Alone time as the foundation of your next chapter

There is something I keep seeing in women around the 50 threshold, and honestly, it breaks my heart a little. The fastest way to lose your magnetism, your authenticity, your truth, your inner light, your genius, or whatever words you use for that deep alive part of you, is to believe that something is wrong with you.

That you are not normal. That the way you move through the world, the way you feel things, the way you need space, the way your energy works, somehow needs to be fixed. And I think we are waking up to this collectively as women now, in a very real, messy, enough-is-enough kind of way.

We are starting to notice how many parts of ourselves we have spent years apologising for, shrinking, hiding or explaining, simply because they did not fit the very narrow version of what a “good woman” is supposed to be. And one of the places this shows up so clearly is in the guilt women feel around wanting to be alone.

The guilt women carry around needing space

I recently had more than ten comments on one of my Instagram yap videos where I talked about the difference between isolation and sacred alone time. Some of the comments honestly broke my heart, because so many women said some version of: “I thought something was wrong with me because I just want to be alone.”

And I felt that in my body, because I know that feeling too. That tiny little panic that comes up when your whole system says, “I need to be left alone now,” and then immediately another voice comes in and asks whether that makes you selfish, difficult, unavailable, unkind, withdrawn or somehow wrong.

This is where the guilt gets us. So many of us were trained to believe that being a good woman means being available to our children, our partners, our clients, our friends, our ageing parents, everyone’s emotions, everyone’s crisis, everyone’s expectations, and everyone’s little need that somehow becomes ours to carry.

And then we arrive somewhere around the 50 threshold, and something in us starts saying no. Not a dramatic no, and not a burn-it-all-down no, but a deep, tired, honest no from somewhere in the body. No, I cannot keep being this available. No, I cannot keep abandoning myself to make everyone else comfortable. No, I cannot keep pretending I do not need space.

I believe this stage of life asks something very different from us. It asks us to let go of the old identity, not because it was wrong, but because it was built for a version of us who had different needs, different responsibilities, different dreams and often a much higher tolerance for self-abandonment.

It also brings up the what-could-have-beens, the lives we did not choose, the paths we left behind, and the parts of ourselves we parked somewhere because there was no room for them at the time. And underneath all of that, a new question begins to form: what if I put myself first now, not in a selfish way, but in an honest way?

Alone time is not the same as isolation

That kind of question needs quiet. It needs shame-free, guilt-free alone time, and it needs space where you are not being watched, needed, measured, interrupted, expected or pulled back into the version of yourself everyone else understands.

I think this is why alone time becomes so important around this threshold. For many of us, it is the first time in decades that we are really getting to know ourselves without all the noise, without the constant managing, and without the pressure to be useful, pleasant, responsive or easy to need.

We need time in our own energy. We need time to feel what is actually true, to notice what is ours and what we have simply carried for years because nobody else picked it up, and to hear ourselves underneath the duties, the habits, the guilt and the coping mechanisms.

This is why it makes me so sad when women are made to feel guilty for longing to be left alone. Because so often that longing is not isolation, rejection or failure. It is a natural rhythm trying to return after years of being forced into constant availability.

Patriarchy has made women believe that we have to be available 24/7. Consistent, helpful, warm, responsive, easy to reach, easy to need, easy to interrupt, always on, always giving, always smoothing things over and always making sure nobody feels too uncomfortable.

But the feminine does not work like that. We have cycles, seasons, energy shifts, inner weather, times when we are outward and times when we need to pull back. The problem is not that women need rhythm, space and quiet. The problem is that we have been taught to feel guilty for needing it.

I do not believe every woman’s desire to be alone is just a perimenopause symptom that needs to be managed away. Of course we need to care for our bodies, our nervous systems and our mental health, but we also need to be very careful not to pathologise every honest feminine need the minute it becomes inconvenient to the world around us.

The need to be alone is not automatically a problem. It can be wisdom, it can be the body finally telling the truth, and it can be the beginning of a new chapter that needs privacy and protection before it is ready to be seen.

For many women around the 50 threshold, being alone becomes the foundation of their next chapter. It is where you start to hear what you actually want, where the old noise starts falling away, and where your life’s work begins to take shape, not as some big performance, but as something true that finally has enough room to come through.

Not overnight, not through a five-step plan, and not by forcing yourself into another version of “better”. This is quieter than that. It is the practice of coming back to yourself and trusting that there is a path, even if you cannot see the whole thing yet.

So if you feel the need to be alone, please do not immediately make yourself wrong for it. Please do not turn it into another thing you have to justify, explain or fix. Give yourself the room, let yourself cocoon, and stop treating your need for space as a character flaw.

Because the world does not need another over-functioning woman who is secretly exhausted, resentful and disconnected from herself. The world needs the full version of you, and sometimes the only way we get to meet her is by being alone long enough to hear her.

If this is where you are right now, The 50 Threshold is a beautiful place to begin. It is my free Human Design lesson for women around 50 whose old life or business is starting to feel too small, and who can feel that something new is asking for space.

Much love, Sharonah x