Episode #52. Building Resilience: How Movement Helps Us Face Life’s Challenges with Jess Rad
How do you keep going when life throws everything at you at once?
In this episode, I speak to award-winning speaker and gender equity advocate Jess Rad about how movement became her secret weapon through some of life’s toughest chapters - from premature menopause and divorce to discovering she’s neurodivergent in her 40s.
Jess shares the unexpected power of cold water swimming, why she’s drawn to endurance challenges, and how building physical strength helped restore mental resilience. We also talk about her work with The WomenHood, why we need to open up more conversations around menopause, ADHD and parent carers - and how finding the right support changes everything.
It’s an uplifting, honest conversation about strength, self-awareness, and why taking care of ourselves is not a luxury - it’s essential.
Chapters
00:00 From Avoidance to Embracing Exercise
03:01 The Transformative Power of Cold Water Swimming
05:46 Navigating Life Changes: Menopause and Mental Health
08:58 Understanding Neurodiversity: ADHD and Self-Discovery
11:58 Finding Strength in Community and Movement
15:02 Setting Goals: The Journey to Swim Run
23:54 The Impact of Maternal Well-being
26:06 Movement as a Tool for Co-Regulation
30:57 Creating Community and Addressing Loneliness
32:35 The Birth of The Womanhood
34:27 Bridging Gender Gaps in Conversations
39:03 The Importance of Self-Awareness
43:48 Empowering Women Through Small Changes
45:47 Personal Challenges and Future Aspirations
About this week’s guest:
Jess Rad
Jess Rad is an award-winning speaker, entrepreneur, and leading voice on gender equity and neurodiversity in the workplace. Winner of the 2024 National Diversity Award for Gender, she works with organisations to close gender gaps, build allyship, and shift workplace cultures ensuring an intersectional lens is always given.
Trusted by organisations including NatWest, Open Society Foundations, and Sussex University, Jess is known for her raw, thought-provoking talks that open up conversations many shy away from. She brings both professional insight and deeply personal lived experience as a late-identified neurodivergent woman, co-parent, and someone navigating premature menopause. As an Ambassador for Amaze, she is passionate about changing the narrative around neurodiversity and amplifying the voices of parent carers.
Through honesty, vulnerability, and storytelling, Jess creates spaces where people feel seen, understood, and able to rethink the way they work and lead.
Menopause Resource: https://www.thewomenhood.com/the-menopause-collection
Connect here:
The Womenhood
Website: https://www.thewomenhood.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewomen_hood/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thewomen-hood/?viewAsMember=true
Jess Rad
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msjessrad/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessrad/
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More about your host, Wendy
Wendy (50) founded Reclaim Movement after a running injury at 40 turned into 4 years of chronic pain. In her search for answers and to reclaim her own movement again she discovered natural movement. The philosophy of training real life practical movements to be able to keep using them as we age, coupled with the benefit of using strengthening and mobilising whole-body movement patterns that are underused in today’s modern world made her realise she had found a way to move for life.
Wendy’s aim is to help people embrace a movement-rich life, at any age, to improve mobility, strength and confidence to keep moving well and doing the things they love for as long as they want.
MovNat Level 1 certified & Functional Range Conditioning certified, she coaches online group classes live & by replay in the Reclaim Movement membership as well as online and in-person private coaching in Oxford.
Find out more about Reclaim Movement:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/reclaim.movement
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@reclaim.movement
Facebook: https://facebook.com/reclaim.movement
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