What Next?

When I started In Her Element, I wasn't entirely sure where it would lead.

I had been thinking for some time about this stage of my life and what it was asking of me. I knew that I wanted to make room for more of myself: for creativity, enterprise, writing, conversations and work that I found interesting. I knew that something was shifting.

But I didn't have a grand plan for In Her Element. I started with a few articles, made a few videos and shared some of what I was thinking and experiencing. Then I listened. People began writing back.

The more I listened, the more I realised that what next? was showing up in very different kinds of lives. Mid-career professionals who have spent years doing meaningful work in the nonprofit sector. They care deeply about the work, but they are tired. They are beginning to wonder whether they can continue doing work they believe in without sacrificing so much of themselves in the process. Young women whose lives have been altered by loss and changes in personal circumstances. The life they thought they were building changed, sometimes suddenly, and they have had to find their footing again. They too are asking: What now? Where do I begin from here? Women who have reached the top of successful corporate careers. From the outside, they have done everything right. But something is no longer sustaining them. They want their next phase to have a different kind of meaning. They want to contribute to society, build something, serve a community, perhaps use everything they have learned in a completely different way. And then there are people who haven't experienced one dramatic turning point at all. Life has simply become routine. Nothing is necessarily wrong, but somewhere along the way they have lost some of their joy. They miss feeling curious. Creative. Useful in a different way. They want to make something, join something, contribute somewhere, through community, enterprise, creativity or service, but they don't quite know where to put that energy.

What next? I recognise this question because I am living it too.

In August, I wrote about making room for more of who I already am. But making room is one thing. Deciding what to put into that space is another. And I am discovering that what next? rarely arrives as one great answer.

For me, it has meant deliberately stepping away from some of the work I have known for more than twenty years and putting more of my energy into building KaraSpace. It has meant picking up the phone and calling people and asking for help. It has meant asking people to come and work with me and accepting that they sometimes know more about what I am trying to do than I do. It has meant saying yes to opportunities I might once have hesitated over, including opportunities to sit on boards, enter different rooms, meet different people and learn from worlds beyond the ones I already know.

It has meant experimenting with AI and developing an AI agent that can support stronger operations for small and medium enterprises, then taking the uncomfortable step of putting that idea into applications and seeing whether somebody else thinks it is worth developing too. It has meant becoming more visible. Reaching out more boldly. Asking for help. Trying things before I am completely certain they will work. And, perhaps most importantly, paying attention to what happens when I do.

That is where I find myself now.

I have stepped out. I don't know exactly where all of this will lead. And sometimes that is the best you can do in the moment: simply take a step. Then that step gives you information about the next one.

That is what In Her Element is becoming for me.

But I am also learning that what next? is not always about taking the next opportunity.

Sometimes it is about choosing between possibilities.

Just recently, someone asked me a question that has stayed with me. She said, in effect: You are capable of doing many things. But just because something needs to be built doesn't mean that you are the one who has to build it. What is it that you actually want?

This question gave me pause.

After years of being someone who sees what needs to be done and gets on with doing it, my instinct is often to ask: How can I make this work?

Perhaps I need to ask a different question first: Do I actually want to do this?

That, too, is part of what next?

So before the application, the business plan or the phone call, there may need to be a pause to ask: What am I actually looking for? What matters to me now? What gives me energy? What will saying yes to this require me to say no to? And am I choosing this because it belongs in the life I want to build, or simply because I know I am capable of doing it?

These questions help us choose the next step more deliberately.

This next phase of In Her Element is going to be a little different.

I don't have solutions to all the questions women have been raising with me.

But I do know some women who have navigated some of this terrain. Women who have changed direction, built businesses, stepped into leadership, managed money, cared for families, looked after their health, begun again, learned new things and found ways of sustaining themselves through change.

I want to sit with them. Not because I think they have the answer. But because they may have pieces of it. And perhaps if we put those pieces on the table, we can look at them together and decide what might be useful for each of us.

I want to get very practical. Where do you start?

Perhaps one place to begin is with a personal asset inventory. What have you learned? What relationships, skills, experience and resources are already available to you? What have you become so good at that you have mistaken it for ordinary? Who is in your corner? Who can you call?

How do you build the confidence muscle, particularly when the next thing requires you to become visible, ask for help or do something you have never done before?

What do you need to learn? And what role can technology and AI play? Not as an abstract conversation about the future, but practically: how might these tools help us learn, organise ourselves, communicate, build an enterprise, find information or extend what we are already able to do?

If you have an idea, how do you turn it into a plan? If you need financing, where do you begin? Who do you approach? What do you need to understand before you walk into the room?

And what about the body carrying you through all of this? What does it actually take to look after ourselves at this stage of life? To build strength. To understand what is changing in our bodies. To eat well. Rest. Protect our energy.

These questions and conversations are at the heart of this next phase of In Her Element.

So, let's simply take this step and pay attention to what it teaches us.

Perhaps that is how we find out what comes next.

Ashanut