Sometimes You Just Need the Space to Hear Yourself

Things very rarely go to plan.

This week, I had been pencilled in to be my daughter’s ‘emotional support carrot’. This is just something we jokingly call my being there for her when her anxiety becomes too much or she knows she will need me for a situation which is potentially tricky for her. (We once saw a reel with a very cute and sensitive dog that needed its carrot toy on hand, whenever it was ‘in its feels’ too much…and the name stuck!) 

Well, after expecting to be accompanying her to college that particular morning so she could go into her mock exam with the least amount of nerves and anxious feelings, plans changed.

I was relieved of my duties as 'Emotional Support Carrot' so I chose to get on with some website tidying up.

Actually, that's not strictly true - the ‘emotional support carrot’ duties weren’t needed out and about, but the support was still required - what could be attended, achieved, completed, this all changed...but the emotions didn't.

It can be tough being there for a ND child when they are doing scary things in the world, but it's something I wouldn't change one bit. I just have to be flexible.

So whilst I thought I'd be holed up in a cafe near to the college, working on this week's 'to-do' list, I was sat on the sofa, rejigging the jobs.

Each new challenge in your inner circle brings another layer of emotions to the surface. But then our instinct is to push them back down, to keep the calm facade in place, whilst under the surface we are paddling for our lives.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how many of us are carrying things we don’t have words for. Or we don't dare share, keeping the facade in place. No time for crumbling.

And these can be everyday things, one on top of the next, on top of the next. It doesn't have to be big dramatic stuff. Just the constant hum in the background.

That’s really why I created Where Wise Women Meet.

The feelings that hover in the background but don’t always burst to the surface immediately…they can be there a long time - days, weeks, months…even years.

And sometimes we never acknowledge them. We hold them close, telling no-one how we are feeling, how frustrations are building up. As far as we are concerned, this is something for us to deal with and we are coping just fine! It’s nothing to be concerned with and certainly not enough of something to share with others. 

Is this our first mistake? Or is it one in a long time of tiny micro-mistakes we make in honouring our feelings, our frustrations and our struggles?

This might be something you recognise  - I think it is just one of those states that women find themselves in often but think it is just part of their ‘job’ to deal with. And so it remains tightly bound and deeply buried.

Many of us carry on with our lives and that ‘hum’ of unshared thoughts and emotions remains hidden forever and nothing bad comes from it. Life still goes on and that inner strength remains intact. It is stretched and pushed and tested but we can still function, at least on the surface. 

There is nothing wrong with this and with many women, nothing has to change. But in some, the change is necessary because the struggle between burying this pressure and it erupting through the careful created surface starts to result in in cracks and tears and rips. 

I think I have spent some time in the past, before I knew better, blaming myself for ‘allowing’ this to happen, for falling to keep it all under wraps. 

Now I know better.

There is more wrong with keeping those emotions and thoughts trapped within, than with visiting and revisiting what needs to be let out. 

Now I know that the body and mind are trying to whisper these needs to us quietly. These are the physical symptoms of something being a little bit ‘off ‘ but you can’t pinpoint what. The fatigue, the teary-ness, feeling disconnected from everything around you, panicky feelings, heart racing. Your body is trying to tell you something quietly. 

Because the voices are so quiet, we often ignore these signs and push on, push everything down and carry on at all costs. We ignore them because we have too much to do, there is no time to ‘give in’ to these weaknesses, as we see them. But often we ignore them at our peril!

The body tends to whisper before it shouts and if you ignore the whispers for long enough, or refuse to join the dots when they are right there in front of you and blooming obvious, then the body, your mind, your energetic being has no other option than to shout. I found this out myself when I ended up with emotional overwhelm and exhaustion. I was being the emotional support carrot long before I realised that’s what i was doing and because I wasn’t backing that up with support for myself, it caused a catastrophic rupture in my emotional field. 

And this brings us back to why I created this community. I had family, friends and colleagues I could talk to. I went down the therapy route. I was in conversations with my GP. 

What I didn't have, was the space and safe structure to have those conversations with myself. With my inner voices, to find out what they needed. I wasn't aware at the time of the value of reflection, journaling, exploring small feelings and emotions in isolation. I was trying too hard to solve the whole problem. To just feel better. A ‘once only, wave the magic wand and I’ll feel better’ solution. I didn’t realise that what I needed was space. I needed to look inward. I needed to listen to what my inner voices had to say. 

I wasn’t aware of how the seasons and moon phases had an influence on all this. How I fit into the seasons of the year, into the seasons of my life and how to forgive myself and embrace myself in all of those places. I had no clue how to listen to my energy, to my intuition, to my ancestral voices, to my chakras, to everything that had come before and also to everything that was out there in the future for me. 

I had stopped listening a long time ago, just to exist. And that wasn’t working for me very well at all. 

So Where Wise Women Meet is the start of me building the place I wish I had found YEARS before those whispers became screams.

A place to land. To feel safe. To not be judged. To feel the support, silent or otherwise, from beautiful souls who knew.A place to reflect. A place to listen. 

I have learned that we can listen to ourselves in different ways and with different outcomes. I’ve learned that the voices we listen to are fluid and they change depending on what needs to come to the surface, what needs to be recognised, honoured and even released. 

I have learned that it is never too late to start listening to those voices but also that once you start listening, you need to keep listening.

When you do start that listening journey, you hear the things you already know, you had just stopped listening. Then it become a more familiar voice and you listen more intently and your instinct about the next steps becomes stronger. Your intuition is being heard and it likes it - so it speaks up more and clearer and louder.

Sometimes you just need to be in the space to hear it. Or create the space for yourself to hear it. 

I have found that once women start this listening process, they want to understand the language of their inner voices with more clarity. 

I have held group sessions to guide people towards their inner voice. They aren’t quite sure what their voices were saying but they know they felt so much better once they started listening. 1:1 sessions can then support them to go deeper into that conversation with whichever voice needs to be heard first.

It is so amazing to see the start of the conversation and then help someone continue it in more depth and THEN hear about the lasting changes it has brought. 

Sometimes one area just asks for deeper listening and this is the basis for some deeper and more bespoke sessions I am developing because I can see the changes, the lasting effects for months afterwards.

If you have read this far and are thinking, well I’m not sure what my inner voices are saying, know that you don’t need to know all the answers straight away.

Maybe just ask one simple question to yourself and then allow space and time to listen to the answer. It could be a sensation, a feeling, a word or phrase that pops into your head. It may come to you in a dream or in a few days. It will just be a ‘knowing’. 

Listening is often the first act of healing.

If you have any questions or just want to chat about any of this, just reach out - that’s what this community is for 💜