The Courage to Take Your Seat at the Table
Last week, I left you at the moment everything opened for her. The moment my client acknowledged her truth. And said, "Just the four of us in our pjs."
If you missed it, you can read it in "The Bravest Question We Almost Never Ask."
There is something sacred about seeing a woman speak a quiet truth she has swallowed for years. You see it in her face and posture. The energy in the room shifts. Sometimes it even changes her future.
This was one of those moments.
As she described that COVID Christmas, her whole body softened. Her voice slowed, and a smile took shape. Her shoulders lowered, and her breath deepened.
She told me about waking up without alarms or expectations. She remembered the soft cotton of her pajamas. The way the house felt still, as if the world had given her a day off from being in charge of everything. Her family laughed together. Nothing felt rushed. She felt connected and calm, no longer feeling pulled in a hundred directions.
She remembered feeling peace. And for the first time in a long time, recalling that memory with me, she remembered that she could want peace.
As she told the story, her eyes filled with tears. Not sad tears. Or overwhelmed tears. Just truth tears.
The kind that comes when you finally admit what you already knew. And when you stop running from yourself.
I asked her to stay with that memory. Not to make a plan. Not to figure anything out. Just to sit with the knowing of what she most wanted.
She did. And something shifted.
She looked down for a moment, took a slow breath, then looked back at me and said, "I'm allowed to want this."
There it was. The realization that what she wants also matters.
What It Means to "Take Your Seat at the Table"
Taking your seat at the table means treating yourself as one of the people whose wants count when decisions and priorities get made, instead of standing off to the side, taking notes and executing everyone else's plan.
My client had forgotten she had a say. She hadn't remembered she was "allowed" to be part of holiday planning conversations, that she had a chair at the table of decisions and priorities at all.
This happens to so many women.
Why So Many Women Forget They Have a Seat
Most of us grew up watching our mothers and grandmothers put everyone else first. We learned to care for our aging parents, to make holidays extra special for our kids, to keep long-standing traditions alive, and to hold the emotional center of the whole family.
We know how to show up for everyone around us. What we were not taught is how to show up for ourselves.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking the most important questions. What do I want? What do I need? What matters to me?
We lost the practice of pulling up our own chair to the table—the place where decisions are made, and priorities are set.
I talked about this with Rachel Perry on the Not Done Yet podcast, in an episode about what midlife women aren't saying, and why we stay silent. So much of the silence isn't that we don't know what we want. It's that we've quietly decided our wants don't get a seat, so we stop saying them out loud, even to ourselves.
Research on self-silencing in women shows that women often suppress their own needs to keep relationships smooth and avoid conflict, until, over time, they lose contact with what they want at all. It isn't a character flaw. It's a pattern we were taught. And it is not our fault. The generations before us modeled what they believed was right, and our culture continues to praise self-sacrifice and endless giving as the highest form of goodness.
We are making progress, but many of us still wrestle with the belief that caring for others and caring for ourselves cannot happen at the same time. (That belief has a quieter cousin, too — the guilt that rushes in the second you want more, which I unpack in "Are You Stuck in the Good-Life Guilt Trap?")
You Can Choose Both
The truth is, it can. It can be both family and self. Tradition and truth-telling. Giving and receiving.
My client did not walk away from this session planning to cancel the holidays and stay in her pjs the whole time. She still wanted to host friends and family. She still wanted to cook the special meal for her father. She looked forward to recreating the traditions her kids love.
But something important had changed. She no longer felt trapped inside obligation.
She found a way to honor both what she wanted and what her family wanted. She created space in the holiday schedule for both. (If you tend to shrink your own wants the moment you name them, you'll recognize yourself in "Stop Negotiating Down What You Want.")
That is the heart of courage. It is often quiet and invisible. No one else may ever know. But it changes everything.
Because once she named what she wanted, something lightened up inside her. The resentment. The guilt. The pressure. The dread.
All of it softened.
What remained was peace. And agency. And a woman claiming her seat at the table of decisions and priorities again.
Bring Your Own Chair
If I could sit with every midlife woman for even five minutes, this is the one truth I would offer:
If no one makes space for you at the table, go get your chair and bring it to the table anyway.
Scoot closer. Take up a lot of room at the table with your calendar, journal, colored pencils, and your personal priorities. Let your voice be heard. Your life deserves your input.
You are not a guest in your own story. You are the one who decides what happens next.
And sometimes all it takes to begin is one small moment of bravery. Just like hers.
How to Know If You've Given Up Your Seat
If something here landed but you're not sure how much it applies to you, here are a few honest questions to sit with:
When a decision affects the whole family, do you assume your job is to execute the plan rather than help shape it?
Do you go blank when someone asks what you want — even about something small, like where to eat?
Do you find yourself quietly resentful, then guilty for the resentment?
Have you stopped saying what you want out loud, even to yourself, because it feels like it won't matter anyway?
Do you believe that caring for yourself and caring for the people you love can't happen at the same time?
If you recognized yourself in any of that, you haven't done anything wrong. You've been loyal to a pattern you were handed. And patterns can change — often starting with one small act of pulling your chair back to the table.
If you're curious where you are right now, this short quiz can help you put words to what you've been feeling.
With immense appreciation & gratitude. Always.
P.S. If you have forgotten how to ask yourself what you want, or you are scared of what the answer might be, or you feel guilty even thinking about your own needs, you are not alone.
But this is the moment to pick up your chair. Walk into the room and take your place.
You deserve that. You always have.
A Connection Call is where women come home to their own voice again. It is a private, grounded, no-pressure space where we set it all aside and finally listen to what you most want.
You do not have to figure this out alone. You only need to take the first brave step.
With immense appreciation & gratitude. Always.
About Katie Pulsifer
Katie Pulsifer is a Master Certified Life Coach and the founder of theGolden Coaching Certification Program™, a life coach training program for women who want to learn how to compassionately coach themselves and others to create extraordinary results. She specializes in working with high-achieving women who look great on paper but feel unfulfilled, helping them rebuild self-trust, make aligned decisions, and stop postponing the life they actually want. Katie's coaching is grounded in neuroscience, radical self-responsibility, and the belief that your worth is inherent, not earned.
