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Introduction to the Play Big Queen Podcast...
Welcome to the Play Big Queen podcast.
This is for the woman ready to lead with power, move with confidence, and own your Play Big self.
For my newly minted or late blooming, neurospicy visionary babes who are waking up to your power and unmasking your brilliance.
For the sovereign leader building success on your own terms.
I am your host, Kate Bailey.
I am the Play Big Queen.
My name is my title and a command for all women, Play Big Queen.
I invite you to claim this title for yourself and coronate your Play Big Self too, so it can serve you.
This is a space for bold embodiment, radical reclamation, unapologetic leadership, and a business that works with your wiring, not against it.
Your voice is meant to be bold and heard and your brilliance is here to be claimed.
You are already powerful.
I am in service of everyone fucking tired of the people pleasing grind.
We go deep, we get real, and we play big.
It's a new era for women on the Play Big path.
Long may we reign.
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Hello and welcome to episode 50. It has been 50 straight weeks where I have been showing up, you have been tuning in and listening to podcast episodes on everything from neurodiversity to leadership, embodiment and all the life and lessons and experiences that come along with playing big. I want to use this episode
to speak very precisely about where I'm at right now after 50 episodes. I'm looking forward to completing a whole year of this podcast, but over the past few weeks, I have been noticing a kind of low-lying tension that has been brewing underneath many of the plans that I have set going forward. I value my relationships that I have built
through this platform, through social media, and I value staying in community and in conversation with people who have been with me throughout my work. And at the same time, I am recognizing that the kind of creative development I am entering into requires more space, more privacy, and a different relationship to time than ongoing public engagement allows.
That tension that I've been feeling is the context for everything I'm about to share in this episode today. But first I want to share a practical update. The Walk & Tawk program is officially closing on January 7th. If you were part of the WTW community, you already received my email explaining why I am closing the program. We are still going to meet on December 24th.
December 31st and January 7th. I chose to keep those final gatherings, especially around the holidays, because I believe that endings deserve structure and presence. Closing something intentionally is different from letting it dissolve. Walk and Tawk was created to support connection without performance. What emerged was intimate.
and meaningful and that has not changed. But the decision to close Walk and Tawk is not at all any kind of comment about the value or the quality of community. It is about my capacity to steward that level of relational engagement responsibly during a season that I now find myself entering.
I thought I was gonna keep the program open in 2026, but the longer I sat with it, the more I realized that it just didn't feel right. And honestly, this is part of how I operate. I am quick to make decisions because I'm very clear on what I want. And I was so clear that I wanted community going forward. And it means everything to have people who have been with me on this journey.
continue to be with me from the beginning all the way through to the end. But as clear and decisive as I am, sometimes the practical implementation of either my desires or my life's work starts to look different when the rubber meets the road. You know, something that has always fascinated me are the philosophies, cultures, or groups of people or stories that
believe in or share the power of leaving the group totally in order to come back to the community and have something better to offer the group. In different communities, it could be known as the hero's journey, a vision quest, a walkabout, or even a rite of passage. In Sicilian cultural history, particularly among women, a departure from the community is not interpreted as abandonment.
It functions as a phase of initiation. A woman who leaves the family or the village and later returns is often regarded with a different kind of authority. The departure allows for perspective. The return carries the weight of understanding a new level of responsibility to community with a new point of view or perspective. This framework has helped
me make sense of some of the uncertainty that I've had around leaving bottom-up style coaching, around closing my programs, starting to aim towards a new industry, and now closing Walk & Tawk Wednesdays and considering stopping this very podcast. In the past couple of months, I had planned to carry the podcast along with Walk & Tawk into 2026. And at that time,
That intention was so genuine. I was so clear that I was going to do that and I really wanted to check in with people, update people on my Play Big journey as I adventure into a new industry because really no one plays big alone. And also now I think I'm actually going through kind of like this major
editing process right now and all the things that I wanted to take with me on this journey, I just, think I physically cannot take. It's kind of like getting packed to go on an airplane, right? Like sometimes you overpack and you have to take things out of your suitcase so you can make the weight limits for your luggage. And something that I've always struggled with ever since I was little is that I
could be so clear and decisive on what I want. And then with ADHD, it's challenging to focus on sometimes what is necessary. It is not even a question to me that I have the type of personality where I do want to experience life and journeys with other people, no matter how introverted I can be. I always wanted to share
the sensuality, the sensory experience, the joy, the moments with people along the way. And if you're someone who experiences like stimulation from either ideas or just the way you move through the world and that has brought you so much joy and the first thing you want to do is share it with other people then like I truly get you.
I've had to learn multiple times throughout my life that like not everybody is going to be as excited as I am to take a pole dance class or revamp your entire career. Not everyone is gonna share your interests or joy and that's okay. And further, not everyone's going to have the same value in your life or intentions. But it is important every so often to work on realigning
or going through a process of editing and just seeing what fits who you are today or who you're becoming or where you wanna go. I've noticed that my interest in dialogue or shared inquiry has not shifted at all, but what has actually shifted for me is the developmental context of my work.
And now I am entertaining a phase that requires extended periods of focus, experimentation, private problem solving, doing deep dives around things that I just need to be educated about. And in that process, maintaining a weekly public voice, either on social media,
or in a podcast in a regular rhythm while doing that has started to feel misaligned in a way that I just did not see coming because I am definitively a creature of habit. And it would be really easy for me to maintain the habit of creating podcast episodes. But what I am genuinely working on right now is becoming a student of a new craft, getting into my zone of genius.
and really starting to understand how to be in a flow state in this new industry that I want to get into. There are some identities that I hold, like I identify as someone who likes to take care of their body and eat good things and move their body. I identify as someone who likes to be in community and in connection with brilliant people.
But the nature of those relationships and everything about them is starting to change for me. Everything feels like it's becoming more relaxed, that I am opening in new ways the more I accept what I'm here for, what I'm here to do, the authority that I have in that.
And I feel like with my body and my relationships, of course they need consistency. But what they need along with consistency is fluidity. And I think showing up for a podcast every week is not gonna give me the fluidity and the creativity and the access to my authentic process that I'm looking for. You know, in the context of everything that I'm going through,
Southern Italian folklore offers this other lens through the figure of the Tarantata. Historical and anthropological accounts describe Tarantism as a socially mediated response to pressure, grief, or constraint expressed primarily through women's bodies. The woman
temporarily withdraws from ordinary participation through ritualized movement and altered states. And this withdrawal from the ordinary into these different states is not framed as a dysfunction or something to be concerned about. is like understood as a necessary reorganization both for the individual
and for the community and for healing. And what stands out to me in this process, in this framework, is that this kind of withdrawal has a very important purpose. It's like more of a pause to tend to the inner world of the individual so an intimate group can create the conditions for creation, for integration on completely different terms.
I recognized this pattern in my own work over the past year and of course everything I do is poetry and it's so poetic that this type of relating to community and this whole process of leaving and returning makes so much sense in my very specific journey of venturing off to start Tarantate
and build this vision that at first I was really just doing it because it pleased me and it brought me pleasure. And then it became something that still brings me pleasure that I'm still doing at like a leisurely lovingly pace, but it has become something that has asked me to go all in. And truly the structures that supported my coaching and my community building through coaching.
were appropriate in the way I did it for that phase. Now I'm realizing that like despite my heart's desire to keep the podcast going or like Walk and Tawk Wednesdays going, my body is realizing that in that reality, keeping it going is not structurally compatible with the kind of creative work that I am now prioritizing. Now I know I have a few sister goddesses in the audience who are very familiar with
the story of Persephone. And this is the part of my own journey where the Sicilian interpretation of Persephone starts to become instructive. Now, if you don't know who Persephone is, and you're like, this is the first time I'm hearing it, a quick overview, right? Persephone is the story of a goddess who is the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture.
nourishment and the earth's fertility. In the myth, Persephone is taken from the surface world and into the underworld, a realm associated with death and dormancy and the unseen. And Persephone's disappearance causes Demeter's grief, which in turn brings famine to the land. Eventually, a compromise is reached.
and Persephone is allowed to return to the surface world for part of the year, but because she has eaten the food in the underworld, she is bound to return there for another part of the cycle. Persephone's movement between worlds becomes the explanation of the seasons, growth, harvest, decay, and rest. What matters in this story is not just the separation
but the structure of the return. Persephone becomes the only figure who has the ability to move between realms. She is no longer simply Demeter's daughter. She becomes a mediator between life and death, presence and absence. In Sicily, Persephone's descent is localized and understood not only as loss, but as the acquisition of authority.
over cycles of life, death, and renewal. The descent is what allows her to return with jurisdiction. She does not resume her role as daughter. She reenters with a different status that reshapes the entire order around her. That distinction is so potent for me as I think about what it means to step back without severing a relationship entirely.
Italian Catholic women's history reflects a similar kind of structure. It's more about retreat and withdrawal, which very often preceded having influence. Authority emerged from discernment rather than constant visibility. Silence and seclusion were not oppositional to leadership. They were formative.
There is also a migration narrative embedded into this moment for me. Italian and Sicilian women immigrants migrated strategically, crossing geographic, economic, and social systems. They returned changed or redirected resources back into their communities. And for many women, migration was a method of expansion and adaptation, not this like rupture.
of loyalty. My movement from the coaching industry toward creative direction and fashion and art follows that lineage. This field requires a much longer horizon, very different rhythms, and sustained periods of development that are not easily compatible with ongoing public relational obligations.
And I very much understand that I could get a team, that I could outsource a lot of this work. But for me, migration in this sense requires loosening the structures that just belong to an earlier phase of my journey. And if you know me after all this time, I mean, really know me, you know I don't go back. I am not a nostalgic person. I'm very present and future focused.
I mean, sometimes I'll get that way about my intimate relationships or family or friendships, but like, I don't like looking back. There's just, yeah, it's like shedding a skin. If you're like a snake or a caterpillar that became a butterfly, like, are you really going back to the thing that you just shed? Like that's the way I move through the world, right? And.
This leads to what I think of as kind of like an unspoken rule across all of these traditions. Really, you leave in order to gain perspective. You return in order to contribute with accuracy and depth. And right now, I am in the first phase of that process. I do know that forcing continuity would absolutely compromise the quality of what I am developing.
And that is why, especially over the past few days, I have been uncertain about the future of this podcast. I know the final episode is coming, maybe in 2026, definitely after I've completed enough episodes to have a full year of episodes every week, because that's another thing, if you didn't know about me, I'm so someone who appreciates a proper sense of completion.
I know I'm going to want to have 52 episodes, so I've done the podcast every week for a whole year. I like to do lots of things for a year. I went live every day for a year. I I wouldn't even call them challenges. For me, they just feel like experiments, like experiments about how it would feel to show up every day and to do this thing every day. And in the coaching spaces, showing up for this podcast every day.
make sense, even in some of the activism places that I inhibit. There are some episodes that got so many views and it really made my heart feel so good to see which episodes they were. Some of it was on neurodivergent voting, the dopamine spending spiral. I mean, things that people are just really looking to put language to in their experience so they can self advocate around those things.
And sometimes they were episodes on business, right? But I'm guessing I might wrap at 52 episodes, but I might not be making a definitive decision around that today. But I've always been hands-on and intentional in all my onboarding and off-boardings, and I've taken all of those processes the same way, one step at a time.
making decisions as I go so I could tap into what felt right to do for myself and all of those involved in the moment, right? If it didn't feel good to leave something hanging, we would talk about it. If today doesn't feel good to make it the last episode, then I won't and it doesn't, so I'm not going to. But I'm still exploring what is going to be the next step that's gonna feel good. Like maybe I'll make a WhatsApp group.
and invite anyone who wants to join me from the era of Play Big Queen into the chat. Maybe I'll just like, I don't know, call it Play Big Queens or something else and we can all share our journeys in there without anyone having to facilitate the space specifically. We can just like be in there together and chat about whatever comes up and replying whenever it feels aligned or not. But I'm also feeling like drawn.
toward a quieter year or two, like less digital presence. I might have a new Facebook profile with only a small amount of people on it so I could still be a part of some of the groups I like on there, or I might deactivate my main Facebook and Instagram and like just play more visually on Pinterest and have like a small group, or maybe just like, yeah, fewer platforms.
greater intimacy, less noise, a slowed down digital experience with like more time working without commentary or trying to keep up with platforms that we all know are ableist in many ways, but more visual exploration and a higher interest in maintaining like a smaller number of close relationships rather than this wide public interface.
For those who want to stay loosely connected, I'm gonna offer a simple way to do that without promising regular updates or like this fixed cadence either through the WhatsApp chat or like a very focused friend group on Facebook. But for those who are navigating a similar transition, it may be helpful to know that periods of withdrawal have historically been how authority and creative clarity are formed
not how we lose connection. Doing this intentionally and knowing the purpose of it really changes how you interact with people in relationships during these times of transition. This episode feels like a responsible place to just take a moment and pause. If we happen to have an ending soon, it will reflect
the reality of this moment rather than an attempt to project any certainty. I want to thank you so much for being a part of this chapter. I will return next week and then the week after that. And then I will return when there is something that requires return in a way that meets myself, my work, and all of us in the moment.
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Outro 1
That's it for today, Queen.
Take what lit you up, leave what didn't.
You know what serves.
If you want to stay in this Play Big Queen orbit, get the rituals, resources, and real talk that fuels your Play Big self, go to xxxkatebailey.com, scroll to the bottom, and join this community.
This is where bold women gather. Neurodivergent visionaries, disability warriors, sacred disruptors.
If this episode spoke to you, leave a review on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
Leave comments, give me all the stars, share it.
That's how we create change that ripples, and how this podcast gets out to more people who need it.
If you're ready to work together to make your play big self not just a vision, but a reality that you embody, then head to xxxkatebailey.com, go to the work with Kate section, and join in on a program
that feels right for you.
Or tag me on socials and tell me a moment that truly served you from this episode.
Until next time, remember to honor your own timing, value your own unique way.
And most of all, when you come face to face with your boldest desires, trust your brilliance and Play Big Queen.
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Outro 2
Hey, queen, are you still here?
Good.
That means you're not just curious.
You are being called and want more.
I am here for the ones who want more than party trick mindset hacks.
The ones who need nervous system rooted, neurodiverse affirming space held by someone who is trauma trained, so they can rise on their terms.
My work is designed to center folks navigating ADHD, autism, disability, trauma, or mental health challenges and their brilliance all at once.
You do not need to be someone who identifies as neurodivergent or someone who has a disability to benefit from this work.
If you're feeling called, you belong here.
I believe in and support queer and trans rights, Black Lives Matter, sex worker rights, Palestinian, Ukrainian, and global self-liberation, religious autonomy, and dismantling abusive systems.
If that's too much for you, then babe, this isn't your podcast and you know where the unfollow is.
But if that lights a fire within you and you are inspired to learn more, then my Play Big Queen, you are home.
You can also head over to xxxkatebailey.com/about to learn more about me, my company,
qualifications, methodology, values, worldviews, philosophies, and my mission.
My mission is to activate 10,000 women with invisible disabilities to lead, create, speak up, and claim the spaces that they were told to shrink inside.
Because their leadership, your leadership, will change the world.
If you know that's you, declare it.
Put your energetic line in the sand and tell me.
Email me at [email protected] and tell me why this work is so important for you and we can explore opportunities to work together and make your Play Big dreams a reality.
