Who's looking after YOU?

You show up for everyone! You're the shoulder, the listening ear, the safe place. But somewhere in all of that giving, who's looking after you?

In this episode, I explore the fine line between genuine generosity and quiet self erasure and ask the question nobody seems to be asking.

This one is for the givers, the fixers, the ones who are always there for everyone else. The ones who can't remember the last time someone asked; are you okay? And meant it.

You're allowed to be looked after too.

Transcript

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I want to talk about something a little personal today. Generally, most things we discuss on this podcast is often lived experiences and not just theoretical. Some are observed closely or at a distance, but most of it speaks directly to who I am, especially this one. I'm wired a certain way, always have been, such that if someone around me has a need, I feel it and I respond to it. Oftentimes before I've even thought about whether I have the capacity to. Sent money I didn't have because someone needed it and I couldn't sit with knowing I hadn't tried. For years, good earning years, money passed through my hands and went into other people's lives. Reflecting on some, it gives me unfiltered joy seeing the impact it's made, but in some instances I look back and see the stupidity in it, and I don't say that with bitterness at all, I say it with honesty. It's the emotional weight of carry for people, the mental energy, the absorbing of other people's pain and problems, carrying it around like it was mine to carry. Those things are draining in ways that are harder to quantify, but just as real. But at some point, and I think a lot of people who are wired this way arrive here eventually. You look up and realize that in looking after everyone else, you've consistently over a long period of time deprioritized yourself. And the question that eventually surfaces, quietly at first, then louder is this. What makes it complicated is that the people on the receiving end rarely see the costs. I mean, why will they? You show up the same way every time, you answer when they call, you carry what they bring you with grace, with love, without complaining, because that's who you are, that's who you've developed yourself to be. However, you carry something inside you, a quiet belief, that needing to be looked after yourself is weakness, that having a limit is almost failure, like saying, I don't have it today will become a betrayal of the person you built yourself to be. So you keep going, past full, past tired, and past the point where giving is costing you things you haven't even fully accounted for yet. And then one day you're sitting with a feeling you can't name. So, what do you do with that? For me, it's been about learning where the line is, and that line looks different for everyone. I've realized that sometimes the boundary is in a conversation, it's not even a decision other people get to see, it's just you removing yourself, becoming unavailable for a season to disconnect and be somewhere mentally and emotionally where nobody needs anything from you. It's stepping back, not because you love people less, but because you've come to the understanding that your presence alone has become an open invitation, and you've learned sometimes the hard way that people don't always intend to lean on you, they just do, it just happens, and you have to get to the point where you learn that no is a complete sentence, and that you don't owe anyone an explanation for protecting your own capacity. Looking after yourself is not selfishness, it's stewardship, maintaining the very thing that makes your giving possible in the first place. Because you can't pour from empty indefinitely, and you cannot be a safe place for others if you have no safe place for yourself. So saying no sometimes is not a betrayal of your generous nature, it's an act of self-respect, the same one that ultimately protects your ability to keep showing up, and that's showing up genuinely, fully, and from a place of real abundance rather than quiet exhaustion. And here's the thing: you're allowed to be looked after too. You're allowed to have needs, to have days where you just don't have it. You're allowed to receive as generously as you give, to let people show up for you the way you've always shown up for them, and sometimes you're allowed to just disappear for a while, to be unreachable, to tend to yourself quietly, away from the needs and the weight, and the beautiful but sometimes exhausting privilege of being someone people depend on. Come back when you're full and give from that place. Remember, selflessness is no longer a gift if the cost of it is you. Know where the line is and look after number one. That's the musing for today. Carry what serves you and leave the rest. Until next time, keep thinking, keep growing, keep showing up well.