Breathing Room with Clordene

The Myth of the Superwoman

Nobody told me the Superwoman cape was actually a straitjacket. I put it on at thirteen, the year my skin began to change, learning to act fine before anyone could be unkind, and I didn't take it off for thirty years. This episode is an honest talk about the impossible standard we measure ourselves against as driven women, what the cape really costs you, and how to start setting it down, one small thing, one safe person, at a time. Because letting go of the Superwoman myth isn't lowering your standards. It's trading a performance for a partnership.
In this episode:
Who the Superwoman really is, and why she's impossible on purpose
My first cape: learning to perform fine at thirteen
What the cape costs you, and the one tell that you're wearing it
How to start taking it off without panicking and pulling it back on
Reflection prompt:
Name one thing you’ve been pretending you’re fine at that you really aren’t. Write it somewhere only you can see it. That’s the whole first move.
Purchase the devotional using the link below
Breathing Room for My Soul Devotional

When Your Identity Lives in Your Output

For sixteen years, Clordene was a voice on the radio. It was the perfect place to hide a body she had spent two decades afraid to have seen. But when she left that career, she discovered the cost of fusing your identity to your output: the day the work stops, you find out whether there was a you underneath it. This episode defines what burnout actually looks like for driven women, names the identity fusion most of us were trained into, traces how it moved from Clordene’s schedule into her body, and offers a way back, three moves from fused to free.
 
In this episode:
What burnout actually is (and the disguise it wears for driven women)
Identity fusion: how your worth gets wired to your work, and the one tell that you are fused
Clordene’s story: the voice that hid the body, and the day it stopped
From fused to free: Catch it. Separate it. Re-anchor it.
Reflection prompt:
Write three things that are true about who you are that have nothing to do with what you accomplish. 

Why Building Something You Believe in Still Leaves You Empty

When everything looked like it was working, I was running on empty.
In this episode I share the story behind the show, and behind a season when the work was good, the calling was real, and I still found myself completely depleted. I had been pouring out of a cup that nobody was filling, including me, and calling it faithfulness.
I unpack the lie so many of us absorb without ever being taught it directly: that rest is something you earn once the work is finished. The trouble is the work is never finished, so the rest never comes. We keep building, holier and emptier at the same time, mistaking exhaustion for devotion. But being empty is not a spiritual achievement.
This episode is about noticing that pattern before it breaks you, and about the truth that quietly sets you free. You don't have to sacrifice your faith to succeed, and you don't have to sacrifice yourself to build something that matters. Sustainable work needs both ambition and rest.
This week's breathing room: notice one place where you're running on fumes, and doing it anyway. Don't fix it yet. Just name it. Awareness is where breathing room begins.
The devotional that started it all, Breathing Room for My Soul, is linked below.
Faith, work, and room to breathe.
In this episode:00:00 Introduction to Breathing Room02:59 The struggle of balancing work and well-being05:53 Understanding burnout and the need for rest
Resources:Breathing Room for My Soul (the devotional): Breathing Room for My Soul
 
 
 
 
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Trailer

What Breathing Room is and Who it is for.