Choosing Ourselves

There is a quiet story many women carry, often without realizing it was ever a story at all.

It begins early.

In my family, my mother taught me what she had been taught, to put others before myself. When I became a mother, I passed that same message to my daughter. It was not intentional harm. It was inheritance. A way of being shaped over generations.

Many of us know this pattern well. It lives beneath the surface of our decisions, our relationships, and our sense of worth. And for a long time, it can feel like the only way.

Until something begins to shift.

I remember a moment in 2017 when my father was in hospice in Sarasota, Florida. I had been traveling back and forth to be with him, staying for extended periods of time. Then Hurricane Irma approached, and he was moved to a hospice facility for safety and respite care.

At one point, I told my father I needed to return home to my own family and to my work. He responded with certainty. It was my duty to stay.

I felt the weight of that word deeply.

Duty.

I was torn between what I had always believed was right and what I sensed, quietly, was necessary. A social worker, who had overheard our conversation, gently intervened. She reminded me that I, too, needed care. That I was allowed to step away. That tending to myself did not mean abandoning him.

It was a simple moment, but it disrupted something foundational.

What I see now, in women across contexts and cultures, is how deeply we have been conditioned to live without clear boundaries. We have been taught that to care for ourselves is selfish. That to speak up is to make a fuss. That to rest is to fall behind.

So we keep going.

We show up in our personal lives as the dependable one, the strong one, the one who can hold it all. And then we carry that same pattern into our work. We take on more. We say yes more often than we mean to. We stretch ourselves thinner and thinner, often being rewarded for it along the way.

From the outside, it can look like success.

On the inside, it often feels like exhaustion.

At some point, many of us reach a threshold. Relationships begin to strain. The work is never done, no matter how much effort we give. Our bodies start to signal what our minds have been trained to ignore. We find ourselves depleted, disconnected, and wondering how we got here.

This is often the moment when a different possibility becomes visible.

Not easy, but visible.

The realization that we do have choices, even if we have not been practiced in making them. That we are allowed to place ourselves on equal footing in our own lives.

So where do we begin?

For me, the shift started with a different lens. One that did not begin with what was wrong, but with what was already strong.

More than twenty years ago, I was introduced to CliftonStrengths. It helped me see parts of myself that I had been taught to downplay or dismiss. My empathy, something I once thought made me too sensitive, revealed itself as a profound strength.

That reframe changed everything.

It did not happen overnight. Rebuilding trust with ourselves rarely does. When we have spent years quieting our inner knowing, it takes time to hear that voice again. It requires spaces where we feel safe enough to listen, and supported enough to respond differently.

I have been fortunate to have coaches and guides who created that kind of space for me. It is part of why I now hold that space for others.

Because this work is a practice.

It is like building muscle. At first, we default to what is familiar. The well worn path of overgiving, overworking, and overriding our own needs. But as we begin to notice another way, and as we experience even small shifts, a new path starts to form.

One where our voice is not only heard, but trusted.

One where our strengths are not minimized, but lived.

One where caring for ourselves is not a betrayal of others, but a return to wholeness.

And from that place, everything begins to change.

We are always a work in progress. Accepting this and extending this permission to ourselves, as we would to others, is paramount. 

If you are ready to set down what you are carrying. I am here.