What Holds You Back? And Why It Matters Now?

Naming What No Longer Serves You

When experience and skills are no longer the issue, but progress still feels difficult, the question shifts. What is holding me back?

For many experienced women in senior roles, stagnation is not caused by lack of competence, ambition, or effort. It is more often linked to something subtle and familiar: a pattern of behaviour, a belief, or an inner rule that once helped us succeed — and now limits our next step.

What holds us back rarely announces itself clearly.

It can appear as

• - a critical inner voice, or

• - guilt for wanting something different, or

• - shame for not feeling further ahead, or

• - ….

Sometimes it feels deeply personal; at other times, it reveals itself as inherited — shaped by family systems, culture, or professional norms absorbed over decades.

Understanding this alone is difficult.

In a group, our own story is no longer the only reference point. Other people’s experiences begin to resonate, disturb, or mirror something in us. What we could not see on our own becomes visible through listening and sharing.

This is not about comparison — it is about seeing it.

The first step in this work is simple but not easy: listening to yourself, hearing your voice. To notice what repeats. To become aware of familiar reactions and beliefs without rushing to fix them.

The second step requires more. Insight alone rarely creates change — otherwise, transformation would be easy. What holds us back is often held symbolically, emotionally, and relationally. Working with it requires distance, reflection, and the ability to see oneself in connection to others and to the wider world.

This is the space that will be shared in the next Return to Yourself online session — where understanding becomes the beginning, not the end, of movement.

This is the space opened and worked with during the Midlife Magic Retreat.

A question to pause with: What belief, behaviour, or inherited expectation might be quietly holding you back right now?

And if this year represents a transition — visible or subtle — what would it mean to deliberately set aside time to act on this question, rather than carrying it silently into the next chapter?