You wake up already behind. You move from meeting to obligation to someone else’s crisis and back again. You are competent, dependable, and so completely exhausted that there’s nothing left of you by the time you finally sit down. And the worst part? You can’t even explain what’s wrong. Because on paper, it looks fine. Maybe even good.

I spent 20+ years in healthcare doing exactly that. Advancing. Taking on more. Saying yes to everyone because somewhere, deep down, I believed that if I gave enough, achieved enough, proved myself enough — someone would finally confirm what I desperately needed to hear: that I was enough. That I mattered. That all of it was worth it.

It never came. Not the way I needed it to.

What changed everything wasn’t a strategy. It wasn’t another certification or another rung on the ladder. It was the moment I finally got still enough to realize the problem wasn’t out there. It was the story I’d been telling myself about what I deserved, and who I was allowed to become.

That one shift — that moment of real permission — changed everything. My work. My relationships. My relationship with my son. The way I move through my days.

And it’s the shift I hold space for the women I work with to make, too.