Healing to Lead Again: The Power of Slowing Down

What happens when the drive to lead begins to erode your ability to live?

In this intimate episode of The Collective Growth Podcast: Inner Work, host MaryAnn Means-Dufrene welcomes Dr. Julie Kennedy, founder of Seed Wellness Co. and a board-certified nurse practitioner, who shares how autoimmune illness forced her to slow down and reimagine leadership from the inside out.

Her story is a wake-up call for high-achieving leaders who feel their bodies, and their clarity, beginning to fray. The conversation unpacks what it takes to transition from burned out and overextended to grounded, intuitive, and truly effective leadership.

The Disruption

Julie’s health began breaking down during her career in traditional medicine. Diagnosed with lupus at just 19, she faced worsening symptoms despite the medications that were supposed to help. When her health hit a breaking point, she made a radical move: leave her job, start her own practice, and begin healing herself.

She didn’t have a business plan, only a calling. Within months, Julie had hired support staff and started building a functional medicine practice rooted in trust, delegation, and deeply personal insight.

The Inner Work

Healing wasn’t just physical. It required Julie to face long-standing patterns of overachievement, people-pleasing, and suppressing her needs.

“I wore myself out trying to do all the things… My body always told me before my brain was ready to hear it.”

Through her practice, she began to recognize the same traits in her high-performing clients: fatigue, adrenal burnout, and emotional avoidance masquerading as success. She started helping others uncover the emotional roots of their health challenges and teaching them to trust their bodies again.

The Rebuild

Julie blends Western medical training with functional and intuitive approaches, empowering clients to take agency over their healing. Her leadership model is now based on collaboration and clarity, not control.

Her clients often share a type-A mindset, but they’re learning to listen:

• To delegate without guilt
  
• To slow down without shame
  
• To rest without viewing it as weakness
  
  

Julie’s approach honors the truth that real leadership begins with inner alignment, not external performance.

What I Know Now

• “You can’t lead well if you’re disconnected from your own needs.”
  
  
• Healing begins with awareness and often starts with burnout.
  
  
• Productivity without presence is not sustainable.
  
  
• Stillness is not a luxury; it’s a leadership tool.
  
  
• You can rebuild your health, your mindset, and your leadership from the inside out.

🎧 Listen to the full episode now!