How midlife pulled me out of overdoing and into self trust

I was raised by a single mum in the 70s, and we never had a lot of money, so I started working early. I think I was 14 when I began babysitting three times a week. By 15, I had added waitressing in a café. By 16, I was working behind a bar at weekends, which was legal then, while still going to school. I also spent a few weekends a year accompanying groups of disabled children on trips.

So when I say I learned early how to keep going, I really mean it. Working, helping, earning, moving, managing, doing. That became my normal long before I had the words to question it.

And honestly, for a very long time, I loved it. I loved being active. I loved having things to do. I loved the feeling of being useful and capable. I am a Manifesting Generator in Human Design, which is the multi passionate, fast moving, “oh look, another thing I can do at the same time” type. So of course I made a whole personality out of having capacity.

For most of my life, there were always several plates spinning. Work, projects, children, ideas, travel, clients, reinventions, all of it. And I genuinely thought stress was part of the fun. Even my holidays were active. Climbing, long road trips, motorbike tours across Europe. Sitting still was not exactly my natural habitat.

But when I look back now, I can see the pattern so clearly. I would build and build and build, take on more and more, push the edges of my own capacity, and then eventually I would hit the breaking point. Then I would burn it all down, quit everything, start again, feel free for a while, and then slowly recreate the same pattern in a new outfit.

Different work. Same nervous system. Different chapter. Same overdoing. Different dream. Same old proof that I was allowed to exist because I was useful, capable and always in motion.

Perimenopause pulled the plug on the old pattern

Then perimenopause entered the chat, and my body basically looked at the life I had built and said, no love, we are not doing this anymore.

At first, I resisted. Of course I did. I had built so much of my identity around being the woman who could handle things. The one who could move fast, figure it out, hold the room, take the leap, get on the plane, fix the problem, reinvent herself, and somehow still make dinner.

But my body was not asking for a better productivity system. It was asking me to stop.

Not forever. Not as a punishment. Not because I had become weak or less capable. It was asking me to stop because I could no longer see clearly while I was constantly stirring the water.

I have always called that phase of perimenopause the muddy water phase, because that is exactly what it felt like. Every time I tried to move too quickly in any direction, the mud came up again and I went blind. I would think I had found the answer, then panic, force, overthink, change everything, and suddenly I could not see the path at all.

The only thing that worked was stillness.

Not the romantic kind where you light a candle and suddenly become a serene woman in linen. I mean the deeply annoying kind of stillness where you want to do something, fix something, start something, end something, decide something, and life just keeps whispering, sit down first.

So I sat. Reluctantly, dramatically, imperfectly, but I sat. And slowly, the mud settled.

Human Design helped me see myself clearly

That was when Human Design found me, or I found it, I still don’t really know which way round it happened. But it was like someone had switched on a quiet lamp inside a room I had been stumbling around in for years.

It helped me see that I was not wrong for having big energy. I was not wrong for loving variety, movement, ideas, travel and intensity. But I had been using my energy without enough discernment. I had been confusing aliveness with pressure, momentum with alignment, and being busy with being worthy.

That distinction changed everything for me.

Human Design did not make me calmer by turning me into someone I am not. It did not ask me to become less passionate, less curious, less interested in life, or less alive. It simply helped me understand how my energy actually works, and where I was overriding my own body in the name of being productive, useful or impressive.

Nearly ten years into my Human Design experiment, I can honestly say I am a changed woman. I am still active. I still love solo travel. I still have a million ideas. I am still very much a Manifesting Generator, so let’s not pretend I have turned into a minimalist monk.

But I no longer need to be busy all the time to feel like I matter.

That is the real shift.

Not becoming someone else. Becoming more honest about how I am built.

Human Design has been, hands down, the best self awareness tool I have ever found. Not because it gives you another label to hide behind, but because when you actually live it, it keeps showing you where you are abandoning your own rhythm.

And what still amazes me is that I have never become bored of it. As a Manifesting Generator, this is basically a revelation. Most things get my full devotion for about five minutes before my system starts sniffing the air for the next interesting thing. But Human Design keeps opening. It keeps giving. It keeps bringing me back to myself.

For me, the real gift has not been more information. It has been self recognition. It has been learning the difference between true energy and borrowed pressure. It has been understanding that stillness is not wasted time, and that sometimes the most powerful thing a woman can do is stop stirring the muddy water long enough to see what is actually true.

With so much love & respect,

Sharonah x