Shows / Just Julia
Just Julia
JUST JULIA is about the stories we carry, the identities we outgrow, and the confidence it takes to become someone new. Through personal stories and conversations, I explore career, motherhood, identity, reinvention and the complicated middle chapters of a woman’s life. I don’t have life figured out. I’m simply collecting better questions and sharing what I discover along the way.
juliakallas.substack.com
Episodes
Just Julia22:22, and Other Things I Still Believe In
I keep seeing 22:22. And every time I do, a small part of me wonders whether someone, somewhere, is trying to tell me something. Which is funny, because I used…
Just JuliaWhat If God Heard Me the First Time?
I heard a story about a man who spent 36 days lost in the Amazon rainforest after his plane crashed. His name was Antônio Sena. For the first week, he stayed…
Just JuliaDon’t Call It Bad Luck Too Soon
On Sunday, my husband and I were sitting together buying flights to Brazil for Christmas. There were two options from Milan. One left from the airport close to…
Just JuliaYou Don’t Have to Choose
What happens when the woman who has everything planned starts getting curious about everything she can't explain? In the first episode of Season 2, I share…
Just JuliaI'm Still Angry. I'm Also Excited.
Some mornings I still wake up frustrated about things I wish had happened differently. Other mornings, I wake up excited about something new. Sometimes both…
Just JuliaI’m Still Angry. I’m Also Excited.
I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time lately trying to figure out how subtitles should appear on a screen. Which font looks right? How long should the words…
Just JuliaBending Time
A strange thing has been happening to me lately. I keep losing afternoons. I sit down in the morning intending to write something. One idea leads to another…
Just JuliaWhat If You’ve Outgrown the Life You Built?
What do you do when the life you knew no longer fits, but the next one hasn’t introduced itself yet? When I look back at my life, I can see so many versions of…
Just JuliaI Thought I Wanted Karma. What I Needed Was Release.
There are moments when someone hurts us and, even if we never say it out loud, a part of us starts waiting. We wait for them to regret it, for life to show…
Just JuliaWho Helps the Woman Who Handles Everything?
There is a kind of woman people trust with everything.She remembers. She organises. She solves. She takes care of people. She finds a way. And eventually, “I…
Just JuliaHow New Cultures Rewire Your Brain
We spend so much time trying to change ourselves from the inside. We journal. We analyse our patterns. We read the books, take the courses, ask ourselves what…
Just JuliaWhat Would I Know About You If I’d Known You for a Long Time?
This summer, at Mindvalley University in Tallinn, I met a woman only briefly, but she asked me a question I haven’t forgotten. It was one of those encounters…
Just JuliaWho Actually Helped You Become Yourself?
For years, I assumed leadership would come from above. From the manager. The director. The person with the title. The person who was supposedly responsible for…
Just JuliaI Lost the Weight. I Still Didn’t Feel Like Me.
For years, I thought sensuality would come back when I felt good in my body again. Then I lost the weight, became stronger, started enjoying clothes again, and…
Just JuliaI Did the Work. I Missed the Moment.
There are endings that hurt because something failed. And then there are endings that hurt because something finally worked, just after you were no longer…
Just JuliaI’m Learning How to Ask for Help
I used to think the hardest part of losing a job would be the applications, the interviews, the waiting, the uncertainty. I was wrong. The hardest part has…
Just JuliaI Asked Life to Guide Me. Then Everything Fell Apart.
A few days before I lost my job, I sat on a plane repeating a mantra I had been using for months: Show me. Guide me. Use me. I’m listening. I’m at your…
Just JuliaSometimes Someone Else Remembers Who You Were
A few weeks ago, someone who knew me when I was 17 wrote a comment that made me cry. Not because it was dramatic. Because he remembered something about me that…
Just JuliaI Left Home to See the World. I Didn’t Know I Would Meet Myself.
When I returned home to Brazil after a year in New Zealand, I was 18 years old. My father looked at me and said something I have carried with me ever since…
Just JuliaI Got My Body Back, So Where Was I?
For a long time, I told myself that I would feel like myself again when I lost the weight. After becoming a mother, my world became very small and very full at…
Just JuliaThe Dream I Can’t See Yet
There are moments in life when the old dream no longer fits, but the new one hasn’t appeared yet. I’m in one of those moments. I don’t know exactly what my…
Just JuliaBefore You Decide What's Next, Know What You Stand For
I have been thinking a lot about what I might build next. Maybe it will be a company. Maybe it won’t. Maybe I will work for someone else again while building…
Just JuliaWhat Happens When You Ask Life to Show You Another Way and Then Hate the Way It Answers?
A few days before I lost my job, I was sitting by the window of an airplane somewhere above the clouds, flying home from Bucharest. I was anxious. Work had…
Just JuliaRehearsing Pain Makes You Suffer Twice
What if the habit you call preparation is actually making you suffer before anything has happened? In this episode of Just Julia, we explore the ideas behind…
Just JuliaThe Dream I Can’t See Yet
I am afraid of the future right now. There. I said it. I don’t know what my professional life will look like six months from now. Will I take another corporate…
Just JuliaThe Woman Who Never Stopped Becoming
This episode is a companion conversation to my essay, She Just Kept Becoming, a reflection on my mother and the many lives she allowed herself to live. She was…
Just JuliaI Wanted to Be There When It Worked
There are endings that hurt because something failed. And then there are endings that hurt because something finally worked, just after you were no longer…
Just JuliaI Thought Kundalini Was Woo-Woo. Then I Experienced It.
What happens when an intelligent, rational woman experiences something she cannot fully explain? Inspired by Julia Kallas’s article I’m Not Becoming Woo-Woo…
Just JuliaStop Erasing Yourself from the Picture
How many memories have we removed ourselves from because we did not like how we looked? We take the photographs. We capture the birthdays, the holidays, the…
Just JuliaI Had Forgotten That Girl
This week, someone reminded me who I was before I had a CV. Before Milan. Before the UN. Before job titles. Before marriage and motherhood. Before I had all…
Just JuliaI Would Wait Again
Four years ago today, on September 17th, 2022, Alessandro and I got married on Lake Como. And a few days ago, someone said something about our wedding that…
Just JuliaWhy High-Achieving Women Fear Looking Inward
We invest so much energy in developing our careers, managing our families and becoming more capable. Yet when that same curiosity turns inward, many of us…
Just JuliaI’m Not Becoming Woo-Woo. I’m Becoming Curious
I was three, or four, maybe five. I was standing in the corner of a children’s birthday party, watching everyone else play. I knew that little girl…
Just JuliaThe People You Thought Would Be Watching
Who shows up when you fall and who is still there when you start trying to stand back up? In this episode of JUST JULIA, we explore something we don’t talk…
Just JuliaThe People You Thought Would Be Watching
When I started writing on Substack, I didn’t really tell people. A few, yes. I told my family in New Zealand. I told a handful of friends. My parents and my…
Just JuliaHow Much of Yourself Have You Shrunk to Fit In?
How much of ourselves do we slowly edit, soften, or make smaller just to belong? This conversation was inspired by my latest JUST JULIA essay, How Much of…
Just JuliaWho Are You When There’s Nothing After Your Name?
What happens when you’ve built a career, lived different lives, collected titles and accomplishments and suddenly none of them quite explain who you are…
Just JuliaHow Much of Yourself Have You Shrunk to Fit In?
When I was around ten years old, I was the tallest girl in my class. Actually, for a while, I think I was taller than almost everyone. Girls and boys. At…
Just JuliaThe Girl Who Never Made the List: The Conversation
Some stories stay with us much longer than the people who gave them to us. In this episode of JUST JULIA, we go deeper into The Girl Who Never Made the List —…
Just JuliaDo You Know How Smart I Am in My Own Language?
A few days ago, I published an essay about something I’ve carried with me for years: what happens to your confidence when so much of your life is lived in…
Just JuliaDo You Know How Smart I Am in My Own Language?
There is a scene from Modern Family that has stayed with me. Gloria, frustrated by not being able to express herself properly in English, says: “Do you know…
Just JuliaThe Empty Space After My Name
When I was in high school, my father used to make me an offer. If I got into medical school, one of the good public universities in Brazil, he would buy me a…
Just JuliaMany Lifetimes in One Life
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how many lifetimes can fit inside one life. When I look back, I don’t see one version of myself. I see many. There was a…
Just JuliaThe Girl Who Never Made the List
When I was twelve, the boys in my class had a tradition. Every so often, they would write a list. The ten prettiest girls. The paper would travel from desk to…
Just JuliaI thought asking better questions would give me answers.
Instead, it changed my life. At the beginning of this year, I started asking myself questions I had avoided for years. Not because I was unhappy. But because…