WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS???
There’s a point in the day, maybe between finishing the washing up and checking your emails, or just after you’ve answered someone else’s needs for the up-teenth time, where you feel a subtle but sharp pang of resentment; a sense that you’re not quite in your life anymore, but orbiting it. It’s not loud. It doesn’t shout. But it's there.
Something is off.
You tell yourself you’ll pause tomorrow. You’ll go slower next week. You’ll carve out space when the schedule softens, when the to-do list shortens, and it feels more convenient to care for yourself. But by then, the distance between you and your real self has stretched. Again.
We perform our lives in roles: parent, partner, colleague, caretaker, friend. These roles we take on where once empowering, necessary, or even chosen. But over time left unchecked, they evolve into something else entirely, mechanisms that keep us performing instead of feeling.
Nodding along instead of asking questions. Showing up instead of dropping in. This is the tension Florence Given names in her writing, particularly through the rhetorical grenade of a question: “Who does she think she is?”
It’s a question historically used to shame women who dare to prioritise themselves. Who dare to be visible. Who dare to choose differently. But what if we let that question become the start of something instead of the end?
We see it all the time. People arrive exhausted, not just from doing too much, but from never being allowed *or rather allowing themselves* to pause. Carrying too many expectations without space to renegotiate them, they deny themselves dedicated, committed, regular rest feeling like they need a reason to deserve self love.
Here’s the truth:
you don’t need to earn rest through burnout.
You don’t need to explain your way into a massage, a Reiki session, or a sound bath. You don’t have to feel broken to deserve repair. What you might need is a moment, a room, a breath, some s. p. a. c. e. ; somewhere to feel your own pulse before the world rushes in.
That’s what we’re offering. Not a quick fix or a miracle. Just a different rhythm. One that lets you stop outsourcing your attention and start listening inward again. One that says: your body is a compass. Your feelings are valid. Your intuition isn’t something to override. Resentment fades when we fill our own cups first. The energy shifts when we remember that we can choose something else.
So the question “Who does she think she is?” becomes an anchor. She is someone who stopped abandoning herself. Someone who listened.
Someone who took her time. She is someone who booked the massage.
Who laid down in the sound bath. Who remembered what her body felt like under the noise. She is someone who belongs to herself again.
And you do. You belong to yourself. You don't deserve rest or space or care, its your birth right! You don't have to work for it, you just need to own it. x
Written by Poetry Therapist & Space Therapies' very own Hayley Frances.