Hello, my loves.
I had one of those moments recently that felt so obvious that, once I processed it and landed back on Earth, I was actually able to get to a place where I laughed my ass off at myself. And also had some serious compassion for myself.
You know those moments where you’ve known something intellectually for years, you’ve even taught it to other people, and then all of a sudden your body catches up? That’s what happened to me. I call it an embodied experience. When what you know fully lands in your body in a way that is just a deep, deep knowing.
It started with a disagreement between my and my husband, Paul, over selling a piece of equipment. It sounds completely ordinary because it was in many ways. But my reaction wasn’t. I was so much more activated than the situation called for, which is usually my cue that there are more people in the room than I can see.
My husband was there.
I was there.
But apparently, there was also little me and some members of my family.
I refer to this type of experience as “knowing there is history in the room.” Meaning we know there is a lived trauma or wound history showing up when our response to something is exponentially stronger than the obvious incident or stimilus.
As I slowed myself down afterward, I found myself asking the same question I’ve asked clients for years:
What is my body remembering?
The answer surprised me and didn’t surprise me at all.
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I realized I wasn’t reacting to my husband.
I was reacting from a little girl who spent years believing that if she could just keep everything together, she’d finally create enough safety.
That’s a lot for a child to carry.
It’s also a lot for a grown woman to keep carrying.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about since then is how often women confuse doing with safety. Not because we’re weak or broken. Because somewhere along the way, the doing worked.
It helped us belong.
It helped us avoid conflict.
It helped us feel needed.
It helped us survive.
Of course we kept doing it.
The invitation isn’t to judge those adaptations. Honestly, I feel a tremendous amount of compassion for mine.
The invitation is to ask whether they’re still necessary.
I’ve been doing what I’ve playfully called a pleasure audit lately. Looking at my calendar and asking myself things like, Do I actually want to go? Did anyone even ask me to do this? Am I saying yes because I desire it, or because some old part of me still believes my usefulness is what makes me worthy?
Those questions have changed more than my schedule. They’re changing my life.
When I say, “Ladies, do less,” I don’t mean become less ambitious or to stop contributing. And I sure as hell don’t mean care less.
I just mean...what if we stopped carrying the things that were never ours to carry in the first place? Especially the things that weren’t explicitly asked of us!
What if we trusted that our dignity isn’t something we earn through exhaustion?
What if we believed that the woman we’ve become no longer has to live by the rules that helped the little girl survive?
That’s the conversation I wanted to have this week.
I’d love to know what came up for you from listening to this episode. And I want to know if and how you are going to do even 1% less.
XO
Libby
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