Unlonely with Dr. Jody Carrington - What If You’re Not Burned Out, Just Heartbroken?

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

What if you're not burned out? What if you're heartbroken?In this deeply personal solo episode, I share the story of climbing onto a mechanical bull at 50 years old (against all better judgment), and the unexpected lesson it taught me about grief, joy, aging, and what it means to be truly bone-tired.As I work on my upcoming book, The Best in Us, I explore a powerful question: Are we really burned out—or are we carrying heartbreak that we've never made space to acknowledge?From losing my dad, navigating menopause, and feeling disconnected from joy, to recognizing how grief shows up as exhaustion, cynicism, numbness, and disconnection, this little monologue is a reminder that maybe there's nothing wrong with us.Maybe we're just carrying too much. Maybe what we need isn't another productivity hack, morning routine, or life optimization strategy. Maybe what we need is connection. A little more grace. A little more time to feel. And a little more permission to be human.If you've been feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, disconnected, or like you're just trying to keep your head above water, this episode is for you. Take a breath. Give yourself some space. And remember: you don't have to earn rest. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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our summer staple moving right on into fall. Everybody gets to pick a flavor. Everybody ends up in the kitchen and the machine does the work while we just kind of hang out. The ninja slushy twist is double the fun on tap. Visit shark ninja.ca to shop the new ninja slushy twist. When you're there, sign up for an email and get 10% off the new item as a new subscriber. Terms and exclusions may apply. Wow, welcome and welcome back to another episode of the Unlonelly podcast with me, Dr. Jody

Carrington. Guess what? Guess who's on today's episode? Me! It's a solo podcast. This is all about riding a mechanical bowl. Listen, this is a fascinating conversation with myself for the next 30 minutes where I contemplate things like burnout and broken hearts and grief.

And I talk about everything from the death of my dad to ride in a mechanical bowl. This is one you're not going to want to miss. It's going to be short and it's sweet and I hope it'll change your life. Well, hi, a solo. episode is, um, it was time. It was time to have a conversation. I'm, I don't know if you know this. I'm, I'm, I'm writing a new book and I'm in the middle of pitching a new book. It's taken me for fucking ever, which is just exhausting. And I'm thinking more and more about why, what, so part of the title is, I'll give you the whole title, um, the best in us. And it is a

liberation for the brilliant, the broken, and the bone tired. And I keep thinking about why people are so assholory-ish these days. Is this just new? Is this new? Is this like a thing that is just happening? Because like, does everybody get to 50? I mean, we've often talked about like the midlife crisis of being 50, right? So do you just get here and you're like, fuck it? I am done with the people. Like, do everybody feel like this? And so I think it can't really be that true because the day, is suggesting otherwise. Maybe we just got better measuring things. But no, levels of anxiety, depression, suicidal, ideation and completion, never this high. So there's got to be something happening in this human race that we need to talk about it. Okay? We need to talk about it. So that

premise for the next book is like, I think we need to talk about it and like urgently. Okay. So as I'm starting to write this, I think about why people want me to talk about two things all the time. Burnout and grief. And then I start thinking, maybe those two things are related. Okay? Like maybe, maybe grief is this universal process that we've always had. So, okay, so this is what I'm thinking. What if you're not burned out? What if you're just heartbroken? What do you think about that? Everybody's talking about burnout. Nobody's talking about grief. And I will, okay, I think there's five things that I want to tell you about by the end of this podcast, but I'm going to see if I can like pull the shit out. I also want to tell you about one thing that happened this week that

has made me really think about like aging and burnout and exhaustion. Okay. I used to be better at trying things. I used to be better at like just like, yeah, I'll fucking do that. You want me to dance on a speaker in billy bobs? Yes, I will. You want me to try this. You want me to do like I was adventurous, okay? I feel like in the last year, so many things have happened, okay? Like the death of my father. I turned 50. Menopause hit like a ton of bricks.

And I, I don't like people. And so I think, is there a coordinated effort between those things? And I mean, I like people. Like, just don't come at me. But like, I'm not a huge, I just notice my tolerance, my desire to spend die with people have decreased significantly, and that worries me, because that exponentially as a wife and a mother, a daughter, and as a psychologist. Anyway, so this weekend, first a story, and then I'm going to talk about, I'm going to try to tie it all together. All right. So I wrote a

bull this weekend, which makes me fucking laugh. Like, not a real one, but a mechanical one. Okay? So let me just take you back. So we went, Evan had a lacrosse game. Sorry, lacrosse tournament. So Evan is our middle son. sporty, like hockey, lacrosse, all the things, okay? One of my favorite things to do is be at my kids' sporting events, A, because I'm a competitive, B, I also, I love sports. Like, I will watch lawn bowling if you give me somebody to cheer for. I am all in all the time.

I, the only thing I watch on TV, if it's not like death and murder, like on Dayline, is hockey, baseball, basketball, the Olympics, just a boat blows my mind, curling, like, I sign me up. Okay. And if there's an underdog, I will fight for that bitch. Okay. And so I'm a huge fan. I'm also quite competitive. So I don't know if you know this, but I grow up playing ringette and hockey and then, you know, lesser versions of baseball like, you know, slow pitch and, you know, all those things, basically drinking leagues. But anytime I could play a sport, I would, uh, curling in my later years. Now I'm a bit of a pickleball fan. You know, all the things. Okay. What I have always fashioned myself after as a farm girl is that like, don't worry about it. I can chase cows. I can do

the things. And we were like pseudo farmers growing up. Okay. So we had cattle and we had grain and we had all the things. But like, you know, it was sort of like I didn't ever feel legit in this space. And my friend, one of my best friends on the planet, Leah Rattray, had charlays growing up. That's a cow, a breed of purebred, breed of cow. And I, they showed cattle all the time. And I was like, oh my God, obviously this is the coolest thing to do on the planet. Now, we didn't have pure bread. Cattle, my dad had, our parents had no experience in sort of the showing space at all. But Leah did. Her family did. And it appeared as though there was many, many potentials in the cattle world. If I only knew them, what I know now. But anyway, I decided that I was,

was going to, I sold this pitch to my parents that I needed to invest in a heifer and a, actually a cow calf pair eventually and that I was going to go and Gordon and his family was going to teach me how to show cattle and we were going to do these things, which just really happened. But I was scared shitless all the time, okay, to be honest with you, I was in the show ring, learning things, but I was very clear all the time that like I was going to lose it. The cow was going to run through the arena and kill people, including me because I was incompetent. Anyway, in the run of that experience, I also fashioned myself as a bit of a like agricultural child, like a kid, you know, like I had a buckle because I won it once when I showed a cow,

because I had the top marketing poster, had nothing to do with showing the cow. It had everything to do with my ability to sell myself. Interesting, right? Anyway, I got a buckle. So I would go to Billy Bob's in my adolescence, my youth, my youth. of college and strap on my buckle and my Wranglers. I had ropers there also called. I think I counted once.

I had like 27 pairs of different colored jeans. Okay. Not fun. And shirts or tassas on and all the shit. Okay. Anyway, I'm, I'm very,

I feel very proud of my rural roots, my agriculture ways of being, but I also felt like a bit of a fraud sometimes. Okay. Don't we all. Fast forward, I now have three children. I've just turned 50. I'm at a lacrosse tournament.

My husband is not with me, but a very cool family that plays on Evans lacrosse team. Rodeoers, big into the farming world, are at this lacrosse tournament with me. And they're like, did you know there's a mechanical bull here? First of all, you know you're in rural Alberta when one of the fundraiser options is to put your aged body on a mechanical bill and see if you can stay on the longest, which I think is fucking ridiculous. But anyway, we're in Alberta. I love the charm of it, all the things. Not a single consideration in my mind while I noticed this advertisement. Like you could buy tickets for the raffle in the booze bin, which I was all in for.

Like you give me a silent auction. I'll win everything, which Aaron reminds me you're not winning. You're actually paying. But anyway, I will bid up anybody. When there's raffles and all the kids' stuff, I'm like, basically, I'm your girl. Like, if you see me come in, you're going to make money because I really, really, under the guise of supporting minor sport, I want to win every lawn chair, every basket full of hair products and usually a shit ton of stuff I don't need. Okay, but you win it, you know? Like, how exciting is that?

Anyway, so we're at the table, buying the tickets. And in no way in my mind, am I like, I need to get on a mechanical bowl. Like you had to pay 10 Canadian dollars in this fundraiser to give you the opportunity to spin around on a mechanical bowl. No, not going to do it. At the time that I was making that very clear and educated decision, the rodeo family who plays on this on Evie's team came up at the same time. And they're all in. They're buying tickets to ride the bow. Okay, because they're skilled in this regard.

Okay, they didn't just pseudo-show cows. These humans like rodeo and wrap things around barrels and rope things, okay? And so they're like, Jody, come on, you should ride the bull. And I'm like, no, guys, like, you're also 10 years younger than me, but I'll come watch you in the curling rink, which also makes this that much more cool, is that the mechanical bull is set up in the curling rink, okay, in Strathmore, as you do. So I go with my daughter and we're going to watch these people ride this mechanical bull. So we get in there and of course their daughter hops up on this thing.

The mom hops up on the thing. Fucking rides this thing like it's her job. All the things are happening. I'm super impressed with these people and I'm like, good job. And I fairly notice in this moment that I'm like, I am the aged wise mother of the group. My children look at me all the time because we had the twins at 36. We had Asher at 34. And so, I mean, I'm 50.

and often like some seemingly 10 years older than other mothers in the group of you know any teams that the kids play on so the kids are always concerned about our imminent death and they're always like you know did you know i'll tell you this side story real quick because i i was i had one of livy's little friends in the car once when we were watching evan play lacrosse somewhere so asher evan no ashore live and her buddy was in the car and i was talking about you know being 50 and she said um oh jody you don't look like you're 50 and i was like thanks but and she's like, yeah, my mom just turned 34. And I was like, hmm, I'm sure she did. I'm sure this kid's the same age as Olivia. And I was like, I'm sure she did, sweetheart. I think you got your math wrong a little bit. Like I'm, you know, she's not 34. You know what I mean?

Like she would have had to have been so young when she had you. And so anyway, so we go home and frolic and do all the things. And then her mother comes to pick her up and we, you know, she comes to the front door. And I'm like, oh, we just love your girl. And I said, we had this funny conversation today. She said at the car, like we're talking about my age. And she said, yeah, that's so funny because my mom's three. And I said, that's funny.

She got that wrong. And she's like, no, I, I am 34. And I was like, all right, then. Fuck off. See you. Thanks for coming. You're not welcome. Like, what do you mean?

You're 34. You're 34 and I am 50 and we both have a 13 year old daughter. I don't even know in what universe. Anyway, my point is the children often ask like if we're going to make it to their graduation because their father is also 50. But anyway. So there I'm standing in that thing thinking like watching these other children's parents jump up on this bowl ride this thing like for fun, you know, and like the kids are cheering them on and all the things. And I'm like, I'm just too old for this.

Like it just sort of struck me that I'm like saddened by that that I've, you know, you reach this age. And then the dad like I got a little cocky and I was like, oh yeah, for sure. You should get on that. That's why I said to the dad. And he's like, oh, sure, I will if you will. And I was like, okay, yeah, fuck, of course I would. Yeah, if you do it, I do it. And he said, okay.

I was like, no, no, no, just joking. He said, I'll pay for it. I'll pay for you to get up on that boat. Come on, Jody. You can do it. And then the mom, the mom says this to me, you're in the best shape of your life, Jody. You could get up on that bull.

And you know what I thought to myself, she's right. Fucking right. I can get on that mechanical bull. What? Who can tell me a 50 I can't? So I saddle up to the pay section. I let this person pay 10 bucks and get me on this bowl. And then I get over there and I like I watch the other people do it and they're like I'm learning from it. You know, you got to lean back and hang out on the rope and grit your teeth and all the shit. And so then the the poor human trying to help me get on. He's like, okay, listen, like we don't have to go over the level of three. That's when we start. counting for points, like one and two are just for practice. And I'm like, no, no, no, like, I want the longest time. So could you just stay at one, like level one where the bull just kind of like rocks a little bit? And he's like, no, ma'am. Like, that's not how this works. Like,

if you want to, if you, if you want to actually, you know, compete in the mechanical bull riding world, you, we don't start timing until you hit level three. And I was like, oh, okay, well, that's bad. And he's like, and you know what? Like, we don't have. We don't have. have to go above one. And I'm thinking to myself, huh, he, he doesn't think I can do it. All right. So maybe there is some cautionary things I should be thinking about right now. Like, can you fall off the wrong way? Can you, you know, break something? And I was like, yeah, probably. So I get on. And then he's like, okay, but it's okay. Like, we'll go so sort of. So I, I, I, I'm five foot. Like, I'm three apples tall at the best of times, right? And so I saddle up to this big

fucking monstrosity. And then I realize I got to get up there. And I am not going to embarrass myself in front of this human's dad and mom and the children and my child and all the children. I'm going to just take a run at this bitch and launch myself up. Keep mind, I got on jeans and like a fancy, flowy, like black top as you do. That's what you do when you go to lacrosse games. Bad choice.

I didn't even have a good bra. So I launched myself up like I'm going to get on a bare back horse, which I don't know that I've ever gotten a bear back horse. So that's really a bad analogy. But anyway, just imagine like into movies where like the people like grab the the horn of the saddle, which there wasn't a horn of the saddle. There was a rope. So I grabbed the rope. And I take a fucking run at this thing. And I launch my leg over top so hard.

I almost shoot myself off the other side. Okay. But I'm on. I'm on. And I can hear my daughter cheering. Woo! Woo! Mom!

I'm like, you know, this is right. You can't tell them how to chase your dreams. You got to show them. So then the kid gets me all loaded up here and he's like, listen, a couple of tips. And I was like, give me all the tips. He's like, lean back, you know, move your bum up higher to the thing, to the rope. I was like, Jesus Christ. So I'm doing this.

And then I discover that if I wrap my feet around the pseudo horns on this bowl, like maybe that'll give me a bit more leverage, you know? So I, he's like, that's not allowed. I was like, listen, I feel like we're going to break some rules. here today, okay? So just look away. That's what I said. God, he's just doing his job.

Anyway, so I, I bear down on this thing. And my brother was a Saddle Brunk rider in high school. Okay, so I have made fun of him for the vast majority of our childhood when he, like, gives the nod and like, let's go boys, let's go. So I think this would be a really good time

to just like bear down and say that. So I throw my free hand, not my riding hand, but my free hand. Like at this point, if I had some rosin, I'd rosin it up, but I didn't even have a glove, so I couldn't do that. Anyway, hang on to the thing. Throw my free hand up in the air, and I say to them to the crowd, let's go, boys, let's go!

Like that. And then the thing starts, and I have to grab with my second hand because I just don't get bucked off. I, in this moment, I'm like, okay, ride the waves. That's what they say, right, go with the bow. go with the bull. So I am moving my hips in ways that has not happened since at least 1998, you know, at least 98 I haven't moved like that. And quite impressively, I still had it. You know what I mean? There is, there's video that I don't know if we can attach video to this

experience here, but I'll tell you what, you're going to get a full video version at some point. And so what happens is they put it on level one. And level one for me feels like Velociraptor. Like I am like, I don't know how people do. Like, how many levels does this bitch have? And so like, I can hear the children screaming and Livy's, yeah, she's videoing and everything. And he's like, do you want to put it up to level two?

And Olivia's like, yeah, yeah, put it up to level two. So we go to level two. This is, they don't even start scoring yet. Like, keep in mind. Like, this is not, this is just grandma level two. And I, then they turn the bowl. Okay. So just when I had it in my hip motion, they changed directions.

and I fucking launch. A hard left off the back hip, catch my hip on the hip of the pseudo bull. And my black ruffle fancy shirt just kind of takes the wind. And I land clearly on my, like, between my shoulder blades and my neck. Okay, so like, like not, not like a head injury. Well, I, anyway, I land so hard that I think to myself, you know those times where you fall and you get hurt and you're just like, I am not. I don't care if I have a C spine injury. I am going to get up and walk out of here because I'm so, A, embarrassed and be, I don't know what.

So I jump up and I'm dizzy. I don't like, and you're on a big, obviously a big, like, cushiony, fucking air-filled mat. So I'm kind of fumbling around. Looks like I've been drunk or like I have a massive head injury. And the guy says to me, are you okay? Okay. Yeah. Like he's like, you wrote at level two for three seconds.

I was like, yeah, I did. Woo! You know? In my head, I think to myself, I feel quite strongly that I have a concussion. I feel like I've knocked something loose here that probably shouldn't get knocked loose at 50, but I am not going to let the land know that. So I get off that thing and I lie. I lie to my children, to my child, because I only had one there then.

And she said, Mom, this video was awesome. That's amazing. And I was like, you're right. I did it for you. I probably, I'm not going to be able to walk pretty soon as my, fine swells up and cuts off my airflow. But anyway, oh my God, you guys, I hobbled back to the lacrosse. And I said to Aaron, I just wrote a bowl.

He's like, you what? I said, look at this video. I wrote, he's like, why the fuck did you do that? I said, because I got peer pressured into it. And now I don't think I'm going to move tomorrow. You guys, the moral of the story is this. I know you're waiting for a punchline. There really isn't one.

I could not. I stretched. out that night a lot. And it's post, it's three days post. My rodeo, what do you call that thing when you, when you go into a world, like my, my rodeo debut. And I got to tell you things are still tight. Okay.

But what I learn from this is a couple of things. You're amazing. And when you have some desire to do. to do something, to take some risks, to be fun, to have some joy again, it's a good sign for me. Because one of the things that I've noticed in the last year is I've lost access to my desire to do anything fun or funny. I, if you know me at all, I consider myself quite funny. I crack myself up all the time.

There's some shit that I think in my head or I say out loud to myself and I'm like, fuck, that's good. I should have write that down. And I think that's kind of the key to many things. And what I've noticed as I'm writing this book, as I'm like picking out the title, I'm, the word bone tired rose to the top for me every day, every day, every day. And I think about how hard it is to do anything when you're bone tired. Why is it that we're bone tired?

And I, I after my dad died, I felt such a significant. exhaustion that was so much bigger than the sadness, so much bigger than the grief, and it surprised the shit out of me. I know that for the history of being humans, people have lost people. I get that. I understand that. I understand that part of living is dying. I understand that nobody gets out of here alive. I think that it is always, I mean, when I've lost, when I've ever been in the front row of a funeral, I am amazed that people, function every day after they've lost people, particularly tragically, right? And I have spent a lot of time thinking about the level of bone tired that I felt feel in my own body, how that robs me of joy

and taking risks and doing the best things and finding the fun in all of the things that are supposed to be in this life. The most vulnerable emotion is joy. I lose access to joy, which is I think a part of grief temporarily. And I also then started to think about why we are so bone tired. And when we're bone tired, of course we're burned out. Of course we lose access to the best in us. And so I do wonder about, and I'm going to write about this a little bit, I don't know that we're just burned out.

I think we're heartbroken. I think it makes more sense to me to consider the exhaustion of humanity right now to be much more reflective of heartbreak because how you heal is in community. How you heal is together. And we've never been more disconnected, which means we're not burnt out. There's nothing wrong with us. We're just heartbroken. And if I feel like people I love the most or are in this community with or are in the village of the people that are raising my babies together, if I think about people as not burnt out, even lonely, but heartbroken, it somehow evokes something more important in me.

It makes me realize that I can do something about heartbreak. heartbreak. I can do something about that. Because I do think we're grieving more than people. We're grieving certainty and community and trust, simplicity, the future we thought we'd have. You know, I thought about like the simplicity of getting back to rural life, of being in the same K to 12 school, of going drinking in gravel pits. The biggest worry we had is could you choose from two boys from Irma, two boys from Wainwright, or the guy that you've known since kindergarten, right? That's it. I think now the options are so endless and overwhelming that there's just no place to think about things. So I'm grieving that. Not that I'm mad about or sad about

the future and the potential for things, but this constant pull is different than we've ever experienced before in the history of the world, in the history of evolution, the pace of change. She's never been like this, which is maybe why we are so bone tired. Because as I unpacked it in this first chapter, here's what I think, burnout and heartbreak look almost identical. Burnout and heartbreak looks almost identical. Exhaustion, cynicism, numbness, disconnection, all necessary to get through something that is unthinkable, unfathomable, unprocessable in any one given moment.

And I think so many of us are trying to productivity hack our way out of heartbreak, out of grief. Let's be more efficient. Let's be better. Let's be faster. Let's achieve more. And it's stealing from us the thing that we've always known to be true. We can't do, we can't outwork this.

We have to slow down. We have to give it space. Heartbreak needs dedicated time, just like grief, just like burnout. The definition of burnout is, has nothing to do with the work you do. It's your ability or lack thereof to refuel, to heal. And just like grief, I mean, you can't optimize your way through loss. The answer isn't another morning routine. It's learning how to feel what hurts.

without being consumed by it. And the first order of practice there is like to give it some space in any capacity, which we just have so little access to these days, I think. And the world rewards performance and ignores heartbreak. I mean, it's still so close. This idea of heartbreak is so uncomfortable for so many people. It's identified, it's closely connected to weakness. So we're asking so many of us to keep producing while we're caring.

impossible loads, the ability to be constantly available to people, to be constantly judged by people, to be observed by everybody, still while doing all the things we used to do like bury our dads. I think my last thought for here for now is that repair begins when we stop asking what's wrong with me and start asking, what have I lost? What have I not made time for to rest these? bones. Why isn't it safe for me to just take a breath, to have a good cry, to go outside and sink my feet in the grass, and have a conversation with my dad? Those things don't happen, even to the best of us who maybe know the shit you're supposed to do. I don't do any of those

things. And I know they'll help. I know that when you're heartbroken, what you don't need is more solutions. What you need is connection. What you need is people either here or not to hear it, to see it, to feel it, to acknowledge that this life is supposed to be hard. In fact, it's always been hard. The people who come before us have always, always struggled. And I think we're struggling more because we have less opportunity, less access, and less desire to just sit with the pain that is part of this life. That's how we rejuvenate, the bone tired, is we make some space for it.

Like listening to this podcast, like shutting this podcast off and taking 30 seconds. I mean, this doesn't have to be, we don't have to start a fucking foster care program from scratch for homeless teenage moms. Like that's how I think we feel like we've made it in this world. like the micro dosing of getting back to the humanness of grief and loss and heartbreak that we're still human.

We're still in the same very authentic place that we were raised in, that we were born into, the histories that have come before us. Let's take the good from that and from that place, learn and explore and optimize and become more efficient. and fix the world and change the world and cure cancer and do all those things. We just can't forget that first part, that in light of all of this, we're human. And when we get heartbroken and don't pay attention to it, don't make space for it, it'll catch up to us.

So from one heartbroken bull rider to another, notice just how much joy you're allowing yourself. Find a little bit more of that. spend a little time patching up your broken heart because I see it, I got one too. And together, I think if we do that, then we find much more the good in us. And we have so much more capacity to give this world what they need the most,

which is just a little more of us.