Have You Mistaken Self-Override for Strength? | 001

You're listening to the Sacred She Reset podcast.

If you're a woman in midlife who's done doing this alone and

ready for real conversations, real wisdom, and real radiance,

you're exactly where you need to be. I'm your host Sharia Shana.

Your path to radiance starts here. Welcome, welcome,

beautiful sisters, to the first episode of Sacred She Reset,

awakening your radiant wisdom. And who wants more of radiant

wisdom in their life? I know I do. I could do definitely do

with some more. So I'm Sharia Shana, and I want to begin this

very, very first podcast because this is super special, and we're

laying the foundations, we're laying the pathway to these

beautiful conversations, and I'd like to share with you something

that I don't share with many people, and to give you a little

bit of behind the scenes and my backstory of how this has all

come about and why Sacred She reset, and so it didn't begin

with a business plan or plugging in the microphone this morning

and going, "Hey, I got a great idea. Let's talk to some

beautiful women out there, and yeah, there's a little bit of

podcast strategy that always helps have a bit of structure.

But it didn't even start with the the book that is has the

same name. So recently launched my book Sacred She Reset. It

began a very very very long time ago, and it began with with me

being in a body that I just did not understand. You know, there

was just so much going on and so much happening. It was a body

that had been operated on, medicated, examined, managed,

and spoken about for years by other people, and so I had to

really, truly learn how to listen.

So I'm sure there are a lot of you out there that can relate to

this, and you know, perhaps it's something that you you ladies

are journeying through in midlife now, and you're looking

at your body and your energy and your emotions, and you're

wondering what is happening to me. And so, I feel like I would

be doing you, the listener, the lady out there that this is

touching. I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't bring

this message to the airwaves. And there is so much within all

of this that I'm going to be sharing with you that is going

to ripple through your life, and it may be one magic word. It may

be someone that I interview. It could be anything, and it could

be just that one thing that really helps to shape and change

your life. And that is what I'm really passionate about. But for

that to happen, I feel we need to be on the same page, and we

need to get to know each other. So that means me coming in with

my full vulnerability to meet you where you're at, and so that

you can go, "Hey, that's a woman right there who's who who knows

what she's talking about. That's a woman right there who's

experienced what I'm experiencing. You know, it's

there's so much out there, and it's it can be difficult to

normalize or stabilize in this, you know, high tech, high

energy, fast moving life and pace and and and place that

we're in right now in 2026, and so I'm here to help ground some

of some of this in and some of our experiences in as women, so

that we can really learn from each other and understand that

it's okay to show up in our vulnerability, and there there

are like-minded women out there that are wanting to support you.

And coming from a space of not having that, in my young, being

a young woman and growing up, I felt very isolated, and so this

is where my fire comes from. It comes from my own journey of

experiencing a lot of trauma through being medicalized all

the time or pathologized. Constantly, and if I can just

hand a little piece of that and share it, and that you get

something from that, then I've done my job. So thank you for

being here. This is a really, really big deal. Yeah, I I don't

have all the answers.

I I really don't have all the answers, but I I do have this

capacity to hold and to to share and to present and presence with

the people that I'm interviewing, and also even

here, like on my own in the studio, like being able to be

with you and know that you're listening and speak to that and

speak to your heart. And so here you are, maybe going, "What is

happening to me? And perhaps you've spent years being

capable, dependable, strong. You've kept going. You've cared

for others, you've carried responsibilities, and found a

way through whatever life has placed in front of you. And I

know a lot of you can relate to this. Yet, under underneath all

of that capability, something feels different now. Maybe you

feel exhausted in a way that rest does not seem to fix

anymore. Maybe your body no longer responds as it once did.

Maybe your emotions feel closer to the surface. I know I can

relate to that one. Maybe you have started questioning who you

are, what you want, and whether the life that you have built

still fits the woman you are becoming. So this podcast was

created for that woman, and if that's you, I invite you to keep

listening. And like I said, it's not because I have all the

answers, but it's because I know what it feels like to search for

answers while feeling alone inside my own experience, and so

my relationship with my body became complicated at a very

early age in life, and it was even before. I'm going to start

with 15, but it was even before that. But I'm going to start

with where it was really significant, and so from the age

of 15, I was in and out of doctors' offices, hospitals, and

specialist appointments.

Over the years, there were repeated gynecological problems,

surgeries, hormonal treatments, and long, very long periods of

recovery. Now, you know, I'm in my 50s now, and I'm talking. You

know, when I was 15, so we're going back 35 years, and you

know, a lot of the decisions were just like just cut it out,

open her up, cut it out. Have another surgery, and so you

might be just starting to get a little bit of an idea of my

journey, and so my body became something that was constantly

being investigated and managed, and that was exhausting within

itself. There were people discussing her, prescribing her,

and operating on her, and but I, I yet didn't understand her

myself. You know, being 15 and having some pretty major

surgeries that were going to change the trajectory of my life

as far as whether I could have children or not, and there were

some pretty big decisions going on for me. That you know, and

you you you kind of hand that trust over, like oh, they know

better they're in a position of they know better and so when I

refer to her in this episode or if any of the episodes that are

relating to you know prescribing her operating on her I'm talking

about the body her as a as a beautiful vessel, and in this

situation, you know where I didn't even understand my own

relationship with her as yet. That came many years later. So

at 21, I left home and began traveling the world. For the

next part of 15 years, I lived and worked in different

countries. I built a life filled with movement, adventure, and

independence. And boy, doesn't that sound good? And from the

outside, I looked strong. And in many ways, I was. I always had

this spontaneous vibe. To follow the flow, follow what was next.

I'd often get bored very quickly, so I just was like

jumping into the next thing. But underneath that strength, there

was a pattern I would not understand until much, much

later. I'd become really, really, really good at enduring.

I could recover from a surgery and then gather myself together

and then continue. I could manage pain, uncertainty, and

disruptions, and then get back on a plane and return to my

life. It was like just off we go next. I could fall down and get

back up again, and I'm not just saying falling off my bike.

I mean literally big meltdowns in life, and I could get back

up, and still can, and get back up and dust myself off and go

again and again and again. And I'm just wondering if any of you

are relating to this, and at the time, and yeah, even up until

recently, I I would have called that I was calling that

resilience, and and resilience, ladies, is important.

Absolutely, we we need to cultivate a level of resilience.

But what I've been exploring and looking into lately is that some

of that resilience and that you know that we're saying, "Hey,

I'm so resilient, I'm so strong, I can get up and start again,

and some of it is also self override, and that's that's the

space where I come in. That's the space where, through much of

my life, I I was overriding the self, fully overriding my body

and those messages that were coming in so strong, and but I

would just be like, no, I'm going to get up and I'm going to

keep going. I I had become brilliant, like I mean, a master

at surviving what was happening to me without learning how to

belong to my own body, and I really I feel like I want to

repeat that and have you hear that again? It's like I had

become brilliant at surviving what was happening to me without

learning how to belong inside my own body. So I was becoming

really good at, you know, deflecting all of this off what

was going on around me, and I mean there was experiences. I

remember traveling through Namibia, and Namibia is in

Africa. For those of you that don't know, amazing country, and

I was on an overland safari, and just to give you a little bit of

context, so you understand. It was I was having surgeries

nearly every 12 months to to the day, and I was having these big

ovarian cysts growing, and then they would, in this case, when I

was in Namibia, I had one rupture, and so this was the

pattern of this pain and this this cysts occurring within my

body, and so I was rushed to this little hospital in the

middle of the, I think it was the Swakampun, Swakampun. I

don't know if I'm saying that correctly, but Swakampun

Hospital, and it was in the middle of the desert, and so

there was things happening in there.

Going, oh my god, no, they wanted to operate on me for

something completely different. Then that's a whole other story

within itself. But I was bleeding, I was in pain, and

lucky in that situation, I had health health insurance, travel

insurance, so I was flown down to Cape Town, but there were

other surgeries in Australia, in the United Kingdom, in South

Africa. There were bowel obstructions, procedures through

my lower abdomen, and recovery periods that could last eight

weeks or more. And so, for any of you that haven't had a major

surgery before, it's often an 868, 12 week recovery period,

and when you've had surgery in your lower abdomen several

times, you know they're cutting through the abdomen wall. So

there's you know you're bent over, you're trying to you know

re reestablish your core. There's a whole lot of things,

and so each time I would eventually stand up, return to

work, return to traveling, and I would just carry on. So I would

just get up and down, recover and continue, and I would take

this cycle or constant. Leave for years and years and years

and years and years, and it was, you know, I guess I know now,

looking back on this, but my body was screaming at me. It was

screaming at me. I was handing everything over to to others to

manage Me, and I want to be really clear. Like this is, I

wasn't down and out on my luck. I was receiving care. You know,

I had care. I had support. There were medical professionals who

helped me through very, very serious situations, and because

this is not about me bagging out the medical system at all, and

if I hadn't had some of those surgeries, I don't know where I

would have been.

So, but often I felt that individual symptoms were being

treated without anyone stepping back and understanding my

experience as a whole woman, and so this is where, you know, I

started to really learn about what it means to look at our

bodies in a holistic manner, in a holistic way, and I sometimes

felt as though treatments, different treatments, were being

tried on my body while the deeper questions remained

unanswered, and that was that. That's when I very much felt

outside of myself. I very much felt like I was just looking

outside of my life, and you know, I just, I just had no idea

what was going on. So, what was this doing to me emotionally,

how many years of intervention had affected my sense of safety?

These are big questions. These are big questions I've reflected

upon for a long time. You know, what relationship did I have

with my body? Did I still trust my body. Did I trust myself? And

back then, they they were questions I did not know how to

ask. You know, it wasn't until much later, until you know, I I

was in this space of I just needed to survive. I literally

just needed to survive. I just needed to survive to the next

surgery or the the next whatever was happening. And you know,

it's all wonderful in hindsight now. You know, I look back and

go, "Oh, I could have done this and could have done that, but I

I did. I felt. I just didn't feel safe in my body. I didn't.

I felt very, very, very alone. But the great thing is, a

turning point came when I was 33. I had been placed on HRT at

around 2829, and I had been trying different sorts of

hormones and pills and all different things, and something

inside of me just like clicked.

There was something inside of me. I guess it was there was a

moment there where it was the straw that broke the camel's

back, right? And I'd say probably that moment for me was

when I was self-medicating and self-injecting in South Africa.

I lived in South Africa, owned a fresh-cut flower farm, very

distant from any form of medical care or anything like that, and

I was needing to to self medicate. So what I mean by that

is, when I had the little messages coming through that

bowel obstruction or something was on the way, I would I was

lucky enough to have high dose buscapan to stop spasming, and

at the time, my partner would inject buscapan, and I would go

through the cycle of trying to self manage. But at 33, I spent

15 years at that time, probably, and actually more between

symptoms, treatment, surgery, and recovery. So I was doing

that loop over and over and over, and I remember reaching a

point where something inside of me just-it was that thing. It

snapped. It was that straw that broke the camel's back, and it

was literally this empowering moment where I just said,

"Enough! Enough of giving away my power, giving away the

responsibility of my own body, like giving that away to others.

Enough of believing that someone outside." Of me would eventually

arrive with the one answer that would make everything make

sense. So I was really relying heavily on others. I realized I

could not continue relating to my body, though she, as though

she was a problem being handed from one person to another, and

that's it's it's not the greatest place to be. I must

just say it's you feel very disempowered when you're in this

position, and you know, like I said before, there was just this

moment something clicked in me, and it wasn't it it wasn't a

lightning bolt or this perfect roadmap, and it wasn't a wise

woman appearing at the door with a basket of herbs and the

complete meaning of my life, which frankly would have saved

some time. And I wondering where she might be out there, but

instead there was uncertainty. I there was trial and error, and I

was questioning every decision because this was new. This was

new now to to now navigate new territory on my own and go. I'm

taking my power back.

And the other thing was, I just I did not realize that there was

so many other women walking a similar road, feeling unheard,

confused, disconnected from their bodies, while quietly

trying to hold their lives together. And so, what began is

I began to discover was that the body is not simply a machine

waiting to malfunction, is it's not. We we are constantly, our

bodies are constantly seeking homeostasis, and our bodies

carry this wisdom and this intelligence that we just do not

give it credit for, and our bodies have this rhythm and a

memory and an instinct, and it has its own language. And it it

it took me a long time to realize this. So, and and also,

I want to be clear here: it doesn't mean that every symptom

has a simple emotional meaning, and you know, absolutely yes.

There's there's a meaning behind all the things, but it it does

not mean that every symptom has an emotional meaning, and it and

it certainly does not mean we could reject medical care. So I

want that to be clear. It means that medical care and

self-listening do not have to be opposites. So we can receive all

the professional care, and we can support ourselves and

communicate and be in communion with our bodies at the same

time. We can say yes or no. We can feel empowered, so we can

ask questions. We can ask questions. We can become more

informed. We can participate in decisions. We can understand

that healing is not always the removal of every symptom, and

that's a big important one. I think there's a bit of a

confusion around, you know.

Oh, I'm healed when I'm healed when when this happens or

whatever. And there is always our bodies are always going to

be sending signals and messages, and for us to understand, and

you know we're not going to be able to remove everything that's

happening to us not at once. It's a journey. It's a process,

and sometimes healing begins with changing the relationship

we have with ourselves first, and that's what I had to do. I

had to do. I had to start listening differently. I entered

years of study and exploration. I studied iridology, and for

those of you that don't know what iridology is, it's where we

take photographs of the eyes, and it's the study of the the

iris and your pupil and the sclera, the white of the eyes. I

studied Australian bushflower essences, herbalism, NLP, art

therapy, somatic practices, sound, voice, and other forms of

holistic well-being. And it has my journey has been a constant

one of learning and unraveling, and you know how can I improve

here? Why is that happening? You know, I like to unpack things.

Why is that happening? Let's look at the deeper level. And so

I began to see that I'd spent years overriding what I felt in

order to remain functional. I had learned to disconnect from

my needs so that I could keep moving. I had confused being

strong with never stopping. I had believed that if I could

endure something, then perhaps it was not affecting me. And so

it was that that whole thing of like, oh no, I'll just ignore

it; it'll go away. How many of you can? How many of you can

relate to that? But the body remembers what the mind learns

to normalize, and that's big. The more I listened, the more I

understood that true well-being could not only be about treating

the physical body; it also had to include the emotions we

carry, the identity we have formed, the voice we have

silenced, the joy we have postponed, and the ways we have

learned to abandon ourselves in order to belong. That

understanding eventually became the foundation of my work, and

so there's another layer to this story, which is really

interesting, and so my body continued. You know, at 33, I I

shifted gears, and I, and then I, be started looking at

holistic practices and the way I can become more in communication

with my body, and how I can learn to trust her again. But

then, at 3038, I had my last bleed. I had gone into at the

time I was married, and we tried a round of IVF that was

unsuccessful, and I went into not long after that.

And I don't know if many of you have been through IVF, but you

understand there's a lot of there's a lot of hormone therapy

with that, and that I went into early menopause, and that was

all recorded on paper. You know, it was all written down, you

know. But what surprised me was that my experience did not

unfold in the way I had been told to expect, and I guess that

brings me to the part of there was no for me. I guess I didn't

know what to expect. I didn't know what was coming when you

finish your bleed. What's next? There's not a lot of information

out there, and this is going on what 1213, years ago now. But

there, you know, now there's a lot of hype around this, you

know, talking about what to, how to how to prepare and how to

manage things, and and there's a lot of information out there,

ladies. By the way, and as a side note, there's a lot of

other things there I can talk about, but anyway, I'm going to

keep it keep it clean, and There's there's intense changes

that come in in many ways when we start to approach midlife,

and we we go into perimenopause, which is the most chaotic time,

and we you know we go into menopause and postmenopause, but

There was just so much that taught me around, you know.

All of a sudden, my bleed had stopped, and to be honest, it's

almost like I really wanted it to stop years and years before

because it was so painful for me. It was such a painful

process, irregular cycles that I could not count on, and and so,

what it taught me is there is no perfect timeline for all of

this, and it it really does happen in a in a timeline that

is is is right for you, and it's what happening for you at the

time, and what what what has been going on in your life

medically or not medically, or your journey or whatever. So

there's there's so much you can read and educate yourself on out

there about we need to really be listening to our body's wisdom

and our body's truth that is has been sitting there all along for

us. And so, I I wrote Sacred She Reset last year. I took took out

the time to write a book, and it wasn't just something that was

like quick five minutes and done. It I had had pieces of it

from my journey, and I wrote it pretty much for the woman I was

at 33 who needed. I didn't have a map. I didn't have anything

that I could. Like, call upon or look upon, and so I wrote the

book because it all came from my lived experience and of the

practices and the study and the healing that I had done, and

these imperfect attempts to understand myself, and I just it

came also came through and channeled through me because I

just do not want another woman to spend years believing she has

to work this all out on her own. And sacred, she reset is the

beginning. It's the doorway.

There is just so much more, but I had to. It's already a beast

at 482 pages, right? But it really is the foundational work.

It's the foundational pathway of coming back in touch with the

body, understanding a little bit more about our rhythms. So I do

not want a woman to enter midlife believing that the

changes they are experiencing mean their body is years behind

them, and this is the other reason why you're sitting here

today, listening to this podcast because it's all birth from all

of this, and I feel so grateful, like beyond grateful. And we'll

talk about menopause and the body, and we'll also be talking

about identity and voice and relationships and energy and joy

and purpose and rest boundaries healing creativity and the quiet

patterns that keep capable women running on empty. And so some of

the episodes will be just me having a chat with you like this

over a cup of tea, and then others. I'm going to be bringing

in the most divine women. I've got. I've already been doing

some amazing interviews with such amazing women, and they

come from being practitioners, teachers, mums, aunties.

They're experts, and they all have this wisdom that helps us

to understand this season of our life more deeply. And you know

what? Sometimes I'm just going to invite you to have a pause,

and take some time out, and just breathe, and just breathe, and

just be here with me. So, before we finish, I just want to leave

you with a question: Where in your life have you mistaken

override for strength? Perhaps it's in the way you work, the

way you care for others, the way you ignore fatigue, the way you

minimize your pain, the way you keep saying, "Ah, I'm fine,

honey. I'm doing my best, honey. Because explaining the truth

feels too difficult. So I want you to know something today.

This is really, really, really important. Awareness is not a

small beginning. It is often the moment the door first opens. If

something in this episode has spoken to you, I invite you to

like and share this podcast, and subscribe to the Sacred She

Reset.

And I'd love you to leave a review if you feel so called to.

And the other invitation is to come and join the Sacred She

Research Circle on Facebook. It's a private community where

we're just connecting and chatting and talking about

midlife and what we're navigating through. And if you

do come over and join us, introduce yourself and tell us

what what is the one thing this season of your life is asking

you to notice. So come as you are. I'm Sharia Shana, and this

is Sacred She Reset, awakening your radiant wisdom. You are not

falling apart. You are becoming, and your radiance starts here.