Unplug & Elevate: Notes of Empowerment Summer Playlist is an annual collaborative mixtape of music and thoughts focusing on the areas of wellness, burnout, and purpose.
This 2nd annual playlist builds on a year filled with the kind of professional and personal growth that can only be done with true partners who uplift and support one another – just like a good bra. And thus, Megan Hutchinson Krings, Eileen Murphy, and I are proud to officially announce our collaborative group name, The BRAs – because together, and as individuals, we are Building Resilience and Accountability, both professionally and personally. We have lots of fun and creative things planned as BRAs but, for now, we are excited to share these handpicked songs that have helped us to rebalance, recoup our own stories, and root into our purpose. Enjoy our A Side: Unplug and B Side: Elevate playlists all summer – and beyond!
Unplug, The BRA Definition: Intentionally giving ourselves permission to unplug, in order to reconnect. I included this song on the playlist because it reminds me to mindfully check-in with my soul.
When Meg, Eileen, and I first started noodling around with the idea of a summer play list, back in the spring of 2024, I thought this would be the easiest project ever. I love music and I enjoy writing, how much fun would it be to put the two together, with some of my favorite people. Turns out, favorite people aside, it was much more difficult than I anticipated – not just the organization of this project, but it turns out that writing about music is really difficult for me. As Meg, Eileen, and I began writing last year, I was quickly reminded of the fact that I don’t listen to song lyrics. I’m not one who has the wrong lyrics to songs (hello, Tiny Dancer / Tony Danza), I just have no lyrics to songs. I’m here for the melody and the feeling a piece of music gives me. And that is really difficult – for me – to write about, the feeling you get from a piece of art.
The discussions I had in 2024 with Meg, Eileen, and others around art, music and writing were a small piece of the puzzle that led me to choose Creative Authenticity as my theme for 2025. I’ve always thought of myself as a creative person – and an authentic person – but I felt the creativity especially had been lacking in recent years. I wasn’t creating, designing, building, or writing much, and I also wasn’t opening my eyes to the creativity and beauty that is all around us. I have used the theme of Creative Authenticity in decision making, in day-to-day activities like making dinner and going for walks, in my meditation time, and in my client work. So it was with that lens that I began adding songs to this year’s summer playlist, and I added A LOT of songs. And yet, with all of that, when I sat down to write about this song, I was completely stumped. This song that I had “fought” to keep on the playlist (banjos aren’t for everyone, I get it), that really does speak to my soul, was literally keeping me up at night as I tried to capture a way to write about what it means to me.
So, with Creative Authenticity as my guide post, I have spent the past few weeks actually meditating on this song and its lyrics. Much as I use meditation to drown out the noise of every day and help me focus and slow down – although in this instance, the noise was lovely, I sat with each line and each word, and I asked myself over and over again, what does it mean to awake my soul? And so, with Creative Authenticity, and a lot of vulnerability, I share my meditation on Awake My Soul.
Awake my Soul, A Meditation
How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes, I struggle to find any truth in your lies
The world has made me fickle and woozy – what’s that you say, I have allowed myself to become these things? What lies within my power, and what lies without? What lies do I buy into and what lies do I create? What truths do I seek and what truths am I afraid to believe? What awakening may arise with awareness and love and joy – and truth.
And now my heart stumbles on things I don’t know, My weakness I feel I must finally show
Oh weakness, your ugly head is showing again. The weakness that keeps my truths buried deep below. If I show you love, if I show you acceptance, will you help me grow?
Lend me your hand and we’ll conquer them all, But lend me your heart and I’ll just let you fall
Lend me your eyes I can change what you see, But your soul you must keep, totally free
Oh joyous freedom, if I offer you my weakness, will you offer me joy and the opportunity to be totally free? Free like the leaf dancing in the wind, free like the birds singing and soaring through the sky, free like the ancient oak trees grounded and one with the earth. Free to love and be loved – both others and to myself. Free to awake my soul.
Awake my soul, Awake my soul
What does it mean to awaken my soul? What changes are in store when I finally do awaken? Am I scared to be awake, can I handle the beauty and truths that lie in this possibility? What do I need to awake my soul and do I have what it takes?
In this body we will live, in this body we will die
This is it?! I get this one body with its creaks and crackles with the wide hips and funky hair. Is this habitat for my entire existence? Or maybe, I get this ONE magnificent body – with my mother’s Irish eyes and my father’s hardworking hands, this one beautiful body that is completely unique to me. A time stamp and a fingerprint of the only one who gets the privilege to inhabit this body. This amazingly powerful body which bore my beautiful son and now propels me through the icy waters of Lake Michigan. This body which holds the secrets of what it is like to be held by someone who truly loves me, and what it is like to hold someone in their most vulnerable times. These bodies that we’ve been given, with all their magic and strength, that society has forced us to compare against one another and to shame and doubt. This, this is the only home we have while doing this thing called life. Let us honor and care for, and feel deep gratitude for for these vessels of our souls that carry us through every moment until we die.
And where we invest our love, we invest our life
Who is worthy of our love, who do we give it to freely and who do we make work for it? Who do we hide our love from – who do we choose to invest our life in? Is it in our family – our spouse, parents, kids, siblings? Is it our friends? Is it people who deserve our love, who are grateful for it and reciprocate it with the same adoration we offer them? Is it celebrities, and grandstanders, and politicians, and noisemakers who don’t know of our existence but still suck our love and life from us? Is it…could it possibly be…ourselves? Are we deserving of our own love? Real tender, unconditional love like – or perhaps even deeper – than we offer freely to others? If I love and invest in myself, am I selfish and guilt-ridden? Or, if I love and invest in myself, am I breaking down the sturdy walls that keep my soul in its den of slumber?
You were meant to meet your maker
Maker, whatever that means to you – whatever that means to me – when I think of a maker there is a sudden feeling of release. And in this release, I feel the hand of something larger than myself, calling me to open – no, to awaken – to the idea that I am only partially in control. That the awakening happens in that moment of letting go of the belief that I am in more control than I actually am. I am meant to meet my maker – whatever that means to you, whatever that means to me – how glorious that must be. But till then, I must care for and continue to awaken this soul of mine, and mine alone. How perfect and precious it is, how perfect and precious am I.
Click here to see my favorite version of this song, when Jon Baptist joined Mumford & Sons on stage and together they brought pure joy to each other and their audience.
Journal Prompts
- What do Creativity and Authenticity mean to you?
- What do you currently do to “awaken your soul” and how can you do more of it?
- Take a song and sit with each lyric for a day or so. What comes up for you? Does your understanding of the song change by slowing it down and taking it piece by piece?
If you have read this far, I want to thank you for taking part in my Creative Authenticity. This blog is not perfect, but it perfectly allowed me to creatively and authentically put myself out there in a way that felt both bold and fitting. Thankfully, I continue to be a work in progress – which is a beautiful departure from where I was a few years ago when I thought I was just imperfectly complete, and I honor any opportunity to remind myself to continue to grow on this path.
Megan Hutchinson Krings, LCSW CADC is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor. She often works with folks when their neglected hunches about life manifest into addiction, depression, anxiety, burnout, or deep grief for the life they want but can’t have.
Mindful Heart Counseling
Charlotte Kovacs, PCC, CPCC, is a personal and career development coach who helps values-driven women embrace their midlife crisis and shake things up—professionally or personally. Through a blend of personal reflection, mindfulness practices, habit-building strategies, and practical tools like resume support and assessments, she guides clients toward purpose, clarity, and meaningful change in their next chapter.
Charlotte Kovacs Coaching
Eileen Murphy, MA in Industrial & Organizational Psychology, is a certified Health & Wellness and Stress Management Coach helping mid-career professionals build their comeback. Blending nearly two decades of HR expertise with coaching, she guides clients to ditch the habits and beliefs holding them back. She believes stress isn’t something we eliminate—it’s something we learn to navigate. By learning to stress better, clients reclaim a more confident, clear, and powerful presence in their careers and lives.
Blackbird Life Coaching
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