Championing female founders to move from imposter to impactful action to grow their impact and income ⚡ Turn ‘I’m not good enough’ into ‘I’ve got this!’ 🔥 Confidence Curator | Speaker | Mindset motivator

I work with women in midlife who are no longer willing to disappear politely inside their own lives.On paper, they’ve done everything right.A career that made sense.A family held together.Years of being reliable, responsible, needed.From the outside, nothing looks wrong.And that’s the problem.Because underneath the competence, there’s often something harder to name:Grief.Resentment.Restlessness.A quiet anger they were never really allowed to feel.A sense that most of their life makes sense - but very little of it is what they're consciously choosing anymore.They don’t need reinvention.They don’t need motivation.And they certainly don’t need another “it’s never too late” pep talk.They need space to stabilise.To surface what’s been suppressed.And to reclaim their authority without blowing everything up.My work combines somatic nervous system regulation with honest, grown-up conversation.We don’t bypass anger.We don’t dramatize it either.We understand it.Process it.Integrate it.Because resentment is often information.And midlife isn’t a breakdown — it’s a recalibration.The women I work with are intelligent. Capable. Thoughtful.They are not trying to become someone new.They are coming back into authorship of the life they’re already living.If that resonates, we’ll probably have a useful conversation.Message me.

Denise Chester

Son (at uni): "Mum, I'm coming home for the weekend"
Me: "ooh fab, be lovely to see you"

Son: "Mum, is it ok if George stays as well?"
Me; "sure, no problem"

Son - arrives Friday evening. One hour later they've gone to the pub. 

Son on Sat: "Mum, can my friends come round tonight,  two, max three of them".
Me: "Ok, no worries"

Sat night: 8 of them. 
Eight old school buddies who think they're grown up cos they're not living at home.  
They're still little boys to me 

Except the kitchen looks like a Wetherspoons
Bin full of McDonalds debris
Music, shouting, and laughter

Finally got my son to myself on Sunday morning

He's hungover
Eldest son just got out of bed.
I'm coming in from a muddy dog walk.

All piled onto my bed.
No words or plans needed

Life is different when they're older
But for a short time it's like they're 3 and 5 again

These are the best moments 🖤

I help midlife women | stop living someone else’s life | reclaim their authority | through somatic nervous system work | In 90 Days

No alternative text description for this image

My son was hungover on Saturday. 

I gave him a right telling off.

Not really. 
What actually happened was we grabbed the blankets, raided the snacks, and spent the afternoon watching Abigail on Netflix - which is very silly, funny, and contains more 𝚓̶𝚊̶𝚖̶ 𝚊̶𝚗̶𝚍̶ 𝚔̶𝚎̶𝚝̶𝚌̶𝚑̶𝚞̶𝚙̶  blood than any film should be allowed.  (I thought I'd hate it.  I did not.)

Once upon a time it would have been me on the sofa feeling sorry for myself.
Now I'm the one making the tea.

I don't even drink anymore, but I do love these moments with my adult children.

They still need you, just differently 🖤

'Body count'
'Love and light'
'Anti-aging' anything
Shoes with pointy toes 
Rating attractiveness out of 10
Starting every sentence with "B1tch..."
Being told to 'sit with the discomfort' 
Hairstyles for women in their 40s/50s blah blah
Standing up in the pub (actually, just pubs in general)
Anyone who books a table after 7pm - WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? 

There are loads of good things that happen as you age, despite what they try to tell us.
Knowing what you'll accept and what needs to disappear from your life is just one of them.

And so we're clear, don't come at me if any of the above matter to you.  

I
DON'T
CARE 🖤

Go ahead, tell me what's on YOUR sh1tlist

"Just be grateful for what you have."

Must be one of the most effective ways to shut a woman up I've ever come across.

Because she will be grateful.
And she'll still want more.
She'll dream of something different.
And then she'll feel guilty for wanting it even though she's grateful...

It's a perfect little trap.

Gratitude and desire are not opposites.
They aren't mutually exclusive, my friend.  

You can be endlessly grateful for your life and still want it to feel more like YOUR life.
You can do your gratitude practice like the gurus tell you, and still want to feel, to be, to have something more.

Just for a minute, imagine feeling grateful for what you've got, AND letting yourself want what you want.  

How does that idea make you feel in your body? 
Relieved?  Relaxed?  Calm and peaceful?  
Did you exhale?

Because if you don't let yourself have both, you'll always have a nagging sense of something missing.
Resentment that builds over time.
Guilt that eats you up inside.

We have to let go of the idea that wanting = bad or selfish. 
See it for the trap it is.

It's not greedy to want.  
You don't have to pretend you don't.
How will you have what you want if you don't even admit you want it?
🖤

In my twenties I rarely went to bed before sunrise at the weekend.

Friday nights spent in the club dancing until the small hours.
All back to someone's to talk until way after dawn.
The same group of people, sharing a love of house music, dancing and having a lot of fun.

In my 30s and 40s, the only clubs I went to were football, rugby, and swimming club with the kids.

Now, in my 50s, I've got my weekends back.
I'm out of bed at sunrise to go hiking most of the time.

And the weird thing is, these days spent walking don't feel so different to my clubbing days.
I'm with a group of people I love, sharing a love of being outdoors, moving our bodies, talking for hours, and having a lot of fun.

Different environment, same outcome => joy 

Life is full of change - priorities, relationships, and roles
And underneath all that, you're still YOU.  

It's not always about going back to who you were, the real joy is to be found in what matters to you NOW.

And if that's buried under guilt, routines, responsibilities, and the idea you're too late to have it now anyway,
it can leave you feeling a bit lost, disconnected, resentful or numb.

It's why I work with the body first, helping clients stabilise and regulate.
Because before you start changing decisions or relationships, you need steadiness.

When guilt, pressure, or people-pleasing have been shaping all your choices, it’s almost impossible to think clearly.

So we regulate those responses instead of being driven by them.

When your nervous system is steadier, something important happens.
You stop reacting automatically.

And you can finally hear your own thoughts again.
See your hidden patterns. 
Think about what you might want now.

𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙨 𝙬𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙢𝙤𝙫𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙤𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙞𝙘𝙚

Your choice might not be hiking, but whatever it is, at least you'll know it's actually yours.  

If you like the sound of that drop me a line 🖤

My son and I both have three eggs for breakfast, but we eat at different times of the day.

This is what I found today.  It really bothered me 😂

WHY DID HE DO THAT?!?

Our brains are so different 😆

It’s not just the years of putting everyone else first.
That’s part of it, yes.

But for a lot of women - most of the women I work with - the pattern that quietly pulls you back just as you start to want more didn’t start with school runs and juggling.

It started much earlier.

In lots of tiny moments.

-> Being overlooked
-> Feeling like love was conditional
-> Learning that shrinking yourself kept the peace
-> That your needs were inconvenient
-> That some people got good things.  And you weren’t one of them

You didn’t analyse it at the time.

You were a child. You adapted.
(Of course you did. You were clever.)

But adaptation becomes identity if no one questions it.

So the beliefs settle in:

– I’m not really wanted
– I’m not worthy of that
– That kind of life isn’t for 𝙨𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙠𝙚 𝙢𝙚

And then midlife arrives.

The kids grow up.
The roles shift.
There’s space.

And you think:
Right. Maybe now.

But the old rules are still there.

> Guilt when you feel bored.
> Shame when you feel restless.
> That voice - who do you think you are?

That’s not a midlife crisis.
That’s an old pattern running the show.

I’m not here pretending I’ve got it all sorted.
I’ve questioned more of those old rules - and I still catch them trying to run the show.
I’m doing this work too.

And so we're clear, this isn’t about slapping 'confidence' over the cracks.

It’s about going back to where the story started - and gently undoing what was never true in the first place.

Because you were always worthy.
Always enough.

You just adapted to survive.

And now?
We get to choose differently.

If this is feeling familiar on some level, just message me.  That's where we'll begin 🖤

Anti-aging is a con.

Marketers selling us products and treatments that:
Turn back the clock
Give a youthful glow
Fight wrinkles & gravity
Reverse the signs of aging

Or they're telling us "the best is yet to come". 
Oh and and btw here are all the things you need to buy if you want to become your best..  

What's wrong with the age we're at?

We've reached midlife - our 40s, our 50s.
We are not a problem to be solved.
Not a crisis that needs a skincare update.
Not a battleground to fight an invisible enemy

At this point we are the most capable, experienced, clear-eyed version of ourselves that has ever existed. 

So why does it sometimes feel like everyone else has moved on and we're still going through the motions?

Always picking up the slack, keeping things running, and putting others first like we're trapped in an episode of "The One Where I Have To Do Everything All The Time" that's playing on a loop, feeling:

- Guilty for wanting more than we've got
- Selfish for imagining a living different life 
- Resentful for all the sacrifices we made that nobody even noticed
- Scared that we did all the right things and now it's too late for us to have what we want

Your age is not the problem here.
The problem is the hidden pattern shaping the decisions you make.

The ways you've come to think, feel and choose that seem normal but are just repetition.

Always putting your kids first has morphed into automatically putting yourself last all the time
Staying quiet to keep things running smoothly => my voice doesn't matter 
Ignoring your needs => I'm a good mum/wife/daughter/team player 
This is all too much => There's something wrong with me
I'm older => I've missed my chance at life

None of this is true, but you've come to believe it anyway.

When you see your patterns, you start to see the lie.  
Then you can get to the truth of who you really are.
And make choices for YOU without feeling guilty, worrying you'll upset everyone, or doubting you can even do it 'at your age'.

𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙚𝙭𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙬𝙝𝙮 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣.

If you want to see your pattern, drop a 🖤in the comments or DM me, I've got something to get you started.

Forget about reinventing yourself or finding your purpose or any of that stuff.  

Think about this instead:  
how you've spent a really long time organising your life around what everyone else needed from you
And you've got no idea what you'd do if you could organise it around yourself instead.

98% of women who recognise this will still immediately dismiss it.  
It's one of the greatest tricks ever played on us.

Get us so used to looking after everyone, keeping it together, ignoring our needs, that living this way feels normal.
It's just how it is.

We're praised for how good we are
Valued for the service we provide.
Our worth based on giving without complaint.

So when we get to the part where the kids are grown, the career is built, and the home's all sorted, we've pretty much forgotten about the life we wanted for ourselves.

Feels weird to want something different.  
Feels selfish to want something more.

So lots of women who read this might feel a flicker of something, an echo, or even a spark.
But it's overridden by a nervous system conditioned to stay quiet in order to feel safe.  

Don't ask, don't moan, don't rock the boat, don't piss people off.  
Don't be different.
Don't be difficult.

Oh and don't bother trying because you're too old now anyway.

It's such bullshit.
It just makes life easy for everyone else if we keep believing the lies.

Wanting = selfish 
Aging = decline
Asking = ungrateful
Taking anyway = cue the pearl clutching and "who does she think she is?"

Once you see the system, you can unpick the conditioning.
Want without guilt.
Choose for yourself without panic.

Because you could have decades left.
Isn't it right that you decide how you live them? 🖤

If you want to be part of the 2% that decides what they want still matters, drop me a message and let's talk about The Reclamation.

How many times have you thought 'ooh, I'd love to do that' 
then shoved it in the drawer labelled 'Dream on'?

That drawer. Stuffed full in there.
You keep cramming things in, squashing everything down.

The course you nearly signed up for.
The trip you almost booked.
The thing you wanted to try but talked yourself out of.

The career change, the lifestyle change, the relationship change...

It's absolutely not because you don't have any dreams, any ideas, any ambition.

It's because you've had years of learning that what you want comes last.
That being sensible is more important that being inspired.
That other people's needs are more urgent, more valid, more realistic than yours.

So you've got very, very good at the pre-emptive 'no'.
Stop the idea before you get carried away. 
Avoid the disappointment of thinking "I could do that" then remembering you've got too many responsibilities to fit it in

But maybe you're one of the women who's feeling the start of a shift.  

The kids don't need you the way they used to.
The house isn't as full.
There are gaps in your schedule for the first time in years. 

And you're standing in the middle of this life you lovingly built for everyone else - wondering 'what now for me?'

Why not have a peek in that drawer?

Not to be reckless. Not to blow everything up.
Just to look.

To say - oh yes! I wanted to do this!  
I could have been that!

I wonder, what would you do if you knew you still could? 

It's not that you're not ambitious or brave enough.
You've just forgotten you're allowed to want things too.

So for whoever needs to hear this today:

YOU. ARE. ALLOWED.

Tell me, what's in your drawer?  🖤

You've been living by rules you never agreed to.

Most women don't realise it.
They just know something feels off.

That the way they make decisions- what they say yes to, what they push down, what they stuff into the "don't even think about wanting THAT" category - has a pattern to it.

One that was probably set a long time ago.

It doesn't mean you're easily led or unaware.

But because you've been following these rules for so long, they stopped feeling like rules.
They just feel like 𝙮𝙤𝙪.

Rules like:
-> Wanting things for yourself is selfish
-> It's too late to think about that now
-> Everyone else comes first, you'll get your turn later (spoiler:  you might never get your turn)

And this is the important bit:
The restlessness you feel, the boredom, the low-level guilt, the "what the hell am I gonna do with my life now?"  - is not a midlife crisis.
Purlease.

The rules haven't changed. YOU have. And somewhere in you, you already know.

My quiz - What's Been Shaping Your Decisions? - shows you which pattern has been silently calling the shots, and why.

Takes less than two minutes and you'll get your result right away. 
 Find the link in the comments and the Featured section in my profile

I bring engineers, innovation teams, and leaders from disengaged to thriving - DM me if this is you 🐲 Techie, Liberator, Complexity Buster, Motivator, Engineering Director @ Novoda

I’m a Head of Engineering who combines hands-on leadership with systems-level leadership development. Alongside my full-time roles, I run a small leadership coaching practice focused on engineering leaders, which strengthens my ability to scale trust, clarity, and impact across organizations.

Sarah G.

Who will I see in Den Bosch on Thursday? ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥🐉

Sarah Gruneisen 🐉

Engineering Leadership | Scaling Leaders, Teams & Sustainable Impact | #9 LinkedIn IT & Tech influencer in the NL | #6 LinkedIn Computer Engineering Female Worldwide

Founder & owner Team Rockstars IT / Executive boardmember / Head of AI

If you’re a woman working in IT in the Netherlands, you’ll know there’s a good chance that in your team, at the office, or at a conference, you’ll mostly find yourself surrounded by male colleagues. Personally, I think there is nothing wrong with working with men ☺️ , but a change of scenery can do wonders from time to time.

That’s why next week Thursday, February 26, we’re hosting another She’s an IT Rockstar office take‑over!

This time we’re working in Den Bosch with a women‑only group. Everyone just does their own work, but with a great group of women around you to brainstorm with, laugh with, and learn from. And of course, we want to be treated like Rockstars, so you can sign up for a massage, a boxing clinic, or get your nails done.

To wrap up the day, we’ll have an informal panel discussion with Mirjam van Olst, Sarah Gruneisen 🐉, and myself about leadership. Special shout-out to the wonderful Ramona Domen & Maarten Boer for organizing this day! 

We still have a few spots available, so if you identify as female and would like to join, feel free to stop by and send me a DM!

taplio

The Battle

Denise Chester

Sarah G.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreDenise Chester's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreSarah G.'s LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Denise Chester

Sarah G.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Denise Chester's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreSarah G.'s LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreDenise Chester's LinkedIn Performance