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Adaptive Humans™ is the podcast for real talk and intentional growth. Hosted by Jami de Lou, each episode blends meaningful stories with practical tools you can use in your next meeting, tough conversation, or high-pressure moment—and just as easily in everyday life. Together, we’ll explore how to work with emotions instead of against them, bridge differences with respect, and steady ourselves when stress runs high. With signature segments like Beyond the Bio, Brave Enough Moment, and Just Be Reset, this podcast invites you to practice adaptability in the moments that matter most.
ADAPTIVE HUMANS
Season 2, Episode 7 | May 5, 2026
I Named It Adaptive Humans. Then Life Made Me Prove It.
INTRO
Navigating massive life change while holding space for other people's massive life change. That's what this episode is about. And honestly, that's what life has felt like since I started the idea of this show a year ago.
Welcome back to Adaptive Humans. I'm your host, Jami de Lou. Around here, we return to three anchors: how we navigate our emotions, how we adapt across differences, and how we steady ourselves when stress or triggers show up. Because that's what helps us stay human when life gets real.
Today is a solo episode, and I want to be honest with you from the start. This one came from a harder place than I anticipated.
BEYOND THE BIO
Beyond the Bio is where we go beyond what you can see on the surface. Not the curated professional life on a LinkedIn profile or on social media. If you listened to my last episode with Ritu Bhasin, you know she talked about how grief will wait for you. And boy does it. And it did. And it somehow keeps compounding.
Not long after we recorded together, one of my dearest friends, a sister to me since college, lost her mom. I traveled out to be with her and for the services. And what I didn't anticipate was how it would feel to come home. The reality of all the compounding aspects of grief in my life hit me mid-flight on my way home.
What I thought about was the real realness of the fact that over the last couple of years, I have seen my family and friends more at funerals than at birthdays or celebrations. And if I'm completely honest, I cried for more than half of the flight home. And not just for my friend's loss — for all of it. The accumulated weight of grief, of change fatigue, of carrying the invisible load, and of how uncertain the world feels.
In my life and career, I'm often the one who takes care of others. And over the last five years or so, I've made a concerted effort to learn how to better care for myself, to manage stress differently, and to understand my own nervous system and stress responses. Probably part of why I make it so much a part of the podcast — because I want to help others with it.
I know all too well that all the stress, grief, and fatigue lives in our bodies. The flight home was one of those moments where it just all cracked open. And I know I'm not alone in this.
It's not just one loss, one change, one stressor. When it keeps compounding, it can linger. So then I came home and I still needed to finalize the last episode that released on what would have been my mother's 78th birthday.
I just didn't know how heavy it would feel to release it on her birthday. It was 18 birthdays without her on this earth.
The joy of her final 60th, a peace-and-soul party, kind of kept playing back for me. Everything she loved, and so many people who loved her. That was what we did.
And I miss my father-in-law terribly. And I'm still learning how to live without him here.
And then there's the league of extraordinary elders that I have lost in these last few years. The friends' parents who became like second parents to me, and like grandparents to our daughters. People whose absence doesn't come with a formal name for the grief. It's just a deep love and loss and longing and missing.
There is a weight to that kind of accumulation that doesn't have a name in most workplaces. With the best of benefits, we maybe get three to five days of bereavement leave for a specific list of people. The rest of the losses — we just carry them with us.
So like many of you do, I showed up. I finalized the episode. I managed the release. I posted on social. I managed my deliverables for clients, tasks at hand, and I performed fine. That's the functional masking that we talked about in Episode 5. Not as a villain — just as what we do when we have to.
The difference is whether we know we're doing it or not. And that week, I knew. I knew that I was showing up and functioning in the best way that I could and masking what I had to in order to get through the week. And I did it all anyway, because people were counting on me. And honestly, because I've learned that sometimes moving through is the only option to move forward.
Since I launched this podcast about nine months ago, I've been asked to adapt in ways that I did not anticipate. Some of it I've shared on the show and some of it I have not, but all of it is real. And all of it has been happening at the same time. And I constantly tell people — it is not lost on me that I named my podcast Adaptive Humans, and life is literally making me prove how adaptive I can be, constantly.
And so some of the things I've learned — slowly and imperfectly — is that being adaptive is not a trait. It's a practice. And some weeks that practice is harder than others.
This episode lands at the start of Mental Health Awareness Month. Our mental health, physical health, and our overall wellbeing are all intertwined with each other. There is no better time to talk about navigating massive life change while holding space for everyone else's.
BRAVE ENOUGH MOMENT
The Brave Enough Moment is the action that you take before you can see the whole horizon ahead. It's the action in the midst of uncertainty.
Here's what I want to name. What I experienced that week — the grief, the masking, the depleted decision-making, and the showing up anyway — I know I'm not alone in it. Not even close. So many people around me are doing the same thing right now. They're carrying the invisible load, running on decision debt, performing fine — all at the same time.
Often all in the same rooms with other people doing exactly the same thing. All making choices from a place of depletion that nobody in the meeting or environment has named. Think about what that costs — not just individually, but collectively. What happens when a whole roomful of people are masking simultaneously?
When everyone is adapting and nobody is naming it. When the leader sets the tone by performing fine and the team follows suit. Decisions get made from the wrong place. Collaboration gets thin. Trust erodes in ways that look like performance problems — but they're not.
This is the human systems gap. A gap between what people are actually carrying and what the system is designed to hold. We often want to cite a talent gap or a resilience gap — just help people be more resilient. And it's really neither of these.
My Brave Enough moment this season — the one I want to name out loud — is this.
I have learned to be kinder to myself. And that sounds simple, but it's not. Not for someone who has spent most of her career holding space for other people's hard. Not for someone who learned early that showing up fully meant showing up for everyone else first. Not for someone whose earliest life was that of a performer and a dancer who carried a relentless schedule — that gave me so much muscle memory for over-functioning and over-delivering and pushing my body to the absolute maximum. And not for someone who learned early that being useful meant being the one who fixes things.
The difference this year is that I've built a structure around how to be kinder to myself. Not because being kinder to myself happens naturally under pressure — it doesn't. And that's why we all have to architect it.
So for me, it's looked like learning to literally breathe more — focus on my breath, which is an activity that we often do on this show. Taking walks, not as exercise, but as a way to remind my mind and my body that it's not in danger, even when everything in my life feels urgent. And this next one: not overscheduling, and leaving actual space in my calendar and in my life — and protecting that space. That is a decision I make every week in an act of resistance to a culture that rewards fullness and busyness.
I've also created more of a morning practice that grounds me before asking anything of myself. And an evening practice that closes the loop at the end of the day and helps me release what's happened so I don't carry everything into tomorrow.
This next one — if you ask the people closest to me, they would probably describe it as still a work in progress — delegating and collaborating. In particular, if you have a partner, a spouse, roommates, or people you live with: letting someone else hold something so that I have room to not have to hold everything. It makes all the difference in the world.
None of this comes naturally. And I often say I'm probably about three to five years into practicing taking better care of myself — being kinder to myself. It's like I'm a toddler. I lose my balance and I falter. As much as I stick to a habit, I also kind of stumble around them a little bit.
But these are not luxury habits. They're how I stay functional. And they're how I keep making better decisions when the pressure is high and the load is invisible to everyone around me.
It also requires getting honest with yourself — and then being honest with the people closest to you in your life. I recently said to a dear friend that in this season of life, I almost want to avoid connecting with people — as much as I'm an extrovert and as much as I want to spend time with people. But when someone really asks how I am, things still feel kind of heavy for me at times.
And I'm the friend that likes to show up for others. I want to be a source of energy, of support, of care. And she was quick to remind me that there's not a person in my life that, if they called me five minutes from now, I would not do everything possible to help them and support them. And it was like a gentle nudge to remind me that my dearest closest friends — the people who I do life with — they don't expect me to be fine, happy, or great.
So I want to say that reminder to everyone else: you do not have to appear fine, happy, or great to engage with your friends or the people closest to you in your life. You can be walking through hard things alongside people that you love who might also be walking through hard things. You don't have to have it all together — or say that you're fine when you're not — to be able to show up.
Being adaptive is not about absorbing more, or how well you manage a crisis. Being adaptive isn't just a response. It's a practice you build over time. Ideally, you start building your adaptability in advance of any pressure that comes. But these days, most of us have to figure out how to build that muscle memory of being adaptive within pressure.
It's about building systems in your own life that give your stress responses helpful muscle memory — of how to recover and support you in the challenges that you might face.
On this show, we focus on how to do that while realizing that doing it across a range of human differences — whether that be culture, identity, lived experience, or generation — all impacts how we show up and how we adapt with others.
JUST BE RESET
The Just Be Reset is where we take time to pause and practice the very self-compassion that we know is so critical to renewing our mind and body connection.
This week's Just Be Reset is one I come back to more than probably anything else in my life. I talked a little bit about this earlier, but taking a short walk after breakfast or even after dinner creates sunlight in the morning, connection with nature depending on where you live, and gets you outside of your own head.
It can also help steady your blood sugar, which can really matter — especially for people who might navigate different ailments, or women of a certain age who might be navigating perimenopause or menopause. You already know exactly what I mean if you're in that group.
But mostly, the walk helps energize me at the start of my day. And even a short 10-minute walk later in the day helps release the stress and anchor me — and kind of round out my day, especially for anyone who works remotely. I don't get to do this every day, but I do try at least one time a day on most days to get out and move and breathe fresh air. And I realize that with my able body, that is a privilege. I know that's not easy for everyone.
But if you're able and you live in a walkable city, or your commute is short enough, try walking home from work. Or if you're a suburbanite or you commute long distances, try to give yourself 10 minutes on your calendar and just walk around the building or the office that you're in to get movement throughout the day. Try to add one thing — or at least acknowledge the one thing that you're already doing. Start with 10 minutes. It doesn't have to be an hour.
I'm not suggesting this because it'll fix everything. I'm suggesting it because you deserve one moment of honest care each day before tomorrow asks you to hold space for everyone else again.
So what is one thing you do as a reset? Share it with me in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.
CLOSE
Navigating life changes while holding space for other people's life changes takes a lot from all of us. It's a human challenge that deserves a human response.
Notice what you're carrying this week that the people around you can't see. You don't have to share it. Just name it for yourself.
Because the first step to being adaptive isn't about strategy. It's honestly about what your human operating system is actually processing. So it starts with acknowledging it.
If you're leading others in your life — whether that's at home, at work, or both — you cannot possibly model adaptability if you are not practicing it for yourself first.
As always, remember: I am brave. I am enough. I am brave enough. And so are you.
This is Adaptive Humans. Real talk, intentional growth.