What if the very thing we've been taught to be ashamed of needing support is actually our greatest source of strength?
In today's episode, we're diving into a topic that I believe women everywhere need to hear right now.
The myth of doing it all alone in the deep power we unlock when we return to community,
sisterhood and shared rituals.
We'll talk about the wisdom of nature, how women across cultures have always leaned on each other
for survival and strength and why the modern obsession with self-reliance is leaving us burned out, disconnected and unwell.
And more importantly, how we can begin to change that.
And before we dive in, I just want to share something exciting.
I'm in the early stages of creating an end of summer retreat for 2026 in the Cascale Mountains.
It will be a gathering designed for women like us to rest, reconnect and rise into our power together.
If this speaks to you, I'd love to know if you're interested.
Just send me an email which will be in the show notes with the subject line retreat
and I'll make sure that you're the first to know when the doors open.
Now, let's explore why self-care is not so low and how building women's circles might be just the medicine we all need right now.
Let's get into it.
You're listening to the Soul Online Self-Care Podcast.
I'm your host, Tina Stinson and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world.
Now I'm laying it all out, the deep-level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced and thriving.
Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience and a soul's journey to alignment.
This is where real conversations about deep-level self-care happen. Let's get into it.
Hey guys, welcome back to the Soul Online Self-Care Podcast.
I am so happy that you're here joining me and honored that you come here every week to hang out with me.
And if you're new here, welcome.
Today we're talking about why self-care is not so low, why we should not be thinking that we need to do everything alone.
We need each other more than ever right now and we need this, we need that heart-centered connection.
We've been spending way too much time and we've been doing it too long holding the weight alone, believing that needing support means that we failed.
And I want to share personally that back in the day before I had my stroke when I was raising three kids by myself.
And I really was kind of by myself.
My former husband did not help me much as far as it came to like spending the time with the kids, monetary-wise the support was always there.
But when it came to actually raising the kids, that was like all me.
I lived far away from the family about two and a half hours, so there were visits where I took my kids to see my parents and my family.
But the bulk of the time I was doing it all alone and I always felt like a failure.
I don't know if I've shared this with many people, but I never felt like I was doing anything right.
I felt like I was half-assing everything, including other parts of my life too, relationships work.
And it never felt like I completely like go into one or the other.
I was lying by the sea to my pants, hence the stroke, right?
So something I wanted to share with you, like every week in my Patreon community it's called Soul Aligned Life.
And I do this card pull from a deck.
I have a whole bunch of different kinds of decks, self-care decks, but right now I'm working with one that is called the Feminine Wisdom Deck.
And it's really beautiful. The cards are just gorgeous.
And this face card was the grounding card.
And it talks about being in the here and now, which is what you would expect, but it uses a tree as its symbol.
And with the branches kind of like reaching out and the roots spreading wide underground, which creates its strength, right?
And it's no wonder this card is used as a symbol for grounding, but what if there was a whole lot more meeting to this?
So I started thinking about this, like trees are a part of an underground and above ground community, like this really large community that offers and receives support from one another.
It's not just from other trees, it's from other living species. They support each other unconditionally, taking care of each other, making sure everyone's well fed and getting enough sunshine.
And I love also how all different trees like the oak tree will take care of the cherry tree and, you know, and so on and so forth.
So what if this symbolism of grounding goes a whole lot deeper, representing the support that we give and receive in the community?
Like with other humans and also with nature. So not only are we in community with humans, but all living things and we are.
After all, this is where we come from as humans. We used to be much more connected to the rhythms of nature.
And I really truly believe that we need to return to this. I truly believe a lot of the problems in the world are this disconnection or at least part of
what kind of feeds the problems in the world. It's not just in community with each other as humans, but also the community that is ready and waiting for us in nature's rhythms.
So I think that we have more support than we realize. And today I want to talk about one aspect of this.
Women supporting other women in community. I believe that we need this now more than ever.
We're in dire need of support. I feel like we're being kind of like almost attacked from all different directions.
And some of us have almost completely lost one of the most profound powerful connections that we have available to us.
And that is other women.
So I want to talk about why community based wellness manners and it's backed by research.
So I remember when I was a kid at my house, it was the house for all the holidays and the get togethers almost always.
We were all together and I'm talking all of us. There were probably around 30 sometimes more people.
And we had these big meals like huge. I remember at Christmas time my mom would cook like they would be like a pasta meal first like lasagna or baked city.
And then there would be antipasta. And then there would be a fruit salad and then there would be the turkey and the ham and then all the fixins.
I don't know how we eat so much food. I just don't even think I could do it now.
But, you know, we, you know, we were all together. Right? All the cousins played together.
We were all connected. We were sharing stories. We were supporting each other. We had rituals.
And most of all, it was a strong form of community. Obviously families don't always get along perfectly, but it was a very strong form of community.
Now, I didn't realize how powerful this was and how lucky I was to grow up with this. We're all spread out now.
So it's very common in the world to have all parts of the family all over the place. So that is the same with my family. All my cousins are all over the place.
Some of them I haven't seen in years. I don't know their kids. I probably could like if I bumped into one of their kids on the street, I wouldn't even know it.
Which is really sad. I believe it's very sad. But we, we barely ever get together.
And I think this happened to a lot of families. And I believe that some of the kids growing up today have never experienced the kind of thing I experienced as a kid.
So when I see them beating themselves up for having such a hard time just surviving in this world by themselves trying to support themselves and do everything themselves.
And then when I see the older generations calling them lazy and whiny and all those things, it makes me really angry because the younger generations coming after us did not have a lot of these almost invisible invisible support systems.
The majority of us had growing up. And when I say invisible, what I mean is that they were so normal to us that we didn't even know they were a privilege at the time.
And the hope I see always comes from my kids. I watch my kids. I'm always amazed by my kids and so proud of them.
I see them creating this for themselves with their friends.
So they're creating their own families of choice, which I think is almost even better than regular families.
And I think there's a lot of people out there that would agree with this.
You know, if you had a choice of what family people would be in your family, what would it be?
But this doesn't just happen. You know, like the way my family got together, we were all related. And that's just how it happened. That was the way it was.
It just was, right? So we were a family. They were just there and we were always got together, whether we liked each other or not.
Now you have to be, I feel like a lot of people still have this. There's definitely a lot of people that have this.
But if you don't, I feel like you have to be intentional in creating a community for yourself. It's not just going to fall into your lap.
I wish that it would fall into everybody's laps. But I just, I think that's something you have to be more intentional about.
Especially if you want to curate something that's really supportive for yourself.
So the benefits are shared rituals and routines bring structure and peace to your life.
So just having these regular rituals, like, you know, having coffee together, just check ins with each other.
They help you curb anxiety. They help you reduce burnout and the improve focus and well being.
Okay. So as you could see, if you could see the younger generations not having this, maybe it makes sense why, you know, the majority of them are an anti-anxiety meds, not all of them, but a large, a large portion of them, right?
Another benefit, well being flourishes collectively. So studies highlight that community level initiatives rooted in empowerment, connection and shared purpose have significant positive impacts on mental and physical health.
So even being a part of something that comes to mind for me is my oldest daughter is very involved in the football club community down in Charlotte, North Carolina, like very involved.
And it's such an incredible community. And I think that that has a very positive effect on her life. She has a lot of fun, a lot of good friends, a lot of connection.
Strong social infrastructure prevents decline better than individual treatment alone. That is just, let me just say that again, strong social, like a strong social life, prevents decline better than having any kind of treatment while being alone.
So being social is healthy.
You know, as long as you're social with the people that are going to be healthy for you, another thing that it does is it rituals strengthen bonds and resilience.
And I think we all know that that rituals together promote emotional regulation and a sense of belonging that we all want, all of us want this as humans.
And in groups, they kind of create that connection and that trust that that's rooted in like community, really, the ritual overrides any type of isolation.
So being involved in community kind of overrides all the negative repercussions of being isolated, obviously.
And the thing I wanted to talk about that I've always been so into is the blue zones, okay. So I share in my latest blog post and I'll put a link to that in the show notes so you could read it if you want.
But lessons from Okinawa. Now if you don't know what blue zones are, I will put a link to that also in the show notes.
So these zones basically are all these different places all over the world where people live well into their hundreds, but they're not just living, they're actually healthy and functional.
Okay, so they're not living with like all this disease and stuff, they're very healthy.
And so what I always loved about and I got into blue zones when I first became a health coach, which was ages ago.
The reason I liked it was because it was all different people and all different places all over the world. So, Okinawa, Japan, Costa Rica, Greece, Italy, California.
I know I'm missing something, right? And there's more now they've added more communities to this.
I was always fascinated by this because it wasn't just one thing that was like making these people live well into their hundreds.
It was like, I think this like a collection of like eight or nine things. You have to go to the website to like learn all of them.
But one of them was community, right? And I thought it was very one of the thing I like about this study that was done is that they're not all eating the same foods or doing the exact same thing.
They have these very common eight or nine things in common, right? But you know, it just shows you that there's no one diet for everyone.
There's no one way to do thing for everyone that creates health. But looking at these different communities is fascinating to me.
And so, as I said, community was one of those common denominators in all these different areas. They always had some kind of a sense of community.
Those different, they definitely did it in different ways, but it was community, okay?
And in Okinawa, one of the famed blue zones known for like very extraordinary longevity in women, excuse me, and men,
is that they don't go through life alone from childhood. They're initiated into small intentional friendship pods. And I say intentional because they're like placed in these pods. And it's called Moai.
And I hope I'm saying that correctly. If I'm not, you could you could write me a little email and tell me I'm not. I think it's Moai.
And typically it's made of four to six members who commit to supporting each other through their entire life. I think this is so cool. And they go far beyond like casual, just social circles.
They share left or grief, and they gather on a regular basis to connect. They pull their resources for life's emergencies, like financial and all different types of emergencies.
And they even offer emotional, and as I said, financial support across generations. So how cool is that? I think it's, I don't know, it's absolutely fascinating.
But research shows that strong social connections like those formed in this Moai group buffer loneliness, support emotional wellbeing, and even contribute to physical longevity.
So what's most striking about how deep rooted support is woven into this every day life over their cups of teas and shared walking together. And just decades of consistent presence, consistent presence, sorry.
This is just a perfect example of how belonging and mutual care can really kind of be so life changing to us. And I feel like a lot of people don't have that here.
But you can, there's hope that you can create that.
So this myth that I talked about at the beginning of doing it all alone, I wanted to just talk about why it's so dangerous.
Okay. So as I talked about, and it nearly killed me, right? So as I talked about after my divorce, I had to start over. So I actually hadn't worked outside of the house.
I was a state home mom, which is a ton of work, believe me, but I hadn't worked outside of the house for 10 years. So not, and not only did I have to learn a new trade, I had to start over.
But then I also had three kids. One was just kind of going into her teen years and the other two were younger elementary ages.
And I had little to no support. As I said, the father was kind of checked out and my family was far away. Now I had a few friends that really understood.
But a lot of them were married and had no clue how hard this is. Most people still don't. They can go through their whole life, not knowing this.
Unless you've known someone close to you who've experienced it or you've experienced it yourself.
I had to start completely over. So long story short, I had a stroke that was caused by stress. I had an artery in my neck tear. I literally like popped a main from stress.
So that's how dangerous it can be. Most people don't have such dramatic like effects. I always say that my body is very dramatic.
But it shows up in different ways. It shows up as chronic fatigue. It shows up as cancer. It shows up as high blood pressure. It shows up in so many different ways. It shows up as anxiety.
So many different ways. So modern culture society often tells us that independence is like successful. And asking for help means that you're a failure.
And I want to tell you three reasons why this is completely and totally false. And I wish I knew this back then. I wouldn't have been so hard on myself.
Humans are wired for connection. Isolation triggers stress and loneliness. The longing soothes the nervous system and fosters healing.
Plain and simple. Well being is enriched by shared knowledge. Collective experiences offer emotional residents insight in creative strategies that solo effort often misses.
Sometimes just knowing that you're not alone. You don't even even if you don't have a solution to a problem.
Just knowing that you're not the only one experiencing that is enough to support you. And I would have loved this type of support.
I had one person say something to me during that time period of my life and it was my uncle. And he told me that I was a super woman.
And he completely acknowledged how hard it must be for me to raise the three kids. He completely somehow understood. And that was the only acknowledgement that I got from anybody during that time period, which is really really sad.
So this is a shout out to all the single moms out there and single dads that are going through it alone that don't have a support system. I am here for you and I hope this message gets to you and encourages you to build it and be intentional about your building your own support system.
Now number three, support does not weaken you. It strengthens you. True resilience is built through shared care, mutual nurturing and reciprocal trust. We are meant to be working together.
All right, just a heads up. I always record with my dog out and somebody's coming down the driveway so she might bark a little bit, but she hasn't yet.
So hopefully she won't, but let's move on. Okay, so let's start talking about how we could start building like your own woman circle or your own community circle. Okay.
Now I've been really, really lucky to have a woman circle gathering right down the road from my house. And I talk about this on a future podcast that will be coming out in September.
So you'll be able to listen to that. And I call this lucky because where I live, it is very, very, very rural and finding something like this is like finding a diamond in a shell pit. I mean, I'm just, I feel like it was meant to be.
So it's pretty new to me, but what I've experienced so far has been so wonderful and has definitely added to my life in so many positive ways.
These women are examples from all walks of life, all ages, and they are strong, caring kind and beautiful in every way.
The more I go, the more I realize that this is something that is needed in the world and that women.
You know, the way women are experiencing life today, I think we just need more support. But even if we weren't experiencing any kind of turmoil, this is something, I think this is just the way it should be.
And I wish I had this all throughout my life. I could have avoided a lot of very detrimental things to my health.
We, I feel like my, the way I feel right now in this time period is that we're being attacked on all fronts right now as women.
And we need to support and build each other out more than ever. It's important not just for us as women, but also for our kids and for all the generations to come.
It's important for us to thrive right now and for the world to hear our voices.
Okay. And if you can find something like this in your community, you're not as lucky as I am, you can always start your own and hear some ways that you could do this.
So I'm going to give you five different ways and you could begin today. So you could host a community wellness check-in.
Invite a few women, neighbors to gather in a park or in your yard or just for like an open conversation to check in with each other, ask each other how you are, what do you need, how can we support each other?
There's much more fun ways to do this, but this is just a very easy way to start.
You can start a shared ritual. So you could do a coffee, you know, you know, just have coffee together in the morning or you can go for a walk together.
You could do journaling together, but how many people have had like a little coffee meeting with their bestie for a long time.
I know back in the day, shout out to Janet, we used to always have coffee together. Even when we were young, I don't know how old we were when we started drinking coffee, but it was ridiculous.
But anyway, we always had coffee together and, you know, I think that this is a very easy way to just share something and have that that meeting with your bestie.
So the king is like, that's like super powerful because not only are you meeting with your bestie or, you know, a neighbor or anybody that, you know, you want to offer support too, but you're also, you know, your outdoors, you're in nature.
So you like you have like this, like triple whammy of positivity. So that's just a beautiful way to start a ritual.
So number three, create a shared wellness playlist or affirmations red. So each day one member contributes to like a self-care tip or an affirmation where you create like a playlist together.
This is this can be really fun, but it's just another way to connect. So it doesn't always have to be face to face.
You can swap stories and healing remedies. So you can create a small group chat where you share what's helping like recipes remedies. It could be based on like a topic. So say if you're a woman going through menopause, you can have this little small group chat where you share anything that helps with the menopause of recipes remedies and any resources that you have and what's worked for you.
And this doesn't necessarily always have to be a group chat. This could be a meeting like a monthly meeting just getting together and talking about this.
And then my favorite way to do it is, you know, host like a simple creative gathering. Okay. It could be around something that you all have in common.
Like maybe you're all runners or you all are artists or you all of cooking or gardening or whatever it might be. Get together in order to like share your experiences with that, that common, that one thing that you have in common.
But this also turns into all the other things I just talked about where you check in in with each other asking how everybody is. What do you need? How can you support each other?
So that's all that's that's all you need. All you need is one other person to get started to you don't need five or six people to get started.
If it's positive and beautiful, it'll definitely grow. Okay. So this is how I think as women, we can reclaim our power.
Not through like the solo hustle where we get burned out, but through shared resilience, shared stories. Community helps ground us. It helps take care of us.
It helps amplify our courage to step out. And together we rise stronger, wiser and lighter, right?
And if you don't have a supportive excuse me see whenever I get to the end of the podcast, I start losing my voice. I'm still losing my voice from whatever that was I had, that virus I had.
So if you don't have a supportive community right now, I hope that this podcast inspires you to start something new, start anywhere you can.
And even some online communities can be powerful. So don't write them off as not being powerful because they're not in person.
Just start somewhere. I do believe though that having that in person community support is the way to go. And no matter where I am in the world, I will very intentionally make sure that I create this for myself and others.
So with that said, I just want to remind you about the woman's retreat that I talked about at the beginning. So my email will be in the show notes that you could check it out.
We'll not check it out, but you could let me know by sending me an email if you're interested. And I will put you on the list so that when I start sending out all the details, you will be the first to know.
Okay guys, I love you. See you next week.
Thank you so much for spending this time with me today.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a new one. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, I love it if you can leave a review.
It helps get the show in front of more people who might need this type of support. And if you're ready to take your everyday self-care even deeper, come join us inside the Soul Aligned Live Patreon.
Every week, you'll get new self-care practices and tools to help reduce stress and overwhelm. Plus, we do a monthly reset to keep you aligned and supported always.
You'll find the link in the show notes and I'd love to see you there. Until next time, be sure to take good care of yourself. Love you. Bye.
(soft music)
