Where Did The Vivacious Women Go?

And can we find our way back to ourselves without having to become the women we were before?

There was a time when people would tell me that if I could bottle my energy, I would make billions. They weren’t wrong. Even as a child, I was always doing something: morning paper-round before school. Then at school it would be lessons and either netball, rounders or hockey at lunchtime, with choir or drama class afterwards. Then home to do my chores and homework before going out to climb trees or a shift at the farm, and when I was old enough, waiting tables or serving fish and chips in our local chip shop.

As I got older, the school sports teams switched to gym classes, and before work I’d be writing business strategies, ideas for books, and journalling the life I wanted to create into fruition. Then in my late twenties, I was building businesses, coaching people and speaking on stages as my two sons arrived into the world. After divorce, the business building continued, the books started being published, I travelled the world, sailing across oceans and creating ideas faster than I could sometimes write them down. I’d walk into a room exhilarated and leave with three new ideas, two new contacts and an entirely unnecessary plan for something else I was going to build.

Perhaps you know a woman like that.
Perhaps you are her.

She is the woman who seems to have an endless supply of energy, the one people call when they need an idea, the one who can see possibilities where other people see problems. The one who avoids people who have a problem for every solution and more drama than Broadway could ever dream of. She is the life and soul of every party, the one who lights up every room she walks into, and the woman who travels, creates, builds, leads, raises children, changes careers, starts again and somehow keeps moving forward. She is adventurous, curious, ambitious and often described as vivacious because there seems to be something almost impossible to extinguish about her.

Until, one day, she notices that her energy isn’t there anymore.

Not necessarily because she has stopped caring, or because she’s stopped having ambitions. Sometimes she still has all the ideas, the dreams and the understanding of what she could build, but the emotional connection to them has become strangely distant, and she has entered a void and a numbness to life.

A difficult experience to explain, and even harder to process, particularly when your identity has been built around being the energetic one.

We live in a culture that is extraordinarily good at celebrating women’s capacity – whilst dismissing it all at the same time. We praise the founder who works late into the night, celebrate the mother who manages a career and a family, the woman who reinvents herself after divorce, revere the female leader who keeps going through adversity and want to emulate the entrepreneur who turns every setback into another opportunity. Her external success and radiance are celebrated, yet we rarely ask what happens when the person who has spent years demonstrating extraordinary capacity eventually reaches the point where there is simply nothing left in reserve. They disappear from our newsfeeds, from networking events and the spotlight… and sadly, no one cares enough to reach out, leaving her to fall further into the void.

We blame the menopause, mid-life, question her credibility and her ability as a business leader and owner, and we are so quick to describe women as lacking motivation and ability, when in reality what they may actually have lost is access.

Access to excitement, pleasure, curiosity and spontaneity. Access to the part of themselves that used to leap towards life rather than calculate whether they have enough energy to deal with whatever comes next.

We’ve created a $51 billion USD industry around motivation, productivity and personal development. We’re told, “If you are struggling, find your purpose”, “If you are exhausted, create better habits”, “If you have lost your spark, set new goals”, “If you are stuck, become more disciplined”

And mostly by the man who has a wife behind him taking care of everything while he builds, hustles and penetrates more than the market sectors.

Motivation, however, isn’t always the problem.

Sometimes the woman who cannot seem to move forward has spent so long surviving, carrying everything alone, protecting herself and her children, performing or simply functioning, that her nervous system has stopped giving her easy access to the energy she once took for granted.

And that can happen for many reasons.

It can be burnout. It can be grief, divorce, illness, menopause, financial pressure, caregiving, chronic stress or years of running a business that demanded more of you than you realised you were giving. It can also follow trauma, including sexual violence, where the consequences can continue long after the original event has ended. And almost all of it is misdiagnosed as something other than what it is.

The route may be different, but the experience can look surprisingly similar from the inside; you know what you want, but you cannot seem to connect with it. You know you should be excited, but you aren’t. You look at the business you once dreamed of building, the book you want to write, the places you want to travel, the people you want to meet or the life you thought you were going to have, and instead of feeling anticipation, you feel exhausted just thinking about it.

Sometimes you don’t even feel sad. You just feel numb, disconnected and uninterested in life in general.

When your body stops feeling like your safe place.

There is another layer to this that is much harder to explain because it isn’t simply about thoughts or energy levels. Sometimes we lose our sense of connection with our own bodies.

We inhabit them without necessarily feeling completely at home. The body becomes something we manage, carry, protect, and occasionally battle with rather than somewhere we feel free to exist.

For women who have experienced sexual violence, this disconnection can become particularly profound. A body that once represented sexuality, pleasure, movement and freedom can become associated with danger, shame or vulnerability. Research into sexual trauma has described how women can come to experience parts of their bodies as unsafe, hostile or shameful, while remaining biologically prepared for danger long after the original trauma has ended.

That can affect intimacy, and so much more. Touch can become complicated, even the most innocent of touches. Being hugged can become complicated, even with our own children. Sex can become complicated, and so celibacy is chosen.

Even masturbation and self-pleasure can become complicated because pleasure requires us to inhabit the body rather than manage it, and for some survivors, surrendering control to the pleasure can feel profoundly unsafe.

The desire may or may not still exist, which is the part outsiders, and we ourselves, often don’t understand. A woman can still want affection, companionship, intimacy, pleasure, dancing, laughter and connection while simultaneously feeling unable to access those things through her body.

Desire and access are not the same thing.

The further we move away from the body, the more we lose access to the things which once made us feel alive.

Dancing matters more than many people believe it does, or should. The woman inside us still wants to dance. We hear the beat and our fingers start to play air piano. The rhythm begins, and our hips want to move. The desire is there, and whilst the body longs to get up and dance, it also remains guarded. We remember what it felt like to move freely, to close our eyes and be lost in the moment, yet something prevents us from completely surrendering to the movement.

For some women, learning to move again becomes part of learning to inhabit the body again, so we take small steps. We listen to the music that makes us smile. We wiggle in our seats, we may even walk with a small sway, and before we know it, we are singing and dancing in our kitchen when no one is home. We turn the music up louder, and then the whole living area becomes our dance floor… even if it is for just one song.

A 2024 systematic review examining women’s experiences of healing from sexual trauma through mind-body practices found themes including reconnecting mind and body, processing emotions, self-compassion, safety, connection, fun and spontaneity. The research was limited, and the authors are clear that these practices are not suitable for everyone, but the findings point towards something important: healing may involve more than talking about what happened. For some women, reconnecting with the body itself can become part of the process of recovery, and for those of us with a raving, disco, clubbing background, there is now data to back up our collective, free-flow, wild and free dancing as evidence of healing.

Research into therapeutic dance has similarly explored dance as a potential intervention for sexual trauma, although the evidence base remains developing rather than definitive in the mainstream world. For those of us who have engaged and studied indigenous cultures, dance culture and spiritual practice for decades, we have long known the benefits of collective dancing and allowing the music to take us to a different place and time.

As a society, we need to stop thinking of movement simply as exercise and start recognising that, for some women, movement can also represent freedom, choice, spontaneity and the experience of occupying physical space without fear.

And then there is the body we judge

There is another part of this conversation that makes me particularly uncomfortable because women can be extraordinarily judgemental about other women’s bodies without having the faintest idea what that body may be communicating.

There is growing evidence connecting adverse childhood experiences with obesity later in life, including an increased risk among women who experienced sexual abuse. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis covering forty-six studies found an association between adverse childhood experiences and adult obesity, with particularly strong associations reported for women exposed to sexual abuse.

The review also touches on older research that specifically explored whether obesity might have an adaptive function for some women with histories of sexual trauma. The study did not establish that sexual abuse causes obesity, nor does it support the simplistic idea that survivors consciously put on weight to protect themselves. What it did raise was the possibility that, for some sexually abused women, obesity and body size may have a psychological or adaptive function that deserves further investigation.

In an article for The Atlantic, we are told the story of Constance, her journey of obesity and addiction following gang-rape by three boys at her school. We have known about comfort eating for decades, and this is where the phrase protective fat suit becomes interesting.

It is not a universal explanation, nor is sexual violence something we should assume about every woman whose body has changed. But it is a way of describing an experience some survivors recognise: becoming less visibly sexualised can sometimes feel safer than being perceived as attractive, desirable or vulnerable.

And if we understand that possibility, perhaps we can stop asking the woman whose body has changed after trauma why she doesn’t simply lose weight. Perhaps we can stop telling her that she would feel more confident if she went to the gym – a place where near naked women parade themselves around the gym with the intention of attracting a man, of which there are plenty of men, all improving their strength and health, but also intimidating to women who have been served a buffet of violence at the hands of men, often without the physique of the men in the gym.

Perhaps we can stop assuming that every woman wants to be smaller, more conventionally attractive or more visibly sexual.

• Because what if the body is protecting something we cannot see?
• What if the woman who has gained significant weight doesn’t need another person to tell her that she should lose it?
• What if she needs someone to become curious about why her relationship with her body changed in the first place?
• And what happens when the judgement comes from other women?

That is particularly uncomfortable because women often understand the social pressure placed upon female bodies better than anyone. Yet we can still participate in it ourselves, overlooking women because they no longer look the way we expect successful women to look, because they don’t dress to attract attention, because they aren’t comfortable being photographed or because they don’t have the energy to perform confidence or be the radiant light she once was. We can be incredibly cruel to women whose bodies are telling stories we don’t understand.

The confidence gap nobody sees.

Consider the woman who rebuilds her life after divorce and becomes a success story on LinkedIn.

She has a corporate career behind her, money in the bank, a good wardrobe, professional photographs, supportive family and friends and the confidence that comes from knowing she has enough resources to survive whatever happens next.

She can show up online, smile for photographs, network with an exuberance even those without trauma envy. She can announce her new chapter, tell the world she is excited about the future – and we applaud her. Loudly. As we should. But there are many other women rebuilding their lives who cannot do those things.

A woman who has experienced sexual or domestic violence may be frightened of being found by the person who harmed her. She may not want photographs of herself online, or be uncomfortable being visibly attractive. She may struggle with trusting strangers, so networking becomes exhausting because her nervous system is constantly assessing whether the people around her are safe.

She may have extraordinary expertise and still be unable to perform confidently on LinkedIn. She may have every qualification required to succeed and yet lack the emotional resources to market herself. She may have the ideas but not the energy to turn them into content, or the capacity to learn the software and platforms that can assist her with making content.

And she may watch another woman seemingly glide through a reinvention and emotionally wish her life was as easy, even though she knows the other woman may simply be operating with a completely different set of circumstances. Emotions are not logical, and not always helpful. They can spill over with a sting in the tail of communications, or be too hard, or they act to protect us so well, we isolate and withdraw completely.

Confidence is easier to perform when you are not worried about who is watching.

It is easier to network when your nervous system isn’t scanning every room for danger. It is easier to sell yourself when you still feel connected to your body. It is easier to appear ambitious when you have enough energy left to perform ambition. It is easier to promote and sell your products when you have never felt the immense rejections from your parents or the one you gave your heart, soul and body to.

What looks like a lack of confidence is actually protection; what looks like a lack of skills is reduced mental capacity due to traumatic brain injury, and what looks like a lack of ambition is exhaustion. And sometimes what looks like a woman disappearing from public life is simply a woman trying to make herself feel safe again.

The physical cost of staying switched on.

We increasingly understand that prolonged stress is not simply something that happens in our heads. Men suffer from lower testosterone, reduced libido, abdominal fat gain, high blood pressure, mood changes, anger issues, and infertility. The body responds in both men and women, and yet investment in rectifying these health issues seems to be one-sided – as per my last article, ‘The Restoration Gap’.

Chronic stress can influence sleep, appetite, metabolism and the regulation of stress hormones, while prolonged physiological stress can affect multiple systems throughout the body. This is particularly relevant when we start thinking about women who have spent years living in a state of hypervigilance, whether because of trauma, solo parenting and parental caregiving, financial uncertainty, workplace pressure, illness or other forms of prolonged stress.

Sometimes it can feel as though the very mechanisms designed to keep us alive are gradually squeezing the life out of us. The hips remain tight, our muscles remain braced for the fight, and our body remains prepared – even when there is no obvious immediate threat.

This is why “just relax” can be such a ridiculous instruction. The body that has spent years preparing for danger does not understand that the danger has ended simply because somebody has told it to.

This is where somatic release rituals, gentle movement, breathwork, stretching, walking, dancing and other body-based practices become interesting. Some will say it is ‘woo-woo’ or spiritual nonsense, or dismiss them because they replace mainstream medical or psychological treatment.

These practices offer another language through which we can begin communicating with a body that has been carrying experiences the conscious mind cannot always articulate. The emerging literature is increasingly interested in the relationship between trauma recovery and reconnecting with the body rather than treating the body as an inconvenient side effect of psychological trauma.

What happens when survival consumes the future?

One of the most fascinating consequences of prolonged exhaustion is what it does to our relationship with our future. From a past of planning, creating and visualising with clarity and certainty, our futures become blurry and unclear. We may still know what we want, still have dreams, ideas and ambitions. We may still be able to describe the life we would love to build.

But feel ourselves moving towards it? Not so much.

We’ve become exceptionally good at getting through the hour, the day, tomorrow. We complete ‘the thing’ in five hours that used to take us one. We make the next deadline, rather than ‘hit it’. We navigate the next meeting, whilst dealing with the court case no one knows about – or cares to remember. We pay the next bill, then the next. Deal with the next family responsibility, attend the next medical appointment, or fix the thing that needs fixing. And eventually, we can become extraordinarily competent at surviving while becoming surprisingly disconnected from living.

This is not a failure of ambition, or lack of ambition or purpose. It is the consequence of having spent too much energy dealing with the present to have anything left with which to imagine the future.

We don’t need to become the women we were before.

Many of us assume that recovery means ‘getting back to normal’ or having our ‘old life back’, and wanting our ‘body back’. But life is never about going back to the old life, energy, confidence, career, relationships and certainly not the old version of ourselves.

Why?

Because the woman we were before is not the woman we need to leap forward. Wanting to go back resists the learnings, refuses the wisdom gained from the experiences we have had. The woman we were before may not have had boundaries we do now. She may have trusted people we would no longer trust.

She may have spent energy proving herself, pleasing people, carrying responsibilities or building things without understanding the cost.

We don’t need to go backwards. We need to acknowledge the parts of ourselves that still belong to us while allowing ourselves to evolve to the woman we were born to be.

When we start asking ourselves, “What happens when I stop spending all my energy on surviving, protecting, proving, performing and carrying everything, and begin making some of that energy available to myself again?”

That becomes a reclamation, much like the reclamation Regena Thomashauer (a.k.a. ‘Mama Gena’) wrote in her book, ‘Pussy:A Reclamation’.

The vivacious woman within didn’t go anywhere. She began an alchemy after exhaustion and invasion took everything from her.

She is choosing to no longer carry responsibilities that are not hers, and has started realising that she no longer needs to protect herself.

She is grieving something they haven’t yet found words for, but as with everything, soul knows. Soul always knows.

Navigating menopause, motherhood, divorce, illness, burnout, financial pressure or the consequences of being the person everyone else relies upon is no longer a burden. It becomes a choose to reframe.

Underneath the weight we’ve gained, the career we’ve abandoned, the friendships we stopped maintaining, the clothes we stopped wearing, the photographs we stopped taking and the invitations we stopped accepting, we are choosing to dance once again.

We are starting to travel, trust ourselves to trust ourselves, to fall in love – and build something extraordinary on our own terms.

We are going to write the book, start the business, stand on the stage, wear the dress, take the photograph, feel attractive, feel powerful and feel free BECAUSE WE GET TO.

The vivacious woman hasn’t disappeared at all; she is becoming and unbecoming all at once, and this time, her energy belongs to her in a life she is designing for herself, on her terms. Not the algorithms, not the social norms and certainly not for the approval of others.

This is her time to rise.
To become alive.
To live a fully connected life she loves.
And so it is.