63: Navigating the Void in Business and the Identity Shift It Brings

When nothing feels clear and you're not sure what's next, you're likely in the void. You’re not making big moves. You’re not feeling inspired. It’s like you’re hanging in the in-between.

In this episode, I talk about the feminine death and rebirth cycle that shows up in business. I share what the void actually feels like, what can make it harder than it needs to be, and how I've learned to move through it without making it wrong. I also break down the four phases I keep seeing in myself and in others when an identity shift is underway.

You’ll hear how I hold myself through this kind of transition, what embodiment has to do with it, and how to tell the difference between real rest and sneaky self-abandonment.

What You’ll Learn

• The signs you’re in a death and rebirth cycle
• Why the void triggers so much panic and how to work with that
• The 3 ways we unconsciously resist what’s actually trying to emerge

Key Takeaways

• Embodiment helps you stay resourced when your nervous system wants to run away.
• The void is uncomfortable, but it’s also where your next version begins to root.
• You can’t rush the in-between. But you can learn how to hold yourself in it.

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Transcript

Tertia [00:00:00]:
Sometimes in business and in life, we enter a space where nothing feels clear. We're not making big moves, we're not feeling inspired. It's like we are hanging in the in between. This is a very uncomfortable space to be in. And if you have ever felt yourself here, you'll know exactly what I mean. So in today's episode, I want to take an exploration into how do we navigate this feminine cycle of death and rebirth, because that's exactly what it is in our business. As I'm recording this episode for you today, I'm feeling inspired, I'm feeling motivated, I'm feeling joyful. And this is such a different place to where I was before, where I was feeling overwhelmed and I was feeling uncertain and I was feeling confused. And so I just want to be clear that where I was before this confused, overwhelmed, and uncertain space that I found myself in, I'm not making that wrong. That is part of the expression of this death and rebirth cycle. And when we understand that and we allow for that our experience, and we don't make it wrong, this is what supports us to navigate these cycles with more ease. So I'm sitting here today on the other side of my most recent death and rebirth cycle, because, yes, they happen more than once. And my intention is that what I'm sharing with you in today's episode is going to support you to navigate your. Your cycle too. Welcome to Beyond Burnout for Driven Women. I'm Tertia, and this is where we go from burnout to abundance, and we take your nervous system along for the ride. If you are doing all of the things but you're still not seeing the shift, you are in the right place. Here we explore embodiment nervous system work and how to be magnetic in business without going into overdrive or burning yourself out. So, a little side note before we dive into today's episode, and that is that something is going on behind the scenes. I'm not ready to talk about that yet. I will when the time is right. And there is a possibility that I will have to change the name of my podcast again. So, my podcast used to be called Untamed and Embodied, and then I changed it to Beyond Burnout for Driven Woman. And now, because of something outside of my control, it might have to change again. But if it does happen, I will definitely give you a heads up so that you will still be able to find me. So let's get into today's episode. I went for a run this morning, and as I was running, I was praying for support. I Was reflecting about what had been going on in my own business over the past eight months. And I guess I was praying for support. And I was also asking for some sign, some guidance, some direction. And this sounds like it comes out of a storybook. It doesn't. I promise you. It really happened as I came around the corner onto our lawn. There was a 1 meter long snake. I don't know what snake it was, it was big one that was coming off our lawn and crossing the street right in front of my feet. So I was. I didn't step on it or anything. I was able to run around the snake and go off to the side. But this was really so significant to me. It brought me right back to the beginning of my own feminine reclamation, which happened after my burnout, which I call the dark night of my soul. You would have heard me refer to that already in this way on my podcast. So after my dark night of the Soul, I was initiated into the feminine. And the goddess Lilith was very present to me at the start of my journey. Seeing the snake this morning was just a reminder of her energy, her wildness, her total reclamation of self. And it felt like a confirmation to me that I'm on the other side. I've rebirthed the next evolution of my work. And I want to, first of all, normalize this cycle of death and rebirth that we go through. And I want to offer perhaps a new perspective and some additional support that can help you as you navigate this in your own life. I always find it so helpful to look to Mother Nature whenever we are navigating the different seasons in our own life. If we look at Mother Nature, we see that she doesn't rush. She moves in cycles of growth and blooming and harvest and decay and growth again. These rhythms keep on repeating themselves, and we cannot have spring without winter. We need a time of rest before the rebirth can happen. The same thing happens in our business where we have busy times, we have creative times, and then we also have slower and more quieter times. It's natural to go through a cycle like this. It's healthy and contrary to hustle culture, we don't have to be on all the time. This is why I feel it's so helpful to have a reference outside of ourselves to show that this is not wrong. So I'm going to share with you the four phases as I experience them in these cycles of death and rebirth. And I'm going to pay particular attention to the second phase, which is in the void, because I feel this is the area where we can really get tripped up. So this is usually where it starts. It feels like something is off, but you can't quite explain it. You might feel unmotivated, you feel tired, you feel like you going through the motions. You just don't feel that same enthusiasm or inspiration like you've had before. You don't feel excited about things. It feels as if your skin is too tight. Or the other analogy that I also often use. It feels like your jacket, your clothes have shrunk, right? You can't move so freely and comfortably in them like you could have before. We know that something needs to change, but we don't know yet what it is. And being in this space of uncertainty can start making us feel wildly unsafe. And this is when we start looking for solutions. We're trying to fix the problem. We live in a hyper masculine world that has conditioned us when something is not working to try harder to fix it. I see this as coming from the mind trying to solve and strategize and plan from the level of the mind where in fact it is within our bodies and the wisdom within our bodies that we can find the truth and begin to trust in our trying. All right, so instead of trying out of panic and using 120 different strategies and moving further away from your truth, you try and you trust. You trust that the boundaries that you are putting in place are the right boundaries for you and that you can honor them. You trust that the way that you choose to show up is the right way for you and that you can lean into that. And you trust in the wisdom of your body to continue to show you these breadcrumbs, to continue to give you these intuitive hit, these intuitive guidance from your internal felt sense to do what is right for you, to make the right decisions for you and your business. As you start the descent into the underworld, beginning to release and let go the identities, the roles, the responsibilities. That is no longer true for you. And the way that you have been showing up perhaps, and the way that you've been holding boundaries that, that no longer serves you. And as we begin this unraveling of self, unraveling of identity, releasing that no longer serves, we enter into what is known as the void. It is that space between death and rebirth. And as I said earlier, in my experience, this is where we have the biggest challenge. This is where nothing has come into form yet. And the discomfort of being in the void can be really unsettling and destabilizing to our nervous systems Unless we have a way to hold ourselves and navigate the space of in between. Unless we have a way to keep ourselves feeling safe in this, we are going to become activated, we are going to feel panicky and we are not going to be able to feel resourced. And this is where a practice like the skill of embodiment, the skill of feminine embodiment, of which I'm a coach, is crucial, in my opinion, to help you navigate this void, to help you stay safe, to help you stay resourced. If you are going to feel unsafe, your nervous system always wins. This is setting you into panic mode. This is setting you into trying to fix what is wrong. Where instead, if we look at Mother Nature and what happens in the wintertime, in the stillness, this is where new seeds, new ideas, new creativity gets birthed. We need the stillness so that we can begin to blossom, so that we can begin to bloom, so that we can begin to expand and grow. If we just continue to plant and harvest and plant and harvest, what happens is the soil is going to die, it's going to lose its nutrients, it's not going to give luscious growth, right? So we need this. And I also know how uncomfortable the space is. Our hyper masculine world can make that turning inwards and that stillness wrong. And if you have connected your worth to your productivity, and I'm raising my hand here as a woman who is still unraveling that in my own body, whenever we enter into the space of the unknown, of uncertainty, the space of chaos, where new beginnings emerge that cannot yet be seen in the external world, it feels wildly uncomfortable. And it is in our nature to survive, to keep ourselves safe from harm. And so our nervous systems will do whatever it takes to make sure that we stay safe. And so I want to share with you three of the most obvious actions that I see we take in an effort to stay safe when we don't feel resourced in this liminal space. The first one is procrastinating and telling yourself that you are just waiting. So you waiting for just a little bit more time. You're waiting for clarity. You're waiting to figure it out. But the thing is, the longer you wait, the more stuck you are going to feel. Clarity doesn't come from us just sitting and waiting and spending time in our minds. Clarity comes when we engage, when we act, when we explore, when we experiment, when we start taking action. The second thing is that we hide ourselves, right? We stop showing up. You pull away from social media, you pull away from your offers. You might tell yourself you don't have anything valuable to say. You'll come back when you feel more like yourself. Right now, you don't want anybody to see you where. In fact, in my experience, when we show up in our truth, in our mess, in who we really are, this is when we really create this connection. But when we hide ourselves in order to stay safe, we keep on waiting to be ready to show up. And the longer we wait, the more difficult it becomes to re engage because you feel more disconnected, right? And then the third thing that I see happens is that we avoid or distract ourselves, but we pretend, and I put this in air quotes, we pretend that we are resting. So you, you just switch off, you stop doing anything. You spend all your time scrolling or listening to podcasts or binging other people's content and you convincing yourself that you are resting, that you're recharging, that you rebooting yourself, you practicing self care. But what happens is your mind goes into overdrive, all right? So you end up being in the cycle of feeling more exhausted than ever, more uninspired than ever, maybe even battling imposter syndrome based on everything that you are seeing and you are numbing yourself in the process. So this is really a cycle that we get stuck into where we claim we are resting, but in fact we are just putting ourselves into overdrive and getting caught up in these overthinking loops. And for sure, my belief is that these three actions, non actions, these three signs that I just shared with you, this is what keeps us stuck in the void for far longer than what we need to. This death rebirth cycle is going to happen, right? It's a given. The more resourced we can be while we are navigating the void, the shorter our time could potentially be, the easier it is for ourselves to find our way out of there. And the more able we are to connect into flow. In order for us to connect into this flow, we have to go into the third phase. The third phase is the phase where the rebirth happens. This is a phase, in my experience, that's one of softening, of surrendering, of stopping to force your way through, but really allowing your inner wisdom to begin to guide you. Really listening to those internal messages, listening to yourself, allowing things to be the way that they are when we go through life, bracing and resisting, it's almost as if our energy becomes very brittle. And when we surrender, on the other hand, when we allow things to be the way that they are, I see it as a tree that just sways in the wind. However the wind is blowing, it doesn't matter how strong or how light the breeze is. This tree is supple and it just sways. It doesn't break. Its roots are strong and holds it connected to the earth. So in this phase of surrender, this phase of rebirth, you might not have full clarity yet, but there is a definite energetic shift, right? It feels like something starts to shift. You feel perhaps a little bit more grounded. You feel that there is more internal space. It feels like you have more capacity, you feel more inspired. So there is, however, this looks for you. There's a definite energetic shift that happens. It's like you are coming up for air. And then the next phase from here is the expansion. It is where we are in summer. It's the beautiful season of ripeness and lushness and full expression. And we feel passionate, we feel empowered. And this is a very intoxicating time to to be in. This is the time when it feels like you can move mountains and we can tap into this energy and use this energy to our advantage, knowing that there's nothing wrong. If we go out of this expansion energy, if we go out of this expansion phase and dive down into the underworld again. In the practice of feminine embodiment or one of the first things that we learn is to welcome what is welcome all parts of ourselves and welcome all parts of our experience so that we can reconnect with our bodies and embrace our authentic selves and lead from that place. When we stop resisting what is. When we stop bracing ourselves, what happens is we start unraveling the shame that we hold around not being enough, not being deserving, not being worthy, not being lovable or being too much. And when we release that shame, we free up our own life force energy. We begin to create space within ourselves to receive. That's how we become magnetic to our desires. When we relate to our experience in a different way. And when we create that internal self safety within ourselves to navigate and trust, the timing of what is our experience of this will be different. And I trust that you found something in this episode that will support you. If this episode has resonated with you and you want to work with me more deeply, you are so welcome to book a free embodied exploration call. On this call, we'll dive into where you are feeling stuck right now. I'll offer some suggestions on the way forward and then we can explore if working together would be a good fit for us. And I'll also leave a link to book that free call in the show Notes. Thank you so much for joining me today. Please share this episode with a business bestie who's also navigating the cycles of death and rebirth in her business. And I will speak to you in the next one. Bye.