Running errands. Answering emails. Buying groceries. Paying bills. Getting the car serviced. Going to the dentist. Finishing the laundry.

All the things on the TO DO list.

All the things we think we have to do.

All the things we believe we are SUPPOSED to do.

It is remarkably easy to go through much of life looking down. Doing. Checking things off. We become so consumed with doing life that we forget to ask ourselves a much more interesting question:

How do I actually want to LIVE it?

Mary Oliver put it best in “The Summer Day”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Am I on the path I want to be on? If I could choose a different path, what would I choose? Do I even know?

That last question is the tricky one.

When you’re already walking down a particular road, you tend to keep looking straight ahead. You don’t notice the little paths going off to the side. You don’t consider that you could turn around. Or sit down. Or climb over the fence. Or decide that you don’t particularly like this road anymore.

For much of my life, I have been very good at editing myself to fit inside the box of my own expectations.

• Be productive.

• Be responsible.

• Do something useful.

• Finish what you start.

• Don’t waste time.

• Don’t be frivolous.

• Eat your vegetables.

I am beginning to wonder how many of these rules I actually chose. And how many I simply inherited.

Living by rules you never chose is its own quiet form of self-abandonment.

With any luck, I may have another twenty good years. Twenty years when I can travel, think, walk, laugh, read, eat, love, explore, make mistakes, change my mind and decide what I want my days to look like.

Twenty years sounds like a long time. And it sounds incredibly short.

So I’ve been asking myself: what do I want to do with them?

Not what should I do. Not what would make me look accomplished. Not what would prove I had used my time productively.

What do I actually want?

I look at my mother and laugh a little. She never, ever imagined that she would live for a year in Paris. It wasn’t on her bucket list. It wasn’t even in the realm of her consciousness.

She lived there because I had a dream.

My mother is the ultimate Timex watch. She takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Whatever life handed her, including a year in Paris, she absorbed and carried on.

There is real strength in that. But I want something different for my next twenty years. Not just to endure what comes. To choose it.

So I’ve started making a list.

Not resolutions. Not goals. Permissions.

Things I am giving myself permission to believe, enjoy, stop doing, start doing, or simply question.

Here is what I know so far.

1. Read in the middle of the day.

I have spent a tremendous amount of my life believing I should be productive. Achieve something. Finish something. Get through the list.

And don’t misunderstand me. I am a great believer in achievement. If there is something you want to build, BUILD IT.

But productivity is no longer going to be the primary measure of whether I had a good day.

Which brings me to reading.

For some reason, reading during daylight hours has always felt vaguely illicit. If the sun is out, shouldn’t I be doing something? Going somewhere? Exercising? Crossing something off my list?

Reading was reserved for bedtime, when all productive possibilities for the day had finally been exhausted.

What nonsense.

I love to read. Why would I restrict something I love to the fifteen minutes before I fall asleep?

So I am giving myself permission to sit on the sofa at two o’clock in the afternoon and read a book.

Even if the sun is shining.
Even if there are dishes in the sink.
Even if somebody, somewhere, is being productive.

I don’t need to earn my day.

2. Eat dessert first.

This is becoming increasingly important because my appetite is not what it used to be.

I do not want to eat all the broccoli then have no room left for the strawberry shortcake. That would be tragic.

Or the peach crumble.

Or an île flottante floating in a glorious pool of crème anglaise.

I can honestly say I have never experienced anything approaching ecstasy while eating broccoli.

Crème anglaise?

Baby, now we’re talking.

I am not suggesting we abandon nutrition entirely. Apparently vegetables still have their place.

But if there is something you really love, perhaps stop automatically saving it for last. The trip. Good china. The dress you’re keeping for a special occasion.

This was never really about dessert.

3. Desire is meant to be enjoyed.

A few years ago, I read Patrick deWitt’s French Exit. Frances Price is running out of money and nevertheless continues to surround herself with beauty and style.

I understand the pull of that, though my version is quieter.

For years, I have put off buying things I coveted. Partly because I genuinely enjoy the act of coveting. If I buy the thing, I can no longer covet it. Then I have to find something new to covet.

I’ve also realized that sometimes I enjoy the IDEA of possessing something more than actually possessing it. Once you own an object, it becomes an obligation. You have to store it. Maintain it. Insure it. Find someplace to put it.

Sometimes I can simply admire the beautiful coat, painting, chair or handbag and enjoy wanting it.

Desire itself can be delicious.

I don’t have to turn every desire into an acquisition. But I also don’t have to apologize for wanting beautiful things.

Wanting is information. It tells me something about what delights me.

4. I do not have to finish everything on my plate.

If only you knew how deeply ingrained this one is.

My mother is 93 and has Alzheimer’s, and she STILL finishes everything on her plate. If you try to take that plate away before she has eaten every last morsel, she will probably swat you.

We finished our plates growing up. No exceptions.

This wasn’t particularly challenging on spaghetti-and-meatball night. Liver-and-onion night was another matter.

Some rules go so deep they outlast memory itself.

But here’s the revelation: I am allowed to stop.

I can stop eating when I’ve had enough.
I can stop reading a book I don’t like.
I can leave a party when I’m tired.
I can abandon a television series after three episodes.

I can change my mind.
I can decide that something I started no longer deserves to be finished.

Apparently there is no celestial award waiting for the woman who dies having cleared every plate put in front of her.

What a relief.

And yes, this means I can leave the broccoli.

5. Some discomfort is worth choosing.

Before this turns into an essay advocating dessert, daytime reading and abandoning all responsibilities, there are things I intend to keep doing even though I don’t particularly enjoy them.

The gym, for example.

I am not what anyone would call a gym rat. I go because it is good for me. Much like broccoli.

But unlike broccoli, I know from experience that I will feel better after I work out. So I do it.

There is discomfort that depletes us. And there is discomfort that builds us.

I want to get better at knowing the difference.

Resistance training? Worth it.
Needless guilt? Not worth it.

I am not lazy. I am selective.

6. Give generously from what I actually have.

I love helping people. And for a long time I could talk myself out of doing it.

What could I possibly know that would help them?

Quite a lot, actually.

I have lived. I have screwed things up. I have learned things. I know people. I can make connections. I can encourage someone. I can offer perspective.

I can sit with a high school student, a new mother or a young adult who is trying to “find themselves” and say: You don’t have to know yet.

Sometimes what we have to give isn’t money. It’s attention. Experience. Encouragement. Hope. A phone call. An introduction. A belief in someone before they have quite learned to believe in themselves.

I have plenty of those things. I want to give them generously.

7. Ask for help.

I cannot do everything.

This has taken me approximately sixty-seven years to accept.

I am not a technical wonder. I am not naturally organized. I am not particularly efficient. There are people who can accomplish in twenty minutes what will take me four hours, three swear words and a complete collapse of confidence.

Why am I making myself do it?

There are people who actually LIKE spreadsheets. There are people who enjoy systems. There are people who understand technology.

Let them experience the satisfaction of using their gifts. I will use mine.

Knowing where I need help isn’t failure. It’s self-knowledge.

8. It is not frivolous to want to feel good about myself.

I was at the beauty parlor last week, and the woman next to me announced: “You should have your hair done every week! You would feel so much better about yourself!”

Immediately, I calculated what this would cost.

Then I thought about my great-aunt. She was a retired schoolteacher in Newark, New Jersey, and she had her hair done every Tuesday. Every Tuesday. It was apparently non-negotiable.

I have no idea how she afforded it. But clearly she had established her priorities.

I am not yet committing myself to weekly hair appointments. I am thinking about it.

Ninety percent of the time, my hair is pulled back into a ponytail under a red hat. Unless I am going to a Valkyries game. Then I wear a Valkyries hat.

Perhaps if my hair looked fabulous, I would take off the hat. (Although then my head might get cold. This IS San Francisco after all… Fog City.)

Clearly this requires further analysis.

But the larger point is this: it is not shallow to care about how I feel when I look in the mirror. It is not frivolous to wear the lipstick, get the haircut, buy the beautiful shoes or put on the good perfume simply because it changes the way I feel in my own skin.

Update

So this is what I’ve been wrestling with this week while Cooper is reCOOPERating from his surgery.

Perhaps he is teaching me something about all of this too.

In case you’ve been wondering, he appears to be adapting remarkably well to life as a tri-pawed Labrador. He still has the sparkle in his eye. He still wants his ball.

He is not sitting around contemplating the life he used to have. He is looking around for what still makes him come alive.

I don’t think the lesson is to pretend that losses don’t matter. They do.

Nor is it to abandon responsibility and spend the next twenty years eating crème anglaise while having my hair professionally blown out.

Although I suppose there are worse strategies.

Maybe it’s simply this: stop living so automatically.

Look up.

Question the old rules. Notice which ones still serve you and which ones you are following merely because you’ve always followed them.

Ask yourself what you want now. Not twenty years ago. Not what your mother wanted. Not what your husband wanted. Not what society tells you a woman your age should want.

What do YOU want to do with the life that is still in front of you?

I don’t have the complete answer yet. But I am beginning to think that twenty years is much too precious to spend living by rules I never consciously chose.

And somewhere on the porch, Cooper is looking for his ball.

Maybe I should be looking for mine, too.

What old rule are you ready to retire? And what permission would you give yourself for the years ahead?

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The Tarot Nook

Judgement Reversed

As I was writing this, I pulled the Judgment card reversed.

I had to laugh.

Here I am writing about a wake-up call, and I pull the card of awakening—upside down.

Judgement reversed can speak to self-judgment, ignoring our own inner call, and continuing to live according to old stories long after they have stopped serving you.

Maybe that is exactly what I am wrestling with.

For much of my life, there has been an invisible judge sitting somewhere in my head, determining whether I am being productive enough, useful enough, disciplined enough, responsible enough.

But perhaps the next twenty years aren’t about passing the test.

Maybe there isn’t a test.

Maybe the wake-up call is realizing that I am the one who gets to decide what makes a day—and ultimately a life—worthwhile.

Stop judging yourself by the old story, and answer the life that is calling you now.

My dog, Cooper, stands over his tennis ball, poised to run, staring directly into my eyes.

I can read his mind.

Throw the ball, Mom. Throw. The. Ball.

At this moment, Cooper is using 100 percent of his considerable mental capacity to persuade me to throw—or kick—the ball so he can do what he LIVES for:

Retrieve.

Cooper is 100 percent field Labrador, and the moment we head downstairs, he starts going crazy.

His collection of tennis balls waits on the front porch, where he carefully selects one before each outing. Then he’s off—focused, enthusiastic, completely engaged with life.

He radiates ALIVENESS.

And Cooper does not believe retrieving should be a solitary pursuit.

He approaches perfect strangers on the street, carefully places his disgusting, soggy ball at their feet, and looks directly into their eyes.

The message is unmistakable:

You. Yes, you. Throw my ball.

And somehow these unsuspecting victims bend down, pick up a ball they probably don’t want to touch, and throw it.

Cooper has remarkable confidence in his ability to get people to play.

When we finally return home, he deposits the soggy ball back on the porch with the rest of his collection, ready for tomorrow.

This is who Cooper has always been.

Ball. Run. Retrieve. Repeat.

A few days ago, Cooper lost his front right leg to cancer.

He is now an official member of the Tri-Pawed Club.

I was frightened about what would happen after the surgery. Would he still be Cooper? Would he still have his relentless enthusiasm? That spark? That desire to run toward life?

As soon as he could stand, Cooper went searching for his ball.

He is reCooperating well.

And the gleam in his eye is still there.

Watching him has made me think a lot about aliveness.

I’ve spent the last few years discovering what remains when parts of the life you thought you were going to have suddenly disappear.

And maybe I’ve been asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking,

What have I lost?

perhaps the more useful question is:

What still makes me run toward life?

Cooper has supported me through some very difficult years, offering very little advice but an enormous amount of love and, frequently, a soggy tennis ball.

After my separation from my husband, Cooper moved right in beside me so I never had to sleep alone—or get cold.

And he has always been extremely diligent about reminding me when it is mealtime.

So, in Cooper’s honor, here are five things he has taught me about being alive.

1. Savor the moment.

Cooper rarely misses an opportunity to enjoy himself.

If I’ve been sitting at my computer too long, he’ll appear with a toy and deposit it in my lap.

Enough of that. Let’s play.

If I lose track of time, he reminds me that it is time for dinner.

Or a walk.

Or preferably both.

Cooper lives very much in the present tense.

I’m trying to get better at that.

For me, savoring sometimes looks like my morning coffee.

I make a special drip blend. I grind the beans. And instead of drinking it out of any old mug, I pour it into a beautiful china cup and saucer my friend Laverne gave me.

Every time I drink from that cup, I think of Laverne.

The coffee becomes more than coffee.

It’s a tiny ritual.

A moment of pleasure.

A connection.

Aliveness doesn’t always arrive as some enormous adventure.

Sometimes it’s coffee in the good cup.

2. Keep what you love within reach.

Cooper always carries a ball.

If he loses one, he combs the park looking for another.

If absolutely no tennis ball can be found, he will settle for a stick.

Cooper makes sure he is always prepared to do the thing that makes him happiest.

Which makes me wonder:

What is your ball?

What is the thing that lights you up?

The things that make us feel alive are often the first things we abandon when life becomes complicated.

We’ll dance later.

We’ll paint later.

We’ll travel later.

We’ll write later.

We’ll play later.

Cooper would find this completely ridiculous.

Keep your ball nearby.

3. Share your balls.

Yes.

I wrote that.

Cooper could simply walk around with his ball in his mouth, perfectly content with his own private enjoyment.

But he doesn’t.

He offers it to other people.

Perfect strangers.

Children.

Neighbors.

People who thought they were simply walking down the street minding their own business.

Cooper invites them into his joy.

Come play with me.

And most of the time, they do.

People laugh. They throw the ball. They get their hands dirty. For a few moments, they’re not thinking about their schedules or their problems or what they’re supposed to be doing.

They’re playing with a dog.

Joy grows when we offer it to someone else.

4. Really see people.

Cooper doesn’t simply drop his ball near someone and hope they’ll notice.

He carefully places it in front of his chosen person.

Then he looks up at them, directly in their eyes.

Not casually.

Intensely.

Ignoring him is extraordinarily difficult.

There is something powerful about being looked at that way.

I see you.

Will you play with me?

Cooper has cracked open many a tough shell with that stare.

And perhaps there is a lesson in that for us too.

How often do we really look at someone?

How often do we allow ourselves to be seen?

When we really see another person—and let them see us—something opens.

Connection begins with noticing.

5. Keep offering the ball.

This may be the lesson I need most.

Cooper firmly believes that when he offers someone his ball, they will throw it.

But occasionally someone doesn’t.

And here’s what’s remarkable:

Cooper doesn’t sulk.

He doesn’t walk away thinking,

Apparently my ball wasn’t good enough.

He doesn’t decide,

I shouldn’t have asked.

He doesn’t wonder,

Was I too much? Too needy? Too enthusiastic?

He doesn’t disappear into a shame spiral and vow never to offer his ball again.

He picks it up.

And offers it to somebody else.

That’s it.

No story.

No humiliation.

No abandonment of what he wants.

Just:

Huh. Not that person.

Next.

Imagine living that way.

Imagine wanting something without being ashamed of wanting it.

Imagine making the invitation without needing everyone to say yes.

Imagine understanding that someone’s refusal doesn’t make your desire foolish.

It simply means:

Not this person.

Not this time.

Pick up your ball.

Keep going.

Cooper doesn’t seem particularly interested in the leg he no longer has.

He’s interested in the ball that’s still in front of him.

Maybe that’s the lesson I need most right now.

Life changes.

Bodies change.

Relationships end.

Plans disappear.

Sometimes things we believed were permanent turn out not to be.

And loss deserves to be grieved.

But somewhere on the porch, there is still a ball.

Something that calls us forward.

Something that makes our eyes light up.

Something that makes us want to run toward life—even if running looks different than it used to.

Maybe the work is simply to remember what your ball is.

And keep picking it up.

What’s your ball?

What makes you feel so alive that, no matter what life takes from you, you want to keep reaching for it?

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The Tarot Nook

The King of Swords

The King of Swords represents intellectual power, clear-cut truth, logic, and mental clarity. He looks at what happened versus the story we make it mean.

This King offers discernment. He asks if the story we are making is true.

That is exactly what Cooper does in Lesson #5. He doesn’t make a story up if people don’t want to play. He simply accepts it and moves on. No shame. No interpretations. Just the facts, please.

The King of Swords doesn’t deny loss, but he doesn’t let loss write a bigger story. Cooper lost his leg, but he’s still a champion. And still so full of love. No need for a pity party here.

My girl friend said something the other day that stuck with me.

Her sister had just retired after more than thirty years in aerospace — a demanding corporate career in a male-dominated industry.

“I feel like I got my sister back!” she said.

Not because her sister had changed.

Because the funny, mischievous, joyful woman she remembered from childhood had reappeared.

That comment stayed with me.

Where had she gone?

Not physically, of course. She had been there all along.

But somehow the playful, carefree girl had become buried beneath deadlines, responsibility, meetings, expectations, and decades of carrying the weight of a serious career.

It made me wonder how many of us slowly disappear without ever noticing.

Where Did the Old Me Go?

We become so focused on building a successful life that we don’t realize we’re quietly leaving pieces of ourselves behind.

Work demands our attention. Marriage asks for compromise. Motherhood asks for sacrifice. Caretaking asks for endurance. Achievement asks for more achievement.

None of these things are wrong. Many of them are beautiful and meaningful.

But over time, we learn to edit ourselves.

Loud parts become quieter. Playful parts become “unprofessional.” Curious parts become “impractical.” Goofy parts become “immature.”

Without meaning to, we begin presenting edited version of ourselves we believe the world will accept — instead of the full person we actually are.

Finding Relief

I know that happened to me.

When my marriage ended, I expected grief.

What I didn’t expect was something that arrived later.

Relief.

Not relief because my marriage had ended.

Relief because I no longer felt like I had to be someone else’s version of myself.

For the first time in years, I could simply be... me.

It didn’t happen overnight. The real me had been buried for a long time. Beneath trying to keep the peace. Beneath worrying about everyone else’s needs. Beneath years of believing that being dependable mattered more than being joyful.

Little by little, those layers began to fall away.

Now I laugh more. I’m more curious. My creativity is blooming. I’m dancing. I’m creating spaces that reflect me.

I’m not becoming someone new.

I’m becoming someone I recognized.

Reconnected with Who I am Meant to Be

And perhaps that’s the greatest surprise.

Maybe healing isn’t about reinventing ourselves.

Maybe it’s about uncovering ourselves.

To remember the woman who existed before I learned to edit myself.

The woman who laughed too loudly… danced because dancing was fun…read mystery novels simply because she couldn’t wait to find out who did it… wandered bookstores without needing to justify buying another book…delighted in beautiful things simply because they made her smile.

That woman never disappeared.

She was simply waiting beneath the weight of who she thought she had to be.

Finding My Joy

These days I think a lot about joy.

Not because it’s frivolous.

Because it’s evidence that I’m still here.

Every time I dance... Every time I laugh until my stomach hurts... Every time I decorate a room exactly the way I want... Every time I follow my curiosity instead of my obligation...

I feel another piece of myself returning.

And maybe that’s what coming alive really means.

Not becoming someone different.

Becoming more completely ourselves.

Your Turn

So let me ask you something.

If someone who loved you as a child met you today —

Would they say, “There you are.”

Or would they wonder where you went?

Perhaps that’s the invitation.

Not to become someone new.

But to gently uncover the woman who has been waiting for you all along.

If this essay landed for you, the Art of Coming Alive series continues next week. Subscribe to Boudoir Banter today!

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The Tarot Nook

The Lovers

The Lovers card is about choice, alignment, and becoming whole. That is exactly what I’m talking about here: reconnecting with the parts of ourselves that we have lost connection with in order to feel like with meet other’s expections.

But now you have the freedom to CHOOSE what you want. This emphasizes self-consultation. Are you going to choose the woman who is emerging? This choice allows you to integrate all the different parts of yourself into one whole.

You have the freedom to choose. What do you choose????

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Not because I needed the exercise. Not because it was good for my brain. Not because I wanted to meet people. Not because it would burn calories.

Just because I love to dance.

And that realization startled me.

Somewhere along the way I had stopped believing that “because it’s fun” was enough.

When Did Joy Need Credentials?

As children, we played because playing was the point. We didn’t play for fun. We played because it was fun. We disappeared into it. We lost track of time. No one asked us what skills we were developing or whether it was productive.

Then something shifted.

I didn’t dance because I loved to dance. I danced because it counted as exercise. I didn’t go for a walk because I enjoyed walking. I walked because it was healthy. I didn’t read mysteries because they delighted me. I convinced myself I should spend my reading time learning something that would make me wiser, more productive, or move my life forward.

Somewhere I absorbed the belief that joy had to justify itself.

If an activity couldn’t make me thinner, smarter, richer, or more successful — somehow it didn’t count.

When did that happen?

Why does pleasure need credentials?

Why do we constantly ask ourselves, What will I get out of this?

What if the answer was simply: joy?

What if fun were enough?

Witnessing Living with Joy

I’ve been observing my daughters who live with me.

One plans little weekend adventures. She cooks beautiful meals. The other dresses nicely every day, even when she’s not going out simply because it makes her feel good. They both create moments of delight in ordinary Tuesdays.

Their lives aren’t perfect. But they aren’t waiting until everything is solved before they’re allowed to experience joy. They simply sprinkle joy throughout their days.

Watching them, I realized something.

For decades, I organized my life around obligation. I remember standing in my kitchen at 10pm, finishing the last of the dishes, calculating how many hours until I had to be up again. That was my life. Not bad. Just... airless.

I had slowly replaced delight with accomplishment.

I began measuring my days by what I completed instead of what made me come alive.

And maybe that’s why I’ve been searching for this elusive feeling of aliveness.

The Moment Before the Dance Floor

But here’s what I’ve realized: it isn’t dancing that keeps me from feeling alive.

It’s what happens before I even step onto the floor.

I predict rejection before I begin.

What if no one asks me to dance? What if someone does and I’m terrible? What if I miss the signals? Step on someone’s feet? Look foolish?

So I leave. Or I don’t go at all.

My inner critic escorts me out before joy has a chance to arrive.

Not because someone else rejected me. Because I rejected myself first.

I told myself it was protection. But if I’m honest — it’s fear.

Fear of not being good enough. Fear of making mistakes. Fear of looking foolish. Fear of being seen — not just failing in public, but of wanting something openly and not getting it.

Whenever I begin enjoying myself, my inner commentator interrupts.

“You’re not very good.” “People are watching.” “You’re making mistakes.” “You look ridiculous.”

For years I believed that voice was protecting me.

Now I wonder if it has actually been protecting me from being fully alive.

And here’s the irony: everyone else is far too busy worrying about themselves to spend much time judging me. The harshest judge in the room has always been the one living inside my own head.

What Self-Abandonment Really Looks Like

We talk about self-abandonment as leaving ourselves to take care of everyone else. Ignoring our own needs. Saying yes when we mean no.

But sometimes self-abandonment is far quieter than that.

It’s allowing our inner critic to make our decisions.

It’s leaving before the music starts.

It’s saying no to joy before joy ever has the chance to say yes to us.

The Shift

The older I get, the less interested I am in organizing my life around obligation.

I’m much more interested in organizing it around aliveness.

Around dancing. Around conversations that stretch late into the evening. Around wandering bookstores. Around traveling simply because somewhere beautiful calls my name. Around creating a home that delights me every time I walk through the front door.

No one is grading me anymore.

But I’m not sure I ever believed that.

Maybe the sense of aliveness I’ve been searching for isn’t something I have to find.

Maybe it’s what remains when I stop abandoning myself.

Maybe joy never disappeared.

Maybe it was simply waiting for me to stop asking permission.

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The Tarot Nook

The Empress

The Empress asks: What kind of life are you choosing to create?

The Empress doesn't ask whether joy is productive. She doesn't justify beauty, music, gardens, or good food. She simply receives them. She reminds us that a full life isn't measured only by what we accomplish, but by what we allow ourselves to experience.

Perhaps that's the invitation.

Not to earn delight, but to return to it.

As a Major Arcana card, this insight is about your whole life. Not just today. What are you choosing to create?

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I walked into the room feeling shy and awkward. It had taken everything I had just to get there — pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I had missed the first class, so I already felt behind before I’d even begun.

Then the music came on.

And I knew, finally, I was home.

After eight months of attending salsa classes weekly without recognizing a single song, I knew in an instant that my heart belonged to swing.

I didn’t sit down for two hours — and then only to drive home.

I felt alive. Connected. Thrilled. I was doing what I love, moving to music I love. The afterglow lasted three days.

I’m no swing superstar. I fumbled over my feet. I stepped on my partners’ toes. I turned the wrong way more than once. But the rhythm kept me moving, I couldn’t stop smiling, and something deep inside me kept saying yes.

My body recognized where I belonged before my mind had a chance to catch up.

The Wrong Question

For years I thought finding myself would be an intellectual exercise. I thought I would think my way into my next chapter.

Read enough books. Journal enough pages. Pull enough tarot cards in the right order. And eventually clarity would arrive.

Instead, my body figured it out first.

Before my brain had a chance to make a spreadsheet of pros and cons, my hips were already undulating to the rhythm of the music.

Maybe we don’t think our way home.

Maybe we feel our way there.

Recognition Energy

What happened on that dance floor wasn’t discovery. It was recognition.

Some forgotten part of myself suddenly woke up and said: I know this. I remember this. This feels like me.

Not an external recognition — an internal one.

I get the same feeling teaching water aerobics — leading a group of women to push themselves, become their best, express something true. In those moments I am not performing. I am simply being the person I am at my core.

This is what recognition energy feels like: not the excitement of something new, but the relief of something remembered.

Your Breadcrumbs

When do you lose track of time? When do you stop checking your phone? When does your body relax without being told to? What conversations leave you energized instead of drained? What music makes you move before you even realize you’re dancing?

Those are your breadcrumbs.

Follow them.

I have spent so much of my life asking, “What am I good at?”

Maybe that’s the wrong question.

Perhaps the better question is: “What makes me feel unmistakably alive?”

Because the things that make us come alive are almost always pointing us back toward ourselves.

My Mother and the Music

My mother has Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t remember my name. Or my birthday. Or her own birthday. She doesn’t recognize faces anymore.

But she remembers the music.

She knows every word to every church hymn she grew up singing. She knows the swing dance music of her youth. Her body sways before her mind even registers that the song has begun.

The music somehow bypasses memory and goes directly to identity.

I wonder if that’s what happened to me on the dance floor.

Not because I had forgotten how to dance.

Because I had forgotten a part of myself.

Maybe It’s Waiting to Be Recognized

Pay attention this week.

Notice what makes your shoulders drop. Notice what makes you laugh without trying. Notice what makes you forget the time. Notice what gives you energy instead of taking it away. Notice what makes you think, “I could do this for hours.”

Those moments aren’t accidents. They’re invitations.

Perhaps the life you’ve been looking for isn’t something you have to create from scratch.

Perhaps it’s simply the part of yourself that has been patiently waiting —

for the music to start.

The opposite of self-abandonment isn’t self-improvement.

It’s self-recognition.

Next week I’m beginning a new series: The Art of Coming Alive. Over the coming weeks we’ll explore how to follow the breadcrumbs back to yourself — in your body, your relationships, your work, and your daily life. If this essay landed for you, you won’t want to miss what’s coming.

If you’ve been reading along and finding value here, this is a beautiful moment to support my work, become a paid subscriber and join me for the full journey.

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The Tarot Nook

Queen of Wands

This week’s card couldn’t have been more fitting.

The Queen of Wands isn’t the queen of confidence.

She’s the queen of aliveness.

She reminds us that there are moments when something inside us suddenly says, “Yes. This is me.” Not because we’ve perfected a skill. Not because someone applauds us. But because some forgotten part of ourselves wakes up.

That’s exactly what happened to me on the dance floor.

For two hours, I wasn’t trying to become someone else. I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t proving. I wasn’t earning.

I was simply expressing.

The Queen of Wands teaches that our deepest vitality comes from living in alignment with who we are—not who we think we should be.

She invites us to notice what lights us up.

What makes us lose track of time.

What fills us with energy instead of draining it.

Perhaps your life isn’t asking you to become someone new.

Perhaps it’s inviting you to become more fully yourself.

The question this Queen asks isn’t:

“Who am I?”

It’s this:

“Where does my fire burn brightest?”

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One of the most influential books I’ve ever read is Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. One chapter in particular — “Best Quality” — has stayed with me since I first read it in the early 1990s.

Here’s the scene, as I remember it.

It’s Chinese New Year, and the family is gathered around the table. A huge platter of Dungeness crabs is passed from person to person. In Chinese tradition, you choose the very best one available. It’s not considered selfish; it’s considered proper. You honor the abundance that has been provided.

The first woman chooses the finest crab for her daughter and another beautiful one for herself. The platter continues around the table. Each person takes the best of what remains.

Eventually, it reaches June and her mother.

Only two crabs are left.

One is whole and beautiful. The other is damaged.

The table is quiet. Steam rising. The smell of the sea and ginger in the air. Everyone watching without watching.

Without hesitation, June reaches for the damaged crab, leaving the better one for her mother.

“No,” her mother says firmly. “Take the good one.”

June resists. Her mother insists.

What’s Going On?

For years, I thought this scene was about a mother’s love, wanting her daughter to have the best crab. And June wants her mom to have the best crab.

Now I think it’s about something much deeper.

It’s not about the crab.

It’s the moment before June’s hand moves.

She doesn’t stop and ask herself: “Which one do I want?”

She doesn’t weigh the options. She doesn’t consciously decide to sacrifice.

Her hand simply reaches.

Automatically.

That is the part that has haunted me.

Identity Moves Faster Than Awareness

June’s hand didn’t reach for the broken crab just this once. It had been reaching her whole life. The dinner table just made it visible.

I don’t think June chose the damaged crab.

I think she was the woman who chose the damaged crab.

That was her identity. Her nervous system had learned, long before that dinner, that someone else should have the better piece. Her hand moved before her awareness had a chance to catch up.

I wonder how many of us live that way.

Not because we consciously decide to take less. Because taking less has become who we believe we are.

The Broken Crab

Self-abandonment doesn’t usually announce itself.

It happens in the accumulated result of thousands of tiny moments — each one seemingly insignificant, each one sending the same quiet message.

Someone asks where you’d like to eat. You know exactly where you’d like to go. Instead you hear yourself say, “Whatever you want is fine.” Broken crab.

Someone interrupts you while you’re speaking. You never return to what you were saying. Broken crab.

You’re exhausted. Someone asks one more favor. You immediately say yes. Broken crab.

You receive a compliment. Instead of simply saying thank you, you explain why it isn’t true. Broken crab.

Your body says, “I’m hungry.” Your mind replies, “I’ll eat after I finish this.” Broken crab.

You look in the mirror. The first thing you notice is the wrinkle. Not your smile. Not your kind eyes. Broken crab.

Every one of these moments seems insignificant.

But together they become a way of living.

Every time I ignore what I want, I send myself the same message: my needs can wait. Eventually, I stop asking what my needs are.

Generosity or Self-Abandonment?

Here’s the distinction that changed everything for me.

Giving someone the better crab isn’t necessarily self-abandonment.

Sometimes it’s generosity.

The difference is whether you had a choice.

Generosity says: “I know what I want, and I freely choose to give it away.”

Self-abandonment says: “I never even asked myself what I wanted.”

One comes from freedom. The other comes from habit.

That difference matters more than most of us realize.

Where Agency Begins

Agency doesn’t begin when you choose the better crab.

Agency begins one second earlier.

It begins when you notice your hand reaching.

When you pause.

When you ask: “What do I want?”

Maybe you’ll still choose to give someone else the better piece. But now it’s a gift. Not an erasure of yourself.

Not to become selfish.

Simply to become visible to yourself.

That tiny pause changes everything.

The Broken Crab Experiment

If you’re willing, spend the next seven days simply noticing.

Don’t try to change anything yet. Just watch where your hand reaches.

Each time you catch yourself taking a broken crab, write it down. It might look like this:

• I said “I don’t care,” when I actually did.

• I apologized for something that didn’t require an apology.

• I let someone interrupt me and never finished my thought.

• I skipped lunch because everyone else needed something.

• I dismissed a compliment.

• I chose what everyone else wanted without consulting myself.

At the end of the week, sit quietly with these three questions:

1. Where do I most often reach for the broken crab? In relationships? Work? Family? My body? My dreams?

2. What identity might be driving that pattern? Am I trying to be easy? Helpful? Invisible? Good? Needed?

3. What would it look like to pause next time? Not to become selfish. Simply to become visible to myself.

Seeing things differently.

Perhaps that’s where reclamation begins.

Not with one grand declaration. Not with leaving your job or ending your marriage.

Perhaps it begins in a hundred ordinary moments when you notice your hand reaching for the broken crab —

— and for the very first time, you stop long enough to ask:

“Which one do I actually want?”

Because agency isn’t about taking the biggest crab.

It’s about remembering that your desire belongs at the table too.

The Tarot Nook

The Queen of Cups Reversed

The Queen of Cups is the Queen of Intuition. She is deeply caring and attune to others. Reversed, the Queen puts other people first, she has poor emotional boundaries. She distrusts her inner sense of knowing.

The message here is that you need to broaden your circle of generosity to include YOURSELF. Offer compassion and love for yourself as well as others. Remember to be generous with yourself. This is the shift in awareness of your actions. Bring the motive from the unseen into the light. Take a pause and make a conscious decision on which crab to take. Understand the bigger picture.

Last week a friend played a gotcha joke on me.

For a few seconds, I genuinely believed something terrible had happened.

Then came the reveal.

I laughed politely.

But inside, something much older had already been activated.

At first I thought I was simply hurt by the joke.

Then came something even more painful.

Shame.

I felt foolish for believing it. I felt too sensitive for not finding it funny. I felt embarrassed that I had reacted so strongly.

Without thinking, I did what I have done for decades.

I withdrew.

Not because my friend rejected me.

Because I rejected myself.

That was the real revelation.

The Voice That Hurt Me Most Was Mine

For years, I thought self-abandonment happened in big moments.

Staying too long in the wrong relationship. Never asking for the promotion. Ignoring my dreams.

Now I think it often happens in less than five seconds.

An incident occurs. A feeling arises. And then...

I judge myself for having the feeling.

That’s the moment everything changes.

I finally had a name for the pattern that had followed me through much of my life.

Trigger → Feeling → Self-Judgment → Shame → Withdrawal

The trigger wasn’t the problem. The feeling wasn’t the problem. The problem was the judgment.

Nothing changed for me until I realized the judgment wasn’t coming from my friend.

It was coming from me.

“How could you be so stupid?” “Why would you fall for that?” “What’s wrong with you?”

Before my friend had even finished laughing, another voice had entered the room.

Mine.

That voice took me straight back to old stories.

You’re not smart enough. You’re too sensitive. You’re not enough.

No wonder I withdrew.

The Pattern Interrupt

As I sat with the experience, I realized I needed what I often forget I know.

A pattern interrupt.

Not changing the trigger. Changing what happens after it.

What would agency look like here?

I began imagining a different pathway.

Trigger → Feeling → Curiosity → Self-Compassion → Choice

Notice what changed.

Not the event. Not the feeling. Only what happened next.

Curiosity interrupted certainty.

Judgment says: “I know what this means.” Curiosity says: “I wonder what this means.”

The difference between those two sentences is the difference between abandoning yourself and staying.

Curiosity Lives in the Space

Viktor Frankl famously wrote:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”

For years I thought that space was filled with willpower.

Now I think it is filled with curiosity.

Curiosity gives our nervous system another option besides old programming.

Instead of immediately deciding what something means — we become interested. Instead of condemning ourselves — we become compassionate. Instead of abandoning ourselves — we stay.

A Different Response

If I could replay that moment today, perhaps it would sound something like this:

“Wow. That really got me. I genuinely thought something awful had happened. No wonder my body reacted the way it did.”

“Interesting... I notice I don’t actually enjoy this kind of teasing. My friend and I probably just have different senses of humor.”

“I don’t know whether my friend intended to hurt me or not.”

“What I do know is what happened inside me.”

“So... what do I want to do now?”

That question changes everything.

Not: Who’s right?

But: What do I need?

That is agency.

Choosing Yourself

Agency isn’t about controlling life.

People will still disappoint us. We will still be misunderstood. We will still get triggered.

Agency doesn’t eliminate those experiences.

It changes what happens after them.

Instead of immediately turning against ourselves, we learn to remain on our own side.

Feel the feeling. Stay curious. Offer yourself compassion before criticism. Then choose.

Again and again and again.

Perhaps that’s how self-trust is built.

Not through one dramatic breakthrough.

But through hundreds of moments when we refuse to abandon ourselves.

Because I’m beginning to believe that choosing yourself isn’t one grand decision.

It’s what happens in the quiet space between the trigger...

and the shame.

The Tarot Nook

The Page of Swords

This is the perfect card for this blog. The Page of Swords is all about curiosity! He is the learner who wants to understand what is going on. He even questions the stories we tell ourselves… He challenges the inner critic to ask if the story is really true.

The entire pattern interrupt is an invitation to become an investigator of our own inner dialogue.

Instead of accepting the first interpretation our inner critic offers, you pause and ask:

“Is that actually true?”

That simple question is pure Page of Swords—and it’s also one of the clearest expressions of agency.

The fireplace in my home once had a beautiful plaster façade — a cornucopia spilling fruit and vegetables. It wasn’t grand or elaborate. It was simply graceful and elegant.

During the first remodel in 2002, it was destroyed.

In its place now stands a cold white marble fireplace.

Some may consider it beautiful.

But I long for the original one.

I am enveloped with the same feeling when I wander through flea markets in France.

Among the antique silver and old books you can find boxes of black-and-white family photographs. Wedding portraits. Babies. Soldiers. Women in hats. Children laughing.

Once, these people were someone’s whole world.

Someone kissed those cheeks. Someone mourned when they died.

Now the photos are stashed in a cardboard box and sell for a few euros each.

It makes me feel unexpectedly sad.

I think about my great-aunts who spent forty years teaching elementary school in Newark, New Jersey. They poured their lives into other people’s children — teaching cursive, multiplication tables, and good manners.

Most of those children probably never think about their old teachers.

What happens to all that love? What happens when the memories of the people fade? What is left?

Why do I find myself mourning what was instead of feeling excited about what could still be?

Transitions

I think I’ve finally figured it out.

I’m not grieving fireplaces. Or old photographs. Or my aunts.

I’m grieving the lost connection to the past.

The woman who was a wife. The woman who kept the family together. The woman who believed safety came from keeping everyone else happy.

Those versions of me deserve to be honored.

But they cannot be allowed to keep living my life.

For a long time I thought the antidote to grief was acceptance. Sit with it. Make peace with it. But I’ve come to believe the real antidote is something more active. Not moving on — but moving forward with intention.

That, I’ve discovered, is what agency actually requires.

Not controlling life.

Choosing it.

Agency Is Built Like a Muscle

Over the past several weeks I’ve been thinking about agency as something very different from confidence.

I don’t think we’re simply born with agency. I think it’s a collection of muscles — awareness, self-consultation, desire, choice, emotional tolerance, boundaries — that grow stronger through deliberate practice. Like physical muscles, they fatigue when weak. They strengthen with repetition. Eventually, they become part of who we are.

Today I want to share three more muscles — the ones I believe actually have the power to change your life.

Self-trust. Standards. Congruence.

Self-Trust

For years I believed self-trust was something lucky people were born with.

Now I know it has to be built.

As a child, I was always picked last in PE. No one expected me to be athletic. I can still feel it — the slow dread of standing there, watching everyone else get chosen, learning in real time what my body was worth to the world. I began to identity as uncoordinated. That became my identity for decades.

The interesting thing about self-trust is that it isn’t created by believing.

It’s created by evidence.

My writing taught me this. Readers began writing to tell me my words helped them feel seen. That didn’t build my worth — it built evidence that I had something meaningful to say. Each message became a data point I couldn’t argue with.

The same thing happened with smaller choices. In redecorating the house, I had to find a temporary place for the five of us to live (this includes the dog, Cooper). I had to pick a contractor. I had to select a bathtub… You know how remodeling goes… 100,000 tiny decisions. I don’t believe I would have trusted myself with all of this in the past. But now, I feel like a Nike ad. Just do it! This is all building evidence that I can trust my decisions and everything will turn out, or else, we can PIVOT!!! The Life-Changing Magic of Pivoting!!!! I am not RIGID. I am flexible. I can make decisions and change my mind. And it will all be OK!!! My friend painted her house light blue. Guess what. She HATED it. So she had it repainted. This time in dark blue. Now she LOVES it. Why live with what you HATE when you have the power to change it?

Self-trust isn’t built through affirmations, or meditation, or therapy, wishing it were so.

It’s built through evidence, one small kept promise at a time.

Standards

For years I focused almost exclusively on goals. I wrote about productivity and goal setting. I led workshops and retreats. I read everything I could find about achieving your goals. I was pretty obsessed.

Lose ten pounds. Live in France. Make new friends. Write a successful newsletter.

Goals matter.

But standards changed my life.

Goals ask: What do I want to accomplish?

Standards ask: Who am I committed to becoming?

Goal vs. Standard

Lose 10 pounds

Nourish my body with respect.

Make three new friends

I do not abandon myself in relationships.

Live in France

Create beauty and pleasure wherever I am.

Become more confident

Tell the truth even when it’s uncomfortable.

Goals are destinations. Standards are ways of living.

The beautiful thing about standards is that they raise the floor. As you grow, your minimum acceptable shifts upward. The old floor becomes unacceptable. You have a new baseline — not because you forced it, but because you became someone different.

You don’t have to wait until you’ve arrived somewhere before becoming the woman you want to be.

You simply begin living as her.

Every day.

What is acceptable for the woman I am becoming?

That one question has changed hundreds of small decisions.

Congruence

Congruence means your outer life reflects your inner values.

For years mine didn’t — and I felt the gap long before I had a name for it.

I believed in beauty, but my office was chaos. I encouraged women to take care of themselves, then ignored my own body. I taught confidence in the pool, then quietly doubted myself the moment I got home.

I remember standing in my kitchen one evening, having just delivered what felt like a meaningful water aerobics class — women laughing, moving, feeling strong — and coming home to a disorganized office I’d been avoiding for three days, a supplement I kept forgetting to take, a conversation I’d been putting off. The woman I was in that pool and the woman I came home to felt like strangers to each other.

That gap is exhausting in a way that’s hard to explain. It’s not the exhaustion of doing too much. It’s the exhaustion of being two different people at once.

Peace, I’ve discovered, doesn’t come from becoming perfect.

It comes from shrinking that gap. It comes from living in congruence.

One boundary. One honest conversation. One healthy meal. One organized drawer. One courageous choice.

Congruence isn’t perfection.

It’s alignment.

What the Photographs Were Really Saying

Looking back, I realize those old photographs at the flea market weren’t making me sad because they represented forgotten people.

They reminded me that every season of life eventually becomes a memory.

The question isn’t whether you should honor your past. Of course you should. The question is whether you continue living there.

Agency asks you to remember with gratitude and choose with courage. To carry forward the wisdom without dragging along the identities that no longer fit.

Every one of these muscles strengthens the same way.

Not through one dramatic breakthrough.

But through hundreds of tiny repetitions.

Every time you consult yourself. Every time you tell the truth. Every time you honor one small desire. Every time you choose the woman you are becoming over the woman you’ve always been.

That is how agency is built.

Before almost every decision now, I ask myself one question:

What is acceptable for the woman I am becoming?

Then I let her answer.

The Tarot Nook

Eight of Pentacles Reversed

At first, I was surprised to pull the Eight of Pentacles reversed for an article about building the muscles of agency.

Then I realized...

The card isn’t asking whether I’m practicing.

It’s asking what I’m practicing.

For years, I practiced saying yes when I meant no.

I practiced putting everyone else’s needs ahead of my own.

I practiced doubting myself.

I practiced asking for permission.

Eventually, I became very good at all of it.

The Eight of Pentacles reversed reminds me that every repetition strengthens a muscle—whether that habit serves me or not.

If I want a different life, I don’t need one heroic act.

I need different repetitions.

Self-trust is practiced.

Boundaries are practiced.

Standards are practiced.

Congruence is practiced.

Agency isn’t something we discover in a single day.

It’s something we build, one small choice at a time.

The question isn’t whether you’re building muscles.

You’re always building them.

The real question is: Which muscles are you strengthening every day?

And are those the muscles you INTEND to build?

I tell my kids: You become like the five people you hang around. Muscles are the same. You get the muscles you practice. If you practice good manners, you will have good manners. If you practice thinking through your decisions, you will think through your decisions… etc.

You get what you focus on.

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The painter stood in my kitchen looking slightly exasperated.

“Did you pick the cabinet color yet?”

He had already prepped the house and was ready to paint. The only thing holding up the project was me.

For months, I had known this decision was coming. I had collected paint samples, pinned inspiration photos, and stared at what felt like thousands of color options. Every time I tried to choose, I could actually feel myself shutting down.

I was like a turtle pulling its head back into its shell.

Have you ever looked at one of those paint decks? There are endless shades of white alone. Add wallpaper, countertops, flooring, trim, lighting, and fourteen rooms that all need to flow together, and suddenly one simple decision feels impossible.

At first, I thought the problem was choosing the right color.

It wasn’t.

The problem was that I had forgotten how to trust myself to make the decision.

That realization has everything to do with agency.

The Power of One Decision

Eventually, I stopped asking myself, “What color should I choose?”

Instead, I asked a better question:

“What will help me move this project forward?”

The answer was surprisingly simple.

I called Farrow & Ball and scheduled a color consultation.

For $300, I was hiring someone with expertise—not to make my decisions for me, but to help me make them with confidence.

Jordan arrived with her paint books, walked through the house, and began asking questions.

Not, “What color do you want?”

But questions that went much deeper.

“What do you want this room to feel like?”

“What are you drawn to?”

“How do you want people to experience this space?”

Those questions changed everything.

She wasn’t choosing paint colors.

She was helping me reconnect with my own vision.

When I showed her the wallpaper I’d chosen for the foyer, she immediately understood the direction I was heading. When I described wanting the living room to feel like an intimate speakeasy, she didn’t tell me I was wrong.

She built from my vision.

She suggested possibilities.

She narrowed the options.

She helped me see how each room could support the next so the entire house told one cohesive story.

She offered choices.

I made the decisions.

That distinction matters.

What This Taught Me About Agency

As I reflected on the experience, I realized I hadn’t been struggling with paint colors at all.

I had been strengthening three muscles of agency:

Choice.

Emotional Tolerance.

Boundaries.

Last week we talked about the first three muscles of agency:

• Awareness

• Self-Consultation

• Desire

First you become aware that you’ve been abandoning yourself.

Then you begin asking yourself what you think.

Finally, you reconnect with what you actually want.

Those muscles prepare you for this week’s work.

Because once you know what you want...

you have to choose.

The Muscle of Choice

Agency requires decisions.

Not perfect decisions.

Just decisions.

For years, I had become accustomed to looking outside myself for answers.

What did everyone else think?

What would make the most sense?

What would make everyone happy?

This project forced me to practice something different.

I had to decide.

Not because I knew my choices would be perfect.

But because every decision reminded me that I was capable of directing my own life.

Agency isn’t built by waiting until you’re certain.

It’s built by choosing.

The Muscle of Emotional Tolerance

Here’s where the real work began.

Everyone had an opinion.

The painter wanted decisions so he could keep moving.

The project manager wanted me to think through every detail.

My children had ideas about how the house should look.

Everyone was trying to help.

But I found myself trying to accommodate everyone.

Then I realized something.

When you try to make everyone happy, you eventually lose yourself—and no one ends up happy anyway.

The real challenge wasn’t choosing paint.

It was learning to tolerate the discomfort of knowing someone might not agree with my choices.

That is emotional tolerance.

Can I tolerate someone else’s disappointment?

Can I tolerate not being universally liked?

Can I tolerate making a decision that someone else wouldn’t make?

Those are muscles.

And like every muscle, they grow stronger with practice.

The Muscle of Boundaries

Boundaries often get misunderstood.

People think they’re about controlling other people’s behavior.

They’re not.

Boundaries communicate what you will participate in.

Jordan never crossed my boundaries.

She didn’t tell me what I should like.

She didn’t impose her taste.

She worked within the parameters I established.

That’s exactly how healthy boundaries work.

They create a framework within which choices can be made.

The clearer your boundaries become, the easier your decisions become.

Because you’ve already decided what matters most.

Looking Back

One of the reasons I couldn’t see my self-abandonment while I was living it is because I was inside it.

A close friend—someone who had known me before I was married—saw me about a year ago and quietly remarked how much smaller my life had become.

At first, I resisted hearing it.

Then I realized she was right.

I often tell my children,

“You can’t read the label from inside the jar.”

When you’re inside your own life, gradual changes are almost impossible to see.

Sometimes someone who loves you can see what you’ve stopped noticing.

That conversation became one of the first sparks that woke me up.

Your Practice This Week

Think about one decision you’ve been postponing.

It doesn’t have to be life-changing.

It might be something as simple as saying yes.

Or saying no.

Ask yourself three questions:

• What do I truly want?

• What discomfort am I afraid of feeling if I choose it?

• What boundary would support that choice?

Then make the decision.

Not because you’re completely certain.

But because every decision strengthens your agency.

Every choice is another vote for becoming the woman who trusts herself.

Next week we’ll strengthen the next three muscles of agency:

Self-Trust, Standards, and Congruence.

Until then, remember:

You don’t build agency by making perfect decisions.

You build it by making your own.

The Tarot Nook

The King of Wands Reversed

The King of Wands is a visionary. Upright, he trusts his judgment and confidently leads from his own inner compass. Reversed, he reminds us what happens when we surrender our authority to everyone else’s opinions.

This week’s blog is about strengthening the muscles of choice, emotional tolerance, and boundaries. Those muscles ask us to make decisions that reflect our own values—even when others might choose differently.

When I found myself overwhelmed by something as simple as choosing paint colors, it wasn’t because I lacked good taste or creativity. It was because I had spent years becoming more attuned to everyone else’s opinions than my own. The King of Wands reversed gently asks, “Whose voice is guiding your decisions?”

The goal isn’t to ignore advice. Jordan’s expertise was invaluable. The goal is to remember that advice should inform your choices—not replace them.

The King invites us to reclaim our inner authority. To trust our vision. To lead ourselves with courage instead of seeking approval.

This week, notice where you’ve handed someone else the crown. Then quietly place it back where it belongs.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been exploring self-abandonment—how it happens so gradually that we don’t even realize we’re disappearing from our own lives.

We’ve talked about the Self-Abandonment Compass, the Good Girl Trap, the Good Wife Cage, and the hidden cost of doing everything “right.” But awareness is only the beginning.

Now it’s time to answer the question every woman eventually asks:

“How do I get myself back?”

A few months after my divorce, I noticed something strange.

It wasn’t the big decisions that were difficult.

It was the little ones.

What restaurant did I want to go to?

What color should I paint my kitchen?

What did I want to do on a Saturday afternoon?

For years, I had become so accustomed to considering everyone else’s preferences that I had quietly stopped consulting myself.

At first, I thought I had lost my confidence.

Now I realize something very different.

I hadn’t lost my confidence.

I had lost my agency.

And that realization changed everything.

What Is Agency?

Agency is the belief that you have both the right and the responsibility to shape your own life.

It isn’t about controlling everything.

No one can control whether someone loves you, whether a marriage survives, whether your children call, or whether life unfolds exactly as you planned.

But you can always choose your actions.

You can always choose your responses.

And that is where your power lives.

The definition that has guided me this year is this:

Agency is the capacity to keep choosing yourself—even when you cannot choose the outcome.

That single idea has become one of the most important lessons of my own journey.

Instead of spending my energy wishing the past had been different, I began asking a different question:

“What can I create from here?”

Because while you cannot rewrite yesterday, you have enormous influence over tomorrow.

The Agency Blueprint

Over the past year, I’ve come to believe that agency isn’t a personality trait.

It isn’t something some people are born with while others are not.

Agency is a collection of muscles.

Like every muscle, it becomes stronger through deliberate practice.

Like every muscle, it weakens when it isn’t used.

And just like after a difficult workout, when we’re emotionally exhausted we don’t have access to our full strength.

The good news?

Muscles can always be strengthened.

Over the next four weeks, I’ll introduce what I call The Agency Blueprint—a framework built around twelve Muscles of Agency.

I’ll explore them three at a time.

Each muscle builds upon the one before it.

As you strengthen them, you’ll begin to:

• See yourself more clearly.

• Become the author of your own life instead of a supporting character in someone else’s.

• Become someone you can rely on.

• Align your outer life with your inner truth.

Without agency, life often feels like something that happens to us.

With agency, we begin intentionally creating a life that reflects who we truly are.

Why This Matters to Me

At the beginning of 2025, I chose a single word for the year.

Agency.

At the time, I had no idea how significant that word would become.

As I navigated divorce, I realized I couldn’t change what had happened.

But I could decide who I wanted to become.

Some days those choices were tiny.

Other days they were incredibly difficult.

But every small decision strengthened a muscle that had been dormant for years.

Looking back, I can see that I wasn’t simply rebuilding my life.

I was rebuilding my relationship with myself.

My hope is that by sharing what I’ve learned, you will discover that you are capable of doing the same.

A Lesson from the Pool

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I’ve taught water aerobics for more than twenty years.

One thing I see every week is that people almost always underestimate their own strength.

Women arrive convinced they “can’t.”

They think they’re too old.

Too weak.

Too out of shape.

And then, week after week, they surprise themselves.

Not because they suddenly become stronger overnight.

Because they keep showing up.

Strength isn’t something you discover.

It’s something you build.

Agency works exactly the same way.

You don’t wake up one morning feeling empowered.

You strengthen it one choice at a time.

And I want you to hear this because I believe it with my whole heart:

You are so much stronger than you know.

Life may challenge you in ways you never expected.

There may be moments when the pain feels unbearable.

There may be days when you feel numb—or wish you felt numb.

Keep going.

One choice.

One conversation.

One decision.

One step.

And when it feels like too much, reach out.

You don’t have to do this alone.

Asking for support is also an act of agency.

Part One: The First Three Muscles of Agency

1. The Muscle of Awareness

Agency begins with seeing clearly.

This muscle notices resentment.

Exhaustion.

Overachievement.

People-pleasing.

Indecision.

Self-abandonment.

Without awareness, we remain on autopilot.

When I was married, I didn’t recognize how often I silenced myself.

I didn’t see how frequently I made excuses for my husband.

I didn’t realize how exhausted I was from trying to maintain peace between my inner reality and my outer life.

Looking back, I understand that these were survival strategies.

Awareness wasn’t the end of the journey.

It was the beginning.

Because once we see clearly, we can begin choosing differently.

2. The Muscle of Self-Consultation

This may be the first true muscle of agency.

Self-abandonment teaches you to stop consulting yourself.

Instead of asking,

“What do I think?”

you ask,

“What does everyone else think?”

Instead of asking,

“What do I want?”

you ask,

“What makes the most sense?”

When I first began rebuilding this muscle, the answers didn’t come quickly.

Sometimes they arrived two or three days after a conversation.

I’d call someone back and say,

“Remember what we talked about earlier this week? I finally know what I was feeling.”

That’s how disconnected I had become from my own inner voice.

If that’s where you are, be patient.

You’re not failing.

You’re rebuilding a muscle that hasn’t been used in a very long time.

3. The Muscle of Desire

Once you know what you think, you can begin discovering what you want.

Not what is practical.

Not what everyone expects.

Not what causes the least disruption.

What delights you?

What energizes you?

What makes you curious?

Desire isn’t selfish.

Desire is information.

It tells you where your life wants to grow.

Your Practice This Week

Before you ask your spouse, your children, your best friend—or even Google—pause.

Take thirty seconds.

Ask yourself:

What do I think?

What do I want?

Don’t worry if the answers don’t come immediately.

The goal isn’t to have all the answers.

The goal is to begin consulting the one person whose voice may have been missing for far too long:

Your own.

That’s where agency begins.

Next week we’ll strengthen the next three muscles of agency:

Choice, Emotional Tolerance, and Boundaries.

Until then, keep listening.

Your inner voice has been there all along.

It may simply need the chance to be heard.

The Tarot Nook

The Knight of Swords Reversed

When you charge ahead without thought, that isn’t agency. That is moving on autopilot. That is exactly what this Knight is doing.

Agency doesn’t begin with bold action—it begins with quiet listening.

The reversed Knight often appears when your inner voice has been drowned out by obligation, people-pleasing, or self-doubt. Instead of charging ahead, he invites you to pause, reflect, and reconnect with your own truth.

For many women, self-abandonment doesn’t happen because they lack strength. It happens because they gradually stop consulting themselves. They become so accustomed to asking everyone else what they think that they forget to ask, “What do I think?”

Don’t rush to find the “right” answer. Strengthen the first muscles of agency by creating space to listen. Your deepest wisdom may not arrive immediately—and that’s okay. Sometimes the most courageous thing you can say is, “I need some time to think about that.”

Agency begins not when you move faster, but when you stop long enough to hear yourself again.

Walking down the aisle of a Weis Market in Havre de Grace, Maryland, I was following a young man who had offered to show me where to find bottled water when I heard a voice behind me.

“Ma’am… Ma’am…”

I turned around. A slightly out-of-breath woman in her twenties was weaving toward me through the carts. She stopped, caught her breath, and said, “I just had to tell you—you look so beautiful. I love your whole outfit. Have a great day.”

And off she went.

At 67, people are not usually chasing me down to tell me I look beautiful. I mumbled thank you. The man said, “The water is this way.” And I floated through the rest of the store—standing taller, chin up, something lit from the inside.

I told my sister about it later.

“Well,” she said, “you look great.”

There is something about unsolicited acknowledgment that nothing else quite replicates.

Her compliment did not create my beauty. But it exposed my hunger to have someone notice it.

I wish I could say I had completely outgrown that hunger.

I haven’t.

Why Women Feel Invisible After 55

When you are younger, the world constantly reflects you back to yourself.

Men notice you. Employers invest in your potential. Children need you. Society markets to you. People seek your attention, your labor, your care.

The world keeps sending back evidence that you have a place in it.

As you age, those reflections begin to diminish. And you start to feel invisible.

But perhaps what has actually happened is that you have lost the mirrors you were using to know your worth.

Those mirrors were always conditional. They reflected you when you were performing a socially valued function.

And here is the more uncomfortable truth:

The world has plenty of mirrors for the maiden and the mother.

It offers very few for the woman who belongs primarily to herself.

We call this invisibility. But often what we are really grieving is the loss of witnesses.

And there is a difference.

Social Menopause

Menopause changes how your body works.

Social menopause changes the terms under which the world agrees to notice you.

The attention once offered for beauty, fertility, service, and usefulness begins to recede—whether you wanted that attention or not.

As you age, the identity you have carried starts to shift beneath you. The roles that once made you legible to others—attractive, fertile, caregiving, productive—begin to loosen.

And in the space they leave behind, a disorienting question surfaces:

Who am I now?

Who do I even want to be?

I sit between stories.

The first story was:

Be beautiful.
Be chosen.
Be useful.
Raise children.
Support everyone.
Keep the family intact.
Make something of yourself.

I am no longer living that story.

But the next one has not fully announced itself yet.

For a while, I thought the spotlight had simply moved to my children and I had been reduced to a supporting role.

But their lives are not the sequel to mine.

They are separate stories entirely.

I am still the central character in my own.

My second story, I am beginning to understand, is this:

I no longer organize my identity around who needs me. I organize it around what feels alive in me.

The Hunger to Be Witnessed

What I craved most in my marriage was not praise.

It was something quieter and more essential than that.

I wanted my husband to witness me.

I wanted him to say:

I see the effort you made.
I see what this has cost you.
I see who you are becoming.
I see what you carried when nobody thanked you.

I wanted him to be proud to stand beside me.

Not constant applause—just acknowledgment that I existed and was evolving.

When that recognition did not come, I began to mistake his failure to see me for evidence that there was nothing worth seeing.

Slowly, quietly, I lost my sense of self.

Being looked at is not the same thing as being valued.

Being desired is not the same thing as being loved.

Being busy is not the same thing as being needed.

And yet I had spent years confusing each of those pairs—performing for mirrors that were never really showing me myself.

Some of the Invisibility Is Real

Of course, not all of this is happening inside us.

Some of the invisibility is real.

Older women are talked over, overlooked, underestimated, dismissed, and treated as though their most meaningful years are behind them. Their experience is often ignored. Their bodies disappear from advertising. Their opinions are treated as less relevant. Their ambition is regarded as surprising.

We should not spiritualize away a culture that genuinely looks past aging women.

But the culture’s blindness becomes even more dangerous when we begin using it as our own mirror.

When the world stops reflecting our value, do we stop believing it exists?

That is the deeper danger.

What I Had Been Outsourcing

As I have examined the different ways I abandoned myself, a pattern has emerged.

If your worth has depended on being desired, needed, admired, useful, or indispensable, then invisibility feels terrifying.

Because it seems to confirm what you feared all along:

That without a role to play, you do not quite exist.

But perhaps the problem was never only that others stopped seeing you.

Perhaps it was also that you stopped seeing yourself.

Or, more precisely, the parts of you that matter most—your wisdom, your depth, your courage, your compassion, your resilience, your hard-won experience—were never being reflected back by those mirrors in the first place.

Those are not the qualities our culture is trained to reward in women.

Where did we learn that being noticed was the same thing as existing?

What Becomes Possible

Human beings need to be witnessed.

Wanting recognition does not mean you are spiritually underdeveloped. We are relational creatures, and there is no shame in wanting someone to see us.

The goal is not to become so self-contained that no one’s attention matters.

The more nuanced truth is this:

I can know my worth without pretending I never need anyone to see me.

Self-validation does not mean becoming immune to recognition.

Compliments still warm us. Love still nourishes us. Being witnessed still matters.

The difference is that another person’s gaze becomes a gift—not life support.

I am still grateful to that young woman in Weis Market. Her compliment delighted me. It reminded me that being seen can be a small act of grace.

But the greater gift was what happened afterward.

For a few minutes, I walked differently because she saw me.

The question I now carry is whether I can learn to walk that way before anyone says a word.

Not because I no longer need other people.

But because another person’s gaze can delight in my light.

It should not be responsible for creating it.

It can warm me.

It cannot be the source of my flame.

Can I remain visible to myself?

That is the question for this chapter.

Self-Abandonment

If you think you’ve abandoned yourself, take this simple assessment and see. It’s free! If you have noticed a friend who is experiencing something similar, share this post with them.

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The Tarot Nook

Six of Pentacles Reversed

Upright, the Six of Pentacles is about generosity, giving and receiving, reciprocity. Reversed, it’s about power struggles and conditional reciprocity. This is exactly what the blog is talking about: me giving away my agency to my husband.

Worth that can be granted by another can also be withheld by another, giving them control.

Who have you given the authority to decide what you’re worth?

It’s like living under the belief that if I give enough, I will feel valued, that your worth is earned through performance.

This shines the light on the need to stop outsourcing our self-worth and let it shine from within. Know at your core your worth. Recognize your own value.

Perhaps you aren’t tired because you’re doing too much.

Perhaps you’re tired because you’ve been carrying someone you were never meant to carry.

Photo by Zoe on Unsplash

I’ve been sleeping eight hours a night.

Taking my vitamins.

Eating more protein.

Moving my body.

And yet… I wake up exhausted.

Not sleepy.

Exhausted.

The kind of exhaustion a nap doesn’t touch.

For months, I blamed everything I could think of. Maybe I needed more protein. Maybe I was low on minerals. Maybe I wasn’t exercising enough. Maybe I was spending too much time on the couch.

But when I stepped back and looked at the bigger picture—at the life I had before the carpet was pulled out from underneath me—I realized none of those were the real culprit.

I went from being a wife to suddenly single at sixty-seven.

That shift in identity is what has been draining me.

It’s not physical fatigue.

It’s identity fatigue.

And that is a completely different kind of exhaustion.

Identity fatigue happens when you’ve spent years living inside a role that no longer fits. The good girl. The strong one. The responsible one. The peacemaker. The woman who holds everything together.

Those identities have job descriptions.

The Good Girl keeps everyone happy.

The Strong One never asks for help.

The Responsible One remembers everything.

The Peacemaker makes sure everyone else is okay.

Those jobs don’t end at five o’clock.

They follow you to bed.

Your body may be resting, but your identity is still on duty.

That’s why sleep doesn’t always help.

Here’s what identity fatigue feels like from the inside.

Your mind never truly shuts off.

Is anyone upset?

Did I offend someone?

What needs fixing?

Have I forgotten anything?

Does someone need me?

Even in sleep, some part of you remains on call.

Imagine carrying a forty-pound backpack everywhere you go.

At first, you’d notice it.

Eventually, you’d stop noticing the backpack.

You’d only notice that you were exhausted.

Invisible weight still weighs something.

For many women, that invisible weight is made up of everyone else’s expectations, emotions, comfort, disappointments, and opinions. We carry them so long they begin to feel like our own.

Then there’s another energy leak we rarely talk about.

Every unnecessary “yes” creates a future promise.

Every future promise occupies space in your nervous system.

Before you’ve even shown up for the dentist appointment, the committee meeting, the favor you agreed to out of guilt, or the dinner you didn’t really want to attend...

...your body is already carrying it.

No wonder you’re tired.

Then there are the truths we never allow ourselves to speak.

The no that became a yes.

The hurt we smiled through.

The disappointment we swallowed.

The longing we convinced ourselves didn’t matter.

Those moments don’t disappear.

They settle quietly beneath the surface.

Waiting.

The Dredge

At my grandfather’s funeral, I held it together for my mother.

She had enough to deal with, I told myself, without me falling apart too.

Besides, we weren’t an especially emotional family.

So I swallowed my grief.

Months later, I attended a friend’s grandfather’s funeral.

As the service began, I started crying.

And I couldn’t stop.

I was convulsive.

I liked her grandfather well enough, but my tears had very little to do with him.

They belonged to my grandfather.

The grief I had packed away months earlier had simply been waiting for a place to land.

In that moment, I realized something profound.

My body had remembered what my mind had tried to forget.

Living Two Lives

I wonder if another reason so many women are exhausted is because they’re living two different lives.

There’s the surface life.

The one where everything appears to be fine.

Where you smile.

Where you reassure everyone that you’re okay.

Where you keep performing the role you’ve always played.

Then there’s your real life.

The one filled with grief.

Questions.

Longing.

Fear.

Hope.

Trying to keep those two lives running at the same time requires enormous energy.

Authenticity, while often uncomfortable, is surprisingly efficient.

Performance is exhausting.

Burnout isn’t always the result of doing too much.

Sometimes it’s the result of pretending too much.

Pretending you’re okay.

Pretending you’re not hurt.

Pretending you don’t want more.

Pretending you don’t need help.

Masks are heavy.

And here’s what I think most of us misunderstand:

Rest and restoration are not the same thing.

Sleep gives your body a break.

Restoration gives your soul one.

Sometimes restoration looks like laughing until your stomach hurts.

Dancing in your kitchen.

Saying no without apologizing.

Feeling deeply understood.

Doing something simply because it delights you.

Your nervous system recognizes those moments differently than it recognizes another hour of sleep.

So let me ask you a few questions.

When was the last time you laughed until you cried?

When was the last time you disappointed someone without apologizing for it?

When was the last time you spent an afternoon exactly as you wanted?

When was the last time someone took care of you?

When was the last time you felt completely like yourself?

The version of you who believes she must earn love...

Fix everyone...

Hold everything together...

Never disappoint anyone...

She is exhausted.

Not because she’s weak.

Because she’s been carrying an impossible job description.

Maybe your exhaustion isn’t your enemy.

Maybe it’s the most honest messenger you’ve ever had.

Maybe it’s quietly whispering,

“I can’t keep carrying a life that no longer fits.”

So before you ask yourself whether you need another nap...

Ask yourself a different question.

What if my exhaustion isn’t asking for more rest?

What if it’s asking for a different way of living?

Self-abandonment isn’t something that happens in one transaction. It’s small little ways you give up yourself over time. To see where you are on the scale, check out the free assessment tool. Simply click the button to take it.

Asses Now

The Tarot Nook

Knight of Pentacles Reversed

When I turned over the Knight of Pentacles reversed, I expected it to be a card about work.

Instead, I think it’s a card about weight.

The Knight of Pentacles is known for his reliability. He keeps his promises. He does what’s expected. He carries the load, day after day, without complaint.

Those are beautiful qualities.

Until they become the reason you never stop carrying what no longer belongs to you.

As I reflected on this card alongside today’s blog, I realized something.

Maybe exhaustion isn’t coming from the weight itself.

Maybe it’s coming from carrying yesterday’s responsibilities into today’s life.

Sometimes we’re so committed to being dependable, responsible, and strong that we never stop to ask a simple question:

Is this still mine to carry?

The Knight of Pentacles reversed reminds me that there is wisdom in laying something down.

Not because I’ve failed.

But because I’ve changed.

Perhaps the most responsible thing we can do isn’t to carry more.

It’s to recognize when the journey has changed—and travel lighter.

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I wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over my head.

Not because someone had died.

Not because I had received terrible news.

Because I couldn’t choose a paint color.

There I stood in front of hundreds of paint samples for my home, feeling a wave of overwhelm wash over me. What color did I want for the living room? I had no clear vision. My mind felt completely blank.

It was only paint. If I chose wrong, I could repaint it.

And yet I felt paralyzed.

I gathered sample cards, brochures, and color palettes. I brought them home. I asked my children. I asked my girlfriend. I asked my assistant. I listened carefully to the designer.

Everyone had an opinion.

Except me.

Why was this so hard?

As I sat there surrounded by paint chips, a memory surfaced from kindergarten.

We were painting horses for our school performance.

I knew exactly what mine should look like.

Brown.

With a black mane.

When I reached for the brown paint, my teacher stopped me.

“There isn’t any brown left,” she said. “You’ll have to use blue.”

“A blue horse?” I asked. “There are no blue horses.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied. “Blue is what’s left.”

Unhappily, I painted my horse blue.

At the performance, two older boys walked by, pointed at my horse, and laughed.

“Don’t you know horses aren’t blue?”

I wanted to disappear.

Looking back now, I realize it wasn’t just about the horse.

It was the beginning of something much bigger.

It wasn’t that I made a bad choice.

It was that I learned my choices weren’t safe.

Years later, I didn’t struggle to choose a paint color because I lacked good taste.

I struggled because somewhere along the way, I stopped trusting my own judgment.

For years, I thought my indecision came from fear.

Fear of making a mistake.

Fear of being judged.

Fear of looking foolish.

Those fears were certainly there.

But they weren’t the whole story.

The deeper truth was this:

I had outsourced my authority.

Without realizing it, I had spent decades asking everyone else what they thought before asking myself.

What did my husband think?

What do my children need?

What would my mother say?

What does the designer recommend?

What do my friends think?

Everyone else’s opinion mattered.

Mine slowly disappeared.

Eventually, I stopped asking myself altogether.

“What do you want for dinner?”

“I don’t care.”

“What movie do you want to watch?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Which sofa do you like?”

“I’m fine with anything.”

Those answers sound easygoing.

They’re not.

Sometimes they’re evidence that we’ve become strangers to ourselves and our own desires.

I didn’t just outsource decisions.

I outsourced my authority.

I outsourced my opinions.

My happiness.

My desires.

My boundaries.

My joy.

Eventually...

I outsourced myself.

The strange thing about self-trust is that it doesn’t disappear overnight.

It fades through hundreds of tiny moments.

Every time I said yes when I wanted to say no.

Every time I swallow an opinion because it might disappoint someone.

Every time I ignored that quiet feeling inside me.

Every time I chose approval over authenticity.

I sent myself the same message:

Your opinion doesn’t matter.

After hearing that message for years...

Why would I trust myself?

Then I realized something that changed everything.

My inner voice had never disappeared.

She had simply stopped interrupting.

After decades of ignoring her, she became quieter and quieter.

Not because she had nothing to say.

Because she no longer believed I was listening.

The good news is that self-trust returns the same way it was lost.

One decision at a time.

People often believe confidence comes first.

I don’t think it does.

I think confidence is the result of making hundreds of imperfect decisions and discovering you survive every one of them.

You don’t trust yourself...

and then decide.

You decide...

and then you begin trusting yourself again.

An Experiment

For the next week, practice making one small decision every day without first asking anyone else’s opinion.

Choose what you want to wear.

Decide what sounds good for breakfast—not what you always eat, but what you genuinely want.

Pick the book that sparks your curiosity.

Take the walk that appeals to you.

Spend Saturday morning the way you choose.

These aren’t just decisions.

They’re repetitions.

Every choice is another repetition in rebuilding the muscle of self-trust.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve written about self-abandonment.

I’ve come to believe it rarely happens in one dramatic moment.

It happens through hundreds of tiny decisions.

Tiny compromises.

Tiny silences.

Tiny dismissals of your own voice.

Which also means the journey back happens the same way.

One small choice.

One honest answer.

One quiet act of listening.

Until one day you realize something remarkable.

You are no longer looking outside yourself for permission.

You have remembered something that was true all along.

You are a trustworthy source for your own life.

The Tarot Nook

The Queen of Wands Reversed

At first glance, the Queen of Wands reversed looks like a woman who has lost her confidence.

I don’t think that’s what she’s showing us at all.

I think she’s showing us what happens when we spend years asking everyone else who we should be.

The Queen of Wands upright trusts her instincts. She doesn’t wait for permission to speak, create, choose, or take up space. She knows her own mind.

Reversed, that certainty has been outsourced.

She second-guesses herself.

She asks everyone else’s opinion before honoring her own.

She confuses other people’s approval with inner wisdom.

As I looked at this card next to today’s blog, I realized something.

Perhaps I haven’t lost my confidence.

Perhaps I’ve simply stopped consulting the one voice that has always known the answer.

The Queen of Wands reminds me that my inner fire hasn’t gone out.

It’s just waiting for me to trust it again.

And maybe that’s what rebuilding self-trust really is.

Not finding a new voice...

But finally believing the one that’s been quietly speaking all along.

Harumph… I said under my breath as I put down the mystery book I was enjoying to respond to my daughter calling me from down the hall.

I won’t have to deal with my mom’s nursing home requests again… if I just let the phone go to voicemail.

My phone buzzed. “I’m so sorry. I have to cancel lunch.” I stared at the screen. And before I could stop myself… I smiled. Not because I’d miss her. Because I wouldn’t have to spend two hours listening to her problems.

Who was I becoming with so much resentment boiling under the surface? When did I become the kind of person who festered over small things? When did I let resentment take the driver’s seat in my emotional life?

I felt like I was becoming a bitter old woman.

I thought resentment meant people were asking too much of me.

But I was wrong.

The most uncomfortable truth? I wasn’t angry at them. I was angry at myself — for never saying no.

It meant I had stopped asking enough of myself.

Then I realized something that changed everything.

Resentment isn’t a character flaw. It’s a message. A message from the part of me I’d been ignoring for years. Not proof that something is wrong with me — proof that some part of me has been waiting far too long to be heard.

Resentment is like the ping on my phone — a notification to myself. It was never about my kids, husband, family, or friends. It has always been about ME and my inability to set boundaries and stand up for myself.

I have no problem standing up for my kids in any situation. But standing up for myself? That’s always been the problem.

And because I don’t honor my own boundaries — because I don’t take care of my own needs and desires — I feel resentful of others who are able to ask for what they want and get it. That they even know what they want in the first place.

Resentment is the red flag that I have abandoned myself — that I’ve been ignoring the desires of my own soul to placate everyone else’s.

This is what happens when you repeatedly abandon yourself in the name of keeping everyone else happy.

Every time I said yes when I meant no. Every time I swallowed my disappointment. Every time I convinced myself my needs could wait.

I left another small piece of myself behind.

Eventually, resentment came looking for me.

I’ve stopped seeing resentment as an enemy.

Now I see it as a compass.

It doesn’t point toward the people who are asking too much. It points toward the places where I’ve been asking too little of myself.

Too little honesty. Too few boundaries. Too little permission. Too little care.

Follow resentment long enough… and it won’t lead you to someone else.

It’ll lead you back to yourself.

I spent years thinking resentment made me a bad person. A selfish mother. An ungrateful daughter. An impatient friend.

It didn’t.

It made me a woman who had finally run out of ways to disappear.

If any of this feels familiar, the Self-Abandonment Compass™ below will help you see exactly where you stand — and what your resentment has been trying to tell you all along.

The Self-Abandonment Compass™

If you enjoyed reading about this topic, you might enjoy this post too:

The Tarot Nook

Four of Wands

This week I pulled the Four of Wands. This card is about Homecoming, Community, and Celebration after hard work. At first, it seemed like an odd match for a piece about resentment. Then I realized—finding your way back to yourself after years of abandoning yourself? That's exactly worth celebrating. Also, finally uncovering the connection between resentment and boundaries and making that connection is worth celebrating. Now you can see the benefit of establishing your boundaries, and that will help you live your best life. That is worth celebrating. The Four of Wands is the perfect card for where we are now! Go celebrate!

You’ve done everything right.

You built the career.

You raised the children.

You showed up for everyone.

You became the woman people admired.

So why, in the quiet moments, does it still feel like something essential is missing?

You’ve done everything right. And somehow… that’s exactly the problem.

I know this because I lived on the wrong side of it for decades.

I always wanted my husband to be proud of me, the way I was proud of him. I worked hard to be worthy of his love. I thought if I was successful enough, accomplished enough, good enough — my marriage would reflect that back to me.

I was wrong.

The Reality

Achievement is emotional camouflage. Focusing on achievement is safer than feeling. I’ve come to learn that success is actually a distraction — and a very convincing one.

The hidden cost of doing everything right is that you begin to believe your value lives in your performance, in your doing. This isn’t something you chose. It’s something you’ve learned, early, before you had the words for it.

As a child, I was praised for being a good girl. For doing what I was told. For being easygoing and not complaining. I was noticed when I smiled, when I got good grades, when I helped at home, when I made things easy for everyone around me. When we saw children who acted out, my parents would say how glad they were that I wasn’t like that. We performed as expected. And in return, we received approval.

That’s where the pattern starts. And once it starts, it doesn’t stop on its own.

Fighting for Good Enough

The connection of “achievement as love” gets embedded into your nervous system and becomes the fuel that runs you. You keep achieving because achievement keeps the fear quiet. You keep producing because your sense of worth has become tangled up in what you contribute to others.

Some adults spend their whole lives looking for emotional safety through money, achievement, control, perfection, never asking for help, staying relentlessly busy. Not because they love those things. Because it quiets the anxiety. Temporarily. Band-aids, not healing.

Your nervous system never learned what “enough” feels like — because enough was never the point. Approval was.

You believed that love follows achievement. Good grades and your parents rewarded you. Good wife and your husband was happy. Good mother and your kids turned out well. Good employee and you got noticed.

You built your entire sense of self-worth around those things.

Then you discovered that all of it was built on a false premise.

Emotional Safety

No achievement ever feels like enough because the goal was never really achievement.

It was emotional safety.

Emotional safety is the deep, internal feeling that you are okay — that you are worthy of love, belonging, and respect even when you aren’t performing, pleasing, producing, or proving yourself. It’s not about your circumstances. It’s about what your nervous system believes.

Many successful women aren’t driven by ambition alone. They’re driven by a longing to feel emotionally safe. Their nervous system believes that if they become accomplished enough, indispensable enough, admired enough, the quiet fear of not being enough will finally go quiet.

You learned this as a child.

While achievement can buy admiration, it cannot buy belonging. It can create confidence. It cannot create self-worth.

The Cost of Self-Abandonment

Your success, in many ways, has come at the cost of self-abandonment. Doing things for everyone else. Never pausing long enough to hear the voice inside you — the one telling you what you actually want, what you actually need.

By the time you’re finally able to focus on that voice, it has become so muted you can barely discern it.

You’ve built a life. But is it the life you wanted?

You’ve collected accomplishments, credentials, houses, promotions, investments. And yet what your spirit actually craves is something else entirely: awe, play, wonder, curiosity, delight, sensuality, intimacy.

Not more achievement. Presence.

Now Who Am I?

Your emotional upheaval from an empty nest or a divorce isn’t really about your kids or your ex. It’s about the identity your whole life was organized around. The calendar changes. The house changes. Your role changes. And suddenly the question — the one you’ve been too busy to ask — surfaces:

Now, who am I?

That question isn’t a crisis. It’s an invitation.

Divorce Released the Old Story

For years, I wanted the self-doubt to disappear. But the pain just followed me around, quietly insisting.

Then my life shifted in the earthquake of divorce. And something unexpected happened. I learned — slowly, imperfectly, undeniably — that I was good enough exactly as I am. My 67-year-old face was more than enough. My body, knees falling apart and all, was fine. The personality traits I’d spent decades trying to smooth away turned out to be endearing, not annoying.

I didn’t have to earn love. I never did.

I can make mistakes and still be lovable. I can disappoint someone without believing I am a bad person. I don’t have to be perfect to belong. I can express my needs without fearing abandonment. I am enough even before I do anything.

My nervous system is learning — finally — to relax and just be.

After the Shift, Here’s What I Know

I am enough.

I always was.

But now, I know it in my soul.

Perhaps that’s why so many successful women feel empty.

Not because they failed.

But because they spent decades trying to earn something that was never meant to be earned.

Love.

Belonging.

Worthiness.

Those things aren’t prizes waiting at the top of the mountain.

They’re what allow you to stop climbing long enough to finally come home to yourself.

Follow the Delight…

The way back isn’t through another accomplishment.

It begins the moment you ask yourself questions you’ve been too busy to ask.

• What delights me?

• What makes me lose track of time?

• What do I want if no one is grading me?

• What would I choose if I didn’t have to earn my place?

At first the answers may be quiet.

That’s because your own voice has spent years waiting patiently beneath everyone else’s expectations.

Know now that you are enough.

And you always have been.

The Tarot Nook

The Ace of Swords Reversed

This is an interesting draw. Upright the Ace of Swords in about mental clarity, breakthroughs, the truth cutting through confusion.

Reversed, the Ace of Swords is about the truth that’s been there all along, but couldn’t break through. It’s about confusion with your identity, and blocked clarity.

Your inner voice is muted.

So this is reinforcing the message of the breakdown of an old identity that allows for the real truth to cut through the confusion.

The truth wasn’t that you weren’t enough.

The truth was that you never had to earn enoughness in the first place.

You’ve been believing and living a story that was never true.

“What do you want?”

It should have been an easy question.

Instead, I froze.

Not because I didn’t have an opinion.

But because somewhere along the way, I had stopped asking myself and I had lost my connection with what it is I truly desire.

What is it I want?

I am renovating a few rooms in my house. Not a major remodel. Just changing a few things.

Still, there are so many decisions to be made, both large (what color should I paint the living room?) and small (do you want a 6 ’ tub or a 5’ tub?). Sometimes the decision is easy for me… other times I labor over it. I can’t decide. What is the right choice? How will I decide?

For those decisions, I ask my kids, my two girlfriends, who are designers, the contractor (who repeatedly tells me, "I’m not a designer, but here’s what other people have done), and I review the budget. Then, when I am really desperate, I ask ChatGPT what the right choice is.

But I noticed I never stop to ask myself what I want. What would I be happy with? What is it that will make my heart sing?

When did I stop asking myself what I want?

In a restaurant, I would ask others what they were going to order before I made my own decision. When I was getting dressed, I used to ask my husband which shoe was right for the dress. I asked for others’ opinions and discounted my own.

I have become a stranger to my own desires.

It wasn’t something that happened all at once. There was the slow grind of becoming smaller. Looking back, self-abandonment didn’t begin in my marriage.

I think it began in hundreds of tiny moments when I learned it felt safer to shrink than to shine.

• When I was 5, I asked my mom if I could dance for the guests, and she said no. Obviously, I wasn’t good enough.

• When I got dressed in my favorite outfit for free dress day at school, the kids at school laughed at my choices.

• When I swam in a race, my cousin told me I had the weirdest stroke he had ever seen.

I stopped dancing.

I stopped wearing wild colors.

I stopped swimming.

Every year, my world got a little smaller.

I admired people who took risks, but secretly resented them.

They were living the life I had quietly talked myself out of.

I became resentful of other people doing the things I wanted to do. I stop taking risks. My life grew smaller and smaller. I learned to accommodate others. I got disconnected from what brought me joy.

I let other people decide things for me, and I stopped putting up a fight. I stopped expressing my own desires. I became numb. I lost my confidence. I couldn’t make decisions anymore. I slowly started to disappear.

My life may have looked good from the outside, but it felt hollow on the inside.

And eventually, you believe that.

As women, we are taught to make sacrifices. We are taught that good mothers put themselves last. Good wives accommodate their husbands and kids.

We were raised to believe that honoring our own desires was selfish.

But there’s a difference between demanding your own way and knowing your way.

Something to think about

Some good questions to ask yourself are:

• What do I want more of?

• What do I want less of?

• What am I tolerating?

• What am I pretending doesn’t matter? (this one hurts…)

• If nobody would be disappointed, what would I choose?

• What have I been saying, “maybe someday” about for years?

Years ago, during another remodel, I discovered something interesting. The rooms where my preferences survived became the rooms I loved most. At the time, I didn’t realize what that was teaching me.

And now I have the ability to make my own decisions, and I’m in a tailspin from lack of practice.

The question now isn’t whether or not I’ve abandoned myself.

The question is whether I am willing to come back.

Because deep down inside, I do know the answers. I need to peel away the protective layers to get them.

Not through some grand reinvention.

But through a thousand small moments of asking, “What do I want?”

And then taking the time to listen carefully and discern exactly what that is.

Decision-making is a muscle.

And every time I choose something because I want it—not because someone else expects it—I do one more repetition.

I’m getting stronger.

It’s the small everyday decisions: What do I want for lunch, where to walk the dog, or even, am I hungry? Recognizing hunger and responding to it has become important.

And realizing it’s OK to sit and read my book instead of folding the laundry. The laundry isn’t going anywhere, and I can fold it when I’m tired, but I can’t read my book when I’m tired.

Making these small decisions and following my joy is helping me create the life I want, the life that is right for me. And in so doing, I am a role model for my children, so the generational trauma of playing small ends here. And that is the choice I make.

The Tarot Nook

Queen of Wands

This week’s card couldn’t have been more fitting: the Queen of Wands.

She is a woman who trusts herself. Not because she has all the answers, but because she has learned to value her own voice.

As I wrote this week’s essay, I realized how often I’ve looked outside myself for guidance—asking my children, my friends, the contractor, even ChatGPT what I should choose. The Queen of Wands quietly asks a different question:

“Have you asked yourself?”

She reminds us that confidence isn’t something we’re given. It’s something we build—decision by decision, choice by choice, until our own inner voice becomes the one we trust most.

Maybe that’s the real journey back from self-abandonment. Not becoming someone new, but remembering the woman who was there all along, patiently waiting for us to listen.

The Queen of Wands doesn’t dwell in the wound; she embodies the woman who has begun reclaiming her authority.

SIDE NOTE

If you live in the San Francisco area, my daughter and I are hosting Cacao Ceremonies with Sound Therapy. If you are interested, respond to this essay, and I can add you to the invitation list.

Who wrote the script that sex comes after crawling into bed at 9 or 10 p.m., when you are exhausted from taking care of everyone else all day?

Maybe that worked when I was 25.

But after kids? I couldn’t wait for them to go to bed so I could go to bed.

And yet there I was, lying beside my husband, feeling the quiet pressure to be available.

Not because I felt desire.

Not because I felt connected.

Because I thought that was what a good wife did.

I didn’t call it self-abandonment then.

I called it marriage.

I was in the trap of wanting to be “the good wife.” The wife who met her husband’s needs so he didn’t go looking elsewhere.

But no one ever talked about MY needs. NOT EVEN ME!!!

So who can I blame but myself?

I never spoke up.

(At one point, I did suggest we plan our sexual encounters. That thought was met with ridicule. “It’s supposed to be spontaneous!” After a long day of taking care of everyone else’s needs, spontaneity was not on the top of my mind. I wanted to bury myself in a good murder mystery, then fall asleep.)

The Good Girl Trap teaches us that to be loved, we have to be low-maintenance.

The Good Wife grew out of being the good girl. Doing as I was told, knowing what was expected and delivering it before I was asked, anticipating everyone else’s desires, and disregarding my own needs.

I had to be easy-going, responsible, considerate.

Somewhere along the way, I absorbed the hidden message that other people’s comfort was more important than my own truth. And my truth got buried.

I wasn’t praised for knowing what I wanted. I was praised for accommodating everyone else's wants. That’s the trap.

The Rewards

I didn’t just sacrifice myself for others willy-nilly. No. I was rewarded for the sacrifice. I got called “kind,” “generous,” “thoughtful,” “dependable,” and “a good girl.”

I was good at delivering for everyone else at my own expense.

The qualities I was being praised for were the very qualities that caused me to disappear.

I’ve spent decades being indispensable because I don’t know who I am or what I really want. I just felt NUMB.

Being a good person and being a self-abandoning person are NOT the same thing.

It is possible to be generous, loving, supportive, and compassionate without disappearing.

Where to go from here

Take an inventory of where you are and how you got here. Answer the following sentences.

• I am often praised for being: ________________________

• The thing I rarely ask for is: _________________________

• I feel guilty when: _________________________________

• The last thing I did just for myself was: _________________

Then ask yourself which version of you is getting all the attention? And which is being neglected?

For years, I thought being a good woman meant being selfless. I saw my mother live that out.

Now I see things differently.

A woman who constantly abandons herself doesn’t become more loving or more loved.

She becomes less alive.

The Great Return to YOU begins when you stop asking:

“What does everyone else need from me?”

and begin asking:

“What do I need from myself?”

Spend some time thinking about what it is you truly need.

The Tarot Nook

The Four of Pentacles Reversed

This week’s card is the 4 of Pentacles Reversed.

Upright, this card is about control, holding on tightly to security, old patterns, feeling safe.

Reversed, the card asks, What am I finally ready to let go of?

For years, I held tightly to the identity of the Good Girl. The helper. The caretaker. The one who made life easier for everyone else.

It was a survival strategy to earn love, a sense of belonging, and approval.

But it came at a cost.

Somewhere along the way, I began holding onto those identities more tightly than I held onto myself. I had imprisoned myself in these identities.

The 4 of Pentacles Reversed asks, "What are you ready to release?”

Perhaps the Great Return to YOU isn’t about becoming someone new.

Perhaps it’s about loosening your grip on who you had to become in order to be loved.

The Shadow Question

The card may also be asking, "What are you afraid will happen if you stop being the Good Girl?”

Most women don’t hold onto self-sacrifice because they enjoy suffering.

They hold onto it because they’re afraid of what comes next.

• Will people be disappointed?

• Will they call me selfish?

• Will they still love me?

• Will I still belong?

Those are very 4 of Pentacles Reversed questions.

See this next week as the loosening of a grip that has been held tightly shut. Add some ease into your day and your thoughts.

My college friend commented that she could see bits of my old self returning. I looked at her quizzically. Yes, she said, you disappeared under the weight of your marriage.

I laughed it off at first.

Disappeared?

What was she talking about?

But as I sat with it, memories started surfacing. The clothes I stopped wearing. The opinions I stopped expressing. The spontaneous parts of me that slowly went quiet. The way I began checking his reactions before I acted or spoke.

I hadn’t even NOTICED until she made that remark– but now that she said it, I could FEEL what she was referring to…

I had gone from living in full color, larger than life, audacious me, to a flat-Stanley version, black and white, experiencing life through others’ eyes and not my own. I had buried myself to fit into the “wife” mold that I thought was demanded of me for a successful marriage.

How did it happen?

How could someone with such a large personality allow herself to be whittled down to a mere splinter of myself?

The stronger and more adaptable you are, the more capable you become of reshaping yourself to maintain relationships. People think strong women are immune to self-abandonment. Sometimes we’re the most vulnerable because we’re so capable of adapting.

The change wasn’t one big event. It was death by a thousand papercuts— little remarks here and there that closed the doors of my personality.

The Passing Remark that Woke Me Up

One day, while walking in downtown Petaluma, I commented to a woman walking by about how nice she looked. Just a random remark because I like to notice people.

My wasband said, “Do you HAVE to talk to strangers on the street like that?” (He said it in a rather nasty tone…)

My stomach dropped.

I felt myself go quiet.

Not because of the comment itself, but because I suddenly understood what he was criticizing.

I make an effort to recognize people and say something because I believe people don’t feel seen or appreciated. I believe a small remark like that can make a person’s day. To notice someone and to say something is like a gift you give a person. A gift of delight… a light that shines on the inside.

Suddenly, years of similar moments came rushing back. The times my wasband rejected something I had done that he didn’t approve of. And I had the realization at that moment that the relationship was doomed. When he rejected such a pivotal part of who I was, I realized he didn’t like me at my core.

That was June. He asked for the divorce in September.

I was cut free.

Now I could be fully myself without worrying about his perception.

All the things I had stopped doing, fearing his disapproval, I could now do again.

I could be myself.

But after so many years of shutting down, the rebirth takes time. At the moment, I felt rejected and like a failure. I had failed at this long-term marriage.

The Unfolding

As time has gone by and more of myself has come back online, I realize what a great gift he has given me. The gift of myself.

The funny thing is, when he told me he wanted a divorce, he said I would be able to do what I wanted now. That felt so off-putting at the time.

People talk a lot about finding themselves.

That isn’t what this feels like.

I haven’t found myself.

I know exactly where she was.

Folded up carefully and stored away.

I thought the divorce was the end of my marriage.

Now I see it was the beginning of my return.

Every week, another forgotten piece unfolds.

A desire.

An opinion.

A curiosity.

A boldness.

A voice.

After years of shrinking, I am learning to take up space again.

The Great Unfolding has begun.

The Tarot Nook

The Queen of Swords

This week’s card was the Queen of Swords.

She is often described as perceptive, independent, and unafraid of the truth.

As I reflected on this week’s story, I realized the Queen wasn’t asking me to become someone new. She was asking me to see clearly.

For years, I told myself a story about who I needed to be in order to make my marriage work. Little by little, I folded away parts of myself until I could barely recognize the woman underneath.

Then my friend spoke a simple truth:

“You disappeared under the weight of your marriage.”

The Queen of Swords reminds us that truth can be painful, but it is also liberating. Once we see clearly, we can begin to reclaim what was lost.

The Great Unfolding begins with a single act of courage:

Looking honestly at what is.

“Gunnar (my ex) is a great guy…”

My partner looked at me, surprised. “That’s the first time you’ve said that. What’s great about him?”

I sat there thinking about this. “Well,” I said, “he’s great at making money.”

“Yes, and…”

“He’s a great cook…”

That was all I could come up with. My partner tried to help:

“Did he make you feel great? Did you feel loved when you were with him? Did he listen to you? Did he support you beyond the financials? Did he recognize your needs?”

I sat there.

Then I realized the truth.

I had spent YEARS convincing myself that my husband was a great guy because I needed to believe that myself.

That thought suddenly rose to the level of my conscious mind.

I had to believe that, or I would have wasted 30 years…

The Real Cost of the Relationship

What I had been ignoring for all those years was the price I paid for the relationship; the small ways, over time, that I was eroded… How I lost MYSELF…

It started out so small I didn’t notice… the compromises that didn’t seem that important at the time; the attempts to keep everyone happy at the cost of suppressing my own desires, the need to put a good face forward and never realize what was going on in the background. The marriage. The kids. My mother. Always trying to appease.

I knew everyone else and their needs but had no idea who I was anymore and what it was I wanted. I had compromised myself so often that I completely lost myself.

When someone asked me what I wanted… my brain was empty. A void. I learned to deflect. “What are you having?” or “What would YOU like to do?”

There was none of ME left inside my body.

THAT’S self-abandonment.

A survival strategy.

Now I recognize it. When it tries to take over my body, I feel it. I try to resist, but the force is strong… I focus on bringing myself, Alicia Berberich, back. It’s taken a year and a half to recognize the problem and build that awareness.

Now the work starts. To tune in to my desires, reconnect with my body, ignite my curiosity, harness the power of my agency, build my future the way I want it, learn to trust myself and my decisions, and learn to love myself.

Resentment as the Alarm

For years, I thought resentment was proof that something was wrong with me.

Now I see it differently.

Resentment is often the sound of an abandoned self pounding on the door.

It is the part of us that knows we have said yes when we meant no.

The part that remembers dreams we dismissed, needs we minimized, and desires we buried.

At 67, I am finally opening that door.

And every time I listen, I find a little more of myself waiting on the other side.

The Fire Alarm

Self-abandonment doesn’t disappear quietly. It accumulates. And eventually it surfaces — often as resentment toward the people around us.

It was 10 am. I was working at my desk. Suddenly, the fire alarm went off. After I peeled myself off the ceiling, I went to investigate. No fire. Just my daughter in the shower after her run…

Turns out the steam particles in the air set off the fire alarm.

The fire alarm is there to notify us of an urgent need. It doesn’t have the power to analyze the situation to determine whether the change is okay. It just announces the situation.

Resentment is like our internal fire alarm. When we feel overwhelmed inside, we project resentment outward. For example, my daughter tells me I am interfering with her business by pushing my ideas on her. I get upset and take it personally. But the real problem is that I am unable to set my own boundaries, while she has no problem setting boundaries. I admire that she can establish boundaries, and I am mad at myself. I let everyone interrupt me at will. Then I explode for no apparent reason, which is the result of not setting boundaries.

The resentment I feel is like the fire alarm going off, signaling that something is off.

I learned people-pleasing behavior: be flexible, easy-going, and helpful. Then something small happens, and I become irrationally upset. Someone crossed my boundary… But the problem is, I never communicated that boundary, so people are unaware.

Or I have an expectation I hold and don’t communicate, and then feel disappointed or resentful that I am disappointed.

The problem is, I know what I want, but I’m not communicating it and hoping that others will just get it. Then I am disappointed when they don’t, and I feel resentful. “If they loved me, they would know.”

For years, I wanted a particular handbag. (I am a bit obsessed with handbags…) I told my now ex I wanted it for Christmas and my birthday. He knew. But he never got it for me. He got me equally expensive gifts, but never what I wanted. For me, that was painful. Like my desires didn’t matter. When I voiced my desire, it was ignored. So I stopped voicing it. I told myself it didn’t matter.

For years, I suffered from that disappointment. I could have always purchased the handbag for myself. But that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to receive it as a gift.

Instead, I learned not to have expectations to avoid getting upset. I pretended it didn’t matter.

I further abandoned myself.

The Resentment Test

Here’s what I started doing — and I want you to try it too. Complete this sentence:

I resent….

Write down 10 answers.

Then ask:

What need of mine is hidden underneath each resentment?

From my handbag example above, the need I had that was unmet was the need to be heard and valued.

Then ask:

What part of this situation have I been tolerating that no longer feels aligned?

See what you come up with.

Learning

The next time resentment appears, don’t rush to get rid of it.

Listen.

It may be the part of you that has been ignored for years finally finding its voice.

Not to shame you.

Not to punish you.

But to guide you back to yourself.

Resentment isn’t a character flaw. It’s an invitation.

A smoke signal from a part of you that’s ready to come home.

I am Alicia Berberich, and I am navigating the waters of divorce and reclaiming myself after years of self-abandonment. Join me on this journey by subscribing to my newsletter. Also, I guide women going through a gray divorce and can support you on your journey. Contact me if you would like a deeper conversation.

The Tarot Nook

Ace of Pentacles Reversed

Traditionally, the Ace of Pentacles represents a seed of opportunity, value, and potential. Reversed, it asks us to look at what isn’t being nurtured.

As I reflected on self-abandonment, I realized that my desires never disappeared. They simply stopped receiving attention.

Each time I silenced a preference, ignored a need, or convinced myself that what I wanted didn’t matter, I left another seed unwatered.

Resentment may be what happens when those forgotten seeds refuse to stay buried.

The Ace of Pentacles Reversed asks me: What am I finally willing to invest in?

At 67, my answer is simple.

Me.

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She stood on the line. Eighteen thousand eyes on her. Her teammates were counting on her. Her coach knew she could do it. The roar from the fans was deafening.

Yet she stood there looking calm.

The pressure professional athletes handle with aplomb is unbelievable to me. So much is riding on a single moment. To perform something you have done thousands of times before—successfully and unsuccessfully—at the exact moment the skill is needed.

I find it awe-inspiring.

Doing What You Do

When it comes to handling pressure, one coach advised his team to “treat it like an ordinary Tuesday.”

Don’t make it bigger in your mind.

That free throw? You’ve done it a thousand times. You can do it now. It’s just another free throw.

What fascinates me is that the athlete’s body already knows what to do. The challenge isn’t usually physical. It’s mental. The mind starts adding pressure, expectations, consequences, and what-ifs.

The body knows the move.

The mind interferes.

And that’s what impacts us every day of our lives.

The Big Question

Is your mind supporting you or making things harder than they need to be?

I’ve been thinking about this lately because I have what appears to be an organization problem.

My brain likes to fill space.

I have little mementos, books I want to read, notes I need to remember, papers that require action, projects in progress. If I clear off my desk, it feels wonderful—for about fifteen minutes. Then life starts happening again and the piles begin to reappear.

For years I thought the problem was clutter.

Now I’m beginning to think the problem is unfinished business.

The Reality of the Situation

Take my desk.

The backflow paperwork from the city needs attention. That means calling a plumber and scheduling an appointment. The birthday card for my cousin needs a photo printed before I can mail it. There are forms to sign, emails to answer, decisions to make.

Each item represents something incomplete.

And because I don’t want to forget them, they remain visible.

The paper stays on the desk.

The card stays on the desk.

The reminder stays on the desk.

Before long, there isn’t even room for my coffee cup.

But the pile isn’t really paper.

The pile is decisions.

The pile is postponed action.

The pile is promises I’ve made to myself.

The pile is dozens of open loops quietly asking for attention.

Every unfinished task occupies a tiny piece of mental real estate.

Remember to call the plumber.

Don’t forget the card.

Need to answer that email.

Must schedule that appointment.

None of them are particularly difficult. But together they create a constant low-grade hum in the background of life.

Death by ten thousand paper cuts.

What strikes me is that it isn’t usually the big things that exhaust us.

When something major happens—a divorce, a move, a remodel—we rise to the occasion. We give those things the attention they require.

It’s the accumulation of unfinished little things that slowly drain our energy.

The Situation IRL

I’m in the middle of remodeling my house. The contractor and I were laughing recently about a punch-list item from my first remodel twenty years ago.

The vanity under-counter lights had been marked on the plans.

They were never installed.

Twenty years later, I told him I would still like those lights.

Twenty years.

One tiny unfinished item that somehow survived two decades.

Apparently unfinished business is very patient.

Moving Forward

The good news is that awareness changes everything.

Once you see the pattern, you can interrupt it.

I used to tell myself I needed to become more organized.

Now I think what I really need is to become a finisher.

Not someone who does everything perfectly.

Not someone who never has unfinished projects.

Just someone who closes more loops than she opens.

Someone who takes the next shot.

Because that’s what the athlete standing on the free-throw line does.

She isn’t thinking about the final score.

She isn’t analyzing what happens if she misses.

She isn’t replaying the last game.

She takes the shot in front of her.

Then the game moves on.

Maybe that’s the lesson.

Not organize everything.

Not solve every problem.

Not figure out the next ten years.

Just complete the next thing in front of you.

Close the next loop.

Make the phone call.

Mail the card.

Take the shot.

Because perhaps the path to a calmer life isn’t found in managing more.

It’s found in carrying less.

The Tarot Nook

Knight of Swords Reversed

This week’s card was the Knight of Swords Reversed.

At first glance, it felt like a card about frustration and lack of progress. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized it was describing the very thing I had been writing about.

The Knight of Swords charges ahead. Reversed, his energy becomes scattered. He starts many things and finishes few. His attention is pulled in a dozen directions at once.

Sound familiar?

My desk certainly thought so.

The card reminded me that movement and progress are not the same thing. Sometimes we are incredibly busy but not actually moving forward because our energy is fragmented across too many unfinished pieces of business.

The antidote isn’t to move faster.

It’s to focus.

One phone call.
One email.
One form.
One shot.

Perhaps the path forward isn’t found in doing more.

Perhaps it’s found in finishing what is already asking for our attention.