Episode 212: Stop Being an Emotional Sherpa | Janet Barrett | Author of Stop the Break & Mental Health Speaker
What if the key to emotional resilience wasn’t talking more but physically releasing what’s been stuck inside for years? Janet Barrett is a mental health speaker and the author of Stop the Break, a book about proactive mental health and how we can stop carrying invisible emotional burdens that keep us from thriving. In this conversation, Janet shares the moment she broke and how that moment became the catalyst for completely changing how she lives, parents, and leads. You’ll hear how a divorce forced her to finally confront decades of buried emotion, and how boxing gloves, movement, and a few brave choices helped her find peace, clarity, and joy again. We talk about mental health, mindset coaching for women, leadership, personal development, and what redefining success really looks like after a lifetime of "keeping it all together."
“I have this passion. I have this message and I really want the world to know there are proactive mental health steps we can all take.”
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Follow along using the Transcript
CHAPTERS:
00:00 From career success to emotional burnout
01:15 Why Janet wrote Stop the Break
03:00 What made her a different kind of boss
05:30 Early career lessons from Sara Lee and Reebok
08:00 Four kids in three years, and a major life pivot
10:15 The breakdown that changed everything
13:00 Discovering the power of physical emotional release
15:00 How boxing became therapy
18:00 Why women leaders suppress emotions
20:00 The cost of emotional suppression
22:00 Parenting with mental health in mind
25:00 Giving kids tools for emotional expression
28:00 How Janet helps others feel seen
31:00 What workplaces get wrong about mental health
34:30 Writing the book she needed
36:00 The mindset shift that changed everything
38:30 What being powerful means now
40:00 What she needs next: speaking and visibility
I came across this concept of physically expressing your emotions and honestly, my first reaction was I went, I scoffed. I have gone five decades without physically expressing my emotions. I do not need to start doing that now. Thank you very much.
That's Janet Barrett. I'm Kara Duffy, and this is the Powerful Ladies.
Podcast,
as you said, it has been so long since we have had a conversation in real life. It's been like, hi, on Facebook or Instagram or any DM like that, but that's been it for so long and. You were such an influential person in my life, so I'm so glad that you're coming back around and now you're on the podcast and you've been up to so many things since then.
So for anyone listening, let's tell them who you are, where you are, and what you're up to, and then I'll get into how we first met.
Fantastic. Janet Barrett. I live just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and I am entering, gosh, I don't know how many times I've reinvented myself, but I am entering a very new chapter in my life as an author of a book called Stop the Break, and I, it's about proactive mental health.
And taking charge of things that have happened to you in the past and finding really solid actionable plans to be able to deal with it. So I learned it from my own mental health break, how to recover from that, and now I want to share that with the world.
Which doesn't surprise me at all because when I said earlier how influential you were in my life, we met at Reebok, what feels like a million years ago, and you were this really powerful boss who was traveling the world all the time, and you were my boss's boss, I believe at the time.
And you were always just yeah, figure it out. You got it. I trust you. And it was so crazy because I had good bosses prior to that, but never that treated the whole team. Guys, you're here because I trust you. Like I don't have time for this. You got this bye. And it wasn't that you were not, didn't care about us.
You're just really empowering in that. We're so busy, please figure it out way.
I always wanted to be managed like that. And so that is always how I did manage. And I can remember in every interview, and I interviewed you at some point in time, and I would go into the interview and say, I, they've already figured out if you can do the job.
I'm just here because I wanna make sure that you fit the dynamic of the team that I want, because I always felt if you had a really great team around you, that you would be able to figure it out even if you didn't know the exact textbook answer. If you had people that were willing to take that responsibility on that, then you would be able to accomplish so many things.
With actually a lot less effort because it wasn't me having to micromanage or, make sure everybody knew everything that was going on. It was, I trust you to do the job that you were hired for, and I can go and do some other things. So I. I loved having you on the team. You were amazing. I am so not surprised to see where you have gone in life.
It has been so fun to watch from a distance you are awe inspiring, truly. And I am glad that I had a just a little part of you in my life. Even though it was a few decades ago, it seems
I know I keep looking back. I'm like, it can't have been that
long ago. And you're like, yes, it was.
Yep. Yeah, it was over 15 years ago because my oldest is 16 and I think he started with me right when he was born. Or it was, yeah. Yeah, it was very close. It was either right before, right after. Yeah, I was there 2006,
seven.
Yep. And he was born in
six. Yeah. So there you have it. Let's go back and just tell people your journey too, because you obviously were working together in footwear at Reebok, but where were you before that?
What happened after that? Because there's a lot between you being born and now you have a book.
There is a lot. So I will, start with my career. And then end with. Some of the, childhood stuff. So my career started, I got a master's in clothing and textiles from the University of North Carolina, and I really had no idea what I wanted to do.
And when I was in that program, I was so lucky to meet this woman, Ruth, who guided me to do this interview. With Sara Lee personal products, which if you're like me at the time when I thought of Sara Lee, I thought of food. But they owned a whole bunch of brands. They own Champion, they own Hanes, they own coach.
They owned a whole bunch of apparel brands, and they wanted to put some structure around how they evaluated the performance of products. And Ruth said, you know what? I think you would be great at this. And my internal dialogue was, I've never had a professional interview before. I'm taking the interview just for the experience.
No way. I'm getting the job. Got the job, and I think everybody was a little shocked. They're like, whoa, okay. So then I had to figure out what this thing called category management was.
And I did and ended up being fairly successful and worked at Sarah Lee. I worked at Fruit of Loom, and then I became a consultant and worked for a company that.
I ended up traveling the world and working with retailers and wholesalers all over the globe, helping them do category management for soft goods. And then I decided I wanted to have a little bit of a break from that, so I retired and I opened up my own interior design firm. Because I like the creative side.
I also like the structural side of things, so when I would do interior design, it was usually also involving some sort of a renovation, and it was, I absolutely loved doing it. But then I decided I wanted to have kids and that job and career didn't really lend itself to having children. It was a lot of evenings, a lot of weekends.
I was a little bit more on call than I wanted to be, so I decided to go back in, and that's when I started working at Reebok. They were. Being acquired by Adidas and I came in to help basically with the merge of those two companies on the apparel side. And then I had. Four kids in three years and three months.
And I realized that the amount of travel that I did was too great for the amount of involvement I wanted to have in my kids' lives. And it was doable. It just wasn't what I wanted to choose. So I chose to become a stay-at-home mom. And I did that for almost 12 years. And then I ended up going through a divorce and that was when I had my mental break.
And my my husband had an affair. And I completely cracked. I couldn't eat, I could not sleep, I could not move forward, and I won't get into all of the details around it, but we chose not to tell the kids for a few months. So I was on my own figuring it out, and I am nothing if not an Olympic Googler.
So I spend a great deal of time going, how do I get out of this? I just told you about this very long career I had. I was very successful. I traveled the world. I worked with, top 10 companies in the world talking to their CEOs. I clearly was somebody that could actually accomplish things.
Yeah.
But this broke me and I'm like, why? Why is this happening? What is going on? So as I was going through that process, I came across this concept of physically expressing your emotions and. Honestly, my first reaction was I went, I scoffed, I have gone five decades without physically expressing my emotions.
I do not need to start doing that now. Thank you very much. Clearly I knew way better than all of these researchers out there and I kept chugging along. Going through the motions and it kept coming up as I was going through all of my research of how to get better. I was doing therapy, I was doing yoga, I was doing meditation, and it just wasn't quite enough.
And I came back to this concept of physically expressing your emotions time and time again. And I finally was like, you know what? Why not give it a shot? What do I have to lose? And I spoke with a the one I was going to get a massage 'cause my whole body just hurt.
And
I was going to get a massage and I told her about this concept and I said, my issue is I don't really know how to do this.
I have read about it and I have this idea in my head. And she had a friend who was a so social worker. And became a personal trainer, and she said, I think she might be the perfect partner for you. So I called her up. Sure enough, she agreed to do this kind of crazy experiment with me where she would come over to my house with her personal training equipment and we would start something like boxing and be jogging and lightly, punching and.
Then she would talk to me about what was going on, and I would tell her a story about something that really gave me a very negative reaction. And we would get to a point in the story where the story was building and the physical activity was building until we came up with a phrase where I would start.
Basically screaming the phrase, and I won't go to the full r rated one, but you learn jerk, yeah. Ugh. And I would scream it and I would hit her hand where she had the safety gloves on, and I would punch it as hard as I possibly could. And it would go on as long as I could.
And literally it was never more than 15 minutes. And then I would just collapse in tears. And I had actually released all of that pent up emotion that was inside my body, and I ended up doing it for the five decades that I had never dealt with. And I dealt with a lot of trauma that had been built up and never addressed.
I had gone to therapy, I had talked about it, but I had never actually physically gotten it out of my body. The things that have happened since then have been phenomenal. I sleep through the night. I don't really diet anymore because I'm not stress eating. I feel more healthy. I am able to respond to things with my kids as opposing opposed to reacting to them and getting all flustered.
I can take things in. In a much more calm way and handle it and deal with it and respond appropriately, and things still happen that really piss me off or make me really sad or something else. But now I'm like, okay, I have that. I'll respond to it. And then later on. I will actually go and I have a punching bag here now.
I have a variety of things that we do, and I have my kids do it, and then I go and I end up physically getting it out. And it has taken so much weight off of me as a person that I didn't even know was there. Because I could push through so much. It was just that one last straw that my body and brain were like.
Nope, you're all done.
Which brings me to the book. And so that's what the book of is about. The book tells my story of how I got there, and then that approach to actually dealing with your mental health, both. Talking about it, you need to have that therapy part, but also putting more on it where you're doing that physical expression of your emotions.
And then my long-term goal is to actually help change how companies deal with and treat individuals that have mental health challenges and take away the stigma that is around it right now because. I think a lot of the reason why I wasn't willing to get help or ask for help or deal with anything that happened to me before this was because I was so worried about what people would think of me.
And I think as. Women who have been successful in life and business, there's extra layers. Not that men don't have this, but there's a whole list of things that women currently and uniquely deal with. Yes. Good girl syndrome. The, proving ourselves, the always having to show a bigger different, like the, we've both worked in the, you don't cry at work space.
So if you can't cry at work, you definitely can't talk about anything else you're dealing with at work.
Exactly. I'm not saying that we can change that culture entirely, but I feel like we can make steps to it so that there are safe spaces for us to have that emotional expression. So when we are in the spaces that haven't changed yet and I am anticipating will not change in my lifetime.
Hopefully for my kids it will. It will be different. But just making those baby steps to get us there and giving people the tools to say, okay, I know I'm in this space. I know I can't cry at work, but I'm gonna need to cry. Yeah. So how do I do that? And I will say the thing that has been most impressive to me since the book's only been out a week, but in the week that it's been out, I've had three gentlemen. In their fifties, reach out to me and thank me for giving them permission to cry. That's crazy, right? They were so bottled up inside and most of my dealings have been with females and the people that I've coached have been females and the people that I have helped do some of this therapy have all been female, and I never really.
Took the time to think about, oh, what impact could it have on the male side? And I'm, I had hoped it would, but obviously I, I don't have that as a personal experience and it was really gratifying to see that men could also get something out of it. But to hear, thank you for giving me permission to cry.
And it was three completely separate individuals from. Three very different parts of my life and it was just, it was really nice to have that experience
when one of the things I coach people on is when they start their new business or do their new thing to email everyone in their life basically like a business birth announcement.
And when I did it for Powerful Ladies, I hesitated initially to include all the men on the list. And I did, and I'm like, Nope. Do what you would tell people to do. Everyone's on there. Some random consultant you met once they're on there, like everyone was on there and similar to you, I had more men on that list.
Reach out and refer someone, recommend someone say I'm so excited to hear it. Here's someone else you should know. Like I was floored. And those people, those surprise people give you a momentum that you. Just didn't even have in your scope of reality that really shifts all the
things that you can be up to.
Yeah, I, my publisher is a man and he is a little bit younger than I am. He is only I think 30 or 32, and I was very curious to see how he would respond, one. He is a very old soul, but he really got me as a person and my idea, and he absolutely helped me birth this book in a way that I couldn't have imagined.
And he told me a story that I absolutely loved because I talked about this physical expression and how it's natural to have that. If you think about somebody tells you a joke, you automatically, like you laugh, you move your face shows that joy. If you're really sad, the tears come out.
But anger, we hold in. And he told me about he and his partner went on a hike with their dog, and their dog found a stick. The dog carried this stick with them the whole way, and was so happy with this stick. Would put it down, play with it. They would throw it for him, they would bring it back. And then they got almost toward the end of the hike and they were next to this creek, and the dog went over and the stick fell into the creek and he watched his dog, and his dog looked at it.
And you could see the dog was like, oh, I lost my stick and was a little sad. I said, and then my dog literally physically shook its body and then got happy again and ran away. And he said, I saw in that moment, everything that you talk about in your book was right there, naturally happen happening. With my dog. And I'm like, that's exactly what happens with people. And sadly, we start really young, telling our kids to, in some way, shape or form, suppress their natural reaction. Don't be a cry baby. Yep. The intent is to be like, have perspective around that, but that's not what the child hears.
The child hears, don't cry. I need to not do that. I need to suppress that. We don't explain to them, here's what you need to do. Here's what you need to look at. And yes, it's okay to cry. Let's find a safe space and a safe time for you to do that. 'cause it might not be the exact right time, but we start their lives saying, suppress those negative emotions.
And even to some extent we say suppress those happy emotions because don't brag, don't act like you have something that somebody else ha doesn't have. Don't make someone feel bad. It's okay to have happiness. It's okay to be proud of yourself, and we shouldn't have kids completely suppress all of those.
We should let them know your natural reaction. Is a good thing. You need to have those reactions. Here is the safe way to make that happen. And so that's the other part that I'm trying to get out in the world is say, let's make sure that once we have adults understand how to safely do this. Let's help our kids understand how to do this appropriately and know it's okay, and that your natural reaction is fine.
And also it's not one size fits all. It's not that everybody has the exact same reaction to everything. I happen to have a natural reaction to smile at everything, even if it's something negative or bad happening, I will sit there, I'll smile, trying to make somebody feel better, because that's my natural reaction.
And it's not always appropriate, but that's what I do and I'm like, you just have to accept that and work with what you have. It's okay. I have other friends who they tend to cry when they get happy. That's okay. It's not that there is one answer for everybody, but whatever you naturally do, you need to learn to be able to be comfortable expressing that whenever it's appropriate.
There's a book
that's been talked about a lot in this podcast, which is The Body Keeps Score. My favorite book. I feel like it's just, it's like you read that one and then you read your book because there, there's in a similar space, but I. So many people who have used the body keep score. It's been more about mobility or massaging it out like a, it's been a gentle approach where I really like this other approach because sometimes this is why running is therapy for people.
This there's, we have to push ourselves this limit because so often we don't even know how to access that feeling anymore because we're so good at being like, just stay down here and it just gets shoved. Further and further down we think we're just like, I'm sure you and I are very similar on the are you stressed space?
You're like, no, I'm not stressed. Like I'm never stressed. And then other people look at my life and they're like, how are you not stressed at level 900? I'm like, what?
And my issue was always, I didn't even realize how much I had suppressed. Because I thought that's just how you went through life. You just go through and you're like, you know what?
No, I can deal with it. I was what I call an emotional sherpa. I was like, Nope, I can take it on. I can take it on. I can take it on. But unfortunately, unlike the Nepalese Sherpas who at the end of the trek take all of their gear off, I just kept putting it on and did not ever acknowledge or recognize that was what I was doing.
And you're right. I think so many people do it, and I do think women do that a lot, especially as they get in higher levels of business because. They are expected to not show any emotion and not have that ever come out because if you do, it is seen as a sign of weakness. I was just reading an article about potential presidential candidates and Nikki is out there and she's 51 and somebody said she's passed her prime.
How?
I don't even know
what to do with that statement. It was one of those that I read it and I'm like, she's 51. She is younger than almost all presidents ever in the history of our country. She could be How is she current past her prime? She could be current
candidate.
Like daughter.
Daughter, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And it was one of those, I was just absolutely blown away that was the statement that was coming out in the press about this particular candidate. And it just highlights the difference for women that we have. We do have to suppress our emotions and not show it at work.
And if we get to a certain age, we are seen as not. Knowledgeable and, sage wisdom, we are seen as old and past our prime. Yeah. And so you layer all of that on. You're like, I can't show anything. I can, I can't even show a wrinkle. And I can't even control that one. That one just naturally happens.
Okay, now I guess now we have to get Botox. I don't necessarily wanna put toxins in my body. It's fine if you do, but it's fine if you don't and we should be able to be Okay. With all of those things.
There's just, there's so much pressure on every choice that women, especially women, as head of households are making.
And I think that's where the extra level of overwhelm is also coming from. It's not just are you managing responsibilities as having whatever you need to do to earn income. If you're taking care of kids, if you have a partner. Regular stuff, just that you need to adult. But then it's oh wait, are you buying all organic?
Everything's perfect. Are you reducing your plastic waste? Do you know what's happening over there? Have you called the FDA? And you're just like, my head is going to fucking explode. Like I cannot manage all of those things at once and. Also worry about oh, I'll be take, I'll be listened to at a different level if I have Botox and I lose 10 pounds and oh, I need to go shopping again. Because there's nothing like, it's so overwhelming.
Yes. And you also can't go too far to the other. Because if you look too good, then you don't have a brain. And I'm like, okay, I don't really know where the balance is, so I've just decided this is what I look like.
This is who I am. I can't change it. And Merry Christmas. Here it is. Merry Christmas, happy birthday. Happy New Year. Exactly. All the
things. You're welcome. It's
all this is all that we got. I do. Absolutely adore the book. The Body Keeps the score. It is, it was one of the things that actually started me on this journey, and it was one of the first things that I read when I came across this concept of linking the two.
And I did go a lot further into the research. I will say the other thing that really influenced me greatly was a podcast called The Healing Feeling. Shit Show. And so the woman that runs it is spectacular. And her whole concept is basically your feelings need to flow through you. Just like anything that you intake into your body.
And some of it comes out like shit. You know what? It just does. And, but that's a good thing because if you held it all inside like I did for decades, then it's gonna be a painful process for you to actually one, get that out and two, to try and keep holding it in. You'll get constipated, you'll get pain, you'll, you'll get bloated.
All of those things. And so they. Go into a lot of detail about how you really need to physically express those emotions. And again, there's a lot of different ways to do it, but if you haven't listened to that podcast, it's also a really good podcast.
How has you, going through this process and the shifts that you've made, how has it impacted how you are as a mom and your kids?
Oh,
it has impacted me so much. I don't even know if I would know exactly where to start, but there is one story that really sticks out with me. My middle son, when he was nine, he came to me and told me, mom, I think the world would be better off without me.
No.
And it was, and it still makes me tear up.
Sure. It was the most heart stopping thing of my life. And I also knew when it happened that this was a major turning point in his life, even though he was only nine, it was major. And I also knew, I had no idea what to do. We contacted a therapist and he agreed to take my son on. And after a couple of weeks, the therapist called and said, I figured out.
One of the things that's impacting him and why he feels this way, it's okay, what is it? It's because when he has bad thoughts I hate my brother, I wish he would die, that kid's a jerk, because he cut me off in line. He thought he was the only one that had those negative thoughts, and that by having the negative thoughts, he was a bad person.
He didn't know that everybody has those thoughts and that it's okay to have those thoughts. It's not okay to kill your brother, but it's okay to be mad at him and to think negative things about somebody. Everybody has them, and that has stuck with me, and I have made sure that my kids know it's okay.
Pretty much any thought. Everyone has thoughts all over the spectrum. It's okay to have that, and you're going to have physical reactions to that. You don't want to hurt somebody. So you want to physically express those emotions safely for you and for them. And so I have taken a lot of time with them and given them this understanding that having those feelings, having those emotions, having those thoughts, completely normal, completely natural, everybody has them.
Here is how you get it out. Here are the multiple options that you can do, and I have four kids, all four of them handle those things differently. All four of them communicate them differently. All four of them actually interact with me differently. So I have one that tells me everything. I probably, I feel like I have a play by play of their day all of the time.
Another one. I feel like I never know anything that is going on, and yet if you talk to that one, they will tell you, oh, my mom knows everything, but I don't, I have no idea what's going on. I might be making some really good guesses, but I don't. But when they need something, they all have different ways of expressing it and coming to me and talking about it and finding a way to deal with it.
So that has been a really huge shift that I didn't even know. I needed to do. I didn't realize I needed to tell my kids those. That's okay. That's normal. That's natural. I don't know. Even when I learned it, I don't think I actually really learned that other people have all those thoughts until I went through this break.
Then had it confirmed that yes, that's, that is true. That is, everybody has them and it's okay. It's okay to have them. The other thing that has really changed in my parenting is how I talk to them about their friends. So when something happens with one of their friends. I encourage them to give that person space and to give them grace because they may have something going on in their life that you have no idea about.
And I've always tried to espouse that to them. And to make sure they understood it. After going through this now, I probably go a little over the top on that in making sure that they understand it and that they use that type of approach in their life. And I think it has made a really big difference for them.
One of my sons hit one of his. Friends, in his acquaintance group has been really struggling with substance use and depression. And they came to my son about it and he came to me and we ended up like figuring out a way to go through it. And my son was really struggling with why is this happening?
Why is he, why does he feel like he needs to use these substances? Why does he need to do these things? And I said, honestly, you'll probably never know unless this person chooses to tell you. You'll probably never know. And he's but how could there be anything bad in his life? How could something this, that bad be going on?
And my kids all know my story. It's in the book. It's out there for anybody to read, but I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And I said, you know what? Nobody knew that growing up. Nobody knew. In fact, I. I can't tell you the number of messages I've gotten from family members who have reached out and said, Janet, I had absolutely no idea until I read your book that's what you were going through.
I said, so there's a lot of things that people can go through that you will never ever know, and just give them the benefit of the doubt that they need your help and support, and not necessarily your judgment. It doesn't mean you have to go, use substances with them. Not saying that, but you need to give them, resources and, give them as much guidance as you can while just letting them know that you're there for them no matter what.
And so many things impact everyone differently. We could go through the same experience and we're not gonna take out the same results either. It's, even just looking at what stresses people out and what doesn't like, there's, everything is so radically different and I'm glad that we're having conversations today about like things being on spectrums more because it is, it's not a left or right choice.
It's a kind of over here on the sad side, over here on the stress hot side. Like it, it fluctuates so much and there's so many factors that tie into it that I'm also glad we're talking about. The normal things. What are you drinking enough water? Are you sleeping? Are you talking to someone?
Are you moving your body? Yes. It's, there's so many chem, it's a chemical situation, so there's so many chemicals that we're putting into our body or on them every day that we don't even know what they're doing.
That is so true. And so it's basically combining your learned experience with your environment and everyone's is different in some way, shape, or form.
Every single person out there has something different. And like we, we talk about the spectrum a lot with everything. What you like to eat is on a spectrum. Your sexuality is on a spectrum. Your emotional awareness is on a spectrum. Everybody has, they're on different points within that. And as long as, and my big thing is you shouldn't, whatever choices you make should not hurt anyone else.
As long as it's right for you and that's your choice and it's not hurting somebody else. That is where, I would like my kids to be and myself to be that. If it works for me and it's not impacting negatively someone else, then it's an okay, a choice to make regardless of. What area of your life that is.
So if you go back to 8-year-old, you would, you have imagined that this is what you would be doing today, and this would be how you're sharing who you are with the world? No,
I am an introvert. A very big introvert. I was the kid that literally hid behind their mother's skirts. I can remember being at church, my mom standing there and she's not a very big person, but I was making sure that I was behind her and hidden as much as I could possibly be.
So no 8-year-old May would never have imagined that I would. One, speak publicly about anything going on in my life that I would have the ability to write a book because I was a voracious reader. I. Spent all of my allowance either on candy or books because I also went to the library and I, checked out a lot of books.
But I love to go to the bookstore and browse and find books and then be able to keep them I my house. I still love that. Yes I would say I am not in my office, but in my office I have stacks and stacks of books. I have more books than I will probably ever read in my lifetime. But I love. And, but I never thought of myself as a writer until I went through this and was talking with my career coach.
And she said to me, Janet, I think you have a book in you. And I had the same response that I did when I learned about physical reactions. So it, no, I don't. And then I ended up. Deciding, you know what I do? I have this message, I have this passion. I really do want to get it out to the world and I want people to know about it.
I have to tell this other funny story As I was going through this and making this choice to write this book and put it out there my coach said, you need to update your LinkedIn profile. And I. Was one of the very, very early users of LinkedIn, which at that point in time, to me, it was simply an electronic Rolodex.
I just wanted something that I didn't have to hand write that I could keep everybody's names and phone numbers in. And so that's what I used it as. And in the over a decade that I was a stay at home mom, LinkedIn transformed dramatically into a much, more robust application than what it was at that time.
So I was like, all right I need to update this profile. How do I do that? And I Googled. What's a good LinkedIn profile And the very first one that popped up was a woman that wrote, I caught fire coding and I was very. Confused and also scared for this poor woman who caught fire. I literally in my head was going, she caught fire.
How did she catch fire? Oh, and why is this her opening statement? Did she get treatment? Was it first degree, second degree, third degree burns? Oh my gosh. And how did you catch fire Coating my brain I think was going to about explode, and then some part of it finally recognized. Janet, clearly she didn't physically catch fire.
You can figure this out. Not shocking. I Googled what does catching fire mean? And it means just finding your passion, finding that thing that just ignites that fire inside you so that you have something that you cannot stop talking about. And that. Is what I found with this. I found such a passion for trying to help people understand how to let go of that emotional trauma that they have been suppressing and carrying around because it doesn't just magically go away.
I wish it did. I really wish it did. It doesn't, and that's what I want. I found that passion for, and that's what I want to try and help people understand as much as I possibly can. I'm gonna guess that will
also lead into your answer to this question, which is, what does being powerful mean to you?
So to me, now, being powerful is much different than what I would've said at eight or even 38. Now to me being powerful is being able to fully experience everything that I'm going through. Positive and negative to really be present, to embrace everything that's happening. To experience it in whatever way I need to experience it is so powerful to me.
And I never, ever would've said that. Literally a decade ago I would have had a completely different answer about, what being powerful would be taking charge and taking this and moving on and moving up and about all of these getting further in my career in life and some random thing out there.
It would never have been about just simply participating and feeling. What is happening right now?
When you look at what you have going on this year and what's coming up, what are you excited about?
From a parenting perspective, I am. So excited about the fact that my oldest is going to start driving in a month.
And it's funny, most parents say to me, oh gosh, I'm so nervous about it. I'm really not. He is a really strong person with a really good head on his shoulders. He's still a teen. I'm not taking that away from him, but I have faith in him that if something happens, he will make. The right choice in the situation and the amount of stress that his ability to simply drive himself to school will take off of me from a logistics standpoint is huge.
So from a parenting standpoint, I am really looking forward to that. From a professional standpoint, I already had my really big event with my book launch last week. But I am really looking forward to spreading my message and my key learnings around the globe. I have a few speaking engagements coming up and I will have more as the year goes on, so that's what I'm looking forward to professionally.
And for everybody who wants to find and follow you and attend those speaking events, where can they do that?
The best place to find me is at Stop The Break Life. So that's my website. It has all of the links to my social media, it has all of my appearances on there. Anytime I do a podcast, I link it in there so you can find literally anything about me at Stop the Break Life.
And of course, we ask everyone on this podcast where they put themselves in the powerful lady scale. If zero is average everyday human, and 10 is most powerful lady you can imagine, where would you put yourself today and on average?
That is actually a really powerful question. I say that thinking back to an activity I did with my therapist, where she asked me to name the top three things in my life that I love and, family, friends God, or whatever you wanna say. I can't remember exactly the three that I listed. And then she had me list the top five and then the top 10.
And I didn't put myself on that list. And we got to the end and she's like, why didn't you put yourself on that list? And so since then I have worked really hard to make sure that I am on that list. So I think where I am on average now and today, I think I'm at an eight. Perfect. And I am really happy with where I am.
There are things I would like to do that would potentially put me a little higher on that list, but I am really happy with where I have taken my life and where I have gotten, and I am glad that I am willing to put myself there and to actually give myself the credit of the work that I have done.
Because when you first asked me that question, my initial reaction was going, oh, put yourself low. Put yourself low. They're like, no, I don't have to. I am proud of myself. I do think that I have done some things that are powerful and I wanna take credit for that. So thank you for asking that.
I love that question. My pleasure.
The last thing we've been asking everyone is. What do you need? What do you want? This group is powerful. This community is powerful and I'm a big believer in you never know who has that next key you need. So how can we help? What do you need?
So the thing that I would love is if you are looking for someone to come and give a speech or.
Do a workshop around proactive mental health and how to become more resilient and to stop being an emotional Sherpa carrying all of that baggage around with you. I would love for you to float my name and let people know that I am out here and that I am more than happy to help anybody that needs help.
I would love people to go out and buy my book. And you can find the link for that at Stop The Break Life, or it's on any online retailer. Just Google Janet Barrett and stop the break and it will come up. And if you are able to read it and share that with somebody, I love to have books passed along, so you don't need to necessarily buy a new book every time, but I would love to have people pass my book along so that other people can hopefully get the benefit of it and learn that it's okay to feel and express those emotions.
And you'll love, 'cause I'm a big book share that I always write my name and the date in it and ask everyone else to also, so it becomes like a library book on the cover. I
love that concept. Yeah. Oh, I'm going to start doing that because I am also a really good book sharer. Yeah. I have a million and I'm always giving them, people will say something like, oh, you need to read this.
You need to read that. I, but I've never written on it. I should do that. I love that. Yeah. Thank you. It makes it
so fun. 'cause when, if it ever cycles back to you, there's all, there's this history of people who have touched and read the book and it really brings me joy when I get them back and like another name has been added or more than I expected have been added.
So it's one of the favorite silly things that I do.
It's when you say that library books don't have those checkout cards anymore. Yeah. And I miss that. I always liked seeing how many people had read it or if I happened to be the first one to get a book. I always thought that was really neat.
But yeah, you don't get to see that
anymore. Same as textbooks in school. Like whenever you would get one and you're like, Ooh, like the cool person, two grades ahead had this book. Wow. Yes. Oh, absolutely.
It's true though, it's and it's a nice connection to have. Yeah. Now all of my kids have electronic devices and almost all of their textbooks are online.
The, there's only one whose English teacher still has them get their physical books to actually read. So when they're reading novels, they actually have the book. And I'm a very big physical book person yeah. I am very appreciative of that, but yeah, no, people don't even get the textbooks anymore.
Ugh.
I can't imagine that. I just know how much I have to, if I wasn't recording the podcast, I'd have like my little blue blocker glasses on and I can't deal with the screens all day. Plus like touching it and highlighting I'll write in books sometimes still, and. I don't, I just, I can't get over the tangible copy version.
I can't either. I do Audible quite a bit, but if there's a book I love or it has all these graphs, it keeps mentioning that I can't see, I'll always end up buying the hard copy too.
Yeah, me too. I'm also still a newspaper reader, which people think is crazy, but I, there's so many stories in the newspaper that I would never come across.
If I was only online. Like the one that I just mentioned about talking about Nikki and the comment about her being Pastor Prime. I never would've read that online and I read it in the. Sunday, Boston Globe this week. So I love
that. It has been such a treat to get to see you and talk to you.
I'm really hoping that our crafts paths cross in real life this year. Yes. But yeah, just thank you for being one of the, first female bosses that I saw. Do it the right way and do it with ease and grace and show that at the time like you could. You could travel, you could have a family, you could crush it at work.
You could be this really empowering and encouraging boss all at once. And it's been really inspiring to see you continuing to expand your power for yourself because it just keeps leading to more empowerment for others. So thank you for doing that. Thank you. I appreciate that very much.
All the links to connect with Janet and her book are in our show notes@thepowerfulladies.com. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening, and if you could leave us a rating and review. Thank you. Come join us on Instagram at Powerful Ladies. If you're looking to connect directly with me, visit kara duffy.com or Kara Duffy on Instagram.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope we, taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.
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Website: cerebralhealth.life and stopthebreak.life
LinkedIn: janet-barrett
Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud
