The Weight of Holding It All

Joy as Defiance

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2596149/fan_mail/new] We are trained to defer joy. To earn it. To wait for it. To tie it to the next grant, the next milestone, the next proof that we deserve a moment of peace. In this episode, Lisa talks about what happens when you stop waiting — and why choosing to feel good in a world that profits from your striving is the most radical thing you can do. This is not about positivity. This is about freedom. Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/ Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday. Not role to role. Soul to soul.

The Person Who Stayed

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2596149/fan_mail/new] There is someone in your life you have not spoken to in weeks. Maybe months. And if something cracked you open tonight, they are the first person you would call. Not because you talk every day. Because they know your silences. We have an entire vocabulary for the courage it takes to leave. We have almost none for the courage it takes to stay — to watch someone you love become a person you did not plan for, and choose them anyway. Not the old them. The becoming them. In this episode, Lisa names the kind of love that does not announce itself. The person who changed the questions they asked. Who stopped meeting you at the surface and followed you down to wherever you were actually living. Who grieved the old you, quietly, so they could be present with who you are now. This episode will make you think of someone. And it will ask you to do something about it.  Soul to Soul drops every Monday. Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/ Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday. Not role to role. Soul to soul.

The First Time You Heard Your Own Voice

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2596149/fan_mail/new] THE FIRST TIME YOU HEARD YOUR OWN VOICE There is a voice you have been using for years. In meetings. In presentations. In every room that ever asked you to prove you belong. It is articulate, strategic, effective. And it was assembled, carefully, over time, from every mentor you admired, every institution you wanted to impress, every expectation you were trying to meet. Then one day, something slips out that you did not rehearse. Something unscripted, unpolished, entirely yours. And the room gets quiet. Not because you said something wrong. Because you said something real. In this episode, Lisa names what most leaders carry but never talk about: the gap between the voice that gets rewarded and the voice that is actually yours. She traces how professional fluency can quietly replace personal truth, what it costs to sound right to everyone except yourself, and what becomes possible when you stop assembling your sentences from borrowed parts. This is not about finding your voice. It is about recognizing you never lost it. You just buried it under years of performing someone else's version of competence. If the most honest thing you have said recently was in a side conversation and not a meeting, this one is for you. Soul to Soul drops every Monday. Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/ Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday. Not role to role. Soul to soul.

The Room After You Leave It

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2596149/fan_mail/new] Think about the last meeting you were in. Not the agenda. Not what was decided. Think about what happened after you walked out. Did the room exhale? Did people finally say the thing they had been holding? Did the conversation get more honest — or less? You will never be in the room after you leave it. And that room is where your leadership actually lives. In this episode, Lisa draws a line between leaders who fill a room and leaders who open one. She names why the culture rewards the person who commands the space but almost never notices the person who changed it. And she asks a question most leaders never have the courage to sit with: if the real meeting happens after yours — what is that telling you? Your leadership is not what happens while you are in the room. It is what happens after you leave it. Soul to Soul drops every Monday. Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/ Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday. Not role to role. Soul to soul.

The Weight of Holding It All

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2596149/fan_mail/new] There's this thing that happens when you're carrying a lot. People ask how you're doing, and you say "I'm good." Not because you're lying — but because the truth would take longer than anyone has time for. In this episode, Lisa gets honest about what her last two weeks actually looked like: two R01 deadlines, fifty resumes, a staffing transition, a LinkedIn post that reached fifty thousand people — and losing her 43-year-old nephew Colby, suddenly and without warning. She connects her invisible inventory to what the world is carrying right now: the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, a new Ebola emergency, and an NIH budget crisis that's pushing scientists out of the work they love. And she names the thing nobody talks about — that the weight isn't the problem. The loneliness of the weight is. Soul to Soul with Lisa Carter-Bawa. Where science meets soul. Soul to Soul with Dr. Lisa Carter-Bawa is a podcast for anyone who is in the middle of becoming — doing the inner work, asking the harder questions, and learning to live from the inside out. New episodes drop every Monday. Follow the journey: 📍 Instagram: @lisacarterbawa 📍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisacarterbawa/ 📍 Website: www.lisacarterbawa.com Follow me on Substack: https://soultosoulleadership.substack.com/ Enjoyed this episode? Leave a review, share it with someone who needs it, and subscribe so you never miss a Monday. Not role to role. Soul to soul.