Tentacles of Fear - whether Fourteen or Fifty

Last night I sat in a school hall watching fourteen year olds present their final year-long projects, and my heart was bursting with joy.

My husband has taught the same cohort since they were six years old. Eight years of knowing them, believing in them - and refusing to let any shyness or discomfort hold them back. Last night was the culmination of their time at the school - the moment they stood up, one by one, and showed the room what they’d created from scratch with mentorship for their final year project.

The work was extraordinary. One girl hadn’t just painted a picture - she’d made the canvas, built an easel, sewn an apron, created a colour palette, and made her own paints: experimenting with pigments until they were right. Another had done a deep investigation into global recycling. Another built his own skateboard. The creativity, the commitment, the sheer aliveness of it all was utterly inspiring.

But what got me - almost brought tears to my eyes - was watching the ones who found the presenting hard. Because my husband, a former professional musician who had his own history with performance anxiety, has spent eight years gently and consistently refusing to let fear win for these kids. He’s pushed them, supported them and believed in them no matter what.

And last night, they all got up. Every single one of them.

When a couple of them finished - the ones who’d found it hardest - he asked them in their Q&As: how does it feel, to have done this? (I’m crying as I write this!) They answered a bit reluctantly that it felt ok or good, clearly unable to fully appreciate what they’d just done. But he knew. And I knew. These are the moments that make the difference. These kids faced their fears with love and support around them, at an age when it can powerfully reshape everything.

I loved seeing them nurtured with all that. It’s not something I had - I fought my fears alone, for decades. Which is why I guess their bravery was so moving for me.

Now, I know by the time we reach midlife, there’s a general understanding that fear starts to loosen its grip a little. We’ve all heard women say - and mean it - I just don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. There’s real truth in that. We feel FOMO differently. We have less energy for things we never actually wanted to do. We’ve earned a certain freedom just by surviving everything we’ve survived.

But that’s not the whole story.

Because by midlife, fear is not so easy to spot. It’s had decades to shape-shift and hide. And - let’s face it - we’ve perfected the practice of avoiding a lot of stuff that scares us. We’ve spent decades unconsciously creating workarounds and convenient truths, so we believe that the stuff we’re not doing, saying - and feeling - is just the way things are. But those tentacles of fear are slippery little buggers - and they’re often still there. Beneath our accomplishments and impressive facade - messing with us. Make no mistake.

In fact, we can only start to see them when we start being honest about what we really want, and then start unpacking why it’s such a struggle.

Let me illustrate. One client of mine came to discover that you can’t have great friendships if you’re not prepared to have difficult conversations. Boundaries matter in all our relationships - and when they slide, friendships can turn ugly, or just fade away. My client unearthed fear tentacles around conflict, and being abandoned. She realised she’d been accommodating friendships that were draining and unsupportive.

The important thing here is: it wasn’t about her friends. We don’t get anywhere if we blame others and focus on how they should change. And this is an important understanding to have if you want to be coached and genuinely make progress! Instead, we addressed her inability to be honest about how she felt and what she wanted. By identifying the fearful - and false - beliefs holding her back, she found the courage to speak up with love and respect. She soon found out which friendships were true and could deepen and which she needed to let go. And having those brave conversations boosted her confidence overnight.

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I myself came to see my own fear tentacles via my public speaking panic - which I’d managed for years by just pushing through, doing less whilst dreading more. But once I committed to working with that fear and healing its roots, a door opened that I couldn’t close again. I started seeing fear’s fingerprints everywhere. Fear of speaking my truth, upsetting people and them not liking me. Fear of being too much, or not enough. Social anxiety that I’d been suppressing with alcohol. One by one, I’ve been facing them down - and yes, like whack-a-mole: new ones continue to pop up and say hi! But the liberation on the other side - the real liberation, the fully transparent authentic kind - is bloody awesome.

Those kids last night had no idea what powerful housekeeping they were doing for their future psyches. They just got up and did it, with someone beside them who knew the terrain and refused to let them miss this opportunity to build real courage.

And I saw the beauty of that so clearly. Because what they did last night cut off a big fear tentacle before it could grow. And that’s what this work is, at its heart. Whether you’re fourteen or fifty. Whether the tentacle is burgeoning, or entwined within.

Bottom line, if you want to make just one meaningful change in your life I’d invite you to be honest about where you might have a tentacle of fear pulling on your life. Not to push through it. (Please no - take it from me!) Not to manage it. But to look at it, perhaps with support, and to release it.

It is never, ever too late to let go of fear’s tentacles. So long as we’re still here, we can all learn and grow and heal - and become ever more brave.

If you’d like a great, FREE and easy way to tune into any fears - in a safe and supported way - then why not give my guided visioning visualisation a try?

It takes just 15 minutes, and all you need to do is find a quite space - and relax!

Scroll down for more details.

And hit reply if you’d like access: I’ll send over the link.

You may well have heard of Dr Louise Newson, AKA the menopause doctor on instagram. She’s become pretty high profile as conversations around menopause and HRT have become more mainstream. She’s also been attacked, highly unfairly to my mind, with smear campaigns by some parts of the media and her fellow medical professionals. You may have your own take on this, and her, but either way: I really want to recommend her latest book The Power of Hormones. This book goes beyond the usual conversations about HRT - i.e. is it a good or a bad thing - and explores the history of hormones within the wider context of medical research and prescription drugs.

I’m pretty well versed on hormones and HRT, but this book was a revelation for me understanding the wide reaching ways oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone (no longer considered merely sex hormones) impact our entire systems and long-term health.

Dr Louise is also forensic here in her detailing of the history of modern medicine and its contradictions - many of which clearly speak to the ingrained misogyny that has sidelined women’s health since forever. Her commitment to ensuring that all women have the information they need - and have long been denied - to make their own health choices, with the full knowledge they need about their individual circumstances and risks, is clear from start to finish.

A lot has changed in the world of hormone treatment, supplements and medical research in recent years, yet few of us are interacting with medical professionals with more than a tiny fraction of knowledge about women’s hormonal health. Do yourself a favour and get hold of this book - it will help you make health choices beyond HRT in ways that you might find truly life changing.

One final thing - and it’s FREE

If this newsletter has got you wondering about how fear might be running the show without you realising it - and that’s the idea! - I want to leave you with a practical tool of support.

Because those fears need a little coaxing to come out of the shadows - and I’ve got a helpful too to gently encourage them to reveal themselves…

I recorded this visualisation because I noticed, both in my own life and in my work with women, that the hardest part of moving forward isn’t lack of strategy or information.

It’s being able to connect to what we genuinely want.

Not what makes sense. Not what we should want given everything we’ve already built. But what’s truly calling to us, underneath all the noise of practicality, other people’s expectations - and our aforementioned fear.

Because that disconnection? It doesn’t come from nowhere. Like the internalised beliefs we’ve been unpicking in this newsletter, it’s the entirely predictable result of the lives we’ve lived - decades of adapting, accommodating, dialling down our instincts to survive and succeed in structures that weren’t built with us in mind.

By midlife, many of us have become strangers to our own deepest desires.

That’s why I’ve recorded a guided visualisation - one of the simplest and most powerful tools I’ve found for bypassing the thinking mind and reconnecting with what’s actually true for you.

I’ve used it in workshops, and I’ve watched women shift in real time. One woman arrived panicking about her future and left, in her own words, feeling “on fire” about what was next - not because she had a plan, but because she’d finally given herself permission to feel into what she truly wanted, without immediately deciding whether it was ‘realistic’.

That shift - from fear and stuckness to genuine aliveness about your future - is available to YOU too.

Right now.

It takes around 15 minutes. All you need is a quiet space and a willingness to let yourself dream a little. And it’s completely free.

If you’d like the link, just hit reply and say yes please — I’ll send it straight to you. Maybe set aside a little time this weekend, press play, and see where it takes you.

You might surprise yourself

(ps - the offer’s open to everyone, not just women)

That’s it for now - keep on reaching for your best self, and reaching out to those who might help you.

Because Drama belongs in the movies, not in your life.

Until next time,

Wendy