Call Me Balot

Motherhood After APAS: When the Fear Does Not End After Birth

People assume that once the baby arrives safely, the APAS story is over. The injections, medications, laboratory tests, scans, and specialist appointments may stop. People celebrate. Everyone is relieved. You are relieved too. But the nervous system does not always receive the message that the danger has passed. For many APAS moms, pregnancy ends but vigilance remains. You may check if the baby is breathing several times during the night....

Motherhood after APAS | Call Me Balot For many APAS moms, fear does not disappear after a healthy birth. This is an honest look at parenting after pregnancy loss and a high-risk pregnancy.

Redefining Success After Leaving Corporate Life

Leaving a corporate role does not automatically create freedom. It removes one structure and leaves you responsible for building another. I already knew how to work hard. I knew how to manage brands, deadlines, clients, teams, and large responsibilities. The harder question was what kind of working life I wanted to create when the company schedule was no longer making the decision for me....

Life After Leaving a Corporate Job | Call Me Balot Leaving corporate life changes more than your schedule. Define success through income, time, family, useful work, and a structure you can sustain.

Self-Awareness or Rumination? How to Know When Reflection Has Stopped Helping

I examine my reactions because I do not want my untested assumptions to make me mean, unfair, petty, or careless. I think this kind of self-monitoring matters. The problem begins when reflection stops producing new information. The mind repeats the same question, searches for a hidden flaw, and treats discomfort as evidence that something must still be wrong. At that point, self-awareness has turned into rumination....

Self-Awareness vs Rumination: Know the Difference | Call Me Balot Healthy reflection leads to clarity, repair, or action. Rumination repeats the same question. Learn how to tell the difference and stop the loop.

How to Share Your Work Online Without Feeling Like You Are Performing

I do not enjoy turning every part of life into content. I do not want to photograph a quiet moment because it might perform well, or manufacture a lesson before I have understood what happened. At the same time, I know that people cannot hire, invite, recommend, or learn from work they never see. The answer for me is not to become more performative....

How to Share Your Work Online Without Performing | Call Me Balot Online visibility does not need to feel like a performance. Share useful work, explain your choices, and make your offer easier to understand.

Why Smart People Overthink Decisions

Overthinking is often described as a failure to trust yourself. That explanation does not fit every situation. Many intelligent, capable people overthink because they can see several possible outcomes at once. They notice exceptions, hidden costs, other people's reactions, ethical questions, and the chance that new information may change the decision. The mind keeps working because it believes one more round of analysis will remove the uncertainty....

Why Smart People Overthink Decisions | Call Me Balot Overthinking can be an attempt to remove uncertainty, risk, or regret. Use a practical framework to make decisions with enough information.

I used to think I wanted to be an aromatherapist.

𝗜 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴.

I became an aromatherapist in 2019.

“When I leave corporate, I will focus on aromatherapy.” That was the plan. And I did. Aromatherapy gave me a lane I could study, practice, teach, and perhaps become known for.

And I do still love aromatherapy. I want people to understand it beyond nice smells. I want them to experience what it can do when it is used with knowledge, care, and respect. Of course, part of me hopes they will love it as much as I do.

𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵?

As I became more rooted in what I wanted my life and work to be, my work kept expanding. Aromatherapy came first, followed by yoga, energy work, coaching, mindfulness, and later, psychology. Each gave me another way to understand what a person may need.

As the years passed, it became clearer that the 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻 has to come before the modality.

When I work with clients, the question I keep returning to is: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥?

I help people find meaning in their lives. That is not work I know how to do shallowly. I study people deeply: how we think, what we carry, what shapes our choices, and what may genuinely help.

Sometimes scent may be exactly what helps someone pause, regulate, or understand something differently. Sometimes what they need may have nothing to do with aroma at all.

I don’t want to make a person fit the modality simply because I trained in it, believe in it, and love it. The person in front of me should never have to become proof that my favorite way of helping works.

The same is true of yoga, Reiki, meditation, coaching, and everything else I have studied. Each can remain an important part of my work without any one of them becoming the answer to every person, every problem, and every season of life.

So now, honestly, I 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 do want to be an aromatherapist. But I just do not think that is the whole of who I am now.

The Mental Load of Motherhood Is More Than a Long To-Do List

The mental load of motherhood is difficult to explain because much of it happens before anyone sees a task. It is remembering that a prescription needs to be found before medicine can be ordered. It is noticing that swim things must be prepared for Friday, checking school requirements, tracking tutoring schedules, monitoring vitamins, planning meals, and knowing which child will need help with which subject....

The Mental Load of Motherhood Is More Than Tasks | Call Me Balot The mental load of motherhood includes remembering, anticipating, checking, and deciding. Here is how to make that invisible work more visible.

Emotional Regulation Is More Than Staying Calm

People often talk about emotional regulation as if the regulated person is always calm, patient, and pleasant. That picture is too narrow. A person can look calm while shutting down. Another can cry, speak firmly, or ask for space and still be regulating well. The visible intensity of an emotion does not tell us everything about the quality of the response....

What is Emotional Regulation? More Than Staying Calm | Call Me Balot Emotional regulation does not mean staying calm all the time. Learn how to notice emotions, understand the signal, and choose your next action.