The Moment I Realized I Was Holding Myself Back
I kept calling it exhaustion. Turns out it was something else entirely.
I had been calling it exhaustion for years. Running on empty, holding everything together, telling myself that’s just what this season looks like. But the day I finally sat down long enough to be honest with myself, I realized exhaustion wasn’t the whole story.
It was something quieter than that. And a lot harder to name.
I was finally sitting down for the first time that day, completely overwhelmed, when something I had come across recently came back to me, something I hadn’t thought much of at the time.
“If I had a wife at home doing everything I do, I would be unstoppable.”
I sat with that and then I made it mine. If I had someone at home handling everything I handle: the kids, the chaos, the invisible mental load that never actually empties, starting to work part-time from home and yes, the husband I was divorcing but found out he has cancer so now I am his caretaker too…I would be unstoppable.
I let that sit for a second. And then, then it knocked the wind out of me. That person is me.
I have been carrying more than just responsibilities. There’s a quiet weight from my past too, things that shaped me, broke parts of me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. Not in a way people could see really. It was in the way I showed up. In the way I learned to shrink, to overgive, to hold everything together no matter what it cost me.
I have been the one keeping everything afloat. The one who figures it out, shows up and holds it all together… for everyone. Meanwhile, I have been treating my own life like something I’ll get to eventually. Someday. When things settle down a bit.
Things don’t settle down. You already know that.
Here is what I am learning: Power is awareness. It’s recognizing where you’ve been playing small… and deciding you’re done with that. Power is quiet. It’s the moment you catch yourself shrinking and you stop. It’s recognizing the pattern and deciding that you are done repeating it. For me, that looks like building something that is actually mine. Raising my kids on purpose, not just on autopilot. Stopping the cycle of pouring out until I’m empty again and calling that strength. I’m not waiting for someday anymore.
This post is me planting a flag. Not for anyone else. For me. Because I have spent long enough being the hardest worker in everyone else’s story while quietly ghosting my own. That’s over now. I have never been more sure of anything.
So what does that look like from here? I’m still figuring that out. But I think it starts small. Smaller than I expected. Maybe it’s one decision I make for my future instead of just managing today. One moment where my kids see me choosing myself, by showing them what it looks like not to disappear. That’s what I want them to carry with them. The image of a loving woman who, in the middle of the hardest season of her life, decided she was worth showing up for too.
So I’ll ask you the same thing I am asking myself:
You would move mountains for the people you love. When did you stop being one of them?
If this resonated with you, follow along. I’m just getting started.
