When we’re the last item on our own to do list, figuring out what we want can feel impossible. This week, we’re talking about how to give ourselves the permission to begin.

What happens when somebody asks what you want? Does your mind to blank like a frazzled cartoon robot…”does not compute”? Do you answer with the “the list” – everything that’s important to everyone else, that’s currently renting space in your head? Or do you make a plea for support? “What I’d really like is a little help!” None of these responses really answer the question at all – because usually…we have no idea what we want & we haven’t for quite some time.

You did not choose a life with fewer obligations so you could inherit everyone else’s. You chose it because you wanted your life to be yours. But, if you’re a default adult without kids – taking your time back can feel really hard.

When space opens up on the calendar, it feels wonderful. Truly. There’s this little lift in your chest. An afternoon that’s free. A morning meeting that gets cancelled and gives you a chance to go get a real coffee. That cancelled conference call that gives you an hour back of your life.

And then your brain, which has spent twenty or thirty years training for this moment, goes into hyperdrive. Instead of slowly driving to your favorite coffee shop and enjoying a morning treat, you’re chained to your desk wondering how it became 11 o’clock.

Because you can’t turn off the noticing. You cannot un-know what you know. You can’t turn off the never ending mantra in your head that says “If I don’t stay ahead of it, it will cost me more in the end.”

It’s Saturday morning for everyone else but you.

The people you love more than life itself are sitting around the kitchen table eating pancakes. Somebody is arguing for their playlist. Someone else is wadding up a napkin to shoot as a dart aimed at their brother’s head.

There is coffee. There is laughter. There are sleepy faces and half-finished conversations about soccer, errands, maybe going to see a movie later if the weather turns gross.

It’s lovely. Like a Hallmark movie, really. A perfect Saturday morning.

Except you are not having Saturday morning. You’re making it.

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.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about being the person everything runs through. Nobody ever thinks about you.

I have great friends who genuinely care about me. But, I am extraordinarily good at making this look effortless. At seemingly like everything is ok while I cry in the shower from isolation and fatigue.

Nobody’s dropping off dinner for me so I have one meal I didn’t have to prepare. Nobody turns up with a bottle of wine and says let’s sit outside for an hour & discuss the mysteries of life. Nobody calls to see if I’m ok on a random Tuesday.

That’s just the arithmetic of being the one who never appears to need anything. Nobody knows you do.

There comes a point in the life of every overly capable person when they look around and think, “Am I the only actual grown-up here?” Because somehow, in your house, in your family, in your work, or in your relationships, you became the one who sees everything, carries everything, remembers everything, and decides everything. You are the default adult.

I have a theory that the strongest people are often the least likely to be present.

Because when you’ve spent so much of your life being excellent at anticipating what might go wrong – it’s really hard to turn it off. Your whole personality forms around staying ten steps ahead of the chaos.

And it stays that way – until life hands you a situation you can’t possibly manage on your own.

Most of my clients have done years of hard, healing work. They’ve read the books, done the therapy, listened to the podcasts, and burned the sage. They are strong, hard working, insightful human beings who are very good at doing difficult things.

But, when you’re learning to live instead of just survive, your old way of being doesn’t just disappear because you “get it now”.