THE WEIGHT WE CARRY – FOR ALL YOU WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE OUT THERE

The Weight We Carry

I have been speaking to many (women in particular), that have NOTICED A THEME, that when certain situations ‘change’, so does their body weight. Women are like accordions that expand and extract, release and contract due to the emotional stresses of the world around them.

It is often said that women are the mirrors / reflectors of the world and men the projectors. We can’t generalise for sure, we all project and we all highlight and express our emotions in our own unique ways but, the things we have been discussing look a lot like:

“I carried this weight for so many years and then as soon as we separated (which is an increasing theme of many of my female friends and also instigated by them) that weight just falls away.

They put it down to stress of divorce and changing circumstances but many now are wondering if its not a release of ‘CARRYING’ the emotional burden that men seemed to hand to the women in their marriages that they themselves refused to share the burden with. (not judging men FYI but just highlighting the voices of these women)

And it is a conversation that has been so LOUD over the last few years that I cannot help but look into whether there is a real physical factor here birthed out of emotional trauma that relationships have endured.

Many of these women will state that their relationships weren’t ‘terrible’ but they just got to a point where they were so tired of asking for help and not being heard / help not being received so they ultimately decided that it would be easier and more peaceful for them to go it alone. Many of them stating that their own children had encouarged them to make the break for everyones sake so that the situation all round could be a more peaceful one, even though it breaks the home because noone wants to live in a ‘bear is better than man’ situation 😦

And then one said to me a couple of weeks ago that her ex partner, who she is still good friends with had taken her out for dinner for a catch up and check in and after the dinner he had made a point of saying to her ‘How come you never looked this good for me?’ hahaha

And she honestly said to him with a cackle in her voice ‘Because you broke me hon and now I feel at peace‘…..

MY OWN SISTER came on holiday here a few weeks ago and no jokes, her and the kids were in the airport (with Bonnie Blue might I add – Again, a chick thats carried a LOT OF MAN WEIGHT) and they saw a BLIND woman pushing the luggage trolley with 2 kids positioned on top of the suitcases, stick un hand while her husband dragged behind, OH HIS PHONE…..COME ON!

So, not to assume that this is the case all the time but it is certainly a perspective to consider given the voices that dare to speak and not at all suggesting that all men are useless t*ats but that the reasons for leaving were a build up of such pressure that the men could simply not acknowledge that they made it impossible for their women to stay 😦

I am a huge advocate for marriage, familt units, nuclear families and unions and I hugely support the masculine and men in general and I see and feel their isolation, worries, turbulent relationships with self, loneliness, disconnect from their natural states into one that is upside down and distorted at every opportunity via harmful anti-patriarchal agendas and disciminatory oppositions (THEY CLEARLY EXIST) But MEN, why are you not stepping up? Your women have asked you to, clearly expressed it to you yet you are so lost you would rather lose your marriages than share the ‘invisible’ work load or figure out a way to better communicate and express your love / commitment and dedication to your ‘other half’?

These women are not wanting to be split in half. They are the sex that is trying to put the whole back together but YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!

Many will say they do all they can to include their husbands in family events, household hang outs, social occasions but their husbands recluse into the MAN CAVE and hide in their worries waving the pity flag whilst putting all the pressure of their worries unconsciously / subconsciously on their women while the women have no option but to carry on moving forwards otherwise the HOUSE BURNS DOWN

And in many cases, the house has burnt down and the family divides but sadly, the women find release and peace in this even though it breaks their hearts. So here’s a little thought piece below that maybe hits a note and offers some clarity on what some of you / many of you might be going through and how it shows up in your physical body – And if you are curious to find out more about this BODY/ EMOTION connection (MEN PLEASE READ THIS TOO AS IT WAS WRITTEN FOR YOU), please check out of previous 2 posts on the twilight zone that looks at the difference between SURVIVAL STATE (Where most men are right now given the state of the external world) and the CREATIVE STATE (Where most women wish they could be but they need their builders on site for construction)

A BEAUTIFUL PIECE ON THE WEIGHT WE CARRY:

Not all weight is visible.

For some arrives quietly…..

A careless comment here. A night of walking on eggshells there. Years of swallowing your own feelings because someone else cannot tolerate them.

Holding your breath so another person can breathe

Becoming the emotional climate regulator (shock absorbers) inside a home that has forgotten what peace feels like.

Eventually the body begins to remember what the mind has tried to forget.

We often speak about “carrying the weight of the world” as though it were merely a figure of speech.

But perhaps it is also a biological one

The nervous system does not distinguish particularly well between physical danger and emotional uncertainty. A home filled with criticism, unpredictability, emotional withdrawal or unresolved conflict keeps the body alert. Stress hormones remain elevated. Sleep changes. Appetite changes. Energy changes. The body adapts to survive, even when the threat is invisible.

Sometimes what looks like laziness is exhaustion.

Sometimes what looks like overeating is self-soothing.

Sometimes what looks like weight gain is simply a body trying desperately to create safety where none exists.

The body keeps score long after the conversation has ended.

Women have long been the emotional architects of families. Not because they are destined to be but because many cultures quietly taught them that love meant carrying.

Carrying birthdays. Carrying children. Carrying conversations. Carrying peace. Carrying everyone’s emotional weather.

And sometimes…

Carrying the storms that never belonged to them

Many men were never taught the language of grief. Or fear. Or vulnerability.

Instead, those emotions were hidden behind silence, anger, work, addiction, distraction or stoicism where often they retract and recluse while the women have to then pick up the pieces while they hide in the shadows (See the last post above)

The shadow did not disappear

It simply found another place to live. Sometimes that place became the relationship itself. Sometimes it became the woman standing beside him, not because she absorbed his emotions like magic but because she became the container for everything he could not yet hold himself.

She anticipated his moods. Softened his reactions. Translated his silence. Protected the children. Managed the tension. Walked carefully around wounds she did not create.

Over time, the emotional labour became physical labour. Her nervous system carried what his could not.

This is not about blaming men. Nor is it about declaring women emotionally superior. There are women who hide from their shadows. There are men who have done the courageous work of meeting theirs.

The point is something much simpler.

Whatever remains unprocessed rarely remains isolated. Pain has a remarkable tendency to migrate. If we refuse to carry it consciously, someone close to us often carries its consequences.

Children do. Partners do. Friends do. Families do.

Love should never require someone else to become the storage unit for emotions we refuse to unpack ourselves.

Perhaps this is why so many women describe an unexpected transformation after leaving relationships that had quietly exhausted them.

They sleep. They laugh. Their faces soften. Their shoulders drop.

Sometimes their bodies change too.

Not because they suddenly became more disciplined but because survival slowly gave way to safety.

The body no longer needed to remain on constant alert. It no longer had to prepare for tomorrow’s emotional earthquake.

It could finally exhale

There is another question hiding beneath all of this.

How much of our lives have we mistaken for our own? How many burdens were inherited? Projected? Normalised?

How many kilograms have been accumulated not through failure, but through years of protecting everyone except ourselves? Perhaps healing is not always about becoming lighter.

Perhaps it is about becoming discerning

Learning which burdens belong to you. And which never did because compassion does not require self-abandonment.

Love does not require self-sacrifice

And no relationship should ask one nervous system to carry what another refuses to acknowledge.

The healthiest relationships are not those where one partner becomes infinitely strong. They are those where both people are willing to meet themselves before asking someone else to carry them.

Perhaps that is what real safety looks like

Not finding someone willing to hold all of your darkness…..

But becoming brave enough to hold your own, so that when you love another person, your arms are free to embrace them rather than asking them to carry your weight.

THE COST OF FREEDOM

This post is coming to you TODAY, JULY 4TH 2026, Independence day – So to all my beautiful family and friends across the pond as you celebrate FREEDOM and INDEPENDENCE, this one is for ALL OF YOU! 🙂

This is a follow on from our previous post on shadow self and survival mode V creator mode. It is part of our ‘Twilight Zone Series’ – For any of you looking to embark on transformational work over the summer, here is your homework honeys!

AUDIO VERSION BELOW IF YOU WOULD RATHER (incoming….):

Freedom is perhaps the most misunderstood word in the human language.

We chase it through careers, countries, relationships, revolutions, wealth, spirituality, travel and self-help books. We seek freedom from governments, religions, families, expectations, obligations and pain. We spend entire lifetimes trying to become free.

Yet very few people stop to ask a more uncomfortable question.

Free from what?

And perhaps even more importantly…

Free for what?

Because if freedom is merely the absence of rules, then chaos is freedom. If freedom simply means doing whatever we want whenever we want, then anarchy becomes enlightenment. Yet instinctively we know this isn’t true.

Absolute freedom without responsibility eventually becomes another form of imprisonment.

The paradox is that freedom has always carried a cost.

Every choice closes another door. Every “yes” quietly whispers a hundred “no’s.” Every liberation demands the death of something that once kept us safe.

Perhaps this is why so many people speak about wanting freedom while simultaneously clinging to the very prisons they built themselves.

Because cages can feel remarkably comfortable once you’ve decorated them.

Carl Jung famously suggested that people will do almost anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. (PREVIOUS POST ON SURVIVAL MODE V CREATOR MODE HERE)

Maybe this is because true freedom isn’t found in escaping the world.

It begins by walking into the darkest room within ourselves

We spend years trying to silence anger. Suppress grief. Outrun jealousy. Hide envy. Reject shame. Deny fear. Label parts of ourselves as “bad,” “negative” or “unspiritual.”

Yet every emotion we exile doesn’t disappear

It simply waits. The shadow is not evil. It is abandoned.

It is every feeling we decided wasn’t acceptable to love. And abandoned things have a habit of speaking louder over time. Sometimes through anxiety, through addiction, through perfectionism, through control, through endless distraction.

The shadow never stops knocking

It simply changes the language it uses to be heard.

This raises an uncomfortable philosophical question.

Who is actually freer?

The person who has acknowledged their anger but chooses compassion?

Or the person who insists they have no anger while unconsciously allowing it to shape every decision they make?

The person who knows they are capable of cruelty but consciously chooses kindness?

Or the person convinced they are only good while quietly projecting darkness onto everyone else?

Perhaps freedom isn’t the absence of darkness.

Perhaps freedom is no longer being controlled by the darkness we refuse to see.

There is an extraordinary difference between possessing an emotion and being possessed by it.

Shadow work isn’t about becoming a better person. Nor is it about fixing ourselves. It isn’t a self-improvement project.

It is an honesty project

Integration is simply saying, “Yes… that part exists too.” Not to celebrate it. Not to shame it. Not to eliminate it.

Simply to witness it.

Because what we acknowledge loses its need to hide.

And what no longer hides no longer needs to control us from behind the curtain.

Many people believe freedom means breaking every boundary.

Leaving the marriage. Quitting the job. Ignoring the rules (I DO THIS ALL TO OFTEN), Cutting everyone off. Escaping. Running. Hiding. Starting again.

Sometimes these things are necessary. Often they are not. Sometimes what looks like freedom is simply another form of avoidance.

Freedom isn’t measured by how many boundaries you’ve destroyed.

It is measured by whether the boundaries you keep are chosen consciously rather than inherited unconsciously.

Healthy boundaries are not prisons.

They are architecture

A river without banks becomes a flood. Music without rhythm becomes noise. Language without grammar becomes a sentence that blurbs noise that has no coherence or harmonic rhythm. Even the universe appears to create through structure.

Perhaps freedom has never existed in opposition to boundaries but exists because of the right ones.

The safest people are often the freest people.

Not because life became easier, but because they built an internal home spacious enough to hold every version of themselves.

This may be the greatest irony of all!

Most of us believe freedom lies somewhere outside ourselves.

One more promotion. One more relationship. One more healing modality. One more country. One more spiritual awakening.

Yet if we remain strangers to ourselves, we simply carry the prison wherever we go.

Freedom isn’t found by escaping your life. It is found by becoming large enough to contain it. Large enough to sit beside grief without drowning. Large enough to witness anger without becoming violence. Large enough to hold fear without surrendering your future. Large enough to welcome every forgotten room of your psyche home.

Because maybe freedom was never about becoming someone new.

Maybe it has always been about finally becoming someone whole.

Not perfect. Whole!

And maybe that is the real cost of freedom.

Not money. Not status. Not sacrifice.

But courage.

The courage to meet every hidden part of yourself with enough honesty that it no longer has to wear a mask nbecause the chains that bind us most tightly are rarely placed there by other people.

More often, they are forged from the parts of ourselves we were taught never to touch and the key was never outside the cage.

It was waiting quietly in the shadows all along.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY FREEDOM SEEKERS! GO LARGE – GO WHOLE – GO HOME

The Twilight Zone

The Shadow We Refuse to Meet

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” — Carl Jung

HAVE A LISTEN BEFORE YOU READ BELOW

Perhaps one of the most tragic observations ever made about humanity is not that we suffer, but that we spend our lives inventing elaborate ways to avoid understanding why.

Carl Jung understood something that many of us still resist today: the greatest prison is not the world around us—it is the one within us.

We exhaust ourselves chasing new careers, new relationships, new identities, new possessions, new beliefs, new distractions and even new versions of spirituality, hoping that somewhere beyond the horizon exists the answer to a discomfort we cannot quite name. Yet the one journey we consistently postpone is the shortest one imaginable: the journey inward.

Ironically, the very thing we fear is the place we already live.

Many people speak as though darkness is something outside themselves—as though anger belongs to someone else, bitterness belongs to someone else, envy belongs to someone else, resentment belongs to someone else. They fear acknowledging these emotions because they believe doing so somehow makes them bad people.

The opposite is often true.

The emotions we refuse to acknowledge are usually the ones quietly directing our lives from behind the curtain.

This is the paradox of the shadow

People often imagine their shadow as a terrifying hidden monster lurking beneath consciousness. In reality, the shadow is frequently much less dramatic and far more ordinary. It is the forgotten grief. The unspoken shame. The childhood wound. The jealousy we disguise as criticism. The fear masquerading as control. The loneliness hidden beneath perfectionism. The insecurity concealed by arrogance. The pain dressed as constant busyness.

The shadow rarely announces itself.

It simply whispers through our behaviours.

We insist we keep attracting the wrong people. We complain that life is unfair. We repeat the same conflicts with different faces. We chase happiness but somehow never arrive.

We tell ourselves that everyone else is the problem while wondering why the scenery never changes.

The external world begins to resemble an endless loop.

From many philosophical and spiritual perspectives, it can feel as though we become magnetised toward experiences that resonate with our unresolved inner world. Whether one understands this through psychology, behavioural conditioning, spirituality or simply recurring life patterns, the effect can feel remarkably similar: what remains unconscious continues to influence the direction of our lives.

We become residents of emotional landscapes we insist we never chose.

This is where the paradox deepens

Many people spend their lives desperately trying to escape darkness while unknowingly living inside it.

Not because darkness has consumed them, but because it has never been acknowledged.

We fear looking at our shadow because we imagine it will destroy us. Yet avoiding it often does precisely that. The shadow does not become dangerous because it exists.

It becomes dangerous because it remains invisible.

Anything hidden gains influence.

Anything unconscious gains control.

Anything denied seeks expression.

The emotions we suppress do not disappear; they simply find subtler ways to speak. They emerge through anxiety, projection, resentment, self-sabotage, addiction to distraction, chronic dissatisfaction, fractured relationships or the quiet belief that life is happening to us rather than through us.

Perhaps this is why genuine healing feels so uncomfortable.

Healing is not becoming someone new. It is becoming honest.

It is sitting beside the frightened parts of ourselves without demanding they disappear.

It is recognising that courage is not the absence of darkness but the willingness to carry a light into it.

The soul does not ask us to become perfect. It asks us to become whole.

Wholeness has never meant choosing light over dark. It means recognising that both belong within the same human story.

Every tree stretches toward the sun because its roots first disappear into darkness.

Nature has understood this long before we did.

Growth does not happen despite the dark.

It happens because of it.

Perhaps our greatest fear has never been the shadow itself.

Perhaps our greatest fear is discovering that the person we have spent our lives running from has quietly been waiting to set us free.

The shadow is not your enemy. It is your unfinished conversation with yourself.

And maybe Carl Jung’s words are not a criticism of humanity at all.

Maybe they are an invitation. An invitation to stop searching for another escape route.

To stop blaming another person. To stop waiting for another timeline, another opportunity, another miracle.

And instead, to have the courage to meet the one person you have unknowingly avoided all along.

Your own soul.

What are your feelings about this? hHow does this post make you FEEL? Uncomfortable? Excited? Scared? Curious? Did you laugh at this and THINK WTF is this person talking about, what a load of shit? or did it make you pause for a moment and question, how do I feel about certain things? How can I integrate my feelings more before I think about them, analyse them, interpret them through my limiting mind?

IN THE NEXT POST WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT FREEDOM AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF SEEKING ULTIMATE FREEDOM PLUS SOME PRACTICAL EXERCISES TO HELP YOU PRACTICE UNDERSTANDING YOUR EMOTIONS BEFORE YOUR THOUGHTS GET IN THE WAY….

See you there x