The nag. The voice that won't quit.
We've spent decades being called a nag for knowing things other people weren't ready to hear.
The Nag
I have a better word for what most people call intuition.
Intuition sounds too gentle. Too wispy. Too much like something that arrives in candlelight wearing a flowing skirt and speaking in complete sentences.
What I have is a nag.
Persistent. Relentless. Completely uninterested in my excuses.
And I mean that as a compliment.
Some people call it a muse. That word has never fit me. A muse sounds optional — something you court, something that visits when it pleases and leaves when it’s bored with you. Something external.
What I have isn’t external.
It’s the part of me that knows things before I’ve finished thinking them. The part that taps on the glass when I’m ignoring something important. The part that — and I say this with complete affection — will not shut up until I pay attention.
That’s not a muse.
That’s a nag.
And I’ve learned to be grateful for it.
Let me tell you about the lavender painting.
It started with a vision — rows of lavender stretching into the distance. Beautiful, right? Except when I sat down to paint it, I realized immediately that straight rows bored me to tears.
So I set it aside.
And then I set it aside again.
And then I got pulled into another project entirely and spent three months away from the canvas.
The nag never left.
While I was busy elsewhere it kept showing up — quietly, consistently, with the particular patience of something that knows it’s going to win eventually. Finish the painting. Not urgently. Not dramatically. Just — finish the painting.
It got aggravating, honestly. So I’d acknowledge it. I’ll get back to it. I’ll finish it. I’ll find it a home.
When I finally returned to the canvas — after three months of resistance, avoidance, and a competing project that felt much more urgent at the time — it took two hours to complete
.
Two hours.
Something I’d been carrying for months finished itself in an afternoon once I stopped fighting it.
That painting now hangs in a local restaurant, waiting patiently for its next owner. Which, given that it spent three months waiting for me to finish it, suggests it has developed considerable patience.
Maybe that was the nag’s purpose all along. Not just to make me finish the thing. But to put it exactly where it needed to go.
Here’s what I’ve come to understand about the nag.
It is not criticism. It is not complaint. It is not the voice that tells you what you’re doing wrong or what you should have done differently. It’s certainly not the “ suposed to” voice!
That voice is something else entirely. That voice is fear dressed up as wisdom.
The nag is different.
The nag is the part of you that remembers what you wanted before you got so practical. The part that kept the dream alive while you were busy keeping everything else going. The part that has been patiently — sometimes aggravating patiently — waiting for you to get quiet enough to hear it.
It is not asking you to be better.
It is asking you to be more yourself.
And yes — it asks for surrender.
Not the white flag kind. Not the I-give-up kind.
The other kind. The letting-go-of-the-steering-wheel kind. The trusting-that-something-in-you-knows-the-direction kind.
Which is terrifying if you’ve spent decades being the person who handles everything. Being the one who plans, manages, anticipates, solves. Being the woman who keeps her hands on the wheel at all times because if she doesn’t — well, who will?
But here’s what I keep learning:
The nag is not asking you to stop driving.
It’s asking you to stop driving to someone else’s destination.
We were taught to push through. To tough it out. To be sensible. To ignore the persistent, inconvenient voice inside us that keeps saying there is something else, there is something more, there is something you have been putting off that belongs to you.
We called that voice impractical.
We called it selfish.
We called it a midlife crisis when it got loud enough.
But what if it isn’t any of those things?
What if it’s just — the truest part of you, doing its job?
The nag doesn’t stop because it’s not meant to stop.
It’s there because you are still here. Still capable. Still becoming.
And it will keep tapping on the glass until you turn around and say — alright. What is it? What have you been trying to tell me?
I don’t know what your nag sounds like.
Maybe it sounds like a painting you keep meaning to finish.
Maybe it sounds like a place you keep meaning to go.
Maybe it sounds like a version of yourself you keep meaning to become once everything else settles down.
It won’t stop.
It wasn’t designed to.
That, I’ve decided, is not a problem.
That is the most faithful thing about you.
If your nag has been tapping on the glass for a while now —
if there’s something it keeps bringing you back to that you keep setting aside for later —
I want to tell you about Tuesday evenings.
That’s when a small group of paid members meets with me on Zoom for the Breakthrough Circle.
Not a workshop. Not a program. Not someone handing you a framework and calling it transformation.
A conversation between women who have started listening to the nag — and are figuring out together what it’s been trying to say.
We finish the paintings.
We follow the whispers.
We stop waiting for conditions to be perfect before we begin.
Right now, annual membership is 20% off.
Which means the nag that brought you to this article just saved you money.
I’d listen to it.
Join at 20% off ↓
The uncomfortable thoughts you don't say out loud? We say them on Tuesdays.
And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.