what happens when you decide to sit the fuck down
for the little girl within watching you perform
I’m still receiving this, babe.
“What do you mean you’re still receiving?”
I didn’t know how to answer that.
So let me try here…
I have been standing my entire life.
Performing my dances. My academics. My daughterhood. Sisterhood. Friendships. Student-ship.
All of it.
A fucking performance. I didn’t even know I was on a stage. I just thought it was life.
When I became an IT consultant, I prepared and performed for every meeting. Every email.
When I created my dance company, I performed every role. Founder. Teacher. Parent. Student. Leader.
I didn’t know I was performing though. That’s the insidious thing about survival. It doesn’t feel like a costume. It feels like skin. You stand long enough, you forget sitting was ever an option.
For as long as I can remember, I have had an affinity for sitting in the discomfort of darkness.
An obsessive love for dreaming about a single sentence for weeks.
Analyzing and examining beliefs and thoughts that the world deemed weird.
Feeling things in ways they called too much.
The world didn’t have to say anything. I felt it in every room I walked into.
So I stopped sharing the seat of my soul. Before they could reject it.
I locked the real things away in a journal. In weekends of isolation when I didn’t answer the phone. In the private hours before life’s performance resumed.
And I performed everything else beautifully.
I borrowed their brands. Memorized the lipsticks. Won the trophies. Achieved the A’s. Moved through all the stages of life pretending my taste and desires had always looked like theirs.
I had calculated exactly how much of myself was acceptable in any given space.
This is what we do, don’t we.
We accept the unacceptable. Editing and compressing until we disappear.
We call it being social. Adaptable. Professional. Appropriate.
“Successful.”
We do not call it what it actually is: civilized consent against our own authenticity.
Decades pass this way. The weight of performance only getting heavier.
Then last week, something happened.
I SAT THE FUCK DOWN!
I’m in Barbara’s Wealth Connection group. A room of women I respect. Women who have seen me cry, break, fail, win.
And I’m not standing or performing.
I’m just… being.
Sharing the words I’ve been turning over in my mind for decades. The weird stuff. The true stuff. Out loud.
No strategy. No calculation. No internal editor running behind my eyes.
The truth is just… moving through me like water pouring down a hill.
And then a woman looks at me and says: Amna, can you do a presentation on this?
And Barbara says: Maybe you can speak at my retreat.
Wait. A. Minute.
You mean I don’t have to perform to receive your validation. Your admiration. Your support. You mean I can just exist. Be me. And that. is. enough?
You mean I can sit down and still be asked to get on a stage?
And then the tears came.
Full of joyous grief. The sacred release we feel when the body receives something it's been longing for so long...
41 years.
41 years.
I have waited to RECEIVE with such EASE.
These women didn’t dim my light. Didn’t compare my wisdom to theirs. My weirdness is valued here. The way I think. It resonates.
They saw me at my most unguarded. Most unperformative self.
And they held my light with such deep reverence that for once…
I didn’t reach for the dimmer switch. And I kept sitting the fuck down. So I can receive. Receive. Receive.
Until that moment, I didn’t know there was a girl inside me just… waiting.
Quietly watching me check the boxes that were never mine — the house, the highlights, the husband — locking away my deepest truths.
Waiting for exactly this moment to ask one question:
If I show them who I actually am… will they send me away?
The answer came…
No.
They will not send you away.
They will ask you to come even closer.
I wonder if that girl is in you too.
Watching the performance that keeps you safe.
Depleted. Lonely.
That girl isn’t waiting for the right room.
She’s waiting for you.
The room didn’t make me powerful.
It revealed what I already was.
A fucking queen.
And the same is true for you.
You don’t need a better audience.
You don’t need more validation.
You don’t need to perform it more perfectly.
You just need to stop editing yourself.
Because the moment you do…
your walls fall.
And the truth can’t help but pour through.
Because truth doesn’t need the outer world to change.
It doesn’t fear rejection.
It just sits.
Undeniable.
Until the room has no choice but to rearrange itself.
And instantly…
that girl knows she will never perform again.
Because she is sitting on her fucking throne.
So yes. I’m still receiving this.
That the pushing doesn’t build the life. It blocks it.
The performing doesn’t earn the love. It prevents it.
The standing doesn’t claim the stage. It keeps you from your throne.
Imagine… Replacing exhaustion with ease.
Achieving with receiving.
Performing with being.
Standing with sitting.
Stages with thrones.
The audacity of it!
I am receiving this.
I am sitting the fuck down.
The Nanorah Method
When I experienced this moment I was tapped into the feminine superpower of Sacred Intuition.
I had done the work long enough that my body created the space for this power to work through me on her own. The receiving happened naturally.
This is what embodying your feminine intelligence does.
It stops being practice. It becomes who you are.
Do you know which of your five feminine powers is active right now?
Because when you do, everything you’ve been forcing starts arriving on its own.
Sacred Intuition is one of five.
And she has been waiting for you to notice her.
Power Move
Notice one moment where you are about to adjust yourself to be accepted.
And don’t…
Let the sentence come out slightly unpolished.
Let the opinion sit without explanation.
Let there be a beat where you would normally fill the space.
Feel what happens in your body when you don’t perform.
That discomfort?
That is the part of you that has never been allowed to exist in real time.
Stay with her.
She’s not here to be improved.
She’s here to be seen.
And when you decide to sit down, do it because YOU decided to. Not because someone told you to. That’s authentic power.
Amna, this is so powerful! I believe these are words so many women have locked away in their hearts. Thank you for unlocking the door.