You're not failing. You're just only using half of your power.
- Kimberley Summers
- Apr 30
- 3 min read
There's a particular kind of tired that doesn't go away with sleep. It's the tired that comes from pushing. From striving. From showing up every single day and doing all the things you were told to do, and still feeling like you're wading through mud.
If you're nodding right now, I want you to know something.
You're not failing.
You're not lazy. You're not lacking discipline. You're not doing it wrong.
You're just only using half of your power.
I know this because I'm in it too.
I run Wild Thread Collective - a creative ecosystem of photography, web design, art and writing. On paper it looks like I have it together and in some ways I do, but for a long time I was building my business the way I'd been taught to. Push harder. Show up more. Be consistent. Have a strategy. Hustle. I also paid ALOT of money for a coach to push me into this.
It worked. Kind of. But it felt heavy. Joyless. Like I was dragging something uphill every single day. I was making good money but the struggle didn't feel worth it.
Nobody told me there was another way and nobody told me that the exhaustion wasn't a sign I needed to work harder, it was a sign I needed to work differently.
Here's what I've come to understand.
We live in a world that celebrates masculine energy, and before you switch off, this isn't about gender. This is about two very real forces that live inside all of us.
Masculine energy is structure. Strategy. Action. Drive. Forward motion. It's the doing.
Feminine energy is intuition. Rest. Receiving. Flow. Creativity. It's the being.
Most women running soul-led businesses are operating almost entirely from one and completely ignoring the other.
We plan, execute, push, produce, show up, give out and then wonder why we feel empty.
We've forgotten how to receive. How to rest without guilt. How to let our intuition lead instead of our to-do list.
We've forgotten that stillness isn't laziness. It's where the best ideas live.
Think about the Empress tarot card for a moment.
She doesn't chase. She doesn't hustle. She doesn't force.
She sits in her abundance, surrounded by nature, rooted in the earth, crown of stars on her head and she creates from that place. Not from urgency. Not from fear. From flow.
She is the embodiment of an idea being held gently. Nurtured like a seed. Given the right conditions to grow in its own time.
That spark you felt when your idea first arrived? That was Empress energy. Pure, alive, electric.
But then something shifted.
You picked up your phone and started comparing. You wrote a business plan at midnight. You launched before you were ready because someone told you to 'strike while the iron is hot'. You pushed and promoted and produced and slowly the spark started to dim.
That's not failure. That's what happens when we take a feminine spark and immediately hand it over to masculine force.
The Empress doesn't do that. She tends. She trusts. She allows the idea to move through her rather than dragging it behind her.
What if you built your business the same way?
Not from a sprint. From a season.
I'm not here to tell you to stop working hard.
I'm here to suggest that maybe the way you're working is costing you more than it's giving you. That maybe your business doesn't need more of your hustle.
It needs more of your wisdom.
Your rhythm. Your intuition. The quiet intelligence that already lives inside you, that you've been too busy to hear.
This is exactly why my friend and I created Empress Energy - Secret Spring Success.
Not as a masterclass. Not as a strategy day. But as a space.
A space for women who already know something needs to shift even if they can't name it yet.
On 23rd May in Shrewsbury, we're bringing together a small intimate group of women for a morning of honest conversation, gentle practices and real grounded insight into what it means to build a business that works with you, not against you.
No hustle. No pressure. No performing.
Just women, in a room, remembering what they already know.
If you read this and felt something, maybe that quiet recognition in your chest, that's your sign.
There are just a handful of seats left.
23rd May | 10am -
2pm | Soul Circle Wellness Space, Shrewsbury | £70
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