No one is coming to save you.
Someone said that to me once, looking me straight in the eye. It changed my life.
Before that, I was the mom, the wife, the employee, the daughter, the sister, the volunteer. I said yes to everything. I gave away my time, my energy, my ideas — to be helpful, to be needed, to be enough. I wasn't pursuing anything of my own. And when I tried, I spun in circles.
What I couldn't see was the belief underneath it: that someone would eventually notice how much I was carrying and step in. That someone else would make the hard decision, set the boundary, say the no I couldn't say. I thought the power to change my life lived somewhere outside of me.
It didn't. It doesn't. Not for me, and not for you.
But here's what I've learned since: naming the belief wasn't what changed things. What changed things was what I DID afterward. The “no” I finally said out loud. The early morning hours I stopped giving away. The rhythm I built and kept when no one was watching.
That's the work. You don't think your way into believing you're capable. You live your way there.
Live your way there.