A Founder's Story: The Lessons Of Inherited Stress Turned Into Success

Forced Off The Wheel… When Life Takes A Turn, Is When It’s Time To Bet On Yourself

The pressure to keep performing can make you forget who you are. In this episode, Renee Coover joins The Raw Onion to talk about what happens when career success, motherhood, and self-worth collide, and what it looks like to choose yourself before your body forces the issue. Renee shares her journey from high-stakes legal work to a more aligned life, including the moment she realized that burnout was not just emotional, it was physical. We talk about career transitions, the illusion of safety, self-advocacy, and the courage it takes to rebuild after everything you thought defined you starts to fall away. This conversation is for anyone who has ever questioned whether the path they are on still fits. If you have been pushing through exhaustion, doubting your next step, or wondering how to trust your inner voice again, Renee’s story offers both honesty and hope. We get into: * Career transitions and self-identity. * Overcoming fear and self-doubt. * The importance of self-advocacy and boundaries. * Building confidence and resilience. * The role of support systems and community. In this episode, you will learn: * Why burnout can show up in the body before it shows up in your decisions. * How to tell when success no longer feels sustainable. * Why a “power pause” can become a turning point. * How yoga and meditation helped Renee reconnect with herself. * What it means to bet on yourself and build something new. 🎙️ Guest: Renee Coover is the founder of Engage Law, a fractional outside general counsel who helps growing businesses navigate employment, regulatory, and operational matters with clarity and practical guidance. ⏱️ Chapters * 00:00 Introduction * 05:13 Renee's Story: From Big Law to Yoga Instructor * 11:07 Listening to the Body and Making Decisions * 19:52 Recognizing Opportunities in Life's Moments * 25:06 Embracing Change and Taking Risks * 37:20 Overcoming Fear of Risk and Embracing Change * 47:22 Armoring Up for Yourself * 55:28 Advocating for Yourself in the Workplace * 01:05:52 Finding Your True Identity 🔗 Connect with Renee: LinkedIn: Renee Coover [https://www.linkedin.com/in/renee-coover/] YouTube: Engage Law [https://www.youtube.com/@EngageLaw] TED Talk: Taking Back Your Pregnancy Rights [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrrvggy2ozc] Website: EngageLaw [https://www.engagelawchicago.com/] 🔗 Connect with Stephanie: Website: Triage Coaching and Consulting [https://triagebalancedlife.com/] Free fit call: https://tidycal.com/sohannesian [https://tidycal.com/sohannesian] 🔗 Connect with Yoshie: Website: Lotus Flower Journeys [https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/] Free clarity call [https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/contact/] 🔗 The Raw Onion: Website: The Raw Onion [http://therawonionpodcast.com/] Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com [hello@therawonionpodcast.com] #WomenInBusiness #PowerPause #CareerGrowth

A Founder's Story: The Lessons Of Inherited Stress Turned Into Success

If you have ever felt like your body gave out before your mind was ready to stop, you are not alone in that experience. And you are not broken. What happened, neurologically and physiologically, has a reason. This episode is where we start to look at it. ---------------------------------------- We closed out the Roadmap to Resilience series with something different this episode. Stephanie brought her own story to the table, and what she’s spent the last decade trying to understand about what actually broke down, and why. What we explored together: Resilience is neurological, not just psychological. Culture tells us resilience means endurance, suppression, grinding through. Neuroscience tells us something completely different. It is recovery capacity. Flexibility. The ability of your nervous system to find its way back to safety after stress. Those are not the same thing. Your body has been scanning for safety your entire life. There is a process happening beneath your awareness, constantly assessing your environment, your relationships, your inner state. When that process has been overridden by years of hustle, inherited messaging, or survival wiring passed down through your family, you lose access to your own signals. You stop trusting what your body is telling you. And that is when collapse becomes possible. What you inherited may not belong to you. The hypervigilance. The head-down, don’t rock the boat, keep working until someone notices. The inability to rest without guilt. For many of us, those were not choices we made. They were patterns absorbed from the people who came before us, people who needed those patterns to survive. The question is whether those same patterns are serving you now, or quietly running the show without your knowing. Identity and resilience are not separate conversations. If you don’t know what belongs to you, if your values have been borrowed from a workplace or a family system or a culture that taught you to earn your worth, your system has nothing stable to return to. Resilience requires somewhere to land. Curiosity is where it starts to shift. Not a program. Not a fix. Just the willingness to ask: what is this trying to tell me? What engine am I actually running on, and is it mine? ---------------------------------------- We are not here to tell you what is wrong with you. We are here because what is happening in your body, your brain, your burnout, your exhaustion, your sense that something is off even when nothing looks broken from the outside, has a reason. And that reason is rewritable. We will be back next week in a new format. Video is coming, and we are stepping into a new series exploring women in business. Until then, you are more resilient than you think. ---------------------------------------- If something in this episode is still sitting with you: Wondering if what you’re carrying might be inherited, not yours? Stephanie works with high-performers ready to remap what’s been running them. Book with Stephanie [https://tidycal.com/sohannesian?utm_source=tidycal&utm_medium=dashboard&utm_campaign=booking_link] ---------------------------------------- Feeling like you're at a crossroads and not sure which layer to look at first? Yoshie works with people who are ready to get curious about what's underneath. Book with Yoshie [https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/contact/]

The Crumble Of Capitalism: Why Doing Good Is Now Considered A Crime - It’s All By Design

About Our Guest Mazarine Treyz [https://healingfromnonprofits.com] is an artist, writer, speaker, and facilitator focused on radical imagination and healing. She has worked across nonprofit, government, and entrepreneurial spaces, delivering 100+ talks in four countries and creating courses, conferences, and consulting work along the way. She is the author of Healing from the Nonprofit Sector and lives in Oregon with her community, garden, and cat. Explore her work: Books [https://healingfromnonprofits.com] Speaking inquiries [https://mazarinetreyz.com] Paintings, prints and workshops [https://mazarine.art] There is a kind of exhaustion that does not make sense on paper. You care. You show up. You give your best. And still, you feel depleted. Not because you are failing, but because something larger has been drawing from you for a long time. That is where this conversation begins. In Episode 23 of our Roadmap to Resilience series, we speak with Mazarine Treyz. Her work explores how systems are designed to extract from those who care most, and what it takes to return to yourself after that depletion. We talk about the quiet shame many high achievers carry. The belief that if you are exhausted, you must not be doing enough. Mazarine reframes this clearly. The burnout is not personal. It is structural. The conversation expands beyond the nonprofit sector into a shared experience. You can be successful, high-performing, and still feel like something is unsustainable. Like the cost of caring has become too high. We also explore anger, not as something to suppress, but as information. A signal pointing to unmet needs and deeper truths. And rest, not as a reward, but as a starting point. A way back to clarity and choice. What stands out most is how Mazarine names the harm in these systems without collapsing into despair. She brings it back to the body, to the self, and to the possibility that your needs matter. If you have ever poured yourself into meaningful work and felt unexpectedly depleted, this episode will resonate. You can find her book and workbook at healingfromnonprofits.com [https://www.healingfromnonprofits.com/]. If this conversation is landing for you, or you are navigating burnout or a turning point, reach out to us at hello@therawonionpodcast.com [hello@therawonionpodcast.com].

The Story of How Your Ancestry Guides Your Resilience

About Our Guest Sandy Davis [https://elevateopsadvisory.com/] is a fractional COO, the founder of Elevate Operations Advisory [https://elevateopsadvisory.com/], and the voice behind Elevate Within on Substack [https://elevatewithin.substack.com/]. With over 25 years in operations leadership across investment banking and commercial real estate, she now partners with founder-led businesses to fix the operational breakdowns that quietly stall growth, so founders can stop being the bottleneck and teams can scale sustainably. Her work sits at the intersection of operational strategy and personal resilience. Website: Elevate Operations Advisory [https://elevateopsadvisory.com/] LinkedIn: Sandy Davis [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-davis-abb21236/] Substack: Elevate Within [https://elevatewithin.substack.com/] That moment when life hits you with everything at once. Loss, burnout, identity collapse. You wonder if you’ll ever find solid ground again. Many of us have been there. This week’s episode with Sandy Davis [https://elevateopsadvisory.com/] pulls back that exact layer. Sandy’s story isn’t the polished bounce-back tale. It’s the raw truth of losing both parents within 37 days, right as corporate burnout peaked and her 50th loomed. The white void of grief turning black. Survival autopilot kicking in while the world demanded she keep performing. Then, the slow reclaiming. Through her mom’s journals, sitting with different versions of herself, and deciding to rebuild on her own terms. We peel into what resilience actually looks like when the Instagram version fails. Not quick recovery, but the kind forged in fire. The masks we wear, especially as women navigating corporate spaces. And that inner voice, the little girl, the 20-year-old, still there beneath the noise, still looking for purpose. Sandy [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-davis-abb21236/] now leads as fractional COO at Elevate Operations Advisory [https://elevateopsadvisory.com/], turning founder chaos into scalable systems. But her real work lives at the intersection of operations and personal rebuilding. “My mom gave me what she could,” Sandy said, “so I could become who she couldn’t.” If you recognize yourself somewhere in Sandy’s story, we’re here. No need to have it figured out first. Reach us at hello@therawonionpodcast.com [hello@therawonionpodcast.com]. Stephanie Ohannesian is the founder of Triage Coaching and Consulting, where she helps high-performing individuals and teams regulate burnout, shift stress patterns, and build sustainable performance using heritage-informed approaches. She offers one-on-one coaching, group programs, and retreats. Learn more: triagebalancedlife.com [http://triagebalancedlife.com] Yoshie Barnett is the founder of Lotus Flower Journeys and a Crossroads Coach for high-achieving women ready to move beyond perfectionism and reconnect with themselves. Learn more: lotusflowerjourneys.com [http://lotusflowerjourneys.com]

The Real Force Behind Resilience

About Our Guest Sarosh Iqbal is the founder of Prezio, a personalized gifting brand rooted in meaning and creativity. After a career in Silicon Valley, she chose a different path. Her journey reflects resilience, uncertainty, and learning to trust herself. Website: prezio.gifts [https://www.prezio.gifts/] Instagram: @prezio.gifts [https://www.instagram.com/prezio.gifts/] LinkedIn: Sarosh Iqbal [https://www.linkedin.com/in/saroshiqbal/] There is a kind of weight that builds quietly over time. Not because everything is wrong, but because everything has been held together for so long. By family expectations. By inherited definitions of success. By the version of you that learned early that belonging meant staying within the lines. That is where we begin this month. May is our series on resilience. Not as toughness or pushing through, but as your nervous system’s ability to return to itself after stress, without losing clarity or connection to who you are. The brain does not distinguish well between physical danger and social risk. Disappointing family, stepping outside cultural expectations, or choosing a different path can register as threat. So when a woman chooses ambition or independence, her nervous system often braces. Not because something is wrong, but because it is doing its job. In this episode, we sit down with Sarosh Iqbal. Raised in Pakistan with a clear path laid out, she followed it into a corporate career in Silicon Valley. When that chapter ended, she built Prezio. What she shares is not linear. She was building a business while raising three children and navigating cultural expectations of motherhood. The guilt was real. So was the fear of judgment, which often lands deeper in the body than professional risk because it is tied to belonging. We also explore the space between shame and guilt, what happens when worth is tied to roles, and what it costs to want something beyond them. Near the end, Sarosh shares a moment with her son that brings the conversation into focus. This is resilience without performance. If this conversation resonated and you want support, reach out at hello@therawonionpodcast.com [hello@therawonionpodcast.com]. Stephanie Ohannesian is the founder of Triage Coaching and Consulting [https://triagebalancedlife.com/], helping individuals and teams regulate burnout and shift inherited stress patterns. Yoshie Barnett is the founder of Lotus Flower Journeys [https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/], supporting high-achieving women navigating life transitions and reconnecting with themselves.