What High-Performing Women Are Too Afraid to Admit: Exhausted, Overwhelmed, and Ready to Surrender

Anyone else spending 57% of their days dreaming about warm weather, their European summer (Paris Immersion, anyone!?), and growing veggies?? Because I am!

Also, keep this hush-hush, but I'm currently mulling over the most perfect European Retreat for 2027 (not telling you the name, but OH MY GOD, THE NAME JUST MAKES ME GIDDY!!!!), and I just am so excited for where I'm taking this business and how I'm supporting high-performing women who often get forgotten about because everything looks great from the outside—but I know you need rest and support, and you want to soften. If you want to be the first to know about this European retreat next year, just click here.

 

(Psst…this blog post is based on the most recent edition of my monthly newsletter, called The Boardroom & Bedroom Diaries, so if you love it, be sure to sign up to receive it directly in your inbox each month!)

 

Switching topics... I've been getting fully into the swing of spring here at home (although it SNOWED last week for a few minutes???!!! I cannot with the state of the environment right now, but I digress), and began planting seeds early and growing them in the garage with a plant light (honestly, it kinda looks like I'm growing weed, lol).

Every year, I just want to make my garden better and better, and this year, I'm going all out with our system so we can have veggies on rotation and growing at different rates, and we're not waiting weeks for more string beans to grow. Make sure we're connected on Instagram so you can see me share little snippets of the garden on my stories—it's truly some of my favourite content to share with you.

 

 

 

When I put myself in rooms filled with high-achieving business women who’ve created massive success for themselves, it’s often very clear that they’re simultaneously exhausted—not only from leading in business but also from leading in their relationship.

 

And of all the business events I’ve gone to over the years, not one is talking about what women actually need them to talk about and why I wrote my book—WOMEN DON’T WANT TO KEEP LEADING.

We want to grow our business, yes, but not at the expense of our love life. We want to make more money but still be able to spend time with our kids. We are sick of putting up this armor and unconsciously competing with men.

If you desire to be a feminine woman, you cannot run your business in the same way that men do. It just doesn’t work. Let alone being a mother, a BREASTFEEDING mother, and running a business... whole different kettle of fish there.

So many high-performing women are leading in their relationships out of habit, because they need control, or because if they don’t lead, they believe they’ll be let down. And whilst they deeply crave to EXHALE through their entire body… to soften and let their man lead feels like weakness.

Many women (some of whom are saying it and owning it, others still feeling shame for it) are secretly fantasizing about being taken care of—about spending hours in their veggie garden or about slowing the fck down and actually being WITH their kids instead of rushing them off to daycare so they can get back to work.

We need to stop normalising that when women get to the top, create epic success, and are the female breadwinner, it comes at the cost of their love life. That they become too intimidating for their man. That he becomes passive because she’s “too much" or she's "got it handled."

I had a woman tell me recently that her body literally exhales—like a full “ahhhhhh” exhale—at the idea of her man leading and taking control. But in the same breath, she admitted she feels weak and ashamed for wanting that. And THAT is the problem.

Society—specifically the 4th wave of feminism—has convinced us that we’re a better, more successful woman if we’re making millions, have 50 people under us, work 24/7, and never need anyone. And that if we desire to cook, be with our kids, travel, garden, and actually slow down? That makes us weak. Less than. Not as evolved. But I call bullsh*t.

Tune into your heart and ask: What do I ACTUALLY want my days to look like? Not what looks impressive on Instagram. Not what makes you seem “successful” to other people. What do YOU want? Because I guarantee it’s not performing and showing up like men do.

 

You want to feel ravished. Claimed. Led. You want to switch off your brain. You want to build a life that actually makes you HAPPY... not just a life that makes your ego happy. You want to garden, travel, be with your kids during the day, and work in a way that fuels you, not exhausts you.

Hear me loud and fcking clear when I say this: Your well-being, your relationship, and your deep happiness don’t have to be at the cost of top performance. We’re DONE unconsciously feeling like we have to be more like men to be seen as professional, productive, and successful.

And this is exactly what we do at The Immersion. We heal the trauma that made control give you the illusion of safety, we rewire your body so that surrender doesn’t feel weak, and we heal what has made you think that you have to be in your masculine to be successful.

This way, you can be a powerhouse in your career AND deeply feminine in your relationship at the same time.

I don’t want you to have to choose between success and love, or money and motherhood. You can lead a team AND be led by your man. You can be successful AND build a life around what you actually desire as a woman.

If you desire to find your joy again and have deep inner peace, you need to work with me. I have the reputation I have for a reason.

Feminine leadership is the way forward as a high-performing woman. Full stop.

Products I'm Loving:

• SUNNYLife Baby float

• SUNNYLife Baby Pool

• Corpus Deodorant, which is, of course, non-toxic and actually works (oh, and doesn't leave white marks!)

 

Recent Blog Posts:

If you need a 34-step morning routine to feel feminine, regulated, and high vibe, you are setting yourself up for massive failure. Read all about my thoughts on this on this blog post I wrote after a juicy HER Year call.

3 Nuggets for You to Mull Over:

 

• Not asking for help is common, but it’s not normal. We have normalized women doing everything alone and acting like that’s some kind of flex. It’s not. You do not get a badge of honour for never resting, never slowing down, and never asking for help. You get burnout, resentment, exhaustion, and a body that never actually feels safe. Whether you’re a mom or not, this applies. So many women feel guilty asking for help because somewhere along the way, they learned that needing support means they’re less capable. That is the lie. The truth is that support is how women are meant to live. You were never designed to hold everything alone.

 

• If you can’t relax without guilt, your body still believes productivity equals worth. One of the quickest ways to see your programming is this: Can you sit on the couch in the middle of the day and watch an episode of something without guilt flooding your body? For many women, the answer is no. And that tells me immediately that the body is still wired to believe that "the more I do, the better I am." This is why resting feels unsafe. This is why receiving feels hard. This is why so many women say they want softness, surrender, and to be led, but then their body freaks out when they try to slow down. If your body only feels safe when it is doing, achieving, producing, and proving, then rest will always feel threatening until you change that blueprint.

 

• Support does not make you less of a woman, less of a mother, or less capable. I am so open about how much help I have because more women need permission to stop pretending they should be doing it all. Support is one of the biggest reasons I have had such a beautiful experience of motherhood. Not because I’m lazy, not because I’m less maternal, but because my nervous system is not drowning. And this applies way beyond motherhood. Asking for help does not make you weak. Having support does not make you less impressive. It allows you to actually show up better in every part of your life. Fuller. Kinder. More regulated. More present. The women who receive support are not failing. They are often the women wise enough to stop performing strength and start choosing sustainability.

 

Okay, so I want to answer this in two parts, because the answer is genuinely different depending on where you're at in life.

If you're a mother, I have to be honest with you first: you need to get really serious about seeing support as an investment, not an expense. I know that feels hard when the budget is tight, but if you can figure out your hourly rate and pay someone less than that to do the things that aren't in your zone of genius, you are making money, not spending it. A cleaner, childcare, admin help—these things exist so that you can show up and do what only you can do. This is what it takes to do both.

And I'm not going to be the person who tells you, "We all have the same 24 hours." Because we don't. A mother building a business/career is operating in a completely different reality, and pretending otherwise is just not honest or fair to ourselves.

 

If you're not a mother and you're asking how I organised my life and business in the early days... I'm going to be fully transparent with you. I didn't, really. I showed up, I hustled, I grinded, I threw spaghetti at the wall, and I made a lot of mistakes. I do not recommend doing it the way I did it.

What I do recommend is working with someone who can save you the time and the mess, because when I watch the women I work with now implement proper structure and systems from the beginning, I could cry. They're not going to spend years undoing and fixing what I had to undo and fix.

What I had to learn—and learn the hard way—was how to be my own masculine. How to hold both. That meant having an organised home life. It meant systems and structure. I had some of it, and the bits I did have I still use to this day, but I didn't have enough of it. (And if you're inside Her Year, you have all of those resources—they are genuinely invaluable, and if I'd had them back then, my god, I'd probably be even further along than I already am.)

 

But I also want to acknowledge that when I started my business, the world was a completely different place. Instagram Live was a brand-new thing (!!!!). For a while, you couldn't even save them! (Anyone else remember this?!) There was no AI, there was no constant scroll pulling you into what everyone else was doing, comparing yourself, and drowning in information overload. I started my business when Instagram was not this dopamine-heavy place that sucked you in, distracted you, and kept you looking outward, not inward.

So, be really intentional about what you're consuming and make sure you are surrounding yourself with content and environments that are uplifting you, inspiring you, and not making you compare yourself to everyone else.

 

Those early days were SO fun. It was just me, one hired team member, after a while running it solo, and we flew by the seat of our pants, changed things at the last minute, and I followed my intuition completely. What I focused on above everything else was what lit me up and made me feel alive, energised, and juicy. That's kept me going and going and going.

I do want to make it very clear that whilst there's a narrative out there that makes you think you can just build your business on feminine magnetism alone... that is simply BS. You need the masculine energy, the determination, and the willingness to show up even when it's hard. Use your feminine energy to magnetise—absolutely, but you still have to show up and try OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. The magic and the structure have to work together. And the most important skill you can develop alongside all of it is learning to listen to your body so that you know when to push and when to pull back.