Permission to Pause — Even When Everything in You Screams “Keep Going”

Turns out a cartoon horse named Applejack knew the secret to midlife all along...

Apr 09, 2025

Welcome to Week One of the Midlife Permission Slip series — 1.0.

This isn’t a glow-up or a reinvention. It’s a soft rebellion — the kind that starts with a full-body exhale (and maybe a well-timed scream into a pillow).

Two years ago, I wrote about needing "the wisdom of a pause" when overwhelmed. Now I realize it wasn't just wisdom I needed — it was permission.

What started as a personal revelation has become something more urgent: a collective reclamation.

You're allowed to stop. And honestly? That might be the bravest thing any of us can do.

So many of us are still subconsciously waiting for someone to say it's OK to take a break. (But don’t TELL me I NEED to learn how to rest, or I will rebel by working overtime. Don’t ask me how that works.)

The face of a woman who finally gave herself permission to stop

We've been conditioned to equate movement with meaning — to earn our worth through output, to perform even our rest like it's part of a 25-step morning routine reel.

But the quiet truth is this: You don't need permission. But sometimes, it helps to be reminded you can give it to yourself.

So here we are, at the start of my 8-post series. We begin with the most radical one: Permission to Pause.

Hello Applejack, it’s me, Nadine

(Welcome to my midlife memoir on not stopping until you drop)

There’s one episode of My Little Pony that lives rent-free in my head.

Hear me out. It’s harvest season. After her brother gets injured, Applejack is determined to pick every apple at Sweet Apple Acres — alone.

It’s an entirely unreasonable job. But Applejack — AKA “The loyalest of friends and the most dependable of ponies” — is stubborn AF. (And a classic over-functioner!)

Eventually, it's not the world that collapses. It's Applejack who collapses. And when she wakes up, she's harvested only a fraction of the orchard.

Spoiler: It's not grit that gets her to the finish line — it's letting her friends in to help.

Reader, I've never related to a cartoon horse more.

Applejack didn't collapse because she was weak. She collapsed because she believed she was the only one for the job. Sound familiar?

🧾 This Week’s Permission Slip:
You are allowed to stop.
Even when it's not graceful.
Even when your to-do list is still yelling.
Even when you feel guilty just for needing rest.
Especially when your body already knows it's time.

The rest is still unwritten

(cue Natasha Bedingfield whisper-singing in the background)

I meant to publish this days ago. Then life intervened: a sick kid, the beautiful chaos of my incredible teen dropping her first single, and therapy — the kind that rearranges your inner furniture and makes it impossible to pretend you’re fine.

At one point, my therapist looked at me and asked: “How do you pause and integrate your becoming?”

So, I allowed myself a pause.

Not with spa music and eucalyptus bombs. But with unwashed hair, unfinished dishes, and a series of deep sighs that counted as breathing.

Alexis Rose from 'Schitt's Creek' is the Best Jewish Character on ...

And still — guilt crept in. That familiar voice: Shouldn’t you be doing something? Shouldn’t you be useful? Shouldn’t you be performing?

Because for so many of us raised as girls, pausing feels dangerous. Selfish. Indulgent.
We learned early that worth = output. That love is earned through care, and rest is a privilege you have to justify with burnout.

I see it in my coaching clients. In myself.
We worry what might unravel if we stop. What people might think. What we might feel.

Alexis's Funniest Schitt's Creek Quotes | PS Entertainment — *(Ew, David! Not feelings!)*

Especially in midlife — when invisible labour expands in every direction, and the pressure to hold everything together quietly, competently, and without complaint becomes the air they expect us to breathe. Not oxygen — obligation.

No wonder so many of us feel like we’re coming undone.
But maybe we’re not just breaking open.
Maybe we’re breaking down into something richer.

And maybe that’s what this whole perimenopausal season is:
Not a collapse. Not a bloom.
But a composting.
A sacred pause that doesn’t look like much on the outside.

But inside? We’re decomposing the old scripts.
The myths. The roles. The shoulds.
Letting them break down so we can grow into something rooted.
Something real. So we can become something no one else ever got to be: ourselves.

This isn’t collapse. It’s preparation.
Our bodies are forcing the very pause our culture has denied us for decades.

The sacred space between Stimulus and Response

(Or: Why I Keep Saying Yes When I Mean “Please Let Me Lie Down”)

I used to think multitasking was a flex. Look at me, replying to emails while boiling pasta and diagnosing myself with a rare nerve disorder on WebMD — all at once! Iconic.

Turns out, that’s not a personality. That’s a trauma response.

Because when you’ve been trained to perform, produce, and please, doing becomes your default. Rest feels wrong. Stillness feels like failure. And God forbid you don’t reply to a text in under 12 minutes — people might assume you’ve died.

But in the rush to do it all, we lose something essential:

The pause between stimulus and response.
That tiny moment where choice lives.
Where we remember who we are.

(or at least who we were before someone asked, “What’s for dinner?” for the third time.)

The best Women Drivers memes :) Memedroid — The pause sometimes looks like THIS

Without that pause, we’re on autopilot.

Reacting instead of reflecting.
Agreeing instead of considering.
Managing instead of noticing.

Maybe you said yes when you meant “maybe.” Or “not right now.” Or “only in my bathrobe with no eye contact.”

That extra sliver of time — the beat between impulse and action — isn’t just for mindfulness apps.

It’s for catching yourself before you say yes out of habit.
For noticing that your jaw is clenched.
For realizing you don’t want to go — and letting that be enough.

And yeah — pausing can be deeply uncomfortable. Which is probably why it matters.

The pause isn’t here to make you better at pretending. It’s here to bring you back to yourself.

Even if — especially if — you’ve forgotten what that feels like.

So what now?

Sometimes the pause doesn't fix anything. It doesn't give you answers. It just sits with you while you stare into the void and whisper, "It's OK, little buddy. You're doing your best."

And in that space — that quiet, uncomfortable space — something starts to stir.

Maybe it’s the no you’ve been overriding.
The resentment you’ve been dressing up as flexibility.
The part of you that’s not willing anymore — even if you can’t say it out loud yet.

Because there’s a difference between peacekeeping and integrity. One keeps everyone else comfortable. The other keeps you honest.

This is where the real shift happens. Not just in what you let go of — but in what you start to make room for.

A quieter yes.
A voice that belongs to you.
The beginning of enough.

Start small. Pick one tiny pause and let it matter.
Not to be more efficient. Not to get ahead.
But to hear yourself.
To remember there’s a you underneath all the doing.

Because in a world that profits from your exhaustion, pausing is resistance.

And not just personal resistance — collective rebellion. Every woman who stops to catch her breath makes it safer for the rest of us to remember we can, too.

You are allowed to stop. You are allowed to not know yet.

That's it. That's the whole revolution.

But since lots of you like homework (gold star lovers unite), choose one thing — just one — that you'll pause before responding to this week.

Maybe it's:

The group chat that always leaves you drained
The "quick favour" that's never actually quick
The social obligation you've been dreading
The guilt-scroll through social media when you could be sleeping

Group chats — Pause before the text. Trust.

Give yourself five seconds to ask: What if I just… didn’t?

Not doing. Just noticing you want something else.
Not "I should go do that thing."
But "I could go do that thing. Do I want to?"

Tiny rebellions. Sacred interruptions.
Each one a way of saying: I’m here. I matter. I choose me.

🌱 Something’s brewing...

It’s called Fck Around and Find You — an 8-week experiment for midlife women who are done performing. No glow-up. No bootcamp. Just real-time honesty and one permission slip at a time. Stay tuned!

(You don’t need to be ready. You just need to be curious.)

💬 I’d love to hear from you: What are you learning to pause — and what’s rising in the space it creates?