The Exhale - What Happens When Women Share Their Truths

There’s something magical that happens when a small group of women come together and share the things they’ve been carrying, often alone and quietly, and sometimes for decades. I have been thinking about it since the last session of Nourished From Within, a five-week Tap and Write series I created for women navigating their relationship with food, their bodies, and themselves.

That moment of truth, sometimes expressed for the first time, is like an exhale that ripples through the group. It’s felt as a collective release, a shift in energy. It connects us even if our experiences have been shaped very differently. We all exhale.

I’ve kept my Tap and Write groups small on purpose. Not because I couldn’t facilitate a larger group – but because this work is best in a safe smaller space in which to share, to be witnessed, to be heard.  A space with room and permission to exhale.

There are plenty of places in our lives where we’ve hidden – around food, our bodies, or because we’ve believed we’re not enough or too much. Women in midlife and beyond often feel invisible to the world, unseen and under valued. Sometimes friends and family diminish or take for granted our wisdom and experience.

But in a small group of women something shifts when you realize each one is carrying something recognizable, something similar, something you can empathize with. There is a leveling effect that ripples out and cannot help but touch you gently. Finally, there is no need to hide, no need to keep quiet, no need to dim our light.

I feel privileged to hold this space and grateful for the training I’ve had in the art of facilitation that has allowed me to hold the exhale, the recognition, the ripples that occur in Tap and Write sessions. And while my training is present in each small group, I cannot help but be in it too, sharing the tools and my experience of them in my life, revealing how each one has helped me create a stronger, healthier relationship with myself – imperfectly, one step at a time.

As I am trusted with other’s stories, I trust them with mine. Not because I’m an expert – far from it. It’s just that sharing what emerges as we tap and write, has a way of bringing us back to ourselves. We are reminded of the tender parts of us, the moments we falter but manage “something, not nothing”. It’s about the consistency we practice so we are free from old, outdated scripts. So that the evidence we begin building embeds confidence in us and is a reminder that we are always enough.

Each week of Nourished From Within I’ve introduced the tools I’ve been using since the beginning of my weight loss and health journey two years ago. There are no expectations to be perfect, only an invitation to give them a try. But with increased use, each one has taken me closer to becoming more of the woman I want to be - in this body at each number on the scale, with food and my emotions, and in my relationship with who I continue to become as I age.

The Pause

There is a moment between an event and our response to it. A tiny window of time between the emotional discomfort we feel and our reach for comfort food. A nanosecond between the request and an automatic yes, so we don’t disappoint someone.

This fraction of time is “the pause”. It seems easy enough to do on the surface and yet many of us miss it in our attempts to push feelings, conflict, challenges away. Sometimes decades of training, diet culture, ingrained habits and old beliefs, keep us going back to a quick response, even when it’s not truly what we want.

The pause is the practice of finding the gap and learning to stay in it long enough to allow, acknowledge and let go of what’s uncomfortable. It’s the practice of asking “what do I need instead of food to support me, or you fill in the blank?”

I’ve been as guilty as anyone of believing in that moment that I am limited in choosing how I respond. And yet, when we can sit with our feelings in that pause more often, we begin to notice a change in the answers to that question. We begin to choose ourselves rather than abandoning the parts of us that grieve lost years and long for freedom from the past and its limitations. We get to exhale.

Something, Not Nothing

This is the tool I keep returning to the most on my journey. At first blush it appears to offer a simple solution: do something instead of nothing. But within this simple philosophy, there’s a depth that takes us by surprise.  

Perfectionism and “all or nothing” thinking is often what stops us from taking action or what drives us to give up and start again on Monday. A step forward practiced daily or regularly is better than a plan that never gets off the ground and is sabotaged by our inner critic or inner rebel.

One short walk when there isn’t time for a longer one. Reducing nibbling instead of cutting it out completely and failing. A moment of self-compassion instead of criticism. A breath in – and an exhale.

When we practice “something, not nothing”, we begin to gather evidence that we can rather than can’t. It begins to shift a long-standing, outdated belief that we aren’t capable of lasting change. We begin to see that this journey – to a comfortable weight, or setting clear boundaries – is finally about choosing consistency over a lifetime rather than racing to cross a finish line.   

Facilitating Nourished from Within reminded me that our work is never done – there will always be something to explore, something around the corner that pops into our lives and requires us to shift, pivot, grow and evolve. But we don’t have to do it alone and that’s the beauty of women coming together to share their truths and practice becoming no matter what stage or age they are at in life. We exhale together.

An Invitation

Nourished From Within isn’t a diet program. I don’t offer meal plans, tracking sheets, and I don’t tell you how to lose weight or change your life. It’s 5 weeks of embodied work using EFT Tapping & Therapeutic/Reflective Writing plus other tools to explore your relationship with food, your body, and yourself.

It’s for the woman who is tired of starting over – again - and ready for “something, not nothing”. Who is tired of hiding. Who is ready to exhale.

If any of this is familiar - if you recognised yourself in this post – in the hiding, the all-or-nothing thinking, the reaching for something that can't quite give you what you really need - I'd love to chat. Reach me HERE.

And if you'd like to stay connected and be the first to hear when registration opens for all my Tap and Write sessions and series, I'd love to have you on my newsletter list. It's where I share tools, insights, and honest reflections on the journey of becoming. It’s where you can find therapeutic/reflective writing prompts designed for you.

Thanks for reading. 

Joan