Reclaiming Your Sense of Agency
- Lisa Rooney
- Oct 18
- 4 min read
The Quiet Erosion and the Path Back
When we talk about women’s health, we’re never just talking about physical symptoms.
We’re talking about identity, boundaries, voice, and agency - the ability to fully inhabit one’s own life and choices.
A woman’s sense of agency is her inner compass.
It’s what allows her to say yes with authenticity, no with confidence, and I’m not sure yet with self-trust.
It’s what allows her to live in alignment with her values, to make decisions that honor her energy, and to stand firmly even when the world asks her to bend.
But for many women, that sense of agency fades long before they realize it’s gone.
How Women Lose Their Agency (Often Without Knowing It)
For most women, agency isn’t taken - it’s given away in small doses over time.
It happens quietly: a yes when we want to say no, a compromise that costs us too much, a smile when we feel misunderstood.
In marriage, agency can dissolve beneath the weight of caregiving, emotional labor, and invisible expectations. We adapt to others’ needs so often that our own preferences become blurry.
In motherhood, it can disappear under the constant pressure to hold everything together - to be the emotional barometer for everyone else’s well-being.
And what sucks even more: society rewards it.
We are praised for being accommodating, flexible, and endlessly giving.
We learn to interpret exhaustion as devotion and self-abandonment as love.
This conditioning runs deep.
The Inheritance of Accommodation
Even if it was never spoken, many of us grew up seeing this pattern modeled.
We watched our mothers or grandmothers give everything of themselves - to their families, their spouses, their communities - often at their own expense.
They loved fiercely but carried the invisible cost: depletion, frustration, a quiet sadness that lingered beneath their smiles.
That unspoken inheritance becomes an internalized belief: “My needs come last.”
Over time, that belief shapes our nervous system, our choices, and even our identity.
We become experts at reading others’ emotions while losing fluency in our own.
When Agency Cracks Open
In recent client sessions, I’ve heard words so often whispered but rarely spoken out loud.
One woman said softly, “I don’t want to live a domestic life and become a shadow of myself - doing all the work that no one even notices I’m doing.”
Another, at her wits’ end, declared through tears, “I can no longer live in the shoulds - what everyone else thinks I should do. I don’t want to abandon my family, but I want my own sense of self within my family.”
And yet another realized the depth of her self-loss only after going through the values process in coaching. “I didn’t even realize how much of myself I had lost until then,” she said.
Each of these women was beginning to touch the same truth: that agency isn’t selfish - it’s sacred. It’s the essence of being able to exist fully as yourself while still being in connection with others.
How I Relate to This Process
I can relate to this deeply.
Being married to a corporate executive and moving multiple times throughout our life, it often felt like the needs that I had were secondary to what the corporate world required.
There were seasons where I felt invisible - like my preferences, passions, and even my sense of belonging were all negotiable.
Slowly, without even realizing it, I began to forget what was vitally important to me.
The core values that had once shaped my life and relationships took a backseat to constant moving, managing a household, and holding our family together while my husband traveled for work.
At times, I felt like a married single mom - functioning, capable, and grateful in many ways, but also quietly grieving the parts of myself that had gone quiet. When I look back on those days, I’m sometimes surprised I survived them.
That’s the subtle erosion of agency - it rarely comes as a crash; it comes as a slow forgetting.
The Deep Work of Remembering Ourselves
Reclaiming agency is not about rebellion - it’s about remembering. (Well, maybe there is some rebellion in it!)
It’s the process of coming home to your own voice and learning to trust it again.
It requires not just awareness, but support because when you begin to change patterns that have been there for generations, it can feel disorienting.
That’s why in my practice, homeopathy, coaching, values work, and somatic healing all weave together.
Homeopathy helps open the doorway - it gently awakens the body and psyche to where energy has been blocked or suppressed.
Coaching brings awareness to the patterns themselves, the ones so old and familiar that you don’t even see them anymore.
Values work clarifies what truly matters, creating an internal compass to guide every decision.
Somatic healing helps you anchor those changes in the body so that new ways of being feel safe, not foreign.
Three Remedies That Tell This Story
Three remedies in particular beautifully illustrate how agency can be lost and reclaimed:
🌸 Folliculinum - for the woman who silences herself and loses her individuality in the needs of others.
🔥 Sepia - for the woman who has given until resentment takes root and joy fades.
🌼 Pulsatilla - for the woman who avoids conflict out of fear of losing love, bending to keep connection intact.
Each remedy represents a different expression of the same longing: to feel free, balanced, connected, and whole again. These are some of the foundational remedies I use in my practice when helping a woman reclaim her sence of agency.
Why This Matters
When women come into my practice exhausted, overextended, or quietly resentful, it’s rarely just about hormones or burnout.
It’s about agency - the ability to feel a choice in your own life.
The remedies help open the door, but the deeper healing happens as you step through it:
when you begin to listen, feel, and choose from a place of self-connection.
✨ Homeopathy awakens the possibility.
🌿 Coaching and values work anchor the transformation.
💫 Somatic healing helps you embody it fully.
Together, they guide a woman not just to find her agency but to live it.
My approach is a combination of powerful life coaching, somatic healing techniques and the use of homeopathic remedies to help settle your nervous system while we are doing the deeper work of healing.
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