Where I've Been, and Why I'm Not Apologizing
I have not written a word here since March. Not one.
I kept meaning to. I would sit down, look at the blank screen, and close the laptop because somebody needed something. That happened for six months straight.
Then I sat down to write this, and the first sentence that came out of me was an apology. I was sorry. Sorry for being gone. Sorry for not being able to be five people at one time.
I deleted it.
What I Was Actually Doing
I was building a patient registry for women losing their hair. I was putting a research study through review. I was writing a continuing education program for cosmetologists and barbers so they would stop missing the thing that is taking women’s hair before a doctor ever sees it.
I was not on a beach. I was working. And the thing I built for myself, this place right here, is the one thing I let go.
That is not an accident. That is a pattern. And I know exactly where I learned it.
We Were Raised to Be Used Up
Think about how we were praised growing up. She never complains. She does for everybody. She would give you the shirt off her back.
Nobody ever said she takes good care of herself. That was not a compliment. That was a warning about somebody selfish.
So we learned the measurement. A good woman is measured by how much of her gets used up. You give until there is nothing, and then you find a little more, and people call that strength. We built whole identities on being the one who handles it.
And it works. It works so well that people stop seeing you as a person and start seeing you as a resource.
What It Actually Costs
Here is the part nobody tells you.
When you stop giving, people do not notice you are tired. They notice what you stopped doing for them.
Nobody called me in those six months to ask if I was writing. Nobody asked about my blog. Nobody said Mary, you sound like yourself again when you talk about that. They asked me for things. Which is fair, because I trained them to.
You cannot be furious at people for treating you the way you taught them to. That is the hard part. I handed out the instructions myself.
My mother said something to me years ago about this. I was too young to hear it right, and I filed it under things mothers say. It took me until sixty to understand she was not giving me advice. She was giving me a warning.
She had already lived it. She was telling me what was coming.
Reinvesting Is Not a Reward
We have the language wrong, and the language is doing damage.
Self-care got turned into a treat. A bubble bath after a hard week. A pedicure because you earned it. Something you get after you have proven you suffered enough to deserve it.
That is backwards.
You do not reinvest in a business because it had a good quarter. You reinvest because if you do not, there is no business next year. It is not a reward for performance. It is the cost of continuing to exist.
You are the same. What you put back into yourself is not a prize. It is maintenance on the only thing that does all the giving.
What I Am Doing Differently
Not a list of resolutions. Three actual changes.
I put this on the calendar. One hour, every week, to sit down and say what I think. It is a standing appointment with a real time on it, like a doctor visit. Things without a time on the calendar do not happen.
I stopped apologizing for gaps. If I am gone for a month, I am gone for a month. I will come back and pick it up. Explaining myself to people who were not waiting is a waste of energy I do not have to spare.
I stopped calling this a hobby. This is the place I think out loud, and thinking out loud is not optional for me. Naming it a hobby was how I gave myself permission to drop it first.
Before You Close This
Somewhere in your week there is a thing you used to do that was only yours. Not for your children. Not for your job. Not for your church or your mama or your husband. Yours.
You know what it is. You thought of it while you were reading.
You did not lose the time for it. You gave the time away, a little at a time, to people who never asked you to and would not notice if you took some of it back.
Take an hour. Not a whole life, not a big announcement, one hour. See who complains.
I am betting on nobody.
I am sixty years old and I am back. Let’s talk.