We Know Better, But We Still Haven’t Interrupted the Pattern.

Since opening Sanctuary in Exeter, NH, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with women across all stages of life, young mothers, women in the thick of careers and caregiving, those beginning to come up for air in midlife, and women in their 60s and beyond. What I expected to see were differences between these stages but what I’ve actually seen is a pattern that runs straight through all of them.

The women in their 60s and 70s are often the first to name it clearly. They talk about how much they carried, how long they pushed through, how normal burnout felt at the time. There’s a kind of clarity there now and a recognition that they spent years, sometimes decades, putting themselves somewhere further down the list than they realized.

Women my age, in our early 50s, are just starting to come up for air from that same stretch. Whether we raised children or not, there’s been a constant level of responsibility, decision making, and holding things together that doesn’t fully turn off. And at some point, rest stopped feeling like rest.

Even in the quiet moments, there’s still a part of you scanning - what needs attention, what hasn’t been handled, what you might be missing. The body doesn’t ever fully settle. For some, this becomes clear after having children. For others, it shows up through work, relationships, or simply the accumulation of responsibility over time. But the experience is the same. There’s a baseline level of vigilance that doesn’t fully turn off. And over time, it starts to feel normal and this is what we’re actually working with.

Not just the visible responsibilities, but the way they live in the body, the tension, the constant readiness, the way effort gets held even when there’s nothing immediate to respond to. This is also the focus of She Who Nurtures, a small group women’s wellness event at Sanctuary designed to work with these patterns directly.

And then there are the women in their 30s, the ones I’ve come to know through the studio and at the clinic. This is the part that hit me the hardest. They have language and access to tools we didn’t have. And still, they’re just as exhausted. They’re aware and thoughtful and trying to do it differently, but the underlying pattern - the pressure, the over-responsibility, the constant mental load is still there. What I see, across all of these stages, is how long this pattern can run before it’s really interrupted. Not because women don’t know something is off because they do.

We hear it everywhere now… self-care isn’t selfish, take care of yourself, set boundaries. It’s like white noise at this point. The language is there in a way it never was before and still, most women aren’t actually living differently. Because knowing isn’t the hard part. The hard part is interrupting a pattern that’s been reinforced for years, sometimes decades, of adjusting yourself around everything else, staying in motion, and continuing to carry more than you need to.

So it keeps going. It shows up in different forms at different stages of life, but the underlying pattern is the same and it doesn’t shift just because we understand it. It shifts when we create space to actually see it clearly; how it shows up in the body, in the way we hold tension, in the way we use effort, and begin to work with it directly.

That’s the point where something can change. Not conceptually, but in a way that’s felt and usable.

This is why She Who Nurtures was created. Not as another conversation about self care, but as a structured way to interrupt this pattern, working from the body up, so you can recognize what’s actually happening and begin to shift it in real time.

Because this isn’t really about one evening. It’s about not waiting another 10, 20, or 30 years to finally do something differently. Because our kids are watching, and if we don’t interrupt this pattern, we pass it on, regardless of how much we talk about self care or intention.

This isn’t something that shifts on its own. If you’re ready to work with it directly, you can join us for She Who Nurtures.