Episode 333: The Voice I Almost Lost
It’s the ninth anniversary since The Live FAB Life Podcast debuted!
In this return episode, I'm sharing the real story behind the seven-month hiatus: the slow fade that started last year, the mental block that made me hate even talking about my own offers, and the POV exercise in a photography community that cracked something open I didn't know was closed.
I walk you through getting laid off after eighteen years in corporate tech, and what it revealed about how sanded-down and sanitized my own voice had become without me noticing.
I also share where things stand now — the refresh (not rebrand) that I've been quietly doing all summer, what's ahead for this show, how Substack fits in, and the point of view I landed on after all of it.
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“I believe your body is reporting on that story. All the symptoms you’re struggling with - it’s your body reporting your story.
And the fastest way to actually change what it’s reporting is to go back and read your story — using your Human Design not as a personality quiz, but as a mirror for where you’ve been conditioned away from yourself.”
Read the Transcript:
Well hello there! It’s been awhile hasn’t it? Seven months to be exact! I’m glad to be back here with you, I really am. When the last episode dropped back in January I knew I’d be taking an extended break - I had no idea how long it would be, but I did know it wouldn’t be the end because I enjoy having this show to connect with you.
About six weeks ago I started getting the Splenic hits that it was time to come back. There were a lot of things I needed to consider and when I finally wrapped my head around the direction I want this show to go in, it made sense to have this return episode drop this week because this week is the 9th anniversary of this show! Can you believe it? Nine years - debuted in 2017.
In full transparency, when I started entertaining thoughts of when to return, I even bought a new mic which, if I’m being honest, motivated me even more to return! I’d been using the same mic for 9 years and one of the reasons I was ready for a break was the audio wasn’t as sharp as I think it was but I was too tired (burnt out) to figure out what was up.
So I got a new mic and recorded a new offering on it and wow - to say the audio improved was an understatement (which I hope you’re noticing too and its not just me).
Okay that was a bit of a tangent but expect this episode to be full of them because if we’re not connected on social meda, a lot has happened this year – and I mean a lot. There’s a lot for me to update you on.
And while one of things I’ve been working on is to stop feeling compelled to explain myself, to justify myself, I do feel like I owe it to you, especially if you’ve been here with me for a while, to fill you in on what’s been going on and the real back story of the hiatus, and what’s to come.
The Back Story
Going back to last year, the frequency of episodes was sporadic. In fact, I took last summer off. It was a slow fade. And while I did come back for the last 12 weeks of the year, it was a struggle. It is a lot of hard work to put out content on a regular basis, especially long-form content like podcast episodes. Sure, I had a production process that I had refined over the years that was efficient but the mental effort was taxing because I lost my “creative spark.” I felt like I was just repeating myself, which isn’t a bad thing when it comes to content creation because no one consumes all of your content. In this sense, repetition is encouraged.
But I felt like I’d “lost my voice” and in some ways even never truly had a voice because I felt like the words coming out of my mouth were still so heavily influenced by the things around me, what I’d been exposed to.
I spent hundreds of hours creating amazing offers and building out a thoughtful offer suite and I never liked “promoting” it – telling people about it because I hated the offer names, didn’t like the words I was using to describe them. They sounded so — just like everyone else. They felt boring to me so how could I expect them to be interesting to anyone else?
It was like I had a mental block where all ideas and innovation was blocked. I needed space away from creating content – I needed a break from it all so I could make room for new ideas and POVs to come forward.
I needed space to explore and breathe out my ideas and POVS other topics unrelated or adjacent to the things I’ve talked about here for almost a decade.
The Turn (Photo Club)
I went through this at about the same time that The Photo Club that I belong to had Substack School going on.
If you recall back to Episode 316: No More Bad Photos — Seeing Yourself Clearly with Lisa Haukom, Lisa and talked about her Photo Club that I’m still a member of. In addition to the Photo Challenges Lisa also runs Substack School that teaches people how to start Substacks meaningfully, mindfully, with intention.
So I started one in August 2025 called The Things I Thought I Knew. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it, or frankly if I’d do anything with it. It felt like one more thing to do in addition to weekly podcast episodes.
But as 2025 came to a close and I found myself needing space from here, but still needing a space to share, I realized that The Things I Thought I Knew was the place to do that – so I did. Or I planned to. Until Lisa had us do a POV exercise where we stated what our POV was and I had an omfg moment where I realized that I didn’t know what my POV was.
Or rather, I questioned it – was my POV actually my POV or was it something I was conditioned to believe? (full disclosure - as a Human Design guide who helps people with deconditioning, I tend to do this a lot myself too).
And then everything made sense – no wonder new episodes felt so difficult. No wonder posting to Instagram felt so painful. No wonder, no wonder, no wonder.
Because somewhere along the way, my POV changed (or maybe, I never knew what mine truly was to begin with) – and that unclarity was a block in every way.
So I worked through it. I started writing Substack essays about topics that I have opinions on based on my lived experiences. But then I realized, I wasn’t alone in my experiences and The Things I Thought I Knew because The Things We Thought We Knew – cultural commentary on the myths that WE inherited about work, rest, wellness, beauty, and belonging — examined through Human Design mechanics.
And since March, I’ve used that space to find my voice again. Some of it was published, some of it hasn’t been yet, and some of it may never be.
I wanted that space to be mine - written for me, not with an audience in mind which is contrary to how I approach the podcast. While this episode is an update for me, I approach episodes with the thought of, “What does my audience need or want to hear from me? How can I serve them?”
Writing on Substack is freeing. I thought I was over long-form written content. Long before Live FAB Life even existed, I had a personal blog that I wrote on for years and got tired of it. I never thought I’d go back to writing again but writing for myself, not on a schedule, not having to “stay on brand” or “stick to a niche” was freeing. Sometimes you have to go “off brand” to find your voice again.
The Bigger Turn
Internally I felt things start to shift, blocks starting to fall and I felt like I was finding my voice, my POV again but then the external world caught up with what I’d already been noticing internally.
After spending the past 18 years at my corporate job in tech, I was impacted. RIF’d. Laid off. I won’t go into all the details here, but if you’re curious, I documented the experience - my initial reactions, grief, realizations - in a few Substack essays that I’ll link to in the show notes for this episode that you’ll find at livefablife.com/333 for Episode 333.
At first it was tough. The uncertainty - the loss of health insurance and stable income. The sadness of realizing that the people I worked with on a daily basis for years, even those that moved to other teams but were still “there” - we would never work together again. Even though we all worked remotely, we were still in each other's lives every day. Working long hours remotely, sometimes they were the only other people I spoke to in a day. That loss hit me hard. I likened it to moving out of the dorms at the end of freshman year of college. We’d never all be together again.
At the same time, it was also a relief. And its been the first summer that I’ve had free from school and work obligations since 1993.
Now that it’s been three months since I was notified and no longer had to work, and one month into being officially laid off, I realized how much my voice had been sanitized by having that corporate job. I also wrote about it on Substack. I unknowingly kept my voice sanded down, carefully making myself palatable all in the spirit of being “professional.” It made me revisit asking myself just what is my POV?
A Refresh
From discovering my personal style, Episode 312, to The Photo Club and learning to like how I look in Episode 316 – that was all personal, internal work. But remember earlier how I said I never liked to even talk about my offerings because I didn’t like what they were called, how I had visually presented them? For me, it’s all connected – the internal work, the work presentation, my POV.
So, with being relieved of my corporate job since May, it was serendipitous that shortly after that happened, I saw an Instagram ad that caught my eye about being “anti-brand.”
Me, being me, I went to the website and went down a rabbit hole of discovering what this was about and who was behind it. First, the person behind the brand resonated with me – in my age group who had just left a corporate job and was doing what she was actually passionate about.
And she was doing so in her own way, in her own POV, unapologetically – anti-brand.
It hit me deep. This is that creative tension I had struggled with - I hated using “wellness” words - I had my own words that I’d been already using but didn’t realize it. I hated the “wellness” visuals but at the same time was still discovering my visual POV. And if this person who’s my age could leave corporate and follow her passions full time (she also dabbled with doing it as a side hustle as I did), why couldn’t I?
So while I have been taking the summer off, I’ve also been refreshing my work. Not rebranding, refreshing. Because what I’ve discovered is that my POV has always been there, I just needed to find my language for it - tightening it, clarifying what was already there and true for me.
It’s a process. It’s something I have to work on every day. “Is this me and what I really want to say, or is this sanded down sanitized version of it?” I guess it feels like I’m stopping performing a version of myself that was never quite right and having to work hard every day not only to connect with the unsanitized version of myself but also feel brave enough and safe enough to let others see it, read it and now hear it too. Right Now
So that’s what I’ve been doing – refreshing.
Refreshing my offers - renaming, tightening up the content and messaging. Everything that existed now has new names that all now fall under my “By Design” framework.
And I’ve created two new offers – The Decodes and The Pattern Intensive.
What I’ve come to admit to myself is that I actually don’t like coaching. I love having a coach but especially with the nature of the coaching I did, it was a lot to carry - mentally and emotionally.
The Decodes and The Pattern Intensive are different. They’re not coaching offers, rather they lean into my Projector energy, combined with the gifts in my Human Design and I offer a read - what I see through the lens of your Human Design. It’s nuanced and it feels good.
The one thing I struggled with is how does the Substack and podcast co-exist? I thought about it a lot and then realized how much I was overthinking it.
The Things We Thought We Knew is for me – my space to write what I want to write about, what I see – my commentary.
The podcast is for you - what can I offer that might be of interest, help or support to you.
Here’s what’s going to be different on the podcast.
While I’m going to try to stick to a weekly schedule for Substack, I’m no longer going to do that for the podcast. I put out 332 episodes, mostly weekly, especially in the early years and I’ve said a lot. And like I said earlier, I stopped because I felt like I was starting to force it and I never want to show up here with that kind of energy.
What you can expect on the podcast are limited series – like The Diplomat on Netflix. Short series on topics that you want to hear about (this would require you dropping me a note and telling me what’s on your wish list), topics from a Substack essay that I feel has more legs and I have more to say and expand on here – for you, conversations with people that I find interesting (I really do miss doing interviews), and who knows.
But to be clear, there won’t be a weekly schedule but when there is a new series to drop, Tuesdays will always be the drop days. Think of it as “here’s the shape of things” rather than “here’s what’s on the schedule to come.” (oh btw, there will be another episode next week because a series has to have more than one episode, right)?
The podcast for voices and stories, Substack for cultural essays. Oh and I refreshed my emails for my email community too – I loathe the word, “newsletter” so I’ll just say I’ll be sending an email monthly, titled “Decoded” with the monthly collection of updates.
All of this is on my website - although as the time this is dropping, I’m still making updates there. Guys, I’m on summer vacation - I don’t live by timelines right now. It’s also on the landing page on the link in bio on my Instagram.
If you’re curious, want more details – everything’s there.
So you’re probably wondering, well, are you gonna tell us what your refreshed POV is?
Okay — here's the part I actually want to leave you with.
The wellness industry fixes symptoms at the surface — lab work, protocols, supplements — and they call this deep work.
But a biomarker is a report. It's not a root.
You can fix a number and still not know how to set a boundary with your mother.
It’s still performing a version of yourself shaped by conditioning instead of choice. And when the symptom comes back — because it will — the wellness industry sells you a new protocol instead of ever asking about the story underneath it.
I believe your body is reporting on that story. All the symptoms you’re struggling with - it's your body reporting your story.
And the fastest way to actually change what it's reporting is to go back and read your story — using your Human Design not as a personality quiz, but as a mirror for where you've been conditioned away from yourself.
I know this because I lived it. For years, I did all the measurable work too and I was still stuck — not because I didn't try hard enough, but because nobody ever taught me the difference between who I actually am and who I was conditioned to be.
And once you see that pattern, you can't unsee it. That's the "oh, THAT'S why" moment I'm here for.
So — if you believe the root cause was never in a lab result, if you're tired of protocols that treat you like everyone else, if you've done the measurable work and you're still stuck, if you're ready to trust your own signal over someone else's system — you're in the right place.
And I'm so glad to be back here with you.
Naomi Nakamura is a Human Design guide and body literacy practitioner, and the founder of Live FAB Life. She decodes the conditioning underneath the symptom — using Human Design as the framework and the body's own patterns as the data. Her writing lives on Substack at The Things We Thought We Knew, and Decoded, her monthly letter to her email community, collects it all in one place.
She resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
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