Who Are You Beneath the Roles

Disconnection rarely happens overnight.

It builds slowly over years of prioritising responsibilities, roles, expectations and sometimes simply getting through what life puts in front of us. You don’t just wake up one morning disconnected from yourself. It happens incrementally.

You become so practised at fulfilling your roles that you stop putting yourself front and centre. And with that, you stop noticing what you need, value or want. You become the master role-player. The partner, the mother, the professional, the daughter, the carer, the organiser, the steadfast friend. Perhaps you become the person everyone knows they can rely on.

Indeed, many of them may be enormously important to you. But somewhere amongst all that doing and being for everyone else, it can become surprisingly easy to lose sight of you.

It doesn’t look the same for everyone.

How disconnection presents for you may be very different from how it affects another woman. You may feel flat and restless. Not necessarily unhappy, just not particularly excited by anything either. It’s like you find yourself going through the motions of a life that, from the outside, looks perfectly fine.

Yes, you may become less tolerant and more easily irritated. Things you once accepted without thinking suddenly bother you. Perhaps resentment starts creeping in.

Of course, these feelings don't always have one explanation. Hormonal changes, the demands of a particular stage of life and other health or personal circumstances can all play a part. Sometimes several things are happening at once.

Deep down you sense something needs to change, but when someone asks you what you truly want, you struggle to answer them. For some women, it’s not an articulated list of what is wrong, it is quieter than that. It's simply a sense that something isn't quite right.

And then one day you catch yourself thinking: “Is this it?”

Not because your life is bad and certainly not because you don't love the people in it. Nor is it necessarily because you want to throw everything away and start again. It’s just that somewhere along the way, you stopped feeling fully present in your own life.

And that, more than anything, is worth paying attention to.

And here’s another thought. What if nothing is actually wrong?

We tend to assume that uncomfortable feelings mean there is a problem we need to fix.

But what if that sense of disconnection isn't telling you that something is wrong with you or your life? What if it's giving you information? Maybe the life you've created has suited you very well for a long time, but what mattered to you then may not be what matters to you now.

In saying all of this, we need to remain conscious that we all change over time. Our circumstances change, our relationships change, our bodies change, our responsibilities change. The roles that once occupied enormous amounts of our time may change too.

Yet we don't always stop long enough to ask whether the person you've become still wants the same things as the person who made those earlier choices. And I think that's where an important question begins to emerge. Who am I now?

You may not need to find the old you

I often hear women talk about wanting to “get back to who I used to be.” I understand the sentiment but I'm not sure going backwards is necessarily the answer. The woman you were ten or twenty years ago hadn't experienced the challenges, relationships, successes, disappointments, losses, opportunities and changes that have shaped you in that time between then and now.

Many years ago, I came across a thought that has stayed with me: All that has gone before helps shape who we are today. I've often reflected on those words because our experiences influence how we see ourselves, how we think and how we respond to what life brings.

Perhaps there is an important message here for you. You haven't disappeared; you have evolved.

Perhaps reconnecting with yourself isn't about finding the woman you used to be. Perhaps it's about getting to know the woman you are now. And that requires something we aren't always very good at giving ourselves Kindness and space to notice.

Start with curiosity, not answers

You certainly don't need to make dramatic changes simply because you've started questioning things.

Start smaller. Ask yourself:

What matters to me now?

What gives me energy — and what continually takes it away?

When do I feel most like myself?

What would I like more of in my life?

Take your time to answer these questions, don’t rush them. Sometimes we've spent so many years responding to what everyone else needs that hearing our own answers again takes a little practice.

Reconnecting doesn't mean changing everything

This matters. Because recognising that you've become disconnected from yourself doesn't necessarily mean you need to leave your relationship, resign from your job, move interstate, or reinvent your entire life. Sometimes change is much quieter.

It might mean setting a boundary where there wasn't one before.

Returning to something you once loved.

Looking after your body differently.

Or simply beginning to include yourself when you make decisions about your life.

Those small changes can be significant when, for a long time, you've barely featured in the equation.

So, who are you beneath the roles?

I'm not sure that's a question any of us answers just once. Our roles are part of us and yes, they matter but they aren't the whole of us. Underneath the responsibilities, expectations and labels is a woman with her own values, needs, interests, desires, strengths and ideas about how she wants to live.

Perhaps you've simply stopped asking her what she thinks. And maybe reconnecting begins there. Not with changing everything and not with becoming someone new. Perhaps it begins with recognising the woman you are today, acknowledging what matters to you, what you need and value.

Because beneath all those roles, you are still very much your own person. And you deserve to be part of your own life.

A final thought

If you've read this and recognise yourself somewhere in it, you don't need to have figured out what to do next before reaching out. Sometimes saying “I'm not sure what's going on, but something feels different” is enough of a place to begin.

Bring me what's happening in your life, and we can start with a conversation.

Simply click the button below to send me an email via the Home Page. We'll arrange a time to meet on Zoom, where you can tell me a little about what's happening in your life, explore what you'd like to change, and see whether working together feels right for you.

There's no obligation — just an opportunity to start a conversation.

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