Owning Her Space

I recently watched The Five-Star Weekend. No judgment please 😊

Now, I’ll admit, parts of it made me smile for all the wrong reasons. A beautiful house in Nantucket that somehow never seemed to need a dishwasher loading, a kitchen that remained spotless despite endless meals and, of course, a budget that appeared to have no ceiling. It all felt wonderfully unrealistic.

But beneath the glossy setting was something that quietly stayed with me.

Five women. Five different lives. Five moments of asking themselves a simple question:

Who am I now?

It struck me because I think many of us reach that point.

Not necessarily after a life-changing event. Sometimes it arrives much more quietly. The children need you a little less. Your career no longer excites you in quite the same way. The life you worked so hard to build finally settles… and you realise you’ve changed while building it.

There comes a point where your previous identity has fulfilled its purpose.

Thank the woman who got you this far.

She is the reason you have become who you are today and deserves your gratitude.

Then, gently ask yourself whether she’s the only version of you that exists.

I think that’s where many women hesitate. Because after decades of putting everyone else first, it’s hard to give ourselves permission to become someone new without feeling disloyal to the person we’ve always been.

Perhaps that’s why optionality matters so much to me. Not because I believe everyone should change their life, but because I believe everyone deserves the freedom to choose.

People often assume optionality is about money. Or leaving a job. Or starting a business.

It isn’t.

It’s about creating enough space in your life that, if one day you feel yourself being pulled in a different direction, you have the freedom to follow it.

You may decide not to change anything. In fact, you may decide that your life is exactly where you want it to be.

That’s the point.

The goal isn’t to erase your past. It’s to stop believing it has to dictate your future.

Because the next chapter doesn’t begin by tearing out the previous ones.

It simply begins by writing another one.

For most of my life, I have been seen as the strong one. The one who stays calm when things get difficult. The one who gets on with it.

Friends and colleagues have often told me that stress never seems to affect me. “You just breathe through it,” they say.

And perhaps, from the outside, it looks that way.

I will admit that I have never shied away from responsibility. If something needs doing, I tend to step forward. If a problem needs solving, I look for a solution. If life becomes messy, I instinctively try to create order.

For a long time, I thought that was simply who I was.

Strong.

But the older I get, the more I wonder whether strength is something I was born with at all. Or whether I simply became strong because someone had to. Children needed soothing. Decisions needed making. Bills needed paying. Friends needed support. Teams needed leading.

Life kept presenting situations that required someone to step forward. So I did.

And then I did it again. And again.

Until one day, what started as a response became part of my identity: the strong one.

But perhaps strength is not what we think it is. We often talk about it as though it is a personality trait. Something some people naturally possess and others do not. I am no longer convinced that is true.

I think strength is trained. Built quietly through repetition. Through carrying responsibility. Through navigating uncertainty. Through making decisions when there are no obvious answers. Through learning that panic rarely improves the situation.

For most of my life, strength meant carrying. Carrying responsibility. Carrying pressure. Carrying other people when they needed support.

And for a long time, that strength served me well. It helped me build a career. Raise a family. Create stability when life felt uncertain.

But as I step into this next chapter, I am beginning to think that strength alone is not what I need most.

Strength got me here. It helped me build. But what will serve me now is something different.

Curiosity.

The willingness to try. The courage to follow what feels right, even when I do not know exactly where it leads. The openness to make mistakes, be vulnerable and learn from them.

Because perhaps every chapter of life asks something different from us. And perhaps the goal was never simply to become stronger.

Perhaps it was to become more fully ourselves.

My husband often laughs when I say I need a holiday.

Not because he disagrees that I’m tired.

But because, according to him, I don’t actually know the meaning of “relaxing” or “doing nothing.”

And if I’m honest… he may have a point.

Even away from work, I will find something to organise.
Something to improve.
Something to think about.
Something to plan.

My brain rarely switches off completely.

For a long time, I saw that as a positive thing.

I’m ambitious.
Independent.
Practical.

I get things done.

And, realistically, when you carry a lot of responsibility, you often have to.

Because if you don’t do it, there’s a good chance nobody else will.

So you adapt.

You become efficient.
Reliable.
Capable.

You stop waiting to be rescued and simply learn to move.

And over time, that becomes your normal state.

But recently, I’ve started wondering something else.

What if the inability to truly do nothing is not ambition at all?

What if it’s simply the result of carrying so much, for so long, that your nervous system no longer recognises stillness as safe?

After two decades of running from one responsibility to the next, perhaps my brain is simply wired to anticipate the next task before the current one has even finished.

The next email.
The next meal.
The next deadline.
The next thing to organise, solve or remember.

And when that becomes your default setting for long enough, something interesting happens.

You stop just doing it.

You become it.

The capable one.
The productive one.
The one who always keeps moving.

And maybe that’s why slowing down can feel strangely uncomfortable.

Because when the movement stops, you are left facing a quieter question:

Who am I when I’m not constantly doing?

I don’t think the answer is to suddenly become someone who spends entire days doing absolutely nothing.

That’s probably never going to be me.

But I do think there is something important in learning how to create more space between the doing.

More moments of presence.
More calm.
More stillness without guilt.

Not because productivity is bad.

But because constantly living in “next” mode means you rarely get to fully experience where you already are.

And perhaps real balance is not about becoming less ambitious.

Maybe it’s about learning that your value does not disappear the moment you stop moving.