THE MUSING 02:

The Most Surprising Desire of High-Achieving Women

One of the most surprising deep desires my female clients often share — if they really let themselves say “fuck it” and do whatever they truly wanted — is the desire to fall off the face of the earth for a bit.

To stop answering calls. To not be responsible for anything.

To escape to some remote island where no one’s expectations, emails, or judgments can reach them — and maybe toss their phone into the ocean before disappearing for a month (or a year).

And it’s not because they don’t love their careers, relationships or lives. 

It’s because they’ve embedded a subconscious pattern of holding too much, all on their own.

These women are powerful — founders, executives, creatives, leaders.

But they’ve been overfunctioning for so long, constantly holding the mental and emotional weight of doing it all: excelling at work, being the perfect partner (or preparing to be), keeping up with shifting beauty standards, staying emotionally available for everyone in their orbit — and doing it all with grace, presence, and a smile. 

From the lens of this work, it’s clear that many high-achieving women have been operating in a high-performing, hyper-driven mode for years — leading, performing, protecting, organizing, anticipating. This mode helps us get things done, and it serves an important purpose.

But when it dominates without balance, it creates an internal pressure with no place to release the weight. 

We start living from our heads instead of our bodies, from obligation instead of intuition. And without even realizing it, we begin to disconnect from our own desires.

When this becomes the norm, shifting into a state of softness, receptivity, creativity, safety, ease, and flow can feel uncomfortable or even wrong.

But leaning into that energy doesn’t make you lazy or complacent. It reconnects you with a deeper intelligence. It allows you to receive more — more creative downloads, more inner steadiness, more time to pause and return to yourself.

It allows your body to lead without everything feeling like a battle.

And finally allows you to feel worthy of receiving all the gifts you’ve gotten used to giving to others. 

In The Muses, I watch this rebalancing shift women from burnout to deep embodiment.

They begin to trust their own timing.

They stop performing for approval and start honoring their needs without apology.

They reconnect with magnetism — not just productivity — and access a new level of power that actually sustains them.

So though it may feel like it at times, you don’t need to disappear from your life - but you do need to learn how to stop disappearing from yourself.

Ask yourself:

Where have you been over-functioning — and what might shift if you let yourself be supported instead?