying to improve… instead of just allowing?

What if you gave yourself permission instead of pressure?

The Violence I Carried Was Never Mine is a reflection on surviving childhood abuse, the invisible inheritance of an abuser’s voice, and the quiet, unglamorous courage it takes to unlearn what was never yours to hold.

This is not a story about rage or revenge.

It’s about recognizing how survival habits turn into identity, and how reclaiming your voice often happens in small, ordinary choices no one applauds.

This episode is an offering.

A setting down.

A reminder that what shaped you does not get to define you.

This episode includes references to:

Childhood abuse

Attempted murder

Incarceration of a parent

Trauma, dissociation, and survival responses

Please listen with care and take breaks as needed.

Note from Alli

If this episode stirred something in you

If you recognized an old voice, a familiar shrinking, a silence you learned early

You are not weak for carrying it.

You are brave for noticing it.

And if you’re not ready to speak yet, you’re allowed to borrow my voice until you are.

You are not alone anymore.

Listener Reminder

You don’t need to share this story to earn your healing.

You don’t need to justify your pain to release it.

And you don’t need to rush yourself into being “over it.”

Quiet courage counts.

This episode is a little different.

For the next few episodes, I’ll be re-recording and sharing some of my earlier essays, personal pieces, short reflections, and excerpts from my memoir and reading them myself here on the podcast.

Some of them are tender.

Some are heavy.

Some sit right in that complicated middle space where life doesn’t make sense yet.

I’m in a season where things feel… unfinished. And instead of rushing past it, I wanted to invite you into it with me.

These episodes are short. There’s no lesson to master, no productivity hack to apply. Just space. Honesty. And the reminder that clarity doesn’t always arrive loudly, sometimes it finds us when we slow down enough to let it.

After this series, we’ll return to our regular episodes and conversations around writing, identity, and getting unstuck, especially around writer’s block. But for now, this is me letting you walk with me through a moment that’s still unfolding.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for listening.

And thank you for holding space while I figure some things out.