You only sat down five minutes ago, and already you’re thinking about the overflowing washing basket. And what about the work email you haven’t yet replied to? And did you remember to book that appointment? While your mind works overtime, your tea is busily going cold because even the act of drinking it feels like something that needs to be squeezed in between more important things. It’s exhausting.
Here’s a question I ask many of the women I coach that stops almost every one of them in their tracks. When did you last properly rest without feeling guilty about it?
The silence that follows tells me everything.
The busiest woman in the room
Women over 40 are, statistically and anecdotally, among the busiest people in the country. Many are still working, often in demanding roles. Some are also caring for ageing parents. Others are supporting adult children who aren’t quite as launched as everyone expected them to be by now. And even those whose responsibilities have lightened find that the habit of being busy is so deeply ingrained, it has become something closer to identity.
We don’t just do a lot. We believe we should be doing a lot. Somewhere between childhood and now, most of us absorbed a very simple equation. Useful equals worthy. If you’re not doing something, you’re not contributing. And if you’re not contributing, well, what exactly are you here for?
It’s a brutal little belief, and it runs so deep that many women don’t even recognise they have it until someone points it out.
Where it all begins
As girls, many of us were praised for being helpful. For being good. For anticipating what other people needed before they asked. Boys were encouraged to play, to explore, to take risks. Girls were encouraged to tidy up afterwards.
This isn’t about blame. It’s about recognising that by the time you reach your forties and beyond, you have had decades of reinforcement telling you that your value lies in what you do for others. Resting, truly resting, with no purpose, can feel almost transgressive. Like bunking off from your own life.
Then midlife arrives with its own particular pressures. Hormonal shifts that disrupt sleep. The emotional weight of changing roles. Working in a busy job, while the sheer volume of life admin seems to multiply with every passing year. Your body is asking you to slow down at precisely the moment your life seems to demand the opposite. And instead of listening, you pour another coffee and push on through.
What your brain is trying to tell you
Here’s what’s interesting. Neuroscience has been telling us for years that rest is not the opposite of productivity. It’s the foundation of it. When the brain is allowed to idle, it enters what researchers call the default mode network, a state in which it consolidates memories, processes emotions, daydreams, imagines the future and makes connections it simply cannot make when it’s busy. That idea you had in the shower? That sudden clarity on a problem you’d been wrestling with as you walk the dog? That is your brain in rest mode, doing some of its finest work.
Women who learn to rest without guilt often describe a shift that goes beyond feeling less tired. They talk about thinking more clearly, making better decisions, and, perhaps most tellingly, feeling more like themselves. Not the version of themselves that performs competence and capability for the world, but the truer version. The one who has been waiting patiently for a gap in the schedule for too long.
Unlearning the guilt
So how do you begin to dismantle something that has been built over years? Not with a grand gesture, as they never work. Instead, you start by noticing.
Notice the moment you sit down and immediately reach for your phone. Notice the internal commentary that says, “I should really be…” Notice how you justify rest to other people. “I was absolutely shattered” or “I’ve had a terrible week,” as though you need a valid excuse to stop. You don’t, and you never did.
What would happen if you simply rested? Not because you’re ill. Not because you’ve earned it. Not because you’ve ticked off everything on the list. But because you are a human being, not a human doing, and rest is not a reward. It’s a right.
This shift sounds small. But for women who have spent a lifetime in motion, it can feel seismic.
A county that understands the art of slowing down
One of the things I love about living in Sussex is its quiet refusal to rush. There is a culture here that values the unhurried, and it’s worth leaning into rather than simply admiring from a distance.
Sussex has a long heritage of women who understood the necessity of carving out space for themselves. Virginia Woolf, who lived at Monk’s House in Rodmell, famously argued for the importance of ‘a room of one’s own’ both literally and metaphorically as a foundation for creativity and independence.
At Charleston, the artists and writers of the Bloomsbury Group created a way of living that placed reflection, creativity and intellectual freedom at its heart. They understood that time to think was not a luxury. It was essential. You don’t have to be writing a novel to apply the same principle to your own Wednesday afternoon.
Then there’s the county’s independent café culture. A flat white and an hour with a book in a window seat in Arundel, Rye or Ditchling isn’t wasted time. For many women, it’s the only hour in the week when nobody needs anything from them. That matters more than most people realise.
And there is something to be said for the Sussex tradition of the garden. Spend any time at Great Dixter in Northiam, and you’ll quickly realise it isn’t a garden obsessed with perfection. Instead, it invites you to slow down, pay attention to what’s growing, and accept that some things simply take time. There is a lesson in that for every woman who has forgotten how to be still, and you don’t need a big (or any) garden to learn it.
Your permission slip
If you take just one thing from my musings, let it be this. You do not need to justify rest. Not to your family, not to your colleagues, and certainly not to the voice in your head that insists you should be doing something more useful.
The most powerful women I know are not the ones who never stop. They are the ones who have learned that stopping is where the strength lies. And they are a lot less stressed for it.
So put the phone down. Let the email wait. And drink the tea while it’s hot.
You’ve been earning downtime your entire life. Now it’s time to stop earning it and simply take it.
About Julie Brown
Julie Brown is a Sussex-based accredited coach, content creator, and journalist-turned-writer who works with women in midlife on confidence, boundaries, and identity. She is particularly interested in how women can end up feeling smaller, lacking confidence and without a voice and what happens when they finally decide it’s time to change.
Julie’s writing explores self-worth, visibility and the inner shifts that arrive in midlife. She believes this stage of life can be a powerful turning point, offering women the chance to step into a fuller, more unapologetic way of living: www.stillsassy.co.uk
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