Permission to Pause: Coming Back After a Season of Too Much

I didn’t stop writing on purpose; it turns out that moving countries, moving house, moving community, moving jobs, and renovating a house… well, it all takes up rather a lot of space in a person’s nervous system.

Somewhere in the middle of packing and unpacking, demolishing and rebuilding, uncaulking and recaulking, the part of me that writes went quiet. Not in a dramatic, tortured-artist way, more like a weary voice saying “Look, love… we’ve a lot on. Let’s circle back later.”

And because I was tired, I listened.

The listening part came naturally; not feeling guilty about it… less so.

When Your Nervous System is Busy Surviving, Creativity Has to Queue

I spend my working life telling clients that rest isn’t indulgent, it’s biological. We talk about the window of tolerance, how life contractions require slowing down, how the body has no interest in performance metrics when it’s already juggling threat, loss, novelty, and change.

And yet, when my own system needed a breather, I found myself wondering:

• Shouldn’t I push through?

• Shouldn’t I stay visible online?

• Shouldn’t I at least manage a tidy little blog post from the rubble of my study?

This is what performance culture does to us. We feel the pressure to be “consistent,” to produce something meaningful on a schedule that our nervous system definitely didn’t sign up for.

But the truth is embarrassingly simple: You cannot renovate your entire life and also perform at your best.

Output is not a character trait and rest is not a failing; it’s a physiological boundary.

The Myth of Constant Consistency

There’s an unwritten rule that if you have an online presence, you must maintain it endlessly, as though the algorithm is a small god who requires ritual offerings.

But here’s the thing: no one is sitting refreshing my website thinking, “Where is Emma and her deeply reflective content? She has forsaken us.” (apart from my friend Heidi who did say she hadn't seen a post in a while!)

Most people are too busy doing their own version of life-juggling to notice when someone else steps back for a breather.

We talk a lot about authenticity in this profession, but authenticity isn’t posting relentlessly. Sometimes it’s admitting: “Today the most regulated thing I did was drink water and choose not to cry in the paint aisle at B&Q.”

Sometimes it’s stepping away so you can return with presence, instead of noise.

Rest as a Form of Integrity

What if taking space isn’t a disruption to your work, but part of it?

What if your creativity doesn’t need you to push harder, but to unclench?

What if the most honest thing any of us could do is live as though our well-being is more important than our output?

We encourage clients to notice their limits, to pace themselves, to lean into seasons of contraction and expansion. But we often forget we are made of the same fragile, brilliant biology.

So this return isn’t a grand re-launch. It’s not a promise of weekly posts or heroic productivity.

It’s simply a quiet re-entry. A reminder that you can press pause without losing anything important. A small act of resistance against the lie that you must always be “on.”

Writing again feels like stretching after a long sleep: slow, careful, slightly creaky, but good. So if you find yourself in a season where everything feels like too much, maybe you’ve moved house or heart or job or self, I hope you offer yourself permission to step back when you need to. To stop performing for imaginary audiences. To trust that your creativity will wander home when it’s ready. And to know that rest doesn’t make you less committed, it makes you more whole.

Here’s to returning, softly.