The Moment I Stopped Controlling Everything (And Found My Real Power)

Opening Reflection:

I didn’t realise how much of my life was shaped by the need to control until I started losing energy. Not the kind of burnout you can recover from with sleep—but the soul-level fatigue that whispers, "this isn't how your power is meant to feel."

Both my boys were under 4, neither had slept through the night regularly since they were born, so I hadn’t either. I had moved countries in my first trimester with my eldest, bought a house and moved in the second trimester with my youngest, and moved States by the time the youngest was three. I was managing four houses, my own business (thinking that was the sanity I needed) in yet another new city. My husband spent the evenings behind the iPad, PC or TV, accompanied by wine.

I just had to keep busy, to stay in control, I had to run the household like a tight ship. No one else was showing up for the job. Ten adrenal support tablets a day and micro napping when the kids did, I got through. I was already in my 40s.

Control had become my coping mechanism. I micromanaged the outcomes. I held the reins too tightly. I believed that if I just organised everything perfectly, I wouldn’t feel the chaos rising underneath. I confused control with competence. Order with safety. Strategy with strength.

But something began to crack.

What Control Was Hiding:
At the heart of it was fear. Fear of being seen as inadequate. Fear that if I didn't have the answers, or couldn’t manage, I’d be exposed as a fraud. Fear that if I stopped, I may never get up again.

Gate 21 in the Gene Keys carries this exact frequency. The shadow is Control. And it's seductive—because it feels productive. But beneath it lives an internal panic, a sense that if you don’t hold it all together, something will fall apart (usually, you).

It wasn’t just about to-do lists and delegation. It was a deeply embedded belief that my worth was tied to being "on top of things." And if I wasn’t—if I slipped—I feared I’d be unlovable, unworthy, unseen. It required discipline, the dilemma of Gate 21. My childhood fears that if I didn't do my duty, my parents would discipline me in the form of physical or verbal violence.

My Design Chiron sits here. Gate 21.1. The wound of control became the arena for my greatest healing.

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Where Healing Begins:

I began to notice that all my attempts to control were draining my life force. Not because I was doing too much—but because I was doing it from fear. My husband became more distant, a health scare meant we no longer had Saturday date nights as he chose to stay sober for a year.

I knew I would leave my husband for two years before I told him. I needed the children to be able to sleep through the night; I needed some kind of stamina and discipline to make it through. My self development and healing work had continued, and I knew it was time to hand over the reins to a power bigger than my small mind and control. To trust it would be well if I let it unfold. To take back the authority in my own life.

Each time I surrendered control, a new kind of power emerged. Not force. Not dominance. But a quiet inner certainty I was doing the right thing for myself and my children. The kind that doesn’t need validation or authority to prove anything. Just seeing myself through the process and making it to the other side.

I had found the Gift of Gate 21: Authority.

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What Real Authority Feels Like:

Real authority doesn’t need to command. It doesn’t posture. It doesn’t seek permission.
It knows. I knew what I had to do. I had left him twice before we were married; once the ring was on the finger there was no need for him to show up. It's not the commitment of a life partner I wanted and he knew that. My gut instinct had known before I married him. I have no regrets—it was time to assert my true self, my inner guidance, my real authority.

It leads with presence, not performance. It holds the line with clarity, not control. It makes space for others, without abandoning itself.

This is what I’ve come to understand through my healing with Chiron 21.1:
You cannot fake this energy. You have to come into silence and stillness to hear it. You cannot mentally convince yourself into authority. It comes when you’ve wrestled with your shadow, forgiven your own shame, and decided to lead yourself out of a situation anyway.

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Wisdom as a Way Through:

In my chart, Gate 48—the programming partner of Gate 21—is the Sphere of Attraction. It’s the place I magnetise from.

Wisdom became my bridge.

The more I relaxed my grip, the more my inner wellspring of knowing began to flow. Not book knowledge. But embodied insight. Timeless truth. I started trusting the quiet voice within instead of reaching for control strategies. “Just keep going” I heard it say, more than once.

That’s when the world started responding to me differently. The children started sleeping through the night once I left him. I finally rested after 10 years or more of a concerted, controlled effort in my business, moving houses, countries, states, having children, leaving my husband.
Forever on the move to the next thing when it got too hard to manage the current situation.

That’s when the freedom hit home. I could breathe deeply and take the time to listen to my inner authority. To create new boundaries and relationships with my children. Amongst the pain of separation and financial settlement, I became friends with my ex-husband once more, which is all we ever were really. I reclaimed my own authority.

I set up my first healing business, Your Universal Self, two weeks after I left him. I had to do a sharp change of trajectory—finally own the direction I was really here for. To claim the valour of my mission, no longer hiding behind the masks of normality.

From that place, my work has morphed into enabling others to claim their own authority and authentic self.
We teach the things we need to heal the most.

Reflect on the greatest lessons in your life have been and share it with others. It's one of the strands of your purpose, I guarantee it.

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Contemplation Questions:

• Where in your life are you trying to control every moving part?

• What would happen if you surrendered the illusion of control—just for a moment?

• Is your sense of worth tied to how much you manage, prove, or fix?

• What would real inner authority feel like to you—if no one had to agree with you?

• Are you operating from fear, or wisdom? Be honest.

Take these into your week. Not as answers to force, but as codes to unlock something deeper.

The deeper inner inquiry begins in the Inner Sanctum. The doors are opening soon.

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If this spoke to you…

👉 Share it with someone still living in performance power.
👉 Save it when you’re tempted to control.
👉 Let it live in you.

PS – Let me know if you're ready to reclaim authority in your own life. The frequency of Gate 21 doesn't respond to force. It opens in truth.