For most of my working life, I knew exactly what each day would look like.
I’d leave the house at the same time every morning. I’d do a full, structured day of teaching. I’d come home and do the home things. And around all of that sat the rhythm of the school year: terms, holidays, reports due by a certain date, deadlines that told me what mattered and when.
I didn’t realise how much I relied on that structure until it was gone.
When my son’s needs changed everything, the predictability went with it. The daily routine, the termly rhythm, the deadlines, everything I used to know about how my life worked was taken away, and it happened quickly.
What didn’t go was my drive. And that, it turns out, is where the circling starts.
What going in circles actually looks like
If you’ve been through a major life disruption, you might recognise this.
For me, it looked like jumping from one thing to the next. I’d work on Brolga Education, the teaching resource business I built from home. Then I’d switch to my personal brand. Then a new idea would arrive, and I’d convince myself it wasn’t the next step after all, and I’d move on again.
On social media it looked like constantly changing what I talked about. A new niche, a new angle, a new bio. Starting one thing and not finishing it, because the moment I began, I’d start doubting whether it was the right thing.
From the outside it probably looked like I couldn’t make up my mind. From the inside, it felt like trying to build a house without knowing where the ground was.
Why capable women end up circling
Here’s what I’ve come to understand.
High achievers run on structure. A timetable, a career path, a clear next step, someone or something telling us what success looks like this term. We’re very good at working hard inside a structure.
When a major disruption takes that structure away, our drive doesn’t switch off. It just has nothing steady to run on. So it spins. It grabs the next idea, and the next, because doing something feels better than standing still.
And for many of us, the disruption doesn’t happen once. It keeps happening.
My son was born with a small blip in his hearing. By two, he was completely deaf. Then came seizures, and the discovery of a brain abnormality that affects his sleep. Then cochlear implants that haven’t worked the way we hoped. Learning difficulties. Learning Auslan. Every time I thought I understood our life, it changed shape again.
So I didn’t have a neat little box to put myself in. I’m the mum of a deaf child, but that’s not the whole story. I’m raising a child with a disability, but there are medical complexities too. And I’m also a woman with ambitions of my own, who doesn’t want her whole identity to be her son’s diagnosis.
When your circumstances keep changing, it makes sense that your direction keeps changing too.
The question underneath the circling
Underneath all of it was a harder question: who am I now?
Who am I without teaching? What do I want to be known for? What do I even say when someone asks what I do?
I think every woman who goes through a major life disruption asks herself some version of this. Whether it’s a diagnosis, a divorce, a loss or a career that ended before she was ready, the old answers stop fitting. And when you can’t answer those questions, your confidence takes a hit. You don’t know what to say, so you say less, show up less and second-guess more.
For me, part of it was accepting a new identity I hadn’t planned. When I started my skincare and wellness business, after using and loving the products for a couple of years, I had real blocks about it. Promoting skincare online didn’t fit the picture I had of myself. It took me a long time to genuinely lean in and say: I sell skincare now, and I’m proud of it.
That’s what an identity shift often feels like. Not a single moment of clarity, but a slow process of letting go of who you thought you’d be.
What has actually helped
I want to be honest here: I haven’t completely broken the circle. Choosing one lane and sticking to it is still the hardest part for me. But I’m a few steps further along than I was, and a few things have made a real difference.
I wrote down who I wanted to be. In 2020, unsure whether I'd go back to teaching, I wrote "I want to be:" on a red piece of paper. I chose five words, and under each one listed small, real things I could do to live it. I didn't know what I wanted to do next, but I could describe who I wanted to be. I found that page again recently, and it reads like the life I'm building now.
I started with what was in front of me. When I first left teaching, I knew I’d want to spend my time on something meaningful while I was at home. So I made the most of that situation and started creating teaching resources. I didn’t have a five-year plan. I had a next step, and it grew from there.
I went with the opportunity that fitted my life. Years later, I knew I needed to do something new. I didn’t know exactly what. When the skincare and wellness business came along, built around products I already loved, I went with it. It fitted around homeschool and appointments, and it gave me a structure to work within again.
I let myself become a learner again. That business put me back on a learning journey. I’ve learned content creation, social media marketing and sales. Feeling myself progress, after years of feeling stuck, has been one of the most important parts of finding my footing.
I stopped waiting for clarity before I moved. Every bit of direction I have now came after I took a step, not before. I used to think I needed the whole plan first. I didn’t. I needed one step, and then the next.
If you’re going in circles right now
If this sounds like you, here’s what I’d offer, from one woman still working it out to another.
Name the structure you lost. Was it a daily routine? Deadlines? A workplace? Knowing what next term looked like? Once you can see what’s missing, you can start rebuilding a small version of it that fits the life you have now.
Pick one thing for one season. Not forever. Just for the next few months. Give your drive one place to go, and notice how different that feels from spreading it across ten ideas.
Let clarity come after the step. You don’t need to know what you want to do with the rest of your life. You need to know what you’ll do this week.
Stop looking for the neat box. If your life doesn’t fit a simple label, your next chapter doesn’t have to either. You’re allowed to be more than one thing.
You’re not lazy, and you’re not lost. You’re a capable woman whose life lost its structure, and you’re learning to build a new one.
I’m doing the same, and I’ll keep writing about it here as I go. If you’d like to figure out your next chapter alongside me, subscribe and I’ll send each new letter straight to your inbox.
Hi, I’m Trudy
I’m a former teacher and a medical mum, and I’m building my next chapter. I write honest stories about life changing the plan, ageing well and building an online business around real life.
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