Mini-Episode: Finding Meaning + Action

In this week’s mini-episode, Prentis explores the complexities of burnout and the importance of using our agency to make meaningful action in the world.

Join us over on Patreon to watch the full episode and come explore these themes and topics together -  @Prentishemphill

Transcript

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BTP - Mini Episode - January 30, 2026.mov
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Hey y'all, welcome back to Becoming the People. This is Prentis Hemphill, and this is one of my bi-monthly mini episodes. Is it bi-monthly or is it bi-weekly? But every other week, I'm doing these mini episodes where I'm talking directly to you all about what's on my mind and heart, how I'm processing the world.

And anything that comes up in our discussions online that feel relevant, compelling, that we want to talk about here, this is the space for that. As always, you can join us in our Patreon community, Becoming the People over at Patreon. And we're hoping to just make that a space of lively discussion, sharing questions, gathering of people that are you know, like-minded and trying to figure out who we become and how do we get there in this time. So please join us over there if you have not.

And yeah, please look out for these episodes. We're going to still do our guest episodes every other week. And then in between those will be mini episodes with me and maybe sometimes with an in-house guest, surprise guest to watch out for. So join us there.

And honestly, I didn't even know how to get started this week, because I had so much over the last couple of weeks. There's just been so much happening. And I bet I'm not alone in that feeling. But I was like, what is it that's really rising to the top for me that I really want to share, that I really want to talk about?

And it was a little bit of a challenge to put some words around it because I feel pretty unprocessed and raw and just continuing to situate myself in everything that's happening. So there's that. And there's also just home life too. I live in North Carolina, and the South and the Southeast this week had a major...

I don't know if it was major. It was like... they were preparing us for a major ice storm. And I think it was actually like a pretty minor ice storm, except I live out in the country.

So our road is completely iced over and our driveway is like really a winter wonderland right now. So there was a lot of prep this week, hunkering down. And actually today, as I'm recording this on Friday, we're preparing for another ice storm. So just hoping everybody is staying safe out there.

I'm not sure how widespread this one is going to be. I hope it's another case of like, you know, we're over prepared generally, but I'm thinking of everybody out there that's preparing for heavy weather over this weekend. And, you know, for those of us that are like, I was in the house for days with a four-year-old. And some of y'all got multiple ones.

Some of y'all got multiple kids. So I know y'all are tired. I did a lot of coloring, a lot of wrestling, a lot of charades, a lot of baking, all kinds of things. A lot of playing restaurant.

I did all of that this past week for the storm and when she was out of school. So sending a lot of love to the parents out there. We love our kids. Play is a whole, it's a whole thing.

It's really a whole thing. And I think what's probably been on all of our hearts and minds the last couple of weeks is what's happening really across the United States with ICE snatching up people. in many places, but particularly what's happening in Minneapolis and has been happening in Minneapolis with the deployment of thousands of ICE agents into Minneapolis. I think we talked about it on the last mini episode at that time, the murder of Renee Good.

We've also gotten more information on the murder of Keith Porter, the murder also of Alex Pretti that was recorded. shot 10 times by ICE agents. And we're also seeing just disappearances and detentions. I mean, we can't also forget just the impact on migrant communities.

We saw a five-year-old boy, Liam, who was taken into ICE custody, was used in a way to lure his father into ICE custody. And I just saw this heartbreaking photo of Liam in a detention facility in San Antonio in Texas. And they're saying that he's, it's hard for him to stay awake because he's so depressed, that he just keeps falling asleep. And any of you who've, you know, I've worked with children before and children that have experienced really massive traumas.

And I've seen that particular kind of manifestation of depression before in kids of an overwhelming sleepiness. And I just honestly find it, I mean, this is, again, it's like, these are the stories we know, the stories we don't know. I just find it so devastating and so inhumane. what we do to each other, but especially what we do to kids, especially what we do to kids.

It kind of, it really rocks me to my core, what we allow children to experience. And so, yeah, the last couple of weeks, children have been on my mind a lot, just given how we seem to treat them in this society and really all over the world. you know, when I was thinking about like, what, what can we talk about here? What do I want to talk about this week?

in the midst of all of this, in the midst of everything that's going on. I came across this clip of Tressie McMillan Cottom, who is a writer. She writes essays in the New York Times, and she's an opinion writer in the New York Times. She has an incredible book called Thick of Essays.

She's a professor, and I think one of the most precise thinkers of this moment, like she really is able to look in a way to me that feels very sober, look at the conditions and point out the forces that are at play. And so I really look to her work a lot. So shout out to her. I think she also lives in North Carolina.

But there was a clip shared on PBS NewsHour. She was on PBS NewsHour talking about burnout. And she made this really, really, really important point. It's something that I think about a lot.

She talks about burnout as not only the result of doing too much, but we can also be burnt out from doing too little. And she mentioned that point, and that is such an important point that I was like, maybe I'll take this week to dig into that. There's something that I think about a lot. I do, I just want to say, a lot of us can get burnt out from doing too much.

from being overrun, from having to, it's essentially chronic stress and the impacts of chronic stress on our bodies. The demand that's on our bodies versus the resources that we have in our bodies, in our finite being, or in our communities, or in our families, that there is a finite quality to the resources we have to do things. and it produces a chronic stress that strains the body, that strains the organs of the body, that eventually wears us down and can have all sorts of detrimental effects. So burnout absolutely can come from doing too much.

But her point about burnout also coming from doing too little is one that we overlook. And I want to kind of break it down in a few different ways. One is that how that happens is that burnout is about, if you think about what actually, okay, how do I say this? Because if we think about it, we are meant to take action.

We are meant to do things in the world. That is how our bodies are designed. We are ourselves. We are designed to move, offer.

We have ideas. We want to do them. We want to create in the world. We are made to act.

We're also made to rest, to integrate, to dream. It's a cycle. We are cyclical beings. So that's a super important thing to understand around burnout, because burnout is, a lot of it has to do with the interruption of that cycle, but we're cyclical beings.

We're meant to take action. That is one of the things we're meant to do. And how we do that is that when we feel the impulse to act, electrical currents are sent through our body, our muscles get ready to do something in the world. But if we don't have that expression of doing, our body just sort of remains in this stressful state.

We can't figure out what to do. We are afraid to do. We don't know who to do it with. Our bodies actually have the activation of doing, but we don't have the outlet of actually getting anything done or expressing that in the world.

And so if we do that over time, over time, over time, we still have that chronic stress. We still have that burnout, but we do not have that expression in the form of action. So this is why, you know, when I wrote my book, What It Takes to Heal, this is sort of the point I was trying to bring home. That when we talk about well-being, it's not just like, I feel good.

You know what I mean? I'm gooped out. I've got a smoothie. I've got what I need.

As the conditions are changing around you, as you're responding to conditions, it's also important to be well, to be active in the making of the world, to feel like you can do something in the world, to feel like you can change the world, that that actually does something too towards our wellbeing. Otherwise, we're pacifying ourselves. Otherwise, we're comforting ourselves.

And it relies on a lot of blocking out, a lot of dissociation in order to maintain the kind of well-being that does not take action in the world. So I just think this is a really important point for all of us. Because I think with social media, for example, we can have that scrolling, and we can see the world on fire in our phones. I mean, we can see it intimately, the world on fire in our phones, so intimately that our bodies can't distinguish, am I there or not?

Is that here or not? And our bodies are sitting there responding to what we see as though we're there, but then the most we do is either scroll on to something else, or we push the repost button, And that doesn't satisfy the activation in our bodies. And I'm not saying, again, I think I've said this many times, I'm not down on social media at all. I think social media has been an incredible, incredible connector.

It has been a place of raising awareness. It's been a place of education. It's been a place of community building. And I think for different people, it is more that than others.

Me, I mean, if you follow me, you know that I struggle with social media because what am I doing in my phone? I've never quite figured out the answer to it, but I'm trying to engage more with it. But I'm like, is this real life? What is this thing?

So I'm not knocking social media overall, but I'm saying that when our consumption of images, of information, when our awareness and our activation do not match the actions that we're able to take in the world, our bodies will feel the difference. your body will feel the difference. The stress your body feels will still live inside of you. And so part of the work is like, how do I balance this so that my activation has an outlet?

So I'm able to express and then, and I'm able to feel and then express that there's that cyclical nature of experience. And I think this is why we see a little bit of the tables turning in Minneapolis. I'm not saying that things are getting less dangerous. That's not my assessment at all, actually.

But I think what we're seeing in Minneapolis is that people are taking action. They are building networks of care, of response, of community protection. They're building, building deep networks that are able to respond. And what you're seeing through that kind of action is that it seems like They are changing, perhaps, in Minneapolis.

I mean, Minneapolis has been in similar situations multiple times. But they're also changing us through their actions. They're also changing our sense of our own agency. And I think this is a big piece.

It's a big piece in trauma healing. It's a big piece when we're talking about stress really broadly, this piece around agency. Do I have a sense that I can take action and that my action matters? Because stress, and this is something that we teach a lot at the Embodiment Institute, is stress is this experience of almost like a questioning.

Do I have the resources to face this challenge? Do I have the resources actually inside of me to face the challenge that I'm facing? And that question, that unsurity is what produces stress. It's like, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure I have it. I'm not sure it's here. I'm not sure I have enough community. I'm not sure that I'm strong enough.

I'm not sure whatever it might be to face this stress, to face this challenge, and that produces stress in our bodies. And I often say, how do we learn to make stress a connector? I'm not sure I have the resources. Can you help me?

Can you be with me? Can I go to where other people are facing a similar challenge and figure out with them what to do? And stress could be a connector, but it's often an isolator. I'm not going to get too much into that today, but it's something that I think is really important for us to get.

And I think one piece that gets dropped out in this in the conversations we have about burnout is how important meaning is for us as human beings, how important it is to feel like we can take action in the world, but also that it matters, that it does something for our communities or does something in the world. It has to have meaning. Meaning is very important to our well-being as a species.

It can't really be overlooked or downplayed. Meaning is so, so important to us. and it motivates us, it moves us, it can move worlds. Somebody creates a meaning or an interpretation of the world, or if you feel like the action you're taking is meaningful towards a goal, it's an incredible thing to experience.

And a lot of us for a long time, the meaning that we have is slight. We don't feel like the things that we do are, that they matter very much. that they can change anything, that it impacts anything. But meaning is so important.

And there's this theory called self-determination theory, which talks about what humans need to feel sort of self-determined. And part of it is this autonomy piece, the agency piece. We need to feel like agents in our lives. What we do matters.

But we also need to feel competent, like we have the skills that we need. And those two experiences together make it possible for us to experience meaning in the world. And I was thinking about this and trying to break it down, because I was like, okay, so if we don't experience ourselves as having competence, but we think we should have agency or we feel ourselves as agents in the world. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you're like working somewhere and making some offering.

And it's like, I want to be experienced as a leader in this way, but secretly inside, I don't feel like I'm very competent. And so then the kind of leader we end up being is a little bit insecure or anxious around getting found out around how we lead. And it's hard then to get out of our own minds and out of our own ways and actually see other people or support other people or negotiate or whatever it might be, because we're a little bit stuck in our own story. I think that's part of it.

And then there's this part of like, I'm competent, but I have what I need, but I actually don't have, I can't take, there's no place for agency in the world. There's no place where I can take meaningful action. And then you get stuck almost like that kind of burning rubber sensation of like, I got it, but it can't actually come out in this world. And I think for a lot of marginalized people, for a lot of black people, I relate to this experience of growing up and feeling like I have something to say, but nobody knows how to listen to me.

and nothing I do makes an impact. And it really rocked my sense of meaning. In fact, I didn't relate to meaning for a long time in my own life. I would look back historically and be like, you know, black movements historically, civil rights movements, those movements had meaning, but meaning wasn't available to me because I couldn't figure out where my agency was.

And the truth is, they had to figure out their points of agency, their points of choice. They had to open up portals in order to be able to act and to do things, to be creative. But I had that sense of like, there's no agency for me, especially as a kid, especially as young people. You can feel like you understand something, but I don't have anywhere to put it.

I don't have anything to do with it. And so it disconnects you from meaning and it also burns you out over time. If you know things, you have things to say, but you have nowhere to go, nowhere to put it. It burns you out.

So burnout can be the result not only of doing too much, but it's almost like your body's wanting to do something, but you're not allowing it to happen, or you don't know how to allow it to happen, or someone else is impeding your body from doing the thing that your body wants to do and express. And that's where a lot of this, I mean, obviously this is all political in a way, There's a reason why rights get taken, why agency gets stripped. And when that happens, when people are burning rubber, they are more easily co-opted into stories that give them some place to express themselves, some place to take action, some place to do something.

You know, so those old stories of like, colonizers coming in and people sitting with this question of like, well, how do I, how do I square this up with my gods? When it seems like their gods are allowing them to come in and take over. Your meaning gets disrupted. Cause you know how to be in the world, you know what to do, but your agency gets disrupted by conditions, by the forces.

And then, and then what? And then you can lose sight of your own meaning. Then you can be exhausted just by trying to live inside of systems that don't seem to serve you, that don't seem to see you. And I guess with all that, what I really want to offer around this burnout piece It's one manager energy.

I don't mean hide out. I don't mean take yourself away from the world. But I mean, you have finite energy in your body. And how you tend to that energy, how you grow that energy, or you feed that energy, how you let it move up and out.

All of that really matters. That's actually what creates well-being, those rhythms. Being in that kind of rhythm of life, that's what creates well-being. Not hiding away from life.

Not being a martyr all the time, but allowing yourself the human cycle of expression and tending to that. You are who you are supposed to be tending to. I know we got other people we care take and other people that depend on us, but we can care for people better when we're able to understand our own energetic cycles more and tend to that energy. So one, just Protect the quality of the energy that you have.

Be mindful of the quality of energy that you are producing and expending or not expending. Where are you stuck? Everything is rhythm. Everything is flow.

Everything is movement. Where are you stuck? Do you know your stuck places? And the other thing is this piece around expression.

You know, when we're In this question of burnout, we can feel like, well, I'm looking at these massive, overwhelming, repressive conditions. There's no action I can take individually that's going to meet the level of stress or terror that I feel in my body related to these systems. So what do I do? So it does feel like something to, be on social media, to argue with somebody on social media.

It does feel like, you know, if I do this enough, I'll meet that need. And I feel two things on that. One is that wherever you are, whatever you're a part of, whatever it is that you do, There's always some action to take. If you are a writer, what are you writing about?

Who are you writing to? Who are you writing for? Who is it touching? What are you saying?

What are you afraid to say? If you are an artist, what are you depicting? And for who? And why?

Anywhere you are, if you're a carpenter, what are you building? For who? We all have choice points. We may have a different set of choice points.

We may have more or fewer choice points, but we each have choice points where we can make decisions about how we live in our situation in our lives and what we do with the energy that we have, how we create meaning for our own lives. Because sometimes there are things that we can do that might appear to somebody else to be small, but when you look across from the person that you are building with, that you are sharing with, you realize that that meaning, that exchange of connection, of support, you can feel the field of meaning there. I know when I do, even when I do one-on-one work, which I certainly don't think one-on-one work is always the answer, but when I do one-on-one work, the recharge of meaning that I can feel with people, I don't know how to describe it to you.

Of like, I chose to do this with my life. I sometimes think when I work with people that I have, I can't believe that this is what I get to do. That I get to watch people shed something that they thought they never could shed or encounter something inside themselves that they never thought they could encounter. That's such a gift to me.

And the meaning it creates, the energy that I can release then is just amazing. So whatever you do, however you do it, the question is like, Where could I be experiencing more meaning in this? What could I do to be experiencing more meaning? And then I think the other piece is, who are you doing it with?

Because we have this uncanny ability as human beings, and we all have it to different degrees. But I can feel other people. When we're together, I can feel you. Sometimes we can feel each other.

I can feel your excitement. If you're around your friends and they're excited or they're sad, you can feel that. You can share in that. You got these mirror neurons that allow us to reach through our own skin and feel each other.

So when we are feeling like I'm not making the impact that I want to be making based on what I see going on, do it with some other people. Do something with somebody else. That's why people say protests don't do anything. To me, yes and no.

To me, yes and no. A march may not directly change a policy that day. You can't make it happen exactly that way. You can signify pressure.

You can signify mounting public concern or alignment. You can start to change or push a certain narrative about something, but you also give people the experience. of feeling connected to other people and feeling a little more powerful than they felt before. When they realize, you know, you can't carry everything on your shoulders, but when I look out and there's thousands of people, like we saw marching in the streets of Minneapolis, when there are people as far as you can see, you realize that if we each take a little

piece of this, if we each have a little piece of this, our piece of this, There's enough of us. We have what we need. And that's not just an idea. I think sometimes people have to viscerally have that experience of looking around and feeling alignment, looking around and feeling something bigger than them.

And that reifies people. That brings people into a creative, generative space. That brings people into their power. And that can't be overlooked.

It's not the whole thing, but it's part of it. And it's a part of how we shift who we are in this moment, how we shift our understanding of what's happening is by really using that technology of being together in order to buoy ourselves, make us more courageous, make us more creative. Because what you don't have is found in the collective. What you don't have is found with other people.

And that's really the message. So for all of us who have felt burnout, Lord knows I've been burnout. For sure, I've been burnout. I've been burnout from extending too far, but I am in this same exploration of like, what if burnout isn't about going too far and it isn't about hiding, but it's about a certain precision.

It's about community. It's about using and replenishing my energy in ways that generate meaning for me. What if it's about that? So that's what I want us, I mean, if you're here, I hope that that's a helpful question today for us to be chewing on in this moment when there's so, so much happening.

And who knows, honestly, by the time this comes out, what will have happened. I certainly don't want to call in anything, but we know that there's mounting pressure. But we also know that we're seeing beautiful things happen between people, amongst people in communities. And those are also stories we can tell.

So who knows what beauty will have happened. in the next few days before this podcast comes up. Who knows what kind of humane act might have occurred, what courageous act might have occurred. So I'm wishing that for all of us in this moment.

And I'm just really happy that you're all here on this journey, Becoming the People. And again, if you want to be part of the conversation, join us on the Patreon. We'll be doing an offering more there. We'd love to be in community and conversation.

If there's things that you're like, hey, can you talk about this a little bit? I'd love to hear it. Please send your ideas, anything you've got, bring it on over to the Patreon at Becoming the People. And thank you all for listening.

I'll see you next week. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña with special production support this season by Jasmine Stein. It's sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine. Our theme song was created by Mayadda.

If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you listen. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon. Prentis and Phil, you're having a great time over there building community, learning together. Come join us.

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