Sara Sweat, MA – Founder, Monarch
People say “you can’t pour from an empty cup”, but most of the women I know do it all the time.
They have been doing it for years. Even when they’re running on fumes, they somehow produce one more answer, one more meal, one more ounce of patience or creativity or emotional regulation out of thin air.
What’s most astonishing to me is not that women manage these energetic loaves and fishes moments every day. It’s that the world around us fails to see it. Fails to see you.
What You See
You know that Friday is Green Shirt Day at your child’s school.
You also know that the last time anyone saw the green shirt it was partially hiding under a chair in the living room. So, it might be completely underneath it now – or tied to a tree in the backyard because the kids have started using random items of clothing as flags for their turf wars.
You also know that it’s got to be in the laundry before soccer practice on Wednesday night because from that point on you’re basically not home long enough to get it done.
And, that if that happens, it’ll be you staying up till midnight to put it in the dryer on Thursday night so that your sweet kiddo has it ready for Friday morning.
No one else knows any of this. No one even knows that you do. No one, in the history of ever, has thought as much about anything – as you are thinking about this stupid green shirt that isn’t even yours.
Because, if your child goes to school on Friday in a blue shirt, their entirely preventable humiliation – and subsequent years as a grade school outcast – will have been all your fault.
Because you are the default adult.
You know everything that’s happening in your world.
Every schedule. Every detail. Every need.
And, it’s not just at home that you’ve assumed this role. You’re the “go to” at work, the busiest person in the family text chain, & the one everyone assumes will just figure it out and get it done.
Because most of the time… you do.
You can make juggling a maniacal amount of responsibility look simple. You always have.
Which, unfortunately, is why people think you don’t need help & why they just keep piling on the work.
The Work Nobody Sees
It’s the way you work, the insane level of excellence you pour into everything you do, that creates the assumption you can handle even more.
You do not just run the meeting.
You do the market research, gather the requirements, and build a project plan that leverages the unique strengths and weaknesses of everyone on your team.
You schedule every meeting, including detailed agendas and guides. You remember all the relevant nuance of every aspect of everyone’s job and know that Sheila will work faster if you bring her Godiva chocolates and Todd will wow everyone in the meeting, then forget to follow up on everything he promised to complete.
You ask game changing questions. You manage the follow up from every task. You make it so easy for everyone to do what’s asked of them and still end up doing most of their work anyway because…”it’s just easier that way”.
You don’t just make dinner.
You notice what time everyone has been getting hungry and quietly adjust the family schedule to accommodate it. You check the fridge, make a grocery list, track the fruit and vegetable intake of every human in your house. Then, procure the groceries, carry them in, put them away, & meal prep it Sunday night…to make it easier for yourself during the week.
Then, when it’s time to cook, you find the recipe and make the meal while you’re finishing up a work call or helping with homework. Then, you serve, clean up, and prepare leftovers for lunches, complete with tiny heart shaped post-its that offer relevant, topical, words of encouragement to speak into what each family member might be struggling with that week.
You do not just plan the friend or family event.
You make it possible. Because, honestly, if you didn’t – none of these people would probably ever see each other again.
You find the dates that work for the group. You uncover the one location on the planet that is equally inconvenient for all participants. You know that Aunt June will be two hours late and Uncle Jack will show up an hour early so you prepare a menu that accommodates both. You plan everything, pay for everything, and spend most of your time working the event – while everyone else plops on the couch and catches up.
Everyone is grateful for what you do. Everyone enjoys their time together. But, they only see the finished product – not the effort it takes to create it.
And, they only see the small piece of your labor that touches their own life.
Your partner sees that you grabbed their clothes out of their gym bag and threw them in the wash. Your kids see that their breakfast is ready. Your boss sees the task you crushed or the meeting you made better.
But you are the only person with line of sight into the whole system.
You are the only person who knows how many things are being held together because you remembered, anticipated, asked, followed up, planned ahead, smoothed over, and – quite frankly, just handled it.
And, no one sees the cost.
Then Someone Asks What’s For Dinner
Women like this, the ones who carry everything, usually do a pretty good job of holding it all together…until they don’t.
We don’t break in a dramatic, rocking back and forth in the corner of the room crying, kind of way. We break because of the invisibility of our roles and the accumulated avalanche of our tasks.
We break because while we were hanging by a thread, somebody triggered a landmine by asking what was for dinner.
On any given day you’ve gotten kids where they need to be. You’ve taken your parent to their doctor’s appointment. You worked all day on a really important and complex project that wasn’t supposed to be yours because someone else’s inability to plan became your emergency.
You’ve answered questions, soothed feelings, wrangled chaos, and planned ahead for the important events no one else is even thinking about yet. You’ve remembered that thing everyone else forgot, found the toy your child was certain was lost forever, and stayed relatively kind and professional through it all.
Then your kids plan a bath time rebellion that would have made Marie Antoinette gasp. And, you realize you’re on empty. You don’t have what it takes for the battle.
In that circumstance, even the best of us crack. Maybe we snap or yell. Maybe we give up and just let everyone be dirty. Maybe we announce, as I once heard a fellow default adult threaten in the Dallas Fort Worth airport, that Santa is going to take back all the gifts he’s ever given if they don’t do as they are asked.
When we’re in this frazzled place, we might not execute our tasks at the same standard we usually do. But, it all still gets done.
Because when you’re the default adult: you know that even when you have nothing left—nobody else is going to do it.
So you do it anyway. And, then you revenge bedtime procrastinate by binging old episodes of Gilmore Girls until you pass out on the couch with chocolate on your fingers. Hypothetically.
The Shame of Having a Good Life
The thing is you have a great life. You have so many blessings. You’ve got advantages other people would kill for so you feel ridiculous complaining.
Maybe you’ve got a true partner in life, children you love, a job you’re proud of. Maybe you’ve got a beautiful home – far more grand than what you grew up in; closets overflowing with stuff you rarely even use. Maybe you get to take trips to places you never dreamed you would see.
This is the life you wanted. The life you chose and built with your own two hands. And, you know how lucky you are to have it.
So you think:
Listen to me whine about all my first-world problems. Why can’t I just be grateful?
As if somehow gratitude is the only feeling you’re allowed to have.
You can love your family deeply and be exhausted by the invisible labor of making family life work.
You can feel grateful for your job and still feel buried under responsibilities that should not belong to you.
You can have a supportive partner and still be frustrated about being the person who has to notice what needs support in the first place.
You can have a beautiful life and still be suffocating inside it.
Not because you don’t appreciate it. But, because you are carrying too much of it alone.
You Didn’t Get A Choice
The truth is that while you chose this life, and you’ve been here – making decisions and agreeing to things all along – you didn’t get a vote in the burden you’ve been carrying for everyone else. You didn’t ever decide to do it.
You can decide to volunteer as room mom. You can sign up to bring a meal. You can even serve on a board or spend your discretionary time supporting a cause, a friend, or a community you care about.
Those are all choices.
Being the default adult is not.
Being the default adult is what happens when you do something well once and everyone quietly decides it’s your job forever.
“You’re such a great cook” becomes responsibility for meal planning, grocery shopping, preparation, presentation, cleanup, and the emotional experience of every meal your family consumes.
“You’re so organized” becomes responsibility for the calendar, the forms, the birthday gifts, the appointments, the travel arrangements, and the thousands of details that make life run.
“You’re so good at this” becomes: Great. You’ll handle it, right?
It sounds like praise.
But hidden within the compliment is an unauthorized transfer of responsibility.
Your competence is noticed and then leveraged to lower the investment of everyone around you.
Usually nobody asks whether you want to take it on. They simply assume you will and don’t even notice that they’re contributing significantly less.
Sometimes you step up because what’s required matters to you and you can see the disaster that will happen if no one does it well.
You always see three steps ahead. You see the risk. You see the missed opportunity. You see the need before it becomes an emergency.
So, you can spend hours trying to convince someone else that it needs to be handled, ask them for help, explain how to do it, remind them of their commitment, and manage the work along the way.
Or you can just do it yourself. And, doing it yourself just seems…faster.
Then, when doing all the things becomes your whole life and you realize you actually do want some help – no one is there. Which…probably isn’t a new pattern for you, is it?
Drawing the Short Straw
You are not the default adult in your life because there’s something wrong with you.
You are not this person because you’re a control freak, you’re incapable of receiving help, or you’re secretly convinced that no one else is good enough – no matter how hard social media tries to convince you otherwise.
You are this person because something in life forced you to became capable.
Maybe you grew up in a home where someone needed to be the grown-up & you drew the short straw.
Maybe you were raised with perfectionism, instability, or expectations that taught you being useful was the safest way to belong.
Maybe you were simply good at things—and people kept handing you more because you handled it so well. And, you liked being the strong, reliable, capable rockstar. I mean, being a badass is kinda fun.
Whatever the story, you learned to see what others missed. You learned to anticipate – to step in, to figure it out. And, everyone around you got comfortable with your competence.
They learned that if they forgot, you would remember. If they fell short, you would cover it. If they did not see the risk, you’d be there to prevent it anyway.
The people in your life understand that if they don’t know what to do next, you will. You’ll make the hard calls, find the answer, and lead the way.
So, you keep managing their tasks, carrying their consequences, and doing the work yourself – because it’s less exhausting than trying to explain that you are supposed to be more than their prefrontal cortex.
A Metamorphosis
I use an analogy a lot to explain what it’s like to be the default adult. Imagine you’re a caterpillar. You stumble around, climbing on plants and eating leaves. Life is good, from your vantage point down on the ground.
But, something in you that knows there’s more. Something happens in your environment or inside you that triggers a process over which you have no actual control.
You break your own body down, become your own chrysalis, convert yourself into primordial goo & from that glop – you grow your own wings. You emerge confused and exhausted but with an entirely new perspective.
You are a Monarch. A butterfly. You’ve got wings now and can fly above your grassy home to see farther and wider than any caterpillar ever could. And, you do. It’s the best.
But, all your little caterpillar friends are like – “wow, you’ve changed”. And, you’re like “yeah, we’re supposed to, right?”
And, they’re like “ok..but, like, I don’t have to do that right now – do I?” And, you say “I don’t think so. I mean, it’s not like I made a choice; it just kinda happened on instinct.”
Then, they say “hey – while you’re up there – can you get a message to my cousin Bob because it would take me like a week to get to his little patch of grass & I’m really tired from all the leaf eating and growing and stuff.”
And, you say “of course! I’ll be back in a flash.” And, you are.
Then, someone else needs a favor. Or, wants you to check on something for them. And, you can do it SO much better than they ever could – ya know, because of the wings, that this just becomes the default assumption.
Before long, you stop enjoying flying so much because your wings have become the equivalent of being the only friend in your group with a truck. You’re the one everyone asks to help them move. Word spreads and all the caterpillars say – “don’t do it yourself – ask the Monarch”.
On the rare occasions when you see other butterflies twirling around up in the sky – it just makes you sad. You kind of wave at them living their best lives while you’re running freight back and forth for the little caterpillars you love.
Because you do love those adorable little caterpillars. They’re so freaking great. And, they’ll eventually sprout wings of their own and join you in the skies, right? This is just a season.
Except, what if it’s not? What if your ability to carry all their burdens becomes the reason they never grow wings of their own. Or, worse, what if by the time their wings are ready – you’re too exhausted or burned out to even enjoy the flight?
You Are A Monarch
A Monarch is not made for the ground. It’s not a flying mule built to haul everyone else’s luggage up a cliffside.
Monarchs are made to soar. They do some pollinating from time to time. They certainly beautify the world. But, their actual ecological purpose isn’t to produce. In fact, butterflies don’t have much of an ecological purpose at all.
Their job is to spend generations migrating back and forth across the world creating tiny butterfly effects in the electrical field of the earth with their wings.
Flight.
That’s what Monarchs are for.
The same is true for you. Becoming a Monarch doesn’t mean you walk away from your family, lower your standards, or leave your friends and colleagues to fend for themselves in the chaos of life.
It just means you stop being the one who does it all. It means you stop participating in the belief that anything you can do is yours to do.
You stop believing that being the best person for a task means you have to do it. That everyone else’s expectations are a reliable measure of your responsibility.
Being a Monarch means remembering that you exist, too. Not just as the behind the scenes force that takes care of what no one else wants to do. But, as a force to be reckoned with.
Being a Monarch is about being seen. Being acknowledged. Being allowed to take up the space you require without making it easier for everyone else to move.
It’s about building a life where the to do list does not live only in your head. A life where responsibility is visible, shared, and owned by the people to whom it belongs.
A life where the goal isn’t to make the most invisible contributions, but to help everyone make their highest contribution.
A life where you can be present. Laugh. Play. Rest. Where you can be yourself—not the person who makes everything happen, but the person who gets to enjoy what happens, too.
You did not grow wings to become everyone else’s ground crew.
You are a Monarch.
And it’s time to fly.
Monarch is coaching and community for default adults who are ready to stop carrying everything alone. Monarch brings people back to themselves, helps them build the systems and practices that support, and shows them how to use their wings. If you’re ready to take flight, book your free introductory call today.
