Through The Meat Grinder: Through The Meat Grinder Guest Series

Through The Meat Grinder Part 2

Casually Intense — Fri, 08 May 2026 11:02:35 GMT

Welcome to Through the Meat Grinder. This article is a part of a weekly guest series. You can find the other posts in the series here.

I can’t explain how I connect with people on Substack in ways that I almost never do out in the world. We like each other’s work and have a similar drive, compassion, and sense of humor. I dive deeper, and everyone I feel this way about is a little bit like me. They are not quite like me, as they come from different places and have different characteristics and wildly different stories. After 10 sentences of conversation with these new connections, I learn why we are drawn to each other. We’ve been through something. We have a depth that only comes from having lived through something that pushed us past our limit. We became something else to get through it. Our soul was scarred from keeping us together when all of our systems signaled alarm at the same time. We got through it. We learned more than we ever should have. We learned to make peace with this knowledge so we could sleep at night. Getting through that thing pushed us in different directions. Our lives were shattered, then pieced back together. We have this connection between us because we have been to the same place. Overload. And the only other thing we may have in common is that we are both still here, taking life one breath at a time.

I never leave a raised hand unanswered. I had read some of Casually Intense’s articles, but I really only met Stephanie a few weeks ago in the simplest way. I sent a Substack note to the world about how collaboration was changing me for the better, and I asked if anyone wanted to collaborate. Stephanie answered quickly. I pitched her my idea for this series about vulnerability, trauma, and strength through growth, and she responded…with a DRAFT. These are not easy questions, but she handled them casually and with great intensity.

Stephanie Jones writes about boundaries, big feelings, and bounty. She writes about surviving systems, healing in public, and keeping a sense of humor while life is on fire. She talks about the systems that we interact with at work and the price we pay emotionally for their inadequacies. Casually Intense brings a unique blend of feeling and emotion to the workplace discussion. She is a poet dismantling antiquated ways of work one line at a time. Her ideas give us hope that we can shake ourselves free of these inadequate systems and become something more.

Casually Intense,

Welcome to Through the Meat Grinder.

1. Describe a time that the world has ground you into pieces, and putting yourself back together helped you become who you are today?

I don’t think it’s ever just one moment. It’s usually a stretch of time where things stop holding together the way they used to. For me, it was a period where I was showing up, performing, doing what I needed to do… but internally nothing felt stable. What I realized later is I wasn’t breaking because I couldn’t handle life. I was operating within something that had no real support built in. So it looked like I fell apart, but really, I was trying to hold together something that wasn’t meant to last long-term. Putting myself back together wasn’t about becoming stronger. It was about becoming more honest about what I actually needed to function.

2. What has helped?

What helped wasn’t one big thing. It was a few small things that actually held. One of the biggest shifts for me was letting go of the idea that I had to feel grateful while I was struggling. I actually wrote about this in “Gratitude Can Wait.” Forcing gratitude too early can feel like you’re dismissing what you’re actually going through.

Support 1 – Stability Over Intensity

I stopped looking for things that fixed everything and started looking for things that helped me get through a day, or even just that moment/hour minute.

Support 2 – Language & Understanding

Being able to name what I was experiencing changed everything. It reduced the confusion and that overwhelming feeling of willfulness.

Support 3 – External Support

And honestly, having people or professionals who are trained to handle that level of weight matters. To carry alone is optional, but it really helped me, and I highly recommend finding some form of support or community to lean on.

3. What hasn’t helped?

A lot of what people suggest doesn’t actually help when you’re in it. What hasn’t helped is being told to just be grateful for it all when things feel heavy.

That’s actually why I wrote, “Gratitude Can Wait.” Because sometimes pushing gratitude too early creates more pressure instead of relief.

It can make people feel like they’re failing at coping, on top of everything else.

Miss 1 – Oversimplified Advice

Things that sound good but don’t match the reality of how heavy it feels.

Miss 2 – Pressure to Bounce Back

There’s an expectation to recover quickly or quietly, which can make it worse.

Miss 3 – Internalizing Everything

Thinking that everything is your fault when much of it is situational or structural.

4. What is one thing you’d like everyone to know so they will be more prepared when the world grinds them into pieces?

You don’t need to be fully okay to keep going. A lot of people think they have to solve everything before they can move forward. That’s not how it works. Sometimes the goal is just to reduce the friction enough to get through the moment. You don’t have to force yourself into gratitude or clarity right away. Sometimes stability comes first. The rest can come later.

Gratitude can wait. Getting through the moment can’t.

Please remember to attempt to stay kind to yourself during this time.

Not everything that feels like a personal failure actually is. Sometimes it’s what happens when a person is carrying more than was designed to hold. To let go and change what is being held, start by observing the patterns (the cycle you’re finding yourself in), then write down how you want it to look, and take one micro action towards the design you wrote down. It can be embarrassingly achievable, but that is the beginning of the climb out of the dark.

About Stephanie Jones

Founder of FLEek (Frictionless Loyalty Engine) - focuses on how systems impact people, performance, and consistency.

Background in high-pressure customer experience/healthcare operations environments

Known for breaking down complex experiences into clear, honest insights

Speaks on burnout, pressure, inconsistency, and what happens when people operate without real support

Writes under Casually Intense - explores healing in public and pattern recognition

Perspective: not everything that feels personal actually is - a lot of it is structural

Through The Meat Grinder Part 1

Through The Meat Grinder — Fri, 01 May 2026 11:03:25 GMT

I can’t explain how I connect with people on Substack in ways that I almost never do in the world. We like each other’s work and have a similar drive, compassion, and sense of humor. I dive deeper, and everyone I feel this way about is a little bit like me. They are not like me, as they come from different places and have different characteristics and wildly different stories. After 10 sentences of conversation with these new connections, I learn why we are drawn to each other. We’ve been through something. We have a depth that only comes from having lived through something that pushed us past our limit. We became something else to get through it. Our soul was scarred from keeping us together when all of our systems signaled alarm at the same time. We got through it. We learned more than we ever should have. We learned to make peace with this knowledge so we could sleep at night. Getting through that thing pushed us in different directions. Our lives were shattered, then pieced back together. We have this connection between us because we have been to the same place. Overload. And the only other thing we may have in common is that we are both still here, and we are taking life one breath at a time.

I don’t evaluate people the way most people do. I admire an author I met in person recently, who retired from financial planning to focus on green living and teaching people how to create food from their land. Out of the group of my friends that went to engineering school together, one of us quit his corporate job already to be an entrepreneur. What an incredibly scary move to leave the comfort of corporate America to do something on his own, especially with a family and the cost of private health insurance. One of his businesses now makes multiples of his previous engineer salary in annual revenue, and another of his businesses is committed to removing microplastics from people’s insides. I admire a unique blend of qualities and skills over their list of accomplishments, and I’ve added additional criteria. What are they doing for others? All of the authors in this series are people who have survived something, succeeded in something, realized there isn’t an exact place for them, and are now trying to create something of their own, while still giving something back to the world.

I admired long before she reached out to me a few weeks ago to guest author in her weekly series The Art of Staying. I am featured in part 4 of Dr. Eggleston’s Clear View series, and the link to that article is here.

is an ER doctor in Chicago. Her title already has my respect. When I first subscribed to her Substack, I expected medical notes, wellness tips, and emergency room stories. Of course, she is full of this knowledge and has these stories, but she is also writing about appreciating life, being present, learning resiliency, and how to align with your purpose.

To be a medical doctor and find time to write, and more specifically, to write in a way that is fully serving others, is not a skillset; it’s a gift. Dr. Eggleston knows that life is precious, that our time here is short and valuable, and that having a clear view is imperative. She offers a unique perspective and one that I am honored to share with you today.

Welcome to Through the Meat Grinder.

1. Describe a time that the world has ground you into pieces, and putting yourself back together helped you become who you are today?

In reality the world has done this to me more than just once. Medical training alone feels designed to break you down and rebuild you. But the first time I think matters the most, because it’s the moment you learn you can survive something like that—and once you know that, you carry it with you.
When I was 18, I lost my brother to a drug overdose. We had struggled with his addiction for years, and we thought he had overcome it. He had been sober for eight months before the day I found him in his apartment.
Six months later, I left for college.
Looking back, it felt like a cruel kind of timing—being pulled away from my family in the middle of that grief. But at the time, I didn’t want to delay my education for what I told myself was “no reason.” I remember being surrounded by people my age who were so excited to be starting this new chapter, and it felt like a sick joke. I cried myself to sleep most nights, quietly, so I wouldn’t wake my roommate.
Those first two years of undergrad were some of the hardest years of my life. I was learning how to live in a world without my brother. I was separated from a family system that had been deeply ingrained in me, and beginning to recognize just how toxic some of those dynamics were. At the same time, I was being exposed to new people, new experiences, and new ways of thinking—things I was completely unprepared for, having grown up in a conservative Christian household in Texas. There was a lot of shame tied into that, and I didn’t yet have the tools to process it.

2. What has helped?

That time in my life was a period of breaking and rebuilding, over and over again.
It was also the time I found some of the most important things in my life.
I learned what real friendship looked like. I met people I still love deeply today. I walked into my first hot yoga class and found a practice that saved my life (more than any ER doctor ever could) in that it taught me how to reconnect with my body that I had become accustomed to disassociating from. As a health and exercise science major, I spent countless hours in the gym, learning how to take care of the vessel that carried me and understanding what food actually nourished my body from the inside out. I learned—through trial and error—that alcohol was never something that worked for me no matter how much or how little I drank of it. I was in the honors college, which meant I constantly had my nose in a book trying to keep up with the endless reading assignments, always expanding my worldview.
And for the first time, I started to understand that I had a choice in how I lived my life. I was able to pull away from the passivity with which I had grown up with. The lack of control I felt with my brother’s addiction and my parents’ lack of emotional intelligence was no longer at the forefront of my experience. I was gaining a different perspective by simply exploring what existed in the world outside of what I knew. I think I was lucky in that the specific things I was experiencing— my major, the readings I was assigned, the specific friends I met— happened to be healthier alternatives to what I knew. I wonder if any of those specific experiences had been different, if I would have found myself down a different path. But I knew enough to know that I wouldn’t allow alcohol to be a crutch for my grief. So maybe not.

I think in reality what helped was just getting out in the world and experiencing new things, because it allowed me to come back into my body and learn how to be intentional about what works and what doesn’t. It showed me that the world has so much to offer if I was just brave enough to get out there and try it. I learned that the bubble that I grew up in was not the only space in the world.

3. What hasn’t?

It took me a long time to untangle myself from my family. When those dynamics are so deeply wired into you, it’s not something you just walk away from. I should have been able to lean on them during that time, but instead, I found that they were leaning on me—even from a distance. I began to see how the roles had at some point in my life reversed, how my parents had become the ones depending on me, and I had to learn how to step out of that. It was a painful realization to want to find solace in people who were never truly available to find solace in.
At the same time, being away from my sister was incredibly painful. I had to learn how to set boundaries with my parents while still being intentional about maintaining the relationship with my sister. We needed each other desperately at that time. It felt as if she was the only other person in the world who could understand what we had been through.
I also entered college in a long-term relationship, and I stayed in it longer than I should have. Part of me was afraid that if I left, I would lose the last person who had known my brother. I would never again date a man who had the privilege of knowing my brother. That piece of who I was would be missed by anyone who came into my life after he had gone. When I finally ended it, I moved through a series of unhealthy relationships, largely because I didn’t yet have a strong sense of self-worth. I thought being in a relationship solved something—but it didn’t. If anything, it only ever created more problems.
I avoided drugs because of my family’s history, but I still drank. And even then, I never built a tolerance—I was always a lightweight. News flash— alcohol, in fact, did not fix anything. I know, I know. I am sure every intentional human here on Substack is surprised by that.

Yeah, there were a lot of hurdles that felt like they set me back from my healing. But when I look back on it now I think it was all a part of the learning. I was learning to stand on my own two feet and realizing for the first time that I was actually capable of that. I didn’t need my parents or a romantic relationship to keep me afloat. As much as I would have benefited from more time with my sister and as healing as that relationship was, I also didn’t need that. What I needed, and what I realized through the lack of other options, was to show up for myself.

4. What is one thing you’d like everyone to know so they will be more prepared when the world grinds them into pieces?

Here’s the thing—the world ground me into pieces when I lost my brother. I suffered from PTSD for years after finding him like that. And while I picked up some bad habits along the way, I also built good ones—habits that are still part of my life today.
More than anything, I just kept showing up.
I would try something, realize it didn’t feel right, and eventually let it go. It was constant trial and error. It still is. At first, everything felt impossible. But I stayed with it. And after those first couple of years, I realized something important: if I could survive that, I could survive anything. And I have.

Bad relationships, long hours in medical training, moving across the country—I’ve faced all of it with the same underlying belief that I will make it through. That I will land on my own two feet.

When you show up for yourself over and over again, you start to understand your own resilience. I never thought I could survive something like that— and then I did.

Kintsugi—the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold—feels like the closest metaphor. The breaks aren’t hidden; they’re highlighted. They become part of the story, part of the beauty. Cris informed me he actually has a piece on this beautiful practice too (how’s that for the connection he was talking about at the beginning of this article), check it out here. And I’ll leave you with this:

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen, Anthem