Summer Body Image: What Really Hurts

Summer Body Image: What Really Hurts

Summer body image is a powerful struggle so many of us carry without always acknowledging it. Warmer weather, smaller clothes, and it can be so much harder to feel beautiful in our own skin, so easy to feel measured against everyone around us. This episode is about what's really going on underneath that feeling. The pain so many of us feel about our bodies in summer may not be about our bodies, but rather how we constantly measure them, weigh them, size them. How we compare and size ourselves up against the people and the images around us. The measuring is the part that hurts. This is not a new conversation. But consider holding beauty differently. Not as something we have to earn or put on show. As something we already are. I share a simple question you can carry into any moment this summer, one that helps you tell a choice that's caring for you from a choice that's working against you. To me, that's where Self-Love begins. These summer episodes are short and honest, and this one's close to my heart. If summer has ever left you feeling measured and somehow not enough, I'd love for you to join me in this conversation, and to find a kinder place to rest your eyes. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN * Why summer body image can be one of the hardest things to make peace with * Why the deepest pain here may not be about your body at all * What the constant measuring costs us, and how often we do it without even noticing * How to hold beauty as something you already are, rather than something to earn * One simple question that shows you whether a choice is on your side * What to do with all the noise, without fighting it or making it wrong Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Feeling Invisible As You Age? How to Feel Seen

Feeling invisible as you get older is something a lot of women experience and it's complicated and doesn't feel good or fair. In this episode I discuss how I approached this during a recent experience that shifted things in a meaningful way. It usually happens somewhere ordinary. You ask for help, or you say how something made you feel, and you get a disinterested shrug and sometimes the person even looks straight past you. And it is easy to decide that this is just what aging is going to feel like, and that there is no point trying to shift it. I don't think it has to be that way. And I feel we can all do better. This episode is about being seen as something you can claim instead of wait for, and how much it matters when women decide to really see each other. It is short and honest, the way I intend these summer episodes to be. It's hard to feel like you're not seen, it's painful and I invite you to join me in this conversation to find another way. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER * Why feeling invisible as you age is so common, and why it does not have to stay that way * What it means to claim being seen, instead of waiting for someone else to give it to you * Why what you choose to do next can matter more than whether anything changes * Why seeing each other, woman to woman, is a choice we get to make * What to do when you feel overlooked, without firing off something you will regret * Why being unseen is a moment, not a life sentence Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

How to Ask for Help and Get What You Need

How to ask for help and get what you need is a skill most of us were never taught. Asking for help is hard, and the way you ask for help changes what comes back to you and lifts the weight off the person you are asking.When many of us reach out, we often unknowingly hand over the whole problem and a silent hope that someone will give us a solution. It is heavy to carry and heavy to receive. There is a different way, and it is smaller than you think.This week I share what happened when I reached out to three friends on three different continents and asked each of them for one simple thing. Not advice. Not a solution. Just a few words. What came back did not take the tiredness away, and was never meant to. It did not "fix" the situation, and was never meant to. What it did was remind me that none of us has to carry it all alone, and that support does not have to be in the room to reach you.For anyone who finds asking for help hard, or who has never stopped to think about how they do it, this is a small and practical place to begin. It is a short, concentrated episode on purpose. It is summer, and many of you are out living the full, fabulous lives we keep talking about building, so take it on a walk or in the quiet between everything else, and carry one question with you. What does my heart need right now? IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER * The one small thing I did differently that changed how it felt to ask for help, almost immediately * Why a broad, open ask quietly lands as a burden on the person you are reaching out to * The exact request I made to three friends, and the two things I made sure to leave out * Why being specific when you ask for help is a gift to the people who love you, not a weight on them * Why solutions feel impossible to find when you are overwhelmed, and what to reach for instead * The single question to ask yourself before you reach out, especially when you do not know what you need Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Supporting Someone Who Is Struggling With Their Mental Health

f you love and support someone who is struggling with their mental health, this episode is for you. Mental health support is for the supporters too: the partner, the parent, the child, the friend who shows up every day for someone they love. You deserve to be seen, heard, and cared for as well, and that is exactly what this conversation is here to do. I am usually on the other side of this conversation. I have been the person being supported, held by people who love me, and from that closest seat I saw how much they were quietly carrying. This is the episode that finally asks how you are doing. It is the final episode of the Mental Health Awareness Month series, landing in June on purpose, because these conversations do not end when the month does. This week's question: what should we be talking about that we are not talking about? The answer is the people who hold the people who are struggling: the realities they live with that rarely get said out loud, the guilt that does not mean what they fear it means, and one small, doable practice that gives the weight somewhere to go. If you have been the strong one for someone you love, this is the moment someone turns to you and asks how you are. IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER * Why the people supporting someone through a mental health struggle are so often unseen, and what changes when they finally are * What it really feels like to love someone who is struggling, said out loud so you no longer have to carry it silently * The guilt so many supporters know well, and the reframe that reveals it as evidence of how much you care * Why being tired, frustrated, or in need of a break does not mean you love them any less * What Lulu learned from being the person who was held: what the people supporting her truly needed * One small, doable practice that lets you be supported too, and why a single honest sentence is enough to start * Where the whole five-episode series lands, and why this conversation was always for you too THE MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH SERIES Episode 78: Self-Advocacy Episode 79: Functional Freeze Episode 80: Connection and AI Episode 81: Grief for the Life You Thought You'd Have Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Nonfinite Grief: Grief for the Life You Thought You'd Have

Nonfinite grief, mental health, and the emotional grief of feeling stuck, feeling behind in life, and grieving the life you thought you would have. This episode is about processing grief that has nothing to do with death, and why so many of us have been calling it failure instead of calling it what it is. If you have been doing the inner work, showing up, pushing through, and your life still does not look the way you expected, this is for you. This is not about healing from grief through strategy or mindset. It is about what shifts when you finally call this feeling by its real name. This is the fourth episode in The Lulu Essey Podcast's May series for Mental Health Awareness Month where I am asking the question: What should we be talking about that we are not talking about? IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER * What nonfinite grief is and why finding this language changed how I relate to what I have been carrying * What most of us have been calling this grief instead, and the cost of that mislabelling * What happened at graduation ceremonies across the US this month when speakers mentioned AI, and the one speaker who got a completely different response * Why the Gallup data on Gen Z and AI is not a tech story * What opens up when grief and gratitude are allowed to sit in the same place at the same time * One practice using music and intention that meets grief where it actually lives RESOURCES MENTIONED Gallup survey on Gen Z sentiment toward AI, April 2026 Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛