From the Green Velvet Couch | A Conversation with Heather Thompson
What do boundaries, balance, and burnout prevention actually look like for a working mom juggling a high-pressure career and two kids in the middle of the busiest season of their lives? How do you protect your family time without feeling like you are falling behind at work? And what do you do when the signs of burnout start showing up in the faces of the people who love you?
On her podcast, From the Green Velvet Couch, Shelly sat down with Heather Thompson, SHRM-SCP and Chief Human Resources Officer at the Nashville Zoo. Heather brings more than twenty years of HR experience across healthcare, children and family services, and now the nonprofit zoo world. Her honesty about what it takes to stay grounded in a demanding field made this conversation one of the most relatable yet.
Here are the moments worth holding onto.
A Career Built on Supporting People
Heather is new to the Nashville Zoo but not new to HR leadership. Before this role, she spent around seven years in the mental health and family services space, and before that, twelve years in healthcare. Each industry has its own rhythm, but she has noticed something consistent across all of them. HR is where the emotional weight of an organization quietly collects, and the people in those roles often carry it home without realizing how heavy it has become.
That experience has shaped how she thinks about boundaries, balance, and burnout prevention, not as abstract concepts, but as daily practices she has had to fight for in her own life.
The Conversation That Changed Her Schedule
Seven years ago, Heather and her husband decided to expand their family later in life. Around the same time, she and her husband realized they were burning the candle at both ends and could not keep going. A door opened for Heather to move into a more flexible, remote-friendly role, and that pivot became one of the most important boundary decisions of her career.
It was not a one-time fix. She described boundaries as something you have to recycle over and over. Life changes. Seasons shift. New pressures arrive. The work of protecting your family and your wellbeing is ongoing, not a box you check once and forget about.
This kind of ongoing, intentional adjustment is exactly what Shelly helps her clients build through her executive advising work for founders and leaders, where sustainable routines have to flex with the seasons of real life.
The 4:30 to 8:30 Rule
One of Heather’s most practical daily habits is a protected window of family time from 4:30 to 8:30 each evening. Those four hours belong to her children. She tells her team that if they see an email from her late at night, it is because she chose to knock a few things out after her kids were in bed, and she never expects a reply until the next day. Sometimes she uses the “send later” function so her team does not even see the message until morning.
This boundary is rooted in a quiet truth every parent knows. Children are only young for a short while, and those years move faster than we expect. Heather has decided that protecting this window is worth more than trying to keep up with every work notification the moment it arrives.
Saying Yes to the Things That Actually Matter
Heather has also become more intentional about saying no. She explained it in a way that many working parents will recognize. When there is already a yes in the box, there is no room for another one. If volunteering at her children’s school is the yes that matters right now, then an external obligation that would pull her away from her family is a no. She does not apologize for it, and she has learned not to feel guilty about it.
This simple reframe can be one of the most freeing shifts a busy person ever makes. Every yes is also a no to something else, and the question is always whether you are saying yes to the right things.
The Moment Her Kids Noticed
The most vulnerable part of the conversation came when Shelly asked Heather how she learned to recognize burnout in herself. Her answer was honest and moving. The last 18 months had been a difficult season at her previous organization, and she had pushed herself too far. She did not catch it on her own. Her kids did.
When her children started asking “Mom, are you okay?” she knew the pendulum had swung too far. That question, coming from small voices who knew her better than anyone, was the wake-up call that pulled her back to center. She realized the pace was not worth it, and she began making changes.
Her faith played a role in the recentering process. She turned back to what mattered most, stepped back from what she could not control, and gave herself permission to set new boundaries. She was also quick to acknowledge that she is not always good at this work. It is a constant battle, but one she is willing to fight because she has seen what happens when she does not.
Why HR Is Quietly Burning Out
Shelly asked Heather to talk about burnout more broadly, and Heather offered an insight that explains a lot. HR professionals across the country are exhausted. Since 2020, the HR community has absorbed wave after wave of organizational change. Pandemic response. Remote work. The great resignation. DEI strategy shifts. Economic uncertainty. Every one of those waves touches HR first and hardest.
At the same time, HR teams are the emotional catch basin for an entire workforce. When employees are struggling, HR is often the first stop. When leaders need support, HR is there too. The operational load is heavy enough on its own. Add the emotional load, and you have a recipe for exactly the kind of burnout the profession is now experiencing.
Heather found herself in that exact position and had to seek support outside her own agency. She credits her husband for being an encouraging presence who reminded her it was okay to reach out for help. Not everyone has that kind of support, which makes building it intentionally all the more important.
This kind of whole-person support for leaders carrying unseen weight is at the heart of Shelly’s wellness specialist practice for founders, executives, and high-profile clients, where private, trusted space to process the hard parts of leadership is often the missing piece.
Policies Mean Nothing Without Modeling
One of Heather’s most pointed observations was about the gap between what organizations say and what they actually allow. You can have a generous leave policy and encourage people to take time off, but if leaders never model that behavior, employees will not believe it is safe to use. The unspoken message always wins.
Heather said she would love to normalize longer vacations in American work culture. She has seen firsthand how the afternoon rest culture in parts of Europe signals a different relationship with productivity. Slowing down does not mean producing less. It often means producing better, with more focus and less reactivity.
Shelly added something she often says to teams. Busyness is not the same as high-value work. Good employees want to do it all, but the most effective employees know how to distinguish between tasks that actually move the needle and tasks that just fill the day.
The Sports Pressure Parents Know Too Well
Heather and Shelly both spoke honestly about the pressure of being a parent in the current sports culture. Heather has two children who love their sports, but she has had to remind herself that they just want to have fun. They are not going pro. They do not need to be on the road every weekend chasing tournaments.
Giving her kids permission to simply enjoy the game has been one of the quiet boundary-setting decisions that has made her life more sustainable. It has also given her children a healthier relationship with their own interests. This is one of those moments where a parent’s burnout prevention becomes the child’s gift.
The Habit That Sets the Tone
When Shelly asked Heather to share one daily habit that makes the biggest difference, her answer was her 20-minute drive to work. That drive has become her most consistent routine. She listens to a devotional or a verse of the day. She prays. She uses the time to clear her head and set her intention for the day.
It is not fancy. It is not complicated. It costs nothing. But it is the kind of small, repeatable practice that holds a whole life together. As Heather put it, wellness does not have to be expensive. It just has to be real and consistent.
This principle, that sustainable wellness is built on small intentional practices rather than sweeping programs, is central to Shelly’s wellness consulting work for organizations and leadership teams, where culture change starts with what leaders do every single day.
🎧 Join the Conversation
If this post sparked something in you, the full episode is waiting with even more warmth and thoughtful insight.
✨ Listen to the full conversation on the From the Green Velvet Couch podcast. Visit the Podcast page to discover more episodes focused on resilience, leadership wellbeing, and holistic wellness.
Let this be your invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, and step into a well-grounded life full of growth and intention.
