If you love honest conversations that explore the messy, beautiful, and complex truth of being human, come join the conversations on Living the Questions
Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s words, “Live the questions now…,” this show invites you to explore life’s uncertainties through honest conversation. It’s not about having the answers — it’s about embracing the messy beauty of our shared humanity and creating space for connection.
Join us as we uncover the layers and live into the unknown — one big question at a time.
[ watch the trailer ]
Welcome to Living the Questions, a podcast where we embrace the messy middle of life — the space between questions and answers. Hosted by Courtney Koester, this show invites you to explore what it means to live in the unknown and navigate the questions that shape our lives. Each episode dives into the beauty of being present, showing up as you are, and allowing life to unfold without the fear of needing to have all the answers. From the intricacies of self-expression to the challenges of overcoming self-doubt, Living the Questions is a journey of self-discovery, curiosity, and connection. Tune in for deep, authentic conversations that encourage you to live into your questions and meet each moment with clarity and authenticity. Join us as we explore the questions that lead to growth, transformation, and the beautiful complexities of being human.
[ episodes ]
Ep #1 | How Do We Respect Our Needs While Loving Others Deeply?
How do we honor both our needs and the needs of those we love? In this inaugural solo episode, I dive into the complexities of balancing care for ourselves while showing up fully in our relationships. Exploring the tension between people-pleasing, self-sacrifice, and genuine love, I unpack the journey of learning to hold space for both. How do we navigate the discomfort of growth, the murkiness of evolving boundaries, and the reality that the answers are always unfolding? Join me as I reflect on what it means to live into this question with integrity, compassion, and deep care.
Ep #2 | Can You Honor Your No Without Needing Validation from Others?
Navigating the complexity of boundaries and the courage to say "no" is a profound journey of self-connection. In this episode, I share my personal reflections on the difficulty of recognizing and honoring the boundaries of my body, particularly when external pressures or past conditioning make it challenging to assert them. I explore the emotional and somatic processes that accompany saying "no" — from the confusion and dissonance of feeling misaligned, to the eventual realization that honoring myself is necessary for genuine connection with others. This conversation invites you to reflect on your own relationship with boundaries, the tension between self-care and caring for others, and how we can learn to trust and align with our inner wisdom.
Ep #3 | Does What I'm Doing Really Matter? A Conversation w/ Chad Brown
What if the questions you’re avoiding are the ones that hold the most meaning? Chad Brown joins the podcast for an honest, unfiltered conversation about purpose, grief, and self-trust — sharing raw reflections that offer a refreshing perspective on navigating uncertainty and building relationships rooted in truth. He explores the weight of small decisions, the paradox of wanting clarity while resisting life’s invitations, and how loss has reshaped his understanding of what truly matters. From the tension between ambition and presence to the challenge of staying in integrity with ourselves, this episode dives into the messy, beautiful reality of being human — and the courage it takes to live into the unknown.
Ep #4 | What If The Way You Hear Yourself Isn’t Who You Really Are?
What if the way you hear yourself isn’t the truth, but a distortion shaped by old insecurities? Editing the first few episodes of this podcast invited me to listen to my own voice over and over again and what I noticed was a familiar yet eye-opening pattern — the initial playback was clouded by self-criticism, a harsh internal voice telling me I didn’t make sense. But something shifted on the second and third listens. Without realizing it, the distortion dissolved, and I could hear myself differently, with more clarity and grace. This episode explores that experience — how insecurity acts like a filter, shaping our perception, and what happens when we learn to step outside of it. What if your voice is clearer, stronger, and more meaningful than your inner critic would have you to believe?
Ep #5 | Overthinking: Are You Expanding or Overcomplicating Your Perspective?
The beauty and challenge of nuance is that it offers both freedom and overwhelm — especially for those prone to overthinking. In this episode, I explore how my deep love for perspectives, meaning-making, and endless exploration sometimes becomes a source of anxiety rather than clarity. What happens when nuance feels more constricting than expansive? How do we honor where we truly are instead of where we think we should be? Through personal reflection, I unpack the delicate balance of discernment, self-trust, and the timing of our own learning, revealing insights that may resonate with anyone navigating the complexity of their own decisions.
Ep #6 | What If Your Wellness Isn’t Just About You? A Conversation w/ Nisha Mody
What if your personal wellness is intertwined with the well-being of the world around you? Nisha Mody joins for a thought-provoking conversation on the complexities of personal wellness, self-trust, and the interconnectedness of individual and collective care. Nisha reflects on the tension between privilege and responsibility, questioning how her own well-being can exist in a world filled with injustice and violence. Through themes of grief, growth, and healing, she examines how stepping into personal power — while remaining present and self-compassionate — can be an act of service to the greater whole. From navigating discomfort and discernment to redefining wellness beyond commodification, this episode invites us to consider how our own healing contributes to the world around us.
Ep #7 | What If Overextending Isn’t the Path to Love?
What if taking good care of yourself isn’t selfish — but the very foundation of how you care for others? This episode explores the tender, tangled process of shifting out of over-functioning, especially when people-pleasing patterns run deep. I reflect on the internal tug-of-war between the fear of being “too much” or “not enough” and the slow, sacred work of learning what true boundaries, congruent giving, and right relationship with self can look like. If you’ve ever struggled with guilt around saying no, or felt overwhelmed by nuance when all you want is clarity, this conversation is an honest and compassionate space to land.
Ep #8 | Can We Stay Open to What We Can’t Explain?
Some conversations meander in the most magical ways, and this one is a celebration of cosmic timing, personal joy, and the sacredness of embracing what makes us feel most alive. I reflect on the significance of things like numbers — not just as dates or symbols, but as threads of connection woven through family, memory, and meaning. From repeating numbers to astrology, from childhood delight to spiritual inquiry, I explore what it means to honor joy, even when it’s misunderstood, and to build a relationship with uncertainty that invites wonder instead of fear. This episode gently asks: Can we let ourselves play, be different, and trust in the mystery?
Ep #9 | What Power Do I Hold and How Do I Intend to Use It? A Conversation w/ Althea Seloover
What does it really mean to be in right relationship with your power? In this expansive and heartfelt conversation, Althea Seloover invites us into the depths of that question, offering wisdom rooted in lived experience, recovery, and deep care for humanity. We explore how power can be reclaimed through rest, how self-care becomes a radical act of resistance, and what it means to move at a human pace in a world that constantly demands more. From redefining words like “work,” “sin,” and “justice” to mapping the internal landscapes of burnout, healing, and congruence, Althea’s insights challenge and nourish. This is a conversation about capacity, compassion, and choosing presence over performance — for yourself, for others, and for the collective. If you're longing for clarity, groundedness, and/or a deeper sense of integrity in how you live and lead, this episode is a soulful companion.
Ep #10 | Spaciousness | Are You Creating Space or Just Creating Distance?
Spaciousness has long been a guiding word in my life — but I’ve come to realize that truly living it is different from simply offering it to others. In this solo reflection, I explore what it means to create space in our lives — not as avoidance or burnout-fueled withdrawal, but as a life-giving, grounding practice of rehumanization. Together, we explore the difference between true spaciousness and survival-driven distance, and how this theme weaves into nervous system care, seasonal rhythms, and the ongoing practice of embodying what we teach. This episode is an invitation to reclaim spaciousness as a living practice — one that nourishes your nervous system, restores your clarity, and brings you into right relationship with your own capacity. Not every kind of space is life-giving. But the space that brings you back to yourself? That kind of space can change everything.
Ep #11 | Vulnerability | How Do We Let Ourselves Be Loved in the Middle of the Mess?
Some experiences are deeply personal, yet not meant to be carried in isolation. In this episode, I explore the tender space between needing others and recognizing that some emotional journeys can only be walked from within. This conversation wrestles with the complexity of grief, overwhelm, and self-protection, while gently inviting compassionate curiosity as a pathway back to connection. Through themes of vulnerability, nervous system regulation, and parts work, this episode holds space for the paradox that while no one can walk your path for you, you don’t have to walk it alone.
Ep #12 | What Opens When We Stop Trying to “Fix” Ourselves? A Conversation w/ Holly Lowery-Davis
What does it mean to be with yourself so fully that it opens a door to something greater? In this final guest episode of Season One, I share a deeply personal and expansive conversation with my somatic coach, Holly Lowery-Davis. Together, we explore how cultivating a relationship with the Self — through the body, through presence, through emotion — can become the very pathway back to something beyond us: Spirit, Nature, Meaning, Mystery. Holly shares the living question at the heart of her work: How do we honor the stories of our pain without becoming them — and what becomes possible when we do? This is a tender invitation into the slow, sacred work of becoming — with ourselves, and with something greater.
Ep #13 | Discernment | What’s the Difference Between Withholding and Wise Protection?
What does it mean to share vulnerably without oversharing? In this solo episode, I explore the tender discernment between fear-based withholding and wise self-protection. After scrapping a previous recording, I sit down in real time to reflect on what it means to live the questions when some of them still feel too raw to name aloud. With gentle honesty, I unpack the difference between boundaries that isolate and boundaries that support, the nervous system cues that guide our discernment, and the invitation to remain open while also honoring what is still forming within. If you’ve ever struggled with when (and/or how) to share something tender, this one’s for you.
Ep #14 | Becoming | What Did This Season Teach Me About Being Human?
In this episode, I reflect not just on the themes, questions, and lessons we explored, but on how much this space invited me to live into the making of it — just as we’ve been invited to live into the questions themselves. The process of creating this podcast mirrored its own message: we found the shape by showing up, one honest step at a time.
This is a tender, spacious look back at what it means to become through vulnerability, wise discernment + protection, and the quiet unfolding of self-trust. I share what surprised me, the clarity I’ve lived into, what I’m integrating, embodying + still walking with, and the questions that revealed themselves along the way.
S.2 Ep #1 | What Does It Mean to Trust the Timing of Your Life?
As the seasons shift, I’ve been thinking a lot about time -- not just the kind that lives on a clock, but the kind that moves through the body, the heart, the soul. This past year has been one of deep undoing and even deeper remembering. In this first episode of season two, I’m sharing some honest reflections on what it’s looked like to live inside grief and transformation, to walk the lonely road of coming back to myself, and to honor the milestones no one else can see. If you’ve ever found yourself in a season where everything looked still on the outside but everything was changing inside, this one is for you.
S.2 Ep #2 | How Do I Make Aligned Choices When I’m Still Untangling?
Have you ever asked yourself, “Am I doing this for me or because I don’t want to upset someone else?” In this episode, I talk about what it’s been like to move from old patterns of people-pleasing into deeper self-trust, and how murky that process can be. We talk about internal safety, the tension of not knowing yet, and why it’s okay if things aren’t clear right away. If you’re learning how to take care of yourself and still stay connected to others, without abandoning either, this is for you.
S.2 Ep #3 | How Do We Steward Our Lives as Part of an Ecosystem? A Conversation w/ James-Olivia Chu Hillman
I’m so thrilled to share this first guest conversation of Season Two with my dear friend, James-Olivia Chu Hillman. Our relationship has been a constant source of depth, curiosity, and sweetness in my life and this episode is an invitation to sit at the table with us as we move through big questions about devotion, attention, regard, belonging, and the everyday practices that root us in who we are becoming. Together, we explore what it means to live into devotion, to place our attention with care, to tend to “spiritual and relational hygiene,” to honor our changing bodies and seasons, to discern what is truly urgent within our collective, and to remember that belonging is both essential and reciprocal. This is a conversation about living into the questions of being human and I hope it meets you where you are as it did for me.
S.2 Ep #4 | How Do We Reweave Our Soul Work After Transformation? A Conversation w/ Kylie McBeath
What if remembering who we are isn’t about striving or fixing, but about softening into the truth that’s already there? In this episode, I have the honor of welcoming my dear friend + beautifully-hearted human, Kylie McBeath, for a conversation that feels like a true remembering. We explore the beauty and challenge of weaving our soul work into our lives, especially when we’ve walked through initiations like motherhood, grief, and identity transformation. Kylie shares so vulnerably about navigating the transition from maiden to mother, what it means to reweave our capacity to receive, and how we can soften our way into deeper trust with life. We talk about grief as a doorway, about rehumanizing ourselves in a world that demands extraction, and about what it means to live into interdependence rather than hyper-independence or old models of codependency. If you’ve ever wondered what it means to live in alignment with your values while holding many identities and responsibilities or what it might look like to open to abundance in a way that doesn’t require overworking or abandoning yourself, this one is for you.
S.2 Ep #5 | What Happens When We Stop Bracing and Start Living?
Wow, this episode felt like an exhale to record. It’s an honest reflection on where I am right now: a season of integration, self-trust, and embodied alignment after a long, messy, beautiful descent. I talk about the relationships I’ve rebuilt with parts of myself, especially the anxious, younger part that used to run the show, and how somatic work has helped me create real groundedness. We explore what it means to trust ourselves in real time, to let go of the perfectionism that keeps us braced, and to live our way into new questions, not just answer them. If you’re navigating change, honoring complexity, and/or learning to stay with yourself in the hard and the good, I think you’ll find something here that speaks to your own unfolding too.
S.2 Ep #6 | Where Did I Learn That Needing Help Means I’m "Weak"?
Have you ever felt like asking for help meant you were somehow falling short? In this week’s solo episode, I share a dream that opened up a deeper layer of my relationship with support, avoidance, and shame. What began as a simple image of not wanting to drive in the rain turned into a powerful reflection on nervous system regulation, internalized pressure to “just push through,” and the quiet bravery of asking for what we need. I explore how often we mistake needing help as "failure" and how transformative it is to reframe it as an act of trust and congruence. This episode is for anyone learning to meet themselves with compassion, especially when it feels like we “should” already be "further along".
S.2 Ep #7 | What If "Doing It All" Is Costing Me What Matters Most?
I’m living into the question of what happens when we stop letting urgency run the show, especially when urgency is shaped by survival instructions we didn’t realize we were still following. This episode came from a week that left me totally run down. Not because I didn’t get everything done, but because I did, and instead of feeling proud, I felt depleted. I’m reflecting on the moments where I override my own limits, when I default to prioritizing what feels most immediately tense or pressing, and how that can unintentionally mean those closest to me receive what’s left over. I explore more about what my survival instructions have been, how this patterns has played out in my life, and what I’m learning about living more congruently with my energy, time, and relationships. This is a conversation about unsustainable doing, softening control, and what it looks like to build a more honest and sustainable rhythm, one where we don’t abandon ourselves in order to keep the peace or "hold it all together."
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Living the Questions isn’t just about exploring big ideas — it’s about living them. If you’re craving a space to untangle what’s true for you, witness + relate differently with old patterns, and step into a more aligned, embodied way of being, my Rehumanizing YOU coaching offerings might be your next step.
This is a space for deep inquiry, integration, and transformation —where we invite curiosity to become clarity and insight to become action.
Curious? Let’s explore together.