I ran myself into the ground

She said she was tired.
She’d earned it.

For years, the way I proved I was worth anything was by giving… everything — and I do mean everything.

I think in most cases this presented in work - prioritizing work over self and family. The early mornings. The late nights. The “I’ll just answer this one email” at 10pm that turned into an hour. The constant low hum of feeling like I should be doing more, even on the days I’d already done too much.

I’ve always known I love to serve. I love helping people. Got it. But how did I get here? A parentified millenial who only received attention from strangers and only in the form of praise…”you’re such a great helper,” “you and your mom are best friends, wow that’s so special,” “a built in babysitter, haha!” My whole identity revolved around this as a child.
As I grew up, this continued, but I didn’t know how to serve without sacrificing myself in the process.
So I didn’t. I just gave until there was nothing left and then I gave some more.

I paid for it. Apparently, there’s only so long you can pour from an empty cup before the work starts to taste like the empty cup.

Here’s the part that took me too long to learn: working myself into the ground was never actually serving anyone. The people I poured everything into were so used to it they slowly forgot how much I was pouring out.

The universe has given us many, many reminders to refocus and slow down over the years. How could it not. Two kids, a husband in a high-tempo position in the military, constant moves, shifts and transitions. When my dad died the ground really shook. Even after all of the reminders I was given, I STILL thought I had more time. So I sorta burnt-it-all-down. It was quiet and intentional, interestingly enough the people I thought were closest to me didn’t notice. But I noticed them not-noticing. I got honest about my capacity. I stopped taking on every client who came my way. I said “no thanks” to people that didn’t pay their bills. I built systems….
I rebuilt my business to work around my life instead of one that demands my life work around it.

The hustle people don’t want you to know this but it didn’t destroy my business, It actually made it better, it became more sustainable, my mission became clearer and as icky as it may sound after I just poured my guts out to you - I made more money. Sorry, not sorry. I’ve got two creative kids with great big brains to think about.

I’m not everything I want to be yet but I am a lot of things I didn’t know I could.

If you’re in the running-yourself-into-the-ground phase right now, I’m not going to tell you to just slow down because you’d ignore it.
I will tell you this: the version of you that’s exhausted and doing everything is not the most valuable version of you. It just feels like the most honorable thing to do.

You’re allowed to build something that doesn’t cost you everything. I did.