The Woman You Were Before the World Told You Who to Be – Shavita Kotak

When Something No Longer Fits

There comes a point in life for many people when something that once fit no longer feels comfortable. It can happen quietly. The routines are still there. The responsibilities continue. From the outside, very little may appear different. Yet underneath it all, there can be a growing sense that something is shifting.

It is often difficult to explain because the change is not always visible. It can feel more like a question than an answer. Is this still who I am? Is this still how I want to live? Is there more of me beneath all of this?

On Chocolate and Coffee Break, my conversation with Shavita Kotak began around menopause, but very quickly it became clear that we were touching something much deeper. We were not really talking about symptoms or ageing. We were talking about identity. We were talking about the stories women inherit, the roles they step into, and what happens when years of caring for everyone else slowly pull them away from themselves.

The Stories We Learn to Wear

One of the things that stayed with me was Shavita speaking about how women become rewarded for exhaustion. It was such a simple statement, but it stayed with me because I think many people will recognise it immediately.

So many women spend years being praised for carrying more. They hold families together. They organise, support, nurture, remember, manage, smooth over, and continue showing up even when they are running on empty. They become the dependable person, the capable person, the person everyone turns to. There is beauty in that kind of care, but there can also be a quiet cost.

Sometimes caring for others slowly becomes abandoning ourselves.

The difficult part is that many people do not notice it happening because self-sacrifice often looks admirable. It looks responsible. It looks loving. Until one day something inside begins saying that the way things have always been can no longer continue.

Where It Becomes Uncomfortable

During our conversation, Shavita spoke about becoming exhausted from being somebody else. That thought reaches far beyond menopause.

How many people are tired not because they have done too much, but because they have spent years becoming who they believed they needed to be?

How many people learned to stay quiet so they would be accepted? How many learned to make themselves smaller so that others would feel comfortable? How many learned that being needed was safer than being fully seen?

Those are uncomfortable questions because they touch something deeply human. We all want belonging. We all want love. We all want connection. Sometimes, without realising it, we begin trading small parts of ourselves in exchange for those things.

Remembering Who Was There Before

What struck me about this conversation was not the idea of becoming someone new. It was the idea of returning.

Shavita spoke about going back to the woman who existed before the world began telling her who she should be. I found myself thinking about children when she said that. I thought about the freedom children often have before they begin learning how they are expected to behave, what parts of themselves are acceptable, and what parts should stay hidden.

Perhaps some seasons of life are not asking us to reinvent ourselves at all.

Perhaps they are asking us to remember.

Brew the Change: Listening to Wisdom That Has Been Lived

Every week on the show we share a Brew the Change challenge, and this week’s challenge felt like a natural continuation of the conversation itself.

Find a mature woman in your life — perhaps your mother, your aunt, a neighbour, or a mentor — and ask her one question:

What do you know now that you wish you had known earlier?

Then listen without interrupting, without fixing, and without minimising.

There is something powerful about offering someone the space to be heard. Not because they have all the answers, but because wisdom often arrives through years of living, loving, losing, rebuilding, and beginning again.

A Quiet Thought to Take With You

I keep thinking about the possibility that maybe the most meaningful parts of ourselves do not disappear. Maybe they simply become quieter while life gets busy around them.

And perhaps some of the most important conversations are the ones that help us hear them again.