Mothering Yourself: Victoria on Burnout and Self-Compassion
Victoria Duarte joined host Keila Aldea on episode 99 of the She Can Heal podcast for a conversation about burnout, mom guilt, and the pressure to keep doing everything at once. If that pressure is familiar, the episode is worth an hour of your time.
Victoria is a mindfulness and somatic coach, a trauma-informed Reiki and meditation practitioner, and co-founder of Healing Arts Center, a veteran-owned wellness collective in Virginia Beach. She has practiced for more than fifteen years, and she came to this work through teaching, which is where the conversation starts.
Healing is not one path
Victoria makes a case throughout the episode against the idea that there is one correct route through burnout. Different bodies respond to different approaches, and a person often needs several at once, which is the reason Healing Arts Center brings clinical care and holistic practice together under one roof rather than asking people to pick a side. Someone working with a licensed clinician can also sit down with a Reiki practitioner or a somatic coach, and none of it competes.
From teaching to somatic work
Victoria describes how classroom teaching and motherhood led her toward mindfulness and the body. Both roles put her in constant contact with other people's dysregulation, and both taught her how much of what a person feels shows up physically before they can put words to it. That observation became the basis of her practice.
Mom guilt and the self-care industry
Much of the conversation takes aim at self-care as a product. A candle and a bath are pleasant, and neither one addresses the belief underneath the exhaustion, which is that taking up space is selfish. What Victoria offers instead is daily self-advocacy: small acts of asking for what you need, in ordinary situations, before you reach the point of collapse.
Self-compassion without toxic positivity
Victoria is direct about the difference between compassion and positivity. Talking yourself out of an uncomfortable emotion is not compassion, and it costs you information you need. She frames self-compassion as an assertive practice rather than a soft one, since recognizing that something hurt you is exactly what allows you to set a boundary around it.
Practices small enough to actually use
The most practical stretch of the episode covers what to do in the middle of an ordinary hard day. You do not need an hour of meditation. Noticing your posture, slowing your breath, feeling your feet against the floor, releasing your jaw or your shoulders: these take seconds and they interrupt the stress response before it builds. Victoria walks through several of them with Keila.
Three things to take with you
Options matter. Recovery is not one size fits all, and having somatic, holistic, and clinical care available lets you find what your body actually responds to.
Self-compassion is assertive. Honoring what you feel is how boundaries get built, not a way around them.
Micro check-ins count. A few seconds of attention to your breath, your posture, and your feet can shift how the rest of an hour goes.
Listen to the episode
Episode 99 of She Can Heal is available wherever you get your podcasts. If the conversation raises something you would like support with, Healing Arts Center offers mindfulness and somatic coaching, Reiki, sound, movement, nutritional coaching, massage, and licensed clinical care in Virginia Beach. Listen here https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-99-mothering-yourself-overcoming-burnout-with-self/id1747628921?i=1000783875894 or https://open.spotify.com/episode/0een44TDirXz8t1hFR5n58?si=Z5J0HfWQSNmZTfkOaorXqQ&nd=1&dlsi=bc4c0628a2584611
Call (757) 251-9301 or book at healingartsvb.com and to schedule with Victoria https://www.vagaro.com/healingartscenter
