I heard about “the shuga” long before I knew what an A1c was.

“My shuga is up.”
“My pressha is up.”
“It’s cuz of my shuga.”

I heard it from the women in my family. I heard it from the women in the neighborhood. I heard it at church. Those were the words I grew up on. The clinical names came later.

Listen to how we said it, though. The sugar. My pressure. Like something that showed up one day and moved in. Something that happened to you. Something you lived with the way you live with a leaky faucet you keep meaning to get fixed.

And “it’s cuz of my shuga” explained a lot. It was the reason for the bad days. It was the reason for the doctor visits. It was the reason, period. I don’t remember anyone asking what was feeding it. It was always the answer, never the question.

My great-grandmother had a stroke. She had high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. Not one of my grandparents was spared one or the other. In every generation I could see, it was there.

I was a little girl listening to all of it. And somewhere in all that listening, I made a decision. I would do everything I could to not end up dealing with the same things.

I ended up building a career helping women prevent and reverse the very thing I watched take so much from the women around me.

And it found me anyway.

For a long time, I told myself that was just how it goes. It runs in the family. What did I expect?

But here’s what I know. Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure aren’t handed down like a family recipe. You don’t inherit the diagnosis. You inherit the risk.

Family history stokes the fire. It’s real, and it matters. It’s why your doctor asks about your parents and grandparents. But a fire that’s been stoked still needs to be fed.

And I fed mine.

I ate things I knew weren’t good for me. Worse than that, I ate things I knew were harmful for a body like mine. Pastries loaded with butter, sugar, and salt. Potato chips, which are starchy carbs that turn into sugar, plus all that oil and salt. I could have explained to any client exactly what that food does to blood sugar and blood pressure. I just didn’t apply the lesson to the woman eating it.

And takeout. Oh, the convenience of takeout. You know what I’m talking about. It saves you time today while quietly taking time off your life. A ticking time bomb in a to-go container. I knew that too.

Every pastry fed the fire. Every “I’ll do better tomorrow” fed it. Every “it’s not that serious” fed it. Every weekend I promised to rest and didn’t. Every time something bothered me, I swallowed it instead of saying it. Every time I put my own needs at the bottom of the list and called it love.

Nobody handed me a diagnosis. I kept handing the fire more fuel.

That’s a hard thing to admit. It would be so much easier to blame my genes and call it a day. But blaming my genes would also mean I had no power. And if I learned anything from that first 30-day turnaround, it’s that I had plenty of power. I just wasn’t using it for myself.

I think I inherited something else too, besides the risk. I inherited a way of talking about it. “It’s cuz of my sugar” explains it, but it doesn’t change a thing.

And without even meaning to, I had my own versions.

“Oh, I’ll just have some this time.”
“I won’t eat it again until the next holiday.”
And my favorite. The one that gets on my nerves every time I hear somebody say it, even though I said it too: “In moderation.”

Okay, let’s talk about “in moderation.” Because the way I was using it? It was a lie. And I say that with love, because I told it to myself for years.

When a client tells me she eats something “in moderation,” I ask her, “What is moderation? Can you measure it?” And she gets real quiet. Because she can’t. And honestly, neither could I.

Look it up. Moderation means avoiding excess. Staying within reasonable limits. That’s it. No number. No measurement. No line you can see yourself cross. So who decides what’s reasonable? When the pastry is calling your name at 3 in the afternoon, you do. And trust me, in that moment, “reasonable” gets real flexible. Moderation that happens every day isn’t moderation. It’s a habit with a nicer name. “In moderation” = let me eat the pastry and still feel like a responsible person while I did it.

And it’s not just me saying it. The federal dietary guidelines released earlier this year didn’t say “eat added sugar in moderation.” They said no amount of added sugar is recommended as part of a healthy diet. Not a little. Not sometimes. None. They set a ceiling of 10 grams of added sugar per meal. That’s about 2.5 teaspoons. 2.5! Go grab your favorite pastry and read that label. I’ll wait.

They also said, plain as day, to avoid salty and sweet processed snacks like chips, cookies, and candy. So when the folks who write the official rules won’t say “enjoy added sugar in moderation,” what are we still holding onto it for? It’s time we let it go.

Different words, same job as “it’s cuz of my shuga.” Every one of them lets you off the hook for today.

Here’s what else I got wrong. My whole plan was “not me.” I thought if I watched closely enough, worried hard enough, and knew enough, I’d be the one who got away.

But “not me” isn’t a plan. It’s a wish. And being afraid of ending up like the women you love is not the same as taking care of yourself. I told you last week that fear is a terrible steering wheel. Turns out I’d been trying to steer with it the whole time.

Your family history is information. It is not a verdict. It's not a strategy either.

You can’t go back and un-stoke the fire. The risk is the risk. But you can decide what you keep feeding it. That’s the part that belongs to you, and that’s the part I finally took back.

Most of that starts on your plate. Food is not the only thing that matters, but it matters every single day, several times a day. Every meal is a choice. A choice to add to the fire or drown it out. That’s what food as medicine means to me. Not a diet. Not a punishment. A daily decision about what you’re feeding.

What changed for me wasn’t learning more about my family history. I already knew it by heart. What changed was finally treating myself like someone worth protecting from it. Not after a scare. Not on Monday. Every ordinary day, in the small decisions nobody claps for.

So let me ask you something, and be honest with yourself.

If you grew up hearing “my pressha is up” and “it’s cuz of my shuga,” what are you saying now? Is it “it runs in my family”? Is it “I’m just tired”? Is it “I’ll get to it once things calm down”? Is it “in moderation”?

Those sentences sound different. They’re doing the same job. They’re explaining. They’re not changing anything.

The women who raised us didn’t always have the information we have now. They didn’t always have the access, the time, or the room to put themselves first. We know more. A lot of us have more. Which means we don’t get to hide behind “that’s just how it goes” the same way.

If “the shuga” was talked about in your house too, you already know what I mean. You’ve been carrying the warning your whole life.

The question is whether you’ve been carrying yourself with the same care.

Next time, I’m pulling out the receipts. Not mine. Yours. Because you can tell me you put yourself first all day long, but your body? Your body’s been keeping the real records. Come back, and we’ll read them together.

_{I’m sharing my own experience, not medical advice. Family history is one of many factors in type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, so talk with your healthcare provider about your own risk and care.}

The day I started seeing double, I stopped negotiating with my body.

Not because I finally learned something new. I didn’t. I’m a health coach. I had spent years sitting across from women, helping them prevent and reverse type 2 diabetes. I knew the numbers. I knew the food. I knew the warning signs.

Food as medicine isn’t a slogan for me. It’s my work. I teach women what to eat, what to avoid, and how food affects everything from their blood sugar to their energy to their mood.

And there I was with an A1c of 9.5, unable to trust my own eyes.

Here’s what nobody tells you about knowing better. When something goes wrong, you don’t get the comfort of being confused. I didn’t need anybody to explain what blurred, doubled vision could mean for someone with diabetes. I already knew. That was the scariest part. My body had stopped whispering, and I understood every word it was saying.

That wasn’t my first warning. It wasn’t even my worst number.

Years before that, I sat in my doctor’s office and heard her say my A1c was 12. TWELVE. She was ready to start me on insulin right then. I begged her not to. I pleaded.

Think about that for a minute. A health coach, sitting in a doctor’s office, begging for one more chance to do the exact thing she teaches other women to do every single day.

She gave me thirty days. Come back under 7.5, she said, or insulin it is.

So I went home and did what I knew to do. With two medications and every bit of knowledge I had, I walked back into her office thirty days later with an A1c of 6.8.

When there’s a deadline and a needle waiting on the other side, you find out exactly what you’re capable of.

I proved I could do it. And then I slowly stopped.

Not all at once. Nobody falls off all at once. The foods I had cut out started finding their way back onto my plate, one “just this once” at a time. And the excuses came right along with them. It was “I’ll do better tomorrow.” It was “I’ll rest over the weekend.” It was “it’s not that serious.” Small sentences. Reasonable sentences. The kind you say so often they stop sounding like excuses and start sounding like a plan.

Any of those sound familiar?

You know how it goes. Lunch becomes whatever you can eat standing up. The walk gets skipped because somebody needs something. The checkup gets pushed to next month, and then the month after that. You’re not ignoring your health. You’re just getting to it after everything else. And everything else never runs out.

Here’s what still gets me. The whole time, I believed I was putting myself first. Or at least second, because you know, family. If you had asked me, I would have told you with a straight face that I took care of myself. I knew better than anybody what that meant.

But knowing better is not the same as doing better. Intention and action are not twins. They’re cousins at best, and they don’t always live in the same house.

My body knew the difference. It kept the receipts I wasn’t willing to read.

When I was first diagnosed, I was embarrassed, and I was angry. Embarrassed because how does a health coach become one of the statistics she works every day to prevent? Angry because I grew up hearing the women in my family, in my neighborhood, and at church talk about “the sugar” and their “pressure”. I saw what it took from them. I promised myself that it wouldn’t take from me.

It happened anyway. Not out of the bright blue sky. It happened one “tomorrow” at a time, until tomorrow looked me in the face and said, “You said that yesterday.”

Looking back, I can see what went wrong after that first turnaround. I didn’t change for me. I changed for a deadline. My doctor’s thirty days was the reason, and the moment that deadline passed, so did the urgency. I had made my health a priority the way you make a fire a priority. Put it out, then go back to everything else.

That taught me something I didn’t want to learn. A scare can make you change. It can’t keep you changed. Fear is a great emergency brake and a terrible steering wheel.

The second time, after the double vision, I took medication, including insulin, for the first thirty days. And let me be clear: the meds mattered. They helped bring the numbers down. But this time I did something different. I stopped treating my health like a crisis to survive and started treating myself like the priority I had been claiming to be.

I found a doctor who didn’t just treat diabetes, but specialized in reversing it. And I hired a health coach. Yes, the health coach got herself a health coach. Because knowing what to do had never been my problem. Doing it alone, with nobody walking beside me, was.

I released. I started speaking up about the things that bothered me instead of bottling them up and carrying them around. Turns out the things you keep pushing down don’t stay quiet. They just find somewhere else in your body to speak.

And I cleaned up my plate. I’ve always been “selective” about what I eat, but this time I went further. Not to hit a number. Not for thirty days. For the rest of my life. That was the real difference. The first time, food was how I passed a test. This time, it’s how I take care of myself for the long haul.

It wasn’t a thirty-day sprint. It was a decision I had to keep making on ordinary days, when nobody was threatening me with anything and it would have been easy to say “tomorrow” again.

I’ve lost 23 pounds. My A1c is 5.9. I haven’t needed medication in fifteen months, and I’m aiming for 5.4 by January.

I’m not telling you this so you’ll clap for me. I’m telling you because I know there’s a woman reading this who also knows better. Who has done the thirty-day turnaround. The January reset. The “this time I’m serious.” Who would tell you, with a straight face, that she takes care of herself.

And whose body is telling a different story.

It’s in the tiredness that a full night’s sleep doesn’t fix. The numbers at the checkup she keeps meaning to schedule. The way she feels at 3 in the afternoon. Her body is keeping receipts too. She just hasn’t opened them yet.

This isn’t self-care. This is health care.

Next time, I’m going back to where this really started, with the women who taught me what “the sugar” meant long before I ever saw a lab result of my own.

_{I’m sharing my own experience, not medical advice. Every body and every situation is different, so talk with your healthcare provider about your health, your numbers, and your care.}

You open the cabinet and reach for the good mug. The one that feels nice in your hands. Then you put it back and take the chipped one.

Cuz nobody’s coming over.

But you’re here.

Now, I know it’s a mug. I’m not about to conduct a full assessment of your self-worth based on your drinkware. Maybe you grabbed the chipped one because it was closer. Maybe the good mug belonged to someone you love, and it would break your heart if it got broken.

But if the thought that stopped you was It’s just me, can we talk about that?

Just me.

I’ve heard those two little words attached to all kinds of things - I’ve said them myself.

“I’m not going to cook all that. It’s just me.”

“No need to set the table. It’s just me.”

“I’ll use the paper plates. It’s just me.”

We say it like we’re explaining why we don’t need to make a fuss. And sometimes we truly don’t want a fuss. I respect that. I enjoy a meal that requires exactly one fork and no ceremony.

But sometimes “it’s just me” means something else. Sometimes it means I’d do this if someone else were here, but I won’t do it for myself.

That’s the part I want to look at.

Because let somebody we love come over and suddenly we’re digging around for the good glasses. We want them to feel welcome. We want them to have a good time. A lovely time. We might even put the olives in a little bowl instead of sliding the jar across the table. Look at us being fancy.

Then everybody leaves, and we go right back to treating our own presence like it doesn’t quite justify the effort.

I’m not saying you need to put olives in a bowl when you’re home alone. Eat them out of the jar. Live your life. I’m asking why the things that make you happy sometimes stay tucked away until someone else is around to enjoy them.

The candle you love has never been lit because you’re waiting for a special evening. The perfume stays in its box because you’re only running errands. That dress still has its tags because you haven’t been invited anywhere you think is worthy of wearing it.

And the longer these things sit, the more I wonder: What exactly are we waiting for? An invitation? A witness? Permission?

Or are we waiting to become the version of ourselves we think deserves them?

Maybe the dress comes out when we lose weight. Maybe the perfume comes out when we have somebody to smell good for. Maybe we use the nice plates when our lives look a little more like the lives we thought we’d have by now.

Whew. See how we went from a mug to all that?

That’s why I think the small stuff is worth paying attention to. Not because every choice is secretly profound. Some choices are just choices. But if the same thought keeps popping up in different places, I want to know what it’s been telling us.

Save it for later.

Don’t waste it on yourself.

Wait until there’s a reason.

I think a lot of us have gotten used to making ourselves the person who waits. We’ll check what everybody else needs, adjust our plans, make room, give up the last piece, and tell ourselves we don’t mind. Sometimes we don’t mind. Other times we do, but we’ve gotten so good at brushing that feeling aside we barely hear it anymore.

Then we wonder why choosing ourselves feels so uncomfortable, even when the choice is small.

Self-priority can sound like a big, dramatic thing. Like you have to quit something, confront somebody, or change your whole life before you can say you’ve chosen yourself. Sometimes those bigger choices are necessary. But you can also begin by noticing the moments when you quietly move yourself to the back of the line.

Especially when nobody asked you to.

And self-worth? I don’t think a person gains it by using a nice mug. You were worthy before you opened the cabinet. The mug isn’t proof of that.

But I do think the way we talk to ourselves matters. If “it’s just me” is always the reason we go without something we’d enjoy, we ought to hear ourselves say it. We ought to be curious about why me became a reason to put the good thing back.

Maybe that thought has been around so long it feels like common sense. Maybe it came from a time when there wasn’t enough to go around. Maybe you were taught that saving the best for others was what a good woman did. Or maybe you have no idea where it came from.

You don’t need to solve your entire history before you make a different choice today.

And you don’t have to choose the good thing every time. If you love the chipped mug, use it. If you’re saving a candle for your birthday because you enjoy having something to look forward to, save it. I’m not trying to turn your kitchen into another place where you can get self-care “wrong.” Lord knows we have enough of that.

I just want the choice to be yours.

Not a reflex. Not an old rule you’re still following without remembering who made it. Not a decision based on the idea that pleasure is wasted unless somebody else sees you having it.

So next time you reach for something you love and pull your hand back, pause for a second.

Ask yourself, Why did I put that back?

You may have a perfectly good reason. Or you may hear those words again.

It’s me.

If you do, I hope you’ll answer them.

Yes. It’s Me. The woman who bought it. The woman who lives here. The woman who keeps showing up for this life.

Then make your tea.

And if you want the good mug, use the good mug.

Tell me in the comments: what’s your “good mug”? The thing you keep saving, and who are you saving it for?

I’ve been eavesdropping on myself lately.

And some of what I heard? Not cute.

That running commentary happening in the background while I’m just trying to live my life.

Why did I do that?

I should know better.

Girl, get yourself together.

That was stupid.

I always do this.

I can’t ever stick with anything.

What is wrong with me?

Sometimes I say these things jokingly.

Sometimes I’m frustrated.

Sometimes the thought moves through my head so quickly I barely even notice it.

But I hear it.

And I think it’s worth paying attention to.

Because who said that?

That’s one of the questions I’ve started asking myself.

Who said that?

And I don’t necessarily mean who said those exact words to me.

I mean: Where did I learn to think about myself this way?

Because our self-talk didn’t just drop out of the sky one Wednesday afternoon.

Some of it came from our families.

Some came from school.

Religion.

Relationships.

Culture.

Work.

Social media.

And some of it came from that one thing somebody said 30 years ago that apparently moved into our brain, unpacked its bags, rearranged the furniture and has been living there rent-free ever since.

The wild part is that after we’ve heard something—or repeated it to ourselves—long enough, it stops sounding like something we believe.

It starts sounding like something we know.

I’m bad with money.

I’m lazy.

I’m too sensitive.

I’m not disciplined.

I’m terrible at relationships.

I’m not good at that kind of thing.

I’m just not that kind of person.

But hold up.

Is that actually true?

Or have you just been saying it for a really long time?

Because those are not the same thing.

Before you try to change it, hear it

This is where I think we sometimes get ahead of ourselves.

We hear something about negative self-talk and immediately start trying to replace every negative thought with something positive.

I’m amazing!

I’m unstoppable!

Everything is wonderful!

Meanwhile, some part of your brain is sitting in the corner like…

Girl, please.

I’m not interested in pretending.

I’m much more interested in awareness.

Because you can’t really change a conversation you don’t even realize you’re having.

So before you correct yourself, listen to yourself.

What do you say to yourself when you make a mistake?

When you look in the mirror?

When you don’t finish everything on your to-do list?

When you spend money you hadn’t planned to spend?

When you say yes and immediately wish you’d said no?

When you eat something you hadn’t intended to eat?

When you’re tired?

When you procrastinate?

When you disappoint yourself?

Who do you become when you’re talking to you?

That’s the question.

Because some of us are compassionate as hell with everybody else and turn into a drill sergeant the minute we’re dealing with ourselves.

We’ll give somebody else context.

Grace.

Patience.

Another chance.

We’ll explain why they shouldn’t be so hard on themselves.

We’ll remind them that they’re human.

We’ll tell them one mistake doesn’t define them.

We’ll practically deliver a whole damn TED Talk on their behalf.

Then turn around and tell ourselves:

You should’ve known better.

Ma’am.

Can we extend some of that understanding over here too?

The way you talk to yourself matters

Not because every thought becomes reality.

I’m not going there.

Sometimes a thought is just a thought.

But the way we repeatedly speak to ourselves does affect the relationship we have with ourselves.

Think about any other relationship in your life.

If somebody constantly criticized you…

Called you names…

Reminded you of every mistake…

Questioned every decision…

Dismissed every accomplishment…

And used your worst moments as evidence of who you really are…

You probably wouldn’t describe that as a healthy relationship.

So why does it become acceptable when the person doing it is us?

And here’s where I think this gets especially important:

It’s hard to trust someone who is always attacking you.

Even when that someone is you.

If I’m constantly second-guessing myself, criticizing myself and reminding myself of all the times I’ve gotten something wrong, why would I feel confident making the next decision?

Maybe some of what we call a lack of self-trust isn’t because we don’t know ourselves.

Maybe we’ve just spent so much time questioning ourselves that we’ve gotten used to believing everybody else’s voice deserves more authority than our own.

That’s worth sitting with.

I’m not saying let yourself off the hook

Now, because I know somebody is thinking it…

No.

Being kind to yourself does not mean you get to do whatever you want and then sprinkle some self-compassion on top.

Sometimes I make a bad decision.

Sometimes I procrastinate.

Sometimes I don’t follow through.

Sometimes I know better and still do the thing.

Sometimes I need to tell myself:

Cheryl. Girl. Now you know good and well…

Accountability is necessary.

Cruelty isn’t.

There’s a huge difference between:

That wasn’t the best decision. What happened there?

and

See? This is why you can’t get your life together.

One creates curiosity.

The other creates shame.

One asks me to examine what happened.

The other tells me what happened is evidence of who I am.

And that distinction matters to me.

Because I want to be able to tell myself the truth without using the truth as a weapon.

I want to be able to say:

Nope. I don’t like how I handled that.

And then ask:

What was going on with me?

What was I feeling?

What did I need?

What was I afraid of?

What can I do differently next time?

That’s accountability too.

Actually, I think that’s better accountability.

Because now I’ve learned something about myself instead of just beating myself up and calling it personal growth.

Be careful what comes after “I am”

This is another thing I’ve become much more conscious of.

Those two little words.

I am.

Because we put all kinds of stuff behind them.

I am lazy.

I am awkward.

I am terrible at this.

I am bad with money.

I am undisciplined.

I am too much.

I am not enough.

And sometimes we’re taking one behavior, one feeling, one season of our lives, one mistake—or somebody else’s opinion—and turning it into an identity.

There’s a difference between:

I didn’t follow through today.

and

I am someone who never follows through.

There’s a difference between:

I’m struggling with this.

and

I’m bad at this.

There’s a difference between:

I made a mistake.

and

I’m stupid.

One describes something that happened.

The other defines the person it happened to.

I don’t want every temporary experience getting permanent naming rights over who I am.

And yes, I believe in affirmations

Now we’re getting into territory where some people are all in and other people start rolling their eyes.

That’s okay.

Roll ‘em.

I like affirmations.

But probably not for the reason people think.

I don’t believe an affirmation is a magic spell.

I don’t think I can say, I am a billionaire 47 times before breakfast and then check my bank account expecting Beyoncé money.

If that changes, I promise I will report back immediately.

What I do believe is that if I’m going to repeat something to myself over and over again, I should probably pay attention to what I’m rehearsing.

Because I’ve been affirming things my whole life.

We all have.

Every time I say:

I’m terrible at this.

I’m never going to figure this out.

I can’t do that.

That’s just how I am.

I’m reinforcing a story too.

So I choose some of my stories intentionally.

Some of my own affirmations are simple:

I am healthy.
I am wealthy.
I am rich.
I am free.

And another one that means a lot to me:

I love myself and allow others to love me too.

I don’t say these things because every single moment of my life already reflects them perfectly.

They aren’t a status report.

They’re reminders.

They’re declarations of what I’m choosing to cultivate.

And, frankly, I’d rather intentionally participate in the stories I tell myself than hand the microphone over to every fear, insecurity, old wound and random opinion somebody has ever had about me.

They’ve had enough airtime.

Maybe “positive self-talk” isn’t even the goal

The more I think about all of this, the less interested I am in having positive self-talk.

I want supportive self-talk.

Honest self-talk.

Compassionate self-talk.

Curious self-talk.

Self-talk that helps me understand myself instead of constantly judging myself.

Self-talk that lets me say:

Cheryl, that wasn’t your finest moment.

without turning it into:

Cheryl, you are a mess.

Self-talk that allows me to celebrate myself without immediately minimizing what I’ve accomplished.

Self-talk that lets me change my mind.

Try again.

Rest.

Set a boundary.

Get something wrong.

Learn.

Grow.

And still be on my own side.

Because that’s really what I’m talking about.

Being on your own side.

Not blindly.

Not dishonestly.

Not without accountability.

But consistently.

So, listen

For the next few days, don’t try to fix anything.

Just pay attention.

Catch the little comments.

Catch the jokes you make at your own expense.

Catch the labels.

Catch the automatic criticism.

Catch what comes after I am.

And especially notice what you say to yourself when something goes wrong.

Then get curious.

Where did I learn to talk to myself like this?

Do I actually believe this?

Is it true—or is it familiar?

Would I say this to someone I love?

And here’s the question I’m asking myself:

Is this how I want to continue speaking to me?

Because I spend more time with myself than I will ever spend with another human being.

I am there for every mistake.

Every win.

Every embarrassing moment.

Every disappointment.

Every new beginning.

Every version of myself I outgrow.

Every version I’m still becoming.

That’s a lifelong relationship.

I think it’s worth paying attention to how we speak inside of it.

Because even when nobody else hears what you’re saying to yourself…

you do.

If you read all of that and felt something twist a little in your chest — that’s not an accident. That’s recognition.

And here’s the thing about becoming aware of the story you’ve been telling yourself: awareness alone doesn’t rewrite it. You need space to actually sit with what you found, say it out loud to someone who isn’t going to judge you for it, and figure out what you’re going to do instead.

That’s exactly what the Choose You First: Clarity Session is for.

It’s 90 minutes. Just you and me. No fluff, no generic worksheet, no pretending everything’s fine when it’s not. We get honest about the voice you’ve been listening to, where it came from, and what it’s actually costing you — and you leave with clarity on what comes next.

Schedule your Choose You First: Clarity Session

Schedule your session here

You’ve spent enough time defending old stories.

Let’s find out who you are without them.

Earlier today, I told my best friend, Dr. Nicolé L. Felton, “I have to write a Substack article today. What should I write about?”

She said, “Write about change.”

That tracks. Nicolé is the owner and founder of Dani’s Garden, which supports people dealing with eating disorders, disordered eating, anxiety, and trauma. And you can’t do work like that without understanding something about change, including how deeply we can want it and how uncomfortable it can feel when it finally shows up.

As soon as she said it, I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

The fear of change.

Change is funny. We can talk about how tired we are of the same old situation. We can pray for something different, journal about it, complain about it, make a whole vision board about it, and then when an actual door opens, grab the frame like somebody is trying to drag us out of the house.

We wanted change.

We just didn’t know change was going to require us to do something we had never done before.

And sometimes that is the whole problem.

We assume the discomfort means something is wrong. We think, “If this were the right decision, I wouldn’t feel so anxious.”

But that is not always true.

Sometimes you feel anxious because you are in danger.

Sometimes you feel anxious because your mind is trying to predict what will happen next and does not have enough information.

And sometimes you feel anxious because this is new, period.

You have never set that boundary before.

You have never gone somewhere alone.

You have never asked for what you actually wanted without watering it down first.

You have never stopped explaining your no.

You have never made a decision based on what was best for you instead of what would keep everybody else comfortable.

Of course it feels unfamiliar. It is.

But unfamiliar does not automatically mean unsafe. And it definitely does not mean you are incapable.

Sometimes what we call fear is really the absence of evidence. We already have evidence that we can survive our current situation, even if we are unhappy in it. We do not yet have proof that we can handle the new one.

The new life has no receipts yet.

The old life has home-court advantage. It knows all your plays.

That does not make it better. It only makes it familiar.

Now, some people truly do not want change. They like their routines. They enjoy knowing what to expect. Their current life fits them, and they are not interested in shaking the table just to prove they are growing.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Change is not automatically better, and staying is not automatically settling.

But there is a difference between staying because you genuinely choose what you have and staying because the unknown has you in a chokehold.

There is a difference between peace and stagnation.

There is a difference between “I like my life” and “I am afraid to find out what else my life could be.”

That is the part worth getting honest about.

Not every change is a good change. Not every uncomfortable feeling is a sign that you should leap. Sometimes your hesitation is telling you to slow down, gather more information, or choose a different path.

Use your discernment. Pay attention to what your body and your life are telling you.

But do not dress fear up as wisdom just because fear knows how to sound convincing.

Fear will say:

“This is too risky.”

“You are not ready.”

“You might regret it.”

“People are going to have something to say.”

And maybe people will have something to say. People have something to say when you change, when you stay the same, when you leave, when you return, and apparently when you breathe with too much confidence.

They’ll be all right.

The bigger question is: will you be all right if you keep letting their possible reactions make your decisions for you?

Choosing yourself often requires change.

Sometimes it is a huge change, like leaving a relationship, moving to a new place, or starting over in your work.

Sometimes it looks small. You rest before everything is finished. You eat in a way that supports your body. You ask for help. You stop volunteering for things you do not want to do. You say, “No, I can’t,” and let the sentence sit there without giving it a five-page explanation and three character references.

Small does not mean easy.

Especially when the change interrupts a pattern that has been running your life for years.

You do not have to wait until you are no longer afraid. You can be nervous and still move. You can be uncertain and still take one honest step. You can let fear come along without handing it the keys.

When change feels like too much, ask yourself:

• Is this actually unsafe, or is it unfamiliar?

• What am I predicting without knowing whether it is true?

• What is staying the same costing me?

• What is the smallest step I can take toward what I want?

You do not have to transform your whole life by Friday. That sounds exhausting, and Friday already has enough going on.

Just give yourself a chance to collect some new evidence.

Evidence that you can say no and survive the silence afterward.

Evidence that you can try something new and not be good at it immediately.

Evidence that you can disappoint someone and still be a good person.

Evidence that you can choose yourself and the world will keep spinning.

Eventually, what once felt unfamiliar begins to feel normal. The thing that made your stomach flip becomes something you know how to do. Not because you waited for the fear to disappear, but because you stopped treating the fear like a stop sign.

Maybe fear is not always telling you to turn around.

Maybe sometimes it is simply announcing that you have arrived at a place you have never been before.

You do not owe the familiar permanent access to your life just because it knows your name.

The life you want may require a version of you that you have not met yet.

Go introduce yourself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. Change may have shown up, but that does not mean you have to figure out how to meet it alone.

I’ve opened up spots for my Choose You First: Clarity Sessions, private 90-minute coaching sessions for women who already know something has to change but keep getting tangled in guilt, fear, and the habit of putting themselves last.

Together, we’ll get clear about what you want, look honestly at what has been keeping you stuck, and identify a next step that fits your life.

90 minutes | Private 1:1 with Cheryl | $297

Learn more and reserve your session here

It was two o’clock, and I was still sitting on my couch sipping coffee and watching Reacher.

I had planned to leave the house sometime between two and three to go to the Jollof Rice Festival. It sounded like my kind of event. International food, music, culture, something different to see and experience. I had been excited about going.

Then two o’clock arrived.

And suddenly I was thinking, “Do I really feel like going?”

This happens to me all the time.

I will find something interesting to do, make a whole plan to go, and sometimes even look forward to it. But when it’s time to turn off the television, get off the couch, get dressed, gather my things, and actually leave the house, I start questioning the whole operation.

Do I really want to go?

Would I rather stay home?

Is this worth putting on real clothes?

But while I was sitting there, I realized something important.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go.

I just didn’t feel like going.

Those are not the same thing.

Wanting to go is about the experience. It is about trying the food, seeing the people, hearing the music, walking around somewhere new, and having a story to tell afterward.

Feeling like going is about everything I have to do before I can experience any of that.

I have to stop doing what I am already comfortably doing. I have to shift gears. I have to get up, get ready (a major feat all on it’s on), leave my house, drive somewhere, find parking, and enter a completely different environment.

Leaving the house is not one step. It is a collection of steps wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one simple decision.

Sometimes I want the destination. I just don’t want the transition.

That realization made me think about something I have said many times:

“I should get out of the house more.”

But why should I?

Who made that rule?

I tell myself I get tired of being in the house. I say I need somewhere to go. I tell myself I should be doing more, seeing more, and getting out more.

But the truth is, I like being at home.

I like my house.

I like sitting on my couch, sipping my coffee, watching a good series, and spending time with myself. I have many days when I am alone, just me and me, and I genuinely enjoy my own company.

That is not a problem that needs to be fixed.

I don’t necessarily want to be out all the time. I want to know that I have somewhere to go when I decide I want to go.

There is a difference.

Of course, I have always had options. My inbox is full of emails about local events. There is Meetup, Eventbrite, Facebook, community calendars, museums, parks, festivals, markets, classes, and all kinds of places I could go.

But having options is not the same as seeing options that feel like they were chosen for me.

A list of random events can feel like more noise. A list built around who I actually am feels like possibility.

Give me an international food market. A cultural festival. A long walking trail. An art exhibit. A place to paint, explore, eat something I have never tried, or wander around by myself without feeling awkward. Now we are talking.

Those are not just things to do.

Those are things that I, Cheryl, would actually enjoy doing.

And apparently, that matters.

Maybe part of choosing ourselves is not simply giving ourselves more options. Maybe it is getting to know ourselves well enough to recognize which options belong to us.

Not what a woman my age is “supposed” to enjoy.

Not what someone else considers fun.

Not something I should attend because getting out of the house is allegedly good for me.

Something that speaks to this version of me. The curious, food-loving, travel-loving, introverted woman who enjoys exploring the world and also enjoys coming home, locking the door, and not speaking to anybody.

Both women are me.

Neither one needs to defeat the other.

The woman on the couch is not lazy or wasting her life simply because she is comfortable at home.

The woman who wants to go to the festival is not obligated to attend just because she once said she wanted to go.

An option is not an assignment.

Still, I have to be honest with myself. Sometimes staying home is exactly what I want. Other times, I am letting the discomfort of transitioning talk me out of an experience I would genuinely enjoy.

That distinction matters too.

Choosing myself doesn't automatically mean choosing the couch. It also doesn't mean forcing myself out the door to prove I am living a full life.

It means pausing long enough to ask myself better questions.

Do I truly want to stay home?

Or do I simply not feel like going through the steps required to leave?

If I stay home, will I feel content or disappointed?

If I go, will I be glad I went once I get there?

There is no universally correct answer. There is only an honest one.

I am also learning that I don’t have to feel like doing something before I do it. Feelings are information, but they do not have to be permission slips.

I can want to go, not feel like getting ready, and still decide to go.

I can also want to go, decide that staying home feels better today, and release myself from the guilt.

What I don’t have to do is turn every decision into a judgment about the kind of person I am.

I don’t need to “get out more” because that sounds like the correct way to live.

I don’t need to stay home because leaving feels inconvenient.

I don’t need to build a case for either choice.

Maybe I just need options that feel like mine, and the freedom to choose among them moment by moment.

Sometimes choosing myself will look like turning off Reacher, putting down my coffee, and getting dressed before I can change my mind again.

Sometimes it will look like staying right where I am and enjoying the quiet.

The point is not whether I go or stay.

The point is that I am no longer turning my wants into shoulds, my options into obligations, or my decisions into evidence that I am doing life wrong.

I can want somewhere to go without wanting to go today.

I can love exploring the world and love being at home.

I can choose differently tomorrow.

And I don’t have to explain any of it.

I believe thoughts become things.

I believe what we focus on grows.

And I think I believed it long before I had language for any of it.

I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I couldn’t have been more than nine. It was summer in South Carolina, and I was walking with my grandmother and my uncle.

I was tired.

Hungry.

Hot.

Did I mention that I was hungry and hot!?!

And apparently, we were walking to the ends of the earth.

I don’t know how long that walk really was, but remembering the area now, I swear we had to have walked at least ten miles. My grandmother had a car, so to this day I have absolutely no idea why we were walking.

But we were.

At one point, my uncle carried me on his back.

Now, I was probably about 60 pounds soaking wet with bricks in my pockets, but my uncle was only five years older than me and maybe 100 pounds himself.

So…that back ride didn’t last long.

Somewhere along that walk, I started thinking about home.

Not just I want to go home.

I started playing a whole movie in my head.

I could see myself walking through the door.

First, I would go pee and wash my hands.

Then I’d go into the kitchen, and there would be food waiting for me. I’d eat.

After that, I’d go take a bath, without anybody even having to tell me to.

Then I would climb into my little twin-sized bed.

White sheets.

My blue fluffy blanket.

My blue comforter.

Safe.

Secure.

Cuddled.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking.

Sheet, blanket AND comforter in the middle of a South Carolina summer?!

Yes.

I still do it.

I said comfort, safe and cuddled, remember?

Anyway…

Eventually, we made it home.

I went inside.

I went to the bathroom and washed my hands.

There was food waiting for me in the kitchen.

I ate.

I took my bath.

And then I climbed into that little bed with my white sheets, blue fluffy blanket, and blue comforter.

Exactly as I’d seen it.

I remember lying there and realizing that everything I had imagined while we were walking had happened.

And nine-year-old me was convinced:

I had done something.

Some kind of magic had happened because I had imagined it first.

And if I had done it once, I figured I could do it again.

So I made myself a promise.

If I was ever somewhere I didn’t want to be, I would imagine myself safe at home.

And you know what?

I still do.

Before I Knew the Word Manifestation

Back then, I didn’t know anything about manifestation.

I didn’t know “thoughts become things.”

I had never heard anybody say, “What you focus on grows.”

I certainly didn’t know anything about visualization, intention, or the way our thoughts can influence what we notice, believe, pursue, and create.

I just knew that I had been somewhere uncomfortable, and instead of allowing that discomfort to become my entire reality, I gave my mind somewhere else to go.

I showed myself what came next.

And maybe that’s the part I’ve carried with me all these years.

Because manifestation, at least the way I understand it, isn’t sitting around thinking happy thoughts and waiting for the universe to drop Amazon packages at your door.

It’s not pretending difficult things aren’t happening.

It’s not denying reality.

Sometimes it’s simply refusing to let your current reality have the final word.

It’s being able to stand in one place while seeing yourself in another.

And maybe there’s more self-priority in that than I realized.

What Are You Allowing Yourself to See?

Choosing yourself first isn’t only about what you do.

Sometimes it’s about what you allow yourself to imagine.

Can you see yourself well?

Can you see yourself free?

Can you see yourself rested?

Can you see yourself loved without having to earn it?

Can you see yourself financially secure?

Can you see yourself saying no and surviving everybody’s disappointment?

Can you see yourself living a life that actually feels like yours?

Because sometimes we’ve spent so much time focusing on what we don’t want that we haven’t given ourselves permission to create a clear picture of what we do want.

We know we’re tired.

We know we’re unhappy.

We know something isn’t working.

We know we can’t keep doing this.

But then what?

Where are you going?

What does it look like when you get there?

What does it feel like?

Maybe choosing yourself first also means being willing to hold a vision of yourself beyond your present circumstances.

Not somebody else’s vision for you.

Yours.

What We Focus On Grows

I really do believe thoughts become things.

But perhaps my understanding of that little girl on that long, hot South Carolina walk has changed.

She didn’t magically create the food in the kitchen.

She didn’t manifest the bathroom. It was already there.

And thank God, because after a ten-mile walk, that would have been an emergency manifestation, Lol!

What she created was a destination in her mind.

While her feet were still walking, some part of her had already arrived.

She could see herself cared for.

Fed.

Clean.

Rested.

Safe.

She knew where she was going.

Maybe that’s why I still return to that practice all these years later.

When I find myself in situations that I don’t want to remain in, I start imagining home.

Except “home” doesn’t always mean a house anymore.

Sometimes home is peace.

Sometimes it’s freedom.

Sometimes it’s health.

Sometimes it’s abundance.

Sometimes it’s the version of me who made the decision I was afraid to make.

Sometimes it’s simply a life where I recognize myself again.

And perhaps that’s one of the most important ways we choose ourselves first:

We stop giving all of our attention to the life we are trying to leave and start giving some of it to the life we are trying to create.

What we focus on grows.

So every now and then, close your eyes.

Play the movie.

See yourself getting home.

And then keep walking.

P.S. In case you haven’t heard, we’re talking about this at “The Audacity of Choosing Yourself First”, it’s a conversational workshop. I’m covering your seat, so…

LET'S TALK

There are things I write publicly because I want as many women as possible to hear them.

Then there are the things I save for you here.

This is one of them.

As a paid subscriber, every now and then I want you to get something that goes beyond an article. Something useful. Something you can take with you, come back to, scribble all over, and hopefully use to make some real-life decisions.

So today, I made you something.

But first, lemme tell you why.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how easy it is to say we’re choosing ourselves first.

It sounds good.

I choose me.

I’m making myself a priority.

I’m protecting my peace.

Okay.

But where?

Because self-priority isn’t really a belief until it starts showing up somewhere in your actual life.

And sometimes the places where we have abandoned ourselves are so normal to us that we don’t even recognize them anymore.

We call it being responsible.

Being helpful.

Being easygoing.

Being the dependable one.

Being a good wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, emplo…

Read more

Let me tell you something about being “the strong one.”

It looks real good from the outside.

Everybody knows you’re going to handle it.

Something goes wrong? Call you.

Somebody needs advice? Call you.

Plans fall apart? You’ll figure it out.

Family needs something? Somehow you already know about it before they finish asking.

You remember the appointments, the birthdays, the groceries, the deadlines, the thing somebody casually mentioned three weeks ago that everybody else forgot.

You are dependable.

Capable.

Responsible.

Strong.

All the things women get praised for being.

But here’s the question nobody really asks:

Can you depend on you?

Because being the woman everybody can count on does not automatically mean you have been showing up for yourself.

Sometimes it means the exact opposite.

Sometimes everybody else has gotten the best of you for so long that you’ve been surviving on whatever scraps of you were left over.

And somehow we called that being a good woman.

You already know what you need

What gets me is that most women are not walking around completely clueless about what they need.

Girl, you know.

You know you’re tired.

You know you need help.

You know you don’t want to go.

You know you need to make that appointment.

You know that relationship is draining the life out of you.

You know you need more rest.

You know you want more.

You know something in your life does not fit anymore.

You know.

Then five minutes later, here comes the committee meeting in your head.

Well, what will they think?

Maybe I’m being too sensitive.

I don’t want anybody to be mad.

Maybe I should just wait.

They really need me right now.

Let me get through this one thing first.

And just like that, you have talked yourself right out of what you already knew.

Again.

That is why I keep coming back to self-trust.

Because choosing yourself first is hard when every decision you make for yourself has to go through a board of directors first.

And everybody you know somehow has a seat on the board.

Meanwhile, you keep your word to everybody else

Tell somebody you’ll be there at 3:00?

You’re there.

Promise to pick something up?

Done.

Say you’ll help with something?

You figure it out.

But tell yourself:

“I’m going to start walking again.”

“I’m going to rest this weekend.”

“I’m going to stop saying yes when I mean no.”

“I’m going to book that trip.”

“I’m going to make that appointment.”

“I’m going to finally do that thing I keep talking about.”

And somehow your own promise becomes optional.

That matters.

Because trust is built through evidence.

If somebody constantly tells you they’re going to do something and never does it, eventually you stop believing them.

Why would your relationship with yourself be any different?

Every time you keep a promise to yourself, even a small one, you are saying:

I can count on me.

And I think a whole lot of us need to rebuild that.

Not confidence.

Not another morning routine.

Not one more damn planner.

Trust.

And sometimes self-abandonment looks ridiculously small

I tell this story about mushrooms because it became one of those moments that revealed something much bigger to me.

Mushrooms.

That’s what helped me see something about myself.

I love mushrooms.

Always have.

But my husband didn’t like them, so over time I just stopped buying them.

Nothing dramatic happened.

Nobody told me I couldn’t have mushrooms.

There was no argument.

No big sacrifice.

I just quietly removed something I liked because somebody else didn’t like it.

That was it.

And one day I thought:

Wait a minute. I like mushrooms. Why the hell am I not buying mushrooms?

It sounds so small.

And that’s exactly the point.

We think losing ourselves has to look dramatic.

Sometimes it’s not dramatic at all.

Sometimes it’s mushrooms.

Sometimes it’s the restaurant you stopped suggesting.

The music you stopped playing.

The clothes you stopped wearing.

The dream you stopped talking about.

The thing you always wanted to try.

The trip you keep postponing.

The hour of silence you never give yourself.

A hundred tiny accommodations can eventually add up to a life that barely has your fingerprints on it.

Self-priority is bigger than self-care

I like a candle.

I like a massage.

I like a nice meal.

I am not anti-bubble-bath.

But a bubble bath is not going to fix a life where you keep overriding yourself.

You can moisturize, meditate, journal, buy the expensive candle, and still get up the next morning and go right back to abandoning yourself.

Self-priority is deeper.

It is saying:

My needs count.

My body gets a vote.

My desires are not automatically less important.

I do not need a jury of twelve people to approve every decision I make.

I am allowed to rest before I completely fall apart.

I am allowed to want something simply because I want it.

I am allowed to disappoint somebody and survive.

That last one will get us in trouble.

Look, I am not interested in creating selfish women

Let me be very clear about that…or, at least not selfish in the negative way we’ve been taught to understand selfishness.

Choosing yourself first does not mean nobody else matters.

It means you stop being the one person who never does.

There is a difference.

I want women to love deeply.

Give generously.

Care about people.

Show up.

Be in community.

And still remain fully present in their own lives.

Women who trust themselves.

Women who listen to their bodies.

Women who keep promises to themselves.

Women who do not need unanimous approval before making a choice.

Women who understand that caring for others and abandoning yourself are not the same thing.

That is the conversation I want us having.

And apparently, so do a lot of other women.

So we’re doing it again

Last time I hosted The Audacity of Choosing Yourself First, something happened that I could not have scripted.

I asked one question:

When did you first learn, or get the message, that choosing yourself first was selfish?

And the room opened up.

Women started talking.

Then somebody else said something.

Then another woman picked it up.

There was laughter.

There were some tender moments.

There were things said out loud that a lot of women have probably been thinking for years.

And by the end, women were asking me if I was going to do it again.

So yes.

We are doing it again.

The Audacity of Choosing Yourself First
Thursday, August 20
7:00 p.m. ET
Live on Zoom

This is not me talking at you for 90 minutes.

It is a conversation.

You can talk.

You can listen.

You can sit there with your coffee, tea, wine, sparkling water, whatever you have going on, and just take it in.

You do not have to perform.

You do not have to tell your business.

You just have to come willing to think about one question:

Where have I been leaving myself out of my own life?

Because you are already part of this Substack community, I’m inviting you to join me as my guest.

RESERVE MY COMPLIMENTARY SEAT

No credit card. No coupon code. Just register.

Come sit with us.

I have a feeling we are going to have a whole lot to talk about.

And that mushrooms story?

Yeah.

I’ll tell you that one too.

If this is your first time here, welcome. Pull up a chair—you’ve landed in a space where we tell the truth about what it takes to choose ourselves first, without pretending it is always easy or comfortable. To learn a little more about me, this community, and what you can expect here, start with my very first article: Welcome to Whole, Well & Unapologetic. And to those of you who have been here for a while, thank you for still being at the table.

I haven’t published an article since July 8th.

As I sit down to write this on Saturday afternoon, August 1, 2026, it has been twenty-four days.

And yes, I started to feel guilty about it.

I thought about the people who subscribed because they wanted to hear from me. I thought about everyone who follows along, reads my words, shares their thoughts with me, and supports this space—whether they are free or paid subscribers.

I thought about how long it had been since I had given you something new.

And the guilt started talking.

You should have written something by now.

People are waiting to hear from you.

You are neglecting them.

What kind of consistency is this?

You know how guilt does.

It does not gently tap you on the shoulder and ask whether you are okay.

It walks into the room with a clipboard and starts listing everything you have failed to do.

For a moment, I listened.

Then I had to tell myself the truth.

I was not carelessly neglecting my subscribers and followers.

I had not forgotten about you.

I had not decided this space, or the people who gather here, did not matter.

Life had been lifing.

Things in my own life required my attention, my energy, my presence, and sometimes whatever little bit of me I had left.

And I could not keep telling women to choose themselves first while punishing myself for needing to do the same.

Well, I could.

Plenty of people teach one thing and live another.

But I do not want to be one of them.

I do not want to build a body of work about self-priority while secretly believing that I must override my own needs to keep producing.

I do not want to encourage you to rest without guilt while treating my own rest like a failure.

I do not want to tell you that your humanity matters, then behave as though mine becomes inconvenient the minute somebody expects something from me.

So I let the guilt go.

Not the responsibility.

The guilt.

Because those are not the same thing.

I can care that I haven’t written in twenty-four days without beating myself up for it.

I can appreciate everybody who subscribes to or follows my work without acting as if their support purchased unlimited access to me.

I can acknowledge that I want to show up more consistently without pretending that consistency means never being affected by life.

And I can return without crawling back in here on my knees, handing out apologies for being human.

That is the kind of guilt I think many of us are carrying.

The guilt that comes up whenever we can’t keep performing at the level people expect us to.

The guilt that appears when life requires us to turn inward.

The guilt that tells us that slowing down is the same as letting people down.

The guilt that tries to convince us that needing time, space, rest, or care makes us unreliable.

But guilt is not always proof that you have done something wrong.

Sometimes it is proof that you have stopped doing what you were conditioned to believe a good woman should always do.

Keep going.

Keep giving.

Keep producing.

Keep smiling.

Keep showing up.

Keep answering.

Keep helping.

Keep carrying.

No matter what is happening inside your own life.

No matter how tired you are.

No matter what your body is saying.

No matter how much grief, confusion, transition, disappointment, or plain old life you are trying to hold together behind the scenes.

A good woman keeps going.

At least, that is what many of us were taught.

We inherited that message from women who were praised for how much they could take.

Women who kept moving when they were exhausted.

Women who stayed quiet to keep the peace.

Women who cared for everybody else while quietly falling apart themselves.

Women who were dependable because they did not believe they had permission to be anything else.

But let’s pause here, because I do not want us looking back at those women and judging them as though they simply did not know any better.

Many of them knew they were tired.

They knew they deserved more.

They knew they were carrying too much.

They just did not always have the freedom, the money, the protection, or the choices to do anything differently.

For a lot of Black and Brown women, putting other people’s needs first was not some cute little lesson in being a “good woman.”

It was survival.

Sometimes keeping the peace kept a roof over her head.

Sometimes staying quiet kept food on the table.

Sometimes being agreeable helped her keep a job she could not afford to lose.

Sometimes taking care of everybody else meant making sure the family survived another day, another bill, another crisis, another season when there simply was not enough.

Black women, in particular, have a long history of being expected to work both outside and inside the home. Their labor-force participation has been especially high for at least 150 years, and they were often expected to earn money while still carrying most of the responsibility for children, elders, meals, homes, and everybody’s emotional well-being.

And it was not always work that offered dignity, fair pay, or protection.

Racism and sexism shut many Black women out of better-paying jobs and pushed generations of them into domestic service, agricultural work, laundry work, caregiving, and other essential labor that was undervalued and poorly protected. Domestic workers, most of whom were Black women, were initially excluded from Social Security protections in 1935.

So when our mothers and grandmothers taught us to work hard, keep going, make ourselves useful, avoid upsetting the wrong people, and never let anybody see us fall apart, those lessons did not come out of nowhere.

Some of those lessons were passed down because, at one time, and still sometimes even now, being useful could mean being employable.

Being agreeable could mean being safe.

Being needed could mean not being abandoned.

Being the one who held everything together could mean the family did not go under.

That does not mean every sacrifice they made was healthy.

It does not mean we have to keep repeating the pattern.

But it does mean we should understand where it came from.

Because there is a difference between saying, “Our mothers taught us to neglect ourselves,” and saying, “Our mothers taught us the survival skills they had available to them.”

Some women had choices.

Many women had very few.

And some had no real choice at all.

They were doing the best they could inside systems that expected their labor, depended on their care, and still offered them very little protection in return.

Even now, Black women are likely to carry major financial responsibility for their families. In 2023, 69 percent of Black mothers were their family’s sole or primary breadwinner.

So this habit of carrying everybody is not only emotional.

It is historical.

It is economic.

It is cultural.

It has been reinforced by generations of women knowing that if they dropped the ball, there might not be anybody standing behind them to pick it up.

That is the truth underneath all that strength.

Sometimes she kept going because she was conditioned to.

Sometimes she kept going because people praised her for it.

And sometimes she kept going because stopping was a luxury she did not have.

We watched women be celebrated for never dropping the ball.

But nobody asked why they were holding every damn ball in the first place.

Nobody asked what it cost them to be counted on by everybody while being cared for by almost nobody.

Nobody asked whether being “strong” was truly who they wanted to be, or simply who life required them to be.

Nobody said, “Maybe she needs to sit down.”

And honestly, even if someone had said it, who was going to take over while she rested?

And somewhere along the way, we learned the rule:

A good woman does not inconvenience other people by having needs of her own.

A good woman adjusts.

A good woman understands.

A good woman pushes through.

A good woman finds a way.

A good woman does not disappoint people.

A good woman does not disappear for twenty-four days because her own life needed her.

Even when she is telling everybody else to make themselves a priority.

Do you see the trap?

We have been taught to measure our goodness by how little our humanity affects anyone else.

We are allowed to struggle, as long as dinner is still made.

We are allowed to grieve, as long as the emails are answered.

We are allowed to be exhausted, as long as we still show up smiling.

We are allowed to have needs, as long as nobody else has to notice them.

And when we finally do notice them?

Guilt appears.

When you say no, guilt appears.

When you rest, guilt appears.

When you cancel, guilt appears.

When you stop rescuing someone who has become use to your labor, guilt appears.

When you choose not to explain yourself for the seventeenth time, guilt appears.

When you let something wait because you cannot keep making everything urgent except your own well-being, guilt appears.

But guilt is not always your conscience speaking.

Sometimes it is conditioning.

Sometimes it is your mother’s fear.

Sometimes it is your grandmother’s survival strategy.

Sometimes it is religious teaching that glorified suffering but never taught you that you were also worthy of care.

Sometimes it is culture.

Often - usually, it is patriarchy.

Sometimes it is the voice of every person who benefited from your belief that you must always be available.

And sometimes guilt is not saying:

You did something wrong.

Sometimes it is saying:

You broke the rules.

Maybe you broke the rule that said you must remain productive, even when life is pulling on you from every direction.

Maybe you broke the rule that said other people’s expectations should outrank your capacity.

Maybe you broke the rule that said you have to earn rest by first reaching complete exhaustion.

Maybe you broke the rule that said being dependable means never having a season when you cannot give as much.

Maybe you broke the rule that said your value lives in what you can consistently provide.

Good.

Some rules need to be broken.

Because being responsible does not mean being endlessly available.

Caring about people does not mean abandoning yourself for them.

Honoring a commitment does not mean ignoring the reality of your own life.

And choosing yourself does not mean you no longer care about anybody else.

It means caring about everybody else will no longer require you to disappear.

That is what I had to remember during these twenty-four days.

I did not stop caring about this space.

I did not stop caring about the people who read my words, subscribe to my work, and follow along.

I thought about you.

I missed writing.

I had ideas.

But thinking about something is not the same as having the capacity to do it well.

And I do not want to throw something together just to prove that I can keep a schedule.

I do not want to serve you words that I have not had the space to feel.

I would rather return honestly than remain visible dishonestly.

Because there is a difference between neglecting something and temporarily not having the capacity to tend to it.

Neglect says, This does not matter to me.

A pause says, This matters, but I also matter.

And I am learning not to confuse the two.

I am also learning that guilt loves to erase context.

It does not care what has been happening in your life.

It does not care what you have been carrying.

It does not care whether you are tired, overwhelmed, grieving, changing, healing, or simply trying to hear yourself think.

Guilt looks only at what you did not do and builds a whole case against your character.

You missed the deadline, so you must be irresponsible.

You did not return the call, so you must be selfish.

You needed space, so you must not care.

You changed your mind, so you must be unreliable.

You took care of yourself first, so somebody else must have suffered.

That is a lie.

You are allowed to consider the full story.

You are allowed to ask yourself whether you acted carelessly or whether you simply reached your limit.

You are allowed to make repairs where repairs are needed without making yourself wrong for having needs.

You are allowed to take responsibility without picking up shame.

And you are allowed to return.

That part matters too.

Sometimes guilt does not just make us feel bad about stepping away.

It makes returning feel so heavy that we stay away even longer.

We think we need the perfect explanation.

The perfect apology.

The perfect comeback.

The perfect piece of writing that somehow makes up for all the time we were gone.

We do not.

Sometimes we simply need to walk back through the door and say:

Life happened.

I needed to tend to it.

I am here now.

No performance.

No groveling.

No public self-punishment dressed up as accountability.

Just the truth.

So yes, I noticed the guilt.

I listened long enough to see what it was trying to tell me.

Then I put it down.

Because I am not interested in recreating the very thing I am asking other women to free themselves from.

I am not going to teach self-priority as a pretty idea while refusing to practice it when it becomes inconvenient.

I am not going to tell you to choose yourself only when nobody else is disappointed by your choice.

That is not choosing yourself.

That is waiting for permission.

Real self-priority will sometimes interrupt the schedule.

It will sometimes require you to disappoint someone.

It will sometimes make you look inconsistent to people who cannot see what you are carrying.

It will sometimes ask you to trust that the people who truly value you will not disappear because you needed time to live your own life.

And yes, guilt may still come.

Let it come.

Let it sit in the corner and pout.

You don’t have to obey every feeling that enters the room.

You can feel guilty and still rest.

You can feel guilty and still pause.

You can feel guilty and still tend to your own life before returning to everybody else.

You can feel guilty and still choose yourself.

The goal is not to wait until choosing yourself feels comfortable.

The goal is to stop allowing discomfort to make your decisions.

Every time you choose yourself and survive the guilt, something inside you begins to change.

Your body learns that rest does not have to be earned through collapse.

Your mind learns that disappointing someone is not the same as harming them.

You learn that a pause does not erase everything you have already given.

You learn that your value does not disappear because you were not productive for a while.

You learn that people who care about you can handle your humanity.

And you learn that you can come back without apologizing for having a life.

You may have inherited the guilt.

But you do not have to keep carrying it like a family heirloom.

So the next time guilt rises because you needed time, space, rest, or room to deal with your own life, do not immediately put yourself on trial.

Pause.

Tell yourself the whole truth.

Then ask:

Was I being carelessly neglectful—or did I simply need to choose myself for a while?

If there is something to repair, repair it.

If there is a responsibility to honor, honor it.

But if the only thing you are guilty of is being a human being with limits, put the guilt down.

That is what I did.

And now I am back.

There are seasons of life that announce themselves loudly.

A graduation.

A wedding.

The birth of a child.

A new job.

Retirement.

And then there are seasons that arrive quietly.

Almost unnoticed.

One day, you realize the house is quieter than it used to be.

The children don’t call as often because they’re busy building lives of their own.

The calendar that was once packed with obligations suddenly has open spaces.

You spend less time rushing from one responsibility to the next and more time sitting with your own thoughts.

At first, it feels unfamiliar.

Then one day, almost out of nowhere, a question appears.

Who am I now?

Not as someone’s mother.

Not as someone’s wife.

Not as the dependable coworker, caregiver, volunteer, or problem-solver.

Just...

Who am I?

It’s a surprisingly vulnerable question.

Not because we’ve disappeared.

But because we’ve spent so many years becoming exactly who everyone else needed us to be.

We learned to anticipate needs before they were spoken.

We made appointments.

Remembered birthdays.

Packed lunches.

Paid bills.

Comforted friends.

Supported partners.

Held families together.

We became incredibly good at showing up.

For everyone.

Except ourselves.

The truth is, many women don’t lose themselves all at once.

We drift.

One small decision at a time.

“I’ll do that later.”

“I don’t have time.”

“Maybe next year.”

“It isn’t that important.”

Years pass.

Life continues.

And before we know it, we’ve become strangers to our own desires.

I don’t write this with judgment.

I write it with compassion.

Because I’ve lived parts of this story myself.

I’ve spent more than sixteen years walking alongside women as a coach, helping them rediscover themselves after years of putting everyone else first.

But lately, I’ve realized something.

This isn’t just my clients’ journey.

It’s mine too.

I’ve found myself asking new questions about what this next chapter of my own life should look like.

Not because my life has gone wrong.

Because it’s changing.

And change always asks us to decide who we’re becoming.

What I’ve discovered is that reclaiming yourself doesn’t usually begin with some dramatic life overhaul.

It begins with something much smaller.

Permission.

Permission to ask yourself honest questions.

Permission to say yes to something that brings you joy.

Permission to make a new friend.

Permission to travel.

Permission to rest.

Permission to cook a meal simply because it sounds delicious.

Permission to laugh until your stomach hurts.

Permission to choose yourself without feeling guilty for doing so.

Maybe that’s what self-priority really is.

Not putting yourself above everyone else.

But finally placing yourself alongside the people you’ve spent a lifetime caring for.

I’ve come to believe that one of the greatest forms of wellness isn’t found in another productivity system or another self-help book.

It’s found in belonging.

In having women around you who celebrate your victories.

Who check in just because they were thinking about you.

Who encourage you to try something new.

Who remind you that this chapter of your life isn’t winding down...

It’s opening up.

Maybe the question isn’t simply,

“Who am I now?”

Maybe the better question is,

“Who do I want to become?”

And perhaps even more importantly...

Who do I want beside me while I become her?

I’d Love to Invite You

For the past several weeks, this question has been living in my heart.

It’s the reason I’ve created a free live conversation called The Audacity of Choosing Yourself First.

This isn’t a webinar full of slides or a lecture about personal development.

It’s a conversation for women who are ready to explore what this next chapter of life could become.

If you’ve been quietly asking yourself some of the same questions I’ve been asking myself...

I’d love to save you a seat.

📅 Monday, July 20
🕖 7:00 PM Eastern
💻 Live on Zoom
🎟 Free

SAVE MY SEAT

I have a feeling this is only the beginning of a much bigger conversation.

This one is just for you.

Before I announce it anywhere else, before I post it on social media, before I invite the wider community in, I wanted to come here first and tell you what’s coming.

On July 20th, I’ll be hosting a new workshop, and I want you to have the first opportunity to reserve your seat.

Because that’s part of what I want this paid space to be.

Not just “extra content.”

Not just a place where I drop something behind a paywall and keep it moving.

I want this to feel like you’re closer to the table.

Like you get the real conversation first.

Like you’re not standing outside the door waiting to see what everybody else gets. You’re already in the room.

And yes, we have snacks in this room. Maybe a little drink. Maybe something simmering on the stove. You know the vibe.

This upcoming workshop is connected to the work I keep circling back to again and again: choosing yourself first without guilt, without apology, and without waiting until you are completely depleted.

Because too many of…

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I can learn a lot about how well a woman is caring for herself by asking one simple question:

What did you eat today?

Not because I am judging the nutritional value of her meals.

Not because I believe every plate must be perfectly balanced, beautifully prepared, organic, plant-based, low-carb, high-protein, sugar-free, or blessed by somebody’s wellness guru.

I ask because food is often one of the first places we reveal how much consideration we are giving ourselves.

Did you eat something you actually wanted?

Did you make enough for yourself?

Did you sit down, or did you eat standing over the sink?

Did you wait until you were shaky, irritable, exhausted, or halfway to a headache before deciding you deserved food?

Did everyone else get a real meal while you picked at what was left?

Our plates tell stories our mouths have learned to hide.

We may say we are making ourselves a priority, but food can reveal that we are still treating our needs like interruptions.

We may talk about self-love while surviving on coffee, scattered bites, and whatever requires the least effort.

We may spend time planning what everyone else will eat and then realize, at eight o’clock at night, that we never made a plan for ourselves.

And no, this is not always because we are too busy.

Sometimes it is because we have become so accustomed to deprioritizing ourselves that neglect feels normal.

We do not even recognize it as neglect anymore.

We call it being flexible.

We call it grabbing something later.

We call it not being that hungry.

We call it taking care of everybody else first.

But food is one of our most basic needs. If we continually dismiss ourselves there, it is worth asking where else we are doing it.

Read more

Pull your chair a little closer.

Bring your coffee, tea, wine, sparkling water, or whatever you have nearby. There are no beverage police at this kitchen table.

And this conversation is just for us.

Every day, I say the same affirmation:

I am healthy.
I am wealthy.
I am rich.
I am free.

Sometimes I say it with complete confidence.

Sometimes I say it while my circumstances are looking back at me as if they would like to challenge the accuracy of my statement.

Rude.

But I say it anyway.

Because I believe words have power.

I believe the words we repeatedly speak over ourselves can shape what we expect, what we notice, what we believe is possible, and how we move through the world.

So I do not say this affirmation casually.

I am not using these words to ignore my body, my bank account, my fears, my disappointments, or the parts of my life that still need to change. I am speaking something larger than the circumstances in front of me.

I say these words because they remind me of what I am building.

They are…

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I spend a lot of time writing about choosing yourself.

About boundaries. Resentment. Rest. Wellness. Food. Reinvention. And the quiet, sometimes very scary work of building a life that actually feels like your own.

But I realized something recently:

You may know what I believe without knowing very much about me.

And people are naturally curious about other people’s lives. We want to know who is behind the words. What shaped them. What they eat for breakfast. Whether they have everything figured out, or whether they occasionally stand in the kitchen staring into the fridge as though the answer to life might be hiding behind the milk (coconut milk in my case).

So, today, I thought I would let you peek behind the curtain.

Just a little.

I am both deeply private and deeply honest.

That combination can be…interesting.

I am not someone who naturally shares every moment of my life as it is happening. I usually need time to sit with an experience, understand what it meant to me, and decide whether it belongs only to me—or whether it needs to be shared for whatever reason.

When I do share, I want it to be real.

Not vulnerability performed for applause.

Not pain wrapped in a pretty bow before it has even healed.

Real life. Thoughtfully offered.

There are parts of my story that I am still living, still understanding and still deciding how—or whether—to tell.

But I also know that pretending to have everything figured out would make me a terrible person to learn from.

Because I do not have everything figured out.

Not even close. Although I do believe that everything is figureoutable.

I am a coach who is still becoming.

I have education, credentials, experience, and more years of studying human behavior, wellness, and personal transformation than I care to count.

And I am still learning how to fully choose myself.

I still have moments when I question my own decisions.

I still procrastinate when something feels too big or unclear.

I still occasionally know exactly what I need to do—and then wander off to reorganize something that didn’t need reorganizing in the first place.

Human growth is funny like that.

Knowing better does not magically remove fear, grief, old habits or the nervous system’s desire to keep everything familiar.

Sometimes the teacher is also sitting in the classroom.

Sometimes the guide is walking through new territory too.

I do not believe that makes me less qualified.

I believe it makes me honest.

I am an introvert with some very public dreams.

I love solitude. I need quiet. I enjoy my own company.

I can happily spend hours cooking, writing, thinking, watching television or wandering through an international grocery store examining foods I have never seen before.

That is genuinely a good time to me.

And yet, I also want to speak on stages.

I want to teach rooms full of women.

I want to build a community where women can gather, exhale, tell the truth, and remember who they were before the world handed them a list of people they were supposed to take care of first.

Part of me wants to be tucked away somewhere peaceful with a bowl of soup.

Another part of me wants a microphone.

Both parts are telling the truth.

Food is one of my love languages.

I do not only think of food as fuel.

Food is memory. Curiosity. Culture. Creativity. Comfort. Medicine. Pleasure. Connection.

I am the kind of person who can become genuinely excited about a beautiful mushroom, an unfamiliar squash or a sauce that tastes so good I immediately start imagining six other things I could put it on.

I eat soups and stews for breakfast without apology.

I use an unreasonable amount of garlic.

I rarely follow a recipe exactly—not even my own.

Cooking is one of the places where I feel most like myself.

It is where science, instinct, nourishment, and play all meet.

You will be hearing more about that part of me here because food is not separate from the work of choosing ourselves.

Feeding yourself well is one of the most ordinary—and most powerful—ways to say:

I matter too.

I am 61, and I still want more from my life.

More freedom.

More travel.

More meaningful work.

More creativity.

More friendship.

More experiences that make me feel awake.

I do not believe desire has an expiration date.

I do not believe women reach a certain age and are supposed to become grateful for whatever scraps of life are left over.

I am still dreaming.

Still changing.

Still becoming.

Still asking myself difficult questions about what I want the rest of my life to look and feel like.

There are things I am building.

There are things I am releasing.

There are things I am not ready to talk about publicly yet.

But I can tell you this:

I am no longer interested in spending the rest of my life merely enduring it.

This space is growing with me.

You will continue to find conversations here about self-priority, food, wellness, boundaries, reinvention, and the emotional receipts we collect when we have ignored ourselves for too long.

But you will also get to see more of the woman behind those conversations.

Not every detail.

Some stories need privacy.

Some need time.

And some of the deeper, more personal and more delicious pieces will be shared with my paid subscribers—the people gathered around the smaller table with me.

But I do want you to know me.

Not as a perfectly polished expert standing on the other side of your life, handing down instructions.

As a woman walking beside you.

A woman who has lived, lost, loved, learned, started over, changed her mind, and discovered that becoming yourself is not a single brave decision.

It is a series of them.

Made again and again.

Sometimes confidently.

Sometimes with your knees shaking.

Sometimes while eating soup for breakfast.

And honestly?

That may be the most accurate description of me yet.

With grace, good food and a little audacity,

I am Cheryl

Subscribe now

Before we get started, I want you to know this post is just for you.

No paywall. No teaser. No “read more” button.

Just a little something for the six people who decided this work was worth supporting before there was a crowd.

You’ve been incredibly patient with me while I’ve been writing about self-priority, grief, boundaries, wellness, and all the things life has been handing me lately. And honestly, you’ve probably been a little neglected.

So consider this a thank you.

A kitchen-table conversation.

A reminder that I haven’t forgotten the promises I made when I started this publication.

One of those promises was that we’d talk more about food—my love of food, cooking, food as medicine, and the simple joy of feeding ourselves well.

This post is the beginning of that.

Because if you’re supporting this work, the least you deserve is something made especially for you.

There are only six of you here right now.

And honestly?

I kind of love that.

It feels less like publishing and more like pulling up a…

Read more

I know resilience is supposed to be a compliment.

People say it when they mean well.

“You’re so strong.”

“You always bounce back.”

“You can handle anything.”

And for a long time, I probably accepted that as praise. Maybe even wore it like a badge.

Because when you’ve survived enough things, being called resilient can feel like proof that you made it. Proof that you didn’t fold. Proof that whatever tried to take you out didn’t succeed.

And listen, there is something sacred about being able to say, “I am still here.”

But lately?

I don’t want to be resilient anymore.

Not like that.

Not if resilience means I keep being expected to recover from things I never should have had to carry in the first place.

Not if resilience means I’m praised for surviving what should have been supported.

Not if resilience means I keep adapting to relationships, systems, expectations, and obligations that drain the life out of me.

At some point, “you’re so resilient” starts to sound less like admiration and more like permission for people to keep asking too much.

And I’m no longer interested in being endlessly available for impact.

I don’t want to keep proving I can take a hit.

I want fewer hits.

Imagine that.

A revolutionary concept.

What if I don’t need to become better at bouncing back?

What if I need to stop being knocked down so often?

What if my healing is not about becoming more durable, but becoming more protected?

Because women, especially Black women and women of color, are taught to be proud of how much we can withstand.

We are praised for holding it together.

Praised for showing up exhausted.

Praised for being the responsible one, the calm one, the reasonable one, the one who figures it out.

Praised for making a way out of no way.

Praised for surviving with grace.

And before we know it, resilience becomes part of our identity.

Not just something we have.

Something we are expected to be.

The strong one.

The dependable one.

The one who can manage.

The one who doesn’t need much.

The one who always lands on her feet.

But nobody asks what our knees feel like after all that landing.

Nobody asks what it costs to keep catching ourselves.

Nobody asks how tired we are of being impressive under pressure.

And maybe that’s the part I’m sitting with now.

I am tired of being impressive under pressure.

I am tired of turning pain into wisdom before I’ve even had time to admit it hurt.

Some things were just heavy.

Some things were unfair.

Some things should not have happened.

Some things did not make me stronger.

They made me hyperaware.

They made me guarded.

They made me overthink.

They made me scan the room, read the tone, anticipate the mood, soften the message, prepare for disappointment, and call it intuition.

That is not always wisdom.

Sometimes that is a nervous system that learned how to survive.

And we have to tell the truth about that.

There is a version of resilience that is beautiful.

The kind that helps us recover, adapt, grow, and keep living after life does what life sometimes does.

But there is another version of resilience that gets weaponized against us.

The kind that turns our ability to survive into an excuse for other people not to change.

The kind that says, “You’ll be fine,” instead of, “You shouldn’t have to be fine with this.”

The kind that makes struggle look noble, exhaustion look normal, and self-abandonment look like maturity.

That kind of resilience can miss me.

Respectfully.

Actually, no.

Disrespectfully, with my whole chest.

Because I am not here to be a monument to endurance.

I am not here to be everybody’s proof that women can handle anything.

I am not here to keep shrinking my needs so other people can keep expanding their demands.

And neither are you.

There comes a point when the question changes.

It’s no longer, “How do I get through this?”

It becomes, “Why am I still arranging my life around things that keep requiring me to get through?”

That question will bother you if you let it.

Good.

Let it bother you.

Let it interrupt your automatic yes.

Let it stand at the door of your next obligation and ask, “Do we actually want to do this, or are we just trained?”

Because so much of what we call resilience is really compliance dressed up in better shoes.

We keep going because we were taught to.

We keep showing up because people expect it.

We keep making it work because somewhere along the way, making it work became our job.

We keep saying, “It’s okay,” when it is not okay.

We keep being flexible until our own lives no longer fit us.

And then we wonder why rest feels suspicious.

We wonder why ease feels unfamiliar.

We wonder why choosing ourselves feels dramatic.

It feels dramatic because we have normalized being overextended.

So the moment we stop participating in our own depletion, it feels like rebellion.

And maybe it is.

Maybe saying, “I don’t want to be resilient anymore,” is not weakness.

Maybe it is clarity.

Maybe it means I no longer want to build my life around recovery.

Maybe it means I want to build a life I don’t have to constantly recover from.

That part.

That is the audacity of wellness.

Not bubble baths.

Not green juice.

Not cute affirmations on a mug.

A life you don’t have to keep escaping.

A life where your body is not always bracing.

A life where your peace is not treated like an optional upgrade.

A life where you are not constantly praised for surviving conditions that should have changed a long time ago.

And no, that does not mean nothing hard will ever happen.

Life is life.

Grief will come.

Loss will come.

Disappointment will come.

Unexpected things will knock at the door without checking your calendar first.

We cannot self-prioritize our way out of being human.

But we can stop volunteering for unnecessary suffering.

We can stop confusing loyalty with self-erasure.

We can stop proving we are low-maintenance when the truth is, we have been under-supported.

We can stop calling ourselves strong when what we really mean is lonely.

Because sometimes that’s what “strong” has meant.

It meant I had to figure it out alone.

It meant people saw my competence and missed my need.

It meant I made hard things look easy, and then everybody believed me.

Whew.

That one stings a little.

Because some of us became too good at appearing okay.

We learned how to be productive while grieving.

Helpful while hurting.

Pleasant while irritated.

Available while empty.

And then people called us resilient.

No wonder so many of us are tired.

Not sleepy tired.

Soul tired.

Tired in the place where the pep talks don’t reach.

So maybe the question is not, “How do I become more resilient?”

Maybe the better question is:

What keeps making resilience so necessary?

What am I tolerating because I know I can survive it?

What would I choose if I stopped being impressed by my own endurance?

Because sometimes the most healing thing you can say is not, “I can handle this.”

Sometimes it is:

“I don’t want to handle this anymore.”

Not because you are weak.

Because you are awake.

Because you finally understand that your capacity is not an invitation.

Because you are done mistaking survival for alignment.

So no, I don’t want to be resilient anymore.

Not in the old way.

I want to be rooted.

I want to be rested.

I want to be resourced.

I want to build a life where my wellness is not an afterthought.

Where my needs are not negotiable.

Where my peace is not the first thing sacrificed.

Where choosing myself is not a reaction to burnout, but a rhythm I live by.

That is the kind of strength I want now.

Not the strength to keep surviving what drains me.

The strength to stop calling it normal.

Not by becoming tougher.

But by becoming truer.

Not by bouncing back faster.

But by refusing to keep bouncing back from what I was never meant to carry.

I was talking with a friend once and I said something that felt completely normal to me:

“I’m not hard to please.”

Without hesitation she responded, proudly:

“I am.”

And we moved on.

No awkward silence.
No debate.
No follow-up questions.

But internally?

My brain got stuck there.

Because I remember thinking:

Wait… why?

Why would I want to be hard to please?

I like being pleased very much.

Now before somebody reads that and starts clutching pearls, I’m not talking about being impressed by shiny things or expecting people to perform for me. I’m not talking about needing grand gestures or constant attention.

I’m talking about something much simpler.

I know what I like.

I know what I need.

And if I don’t know, I usually become curious enough to figure it out.

I don’t enjoy confusion.

I don’t enjoy games.

I don’t enjoy creating obstacle courses for people and then secretly grading how they perform.

So when she said she was hard to please, something about it stayed with me.

Because I started wondering if many of us have quietly absorbed the idea that our value increases when we become harder to satisfy.

Think about it.

How many messages have we received over our lives that sound something like:

“Don’t be too easy.”

“Make them work for it.”

“Don’t let people think they have you.”

“Keep some mystery.”

“Don’t give too much.”

“Don’t act like you care too much.”

“Make people earn your attention.”

And maybe some of those things have wisdom buried inside of them.

Boundaries matter.

Discernment matters.

Protecting yourself matters.

But somewhere along the line, I think some of us started confusing difficulty with worth.

As if ease somehow means cheap.

As if being pleased easily means your standards must be low.

As if receiving joy too quickly somehow makes it less meaningful.

And I don’t think that’s true.

Actually, I think the opposite might be true.

Because I think there is something incredibly self-aware about knowing what pleases you.

I think there is something powerful about saying:

“I enjoy this.”

“This doesn’t feel good to me.”

“I need this.”

“I don’t need that.”

No hidden clues.

No emotional riddles.

No scavenger hunt where everybody’s trying to guess the secret password.

Just honesty.

And honesty sounds simple, but honesty is vulnerable.

Because once you clearly express what you need, people can no longer hide behind not knowing.

They heard you.

Now they know.

Now they have information.

And that’s where things can become uncomfortable.

Because if I clearly say what matters to me and you repeatedly ignore it…

we’re no longer talking about whether I’m hard to please.

We’re talking about whether I’m hard to prioritize.

And those are two completely different conversations.

I think for a long time I believed I was asking for too much when I wasn’t.

I think a lot of women do.

Especially women who have spent years making themselves smaller, quieter, easier, less needy, more understanding.

You become grateful for scraps because you learn to call scraps generosity.

Someone remembers one thing about you after forgetting twenty others and suddenly you’re saying:

“Aww, that was sweet.”

Someone gives you five minutes after you’ve given five hundred hours and suddenly you’re thinking:

“They really care.”

Someone meets a need once and now you’re willing to carry the relationship for the next six months.

And because you’ve become accustomed to surviving on crumbs, actual nourishment starts feeling excessive.

You start calling basic consideration “asking for too much.”

You start calling consistency “high standards.”

You start calling reciprocity “unrealistic expectations.”

I’ve done that.

Maybe you have too.

And here’s the interesting thing:

I don’t think many women become hard to please because they genuinely enjoy difficulty.

I think many of us become hard to please because we become exhausted.

Exhausted from giving.

Exhausted from explaining.

Exhausted from being disappointed.

Exhausted from shrinking ourselves.

Exhausted from saying “it’s okay” when it wasn’t okay.

After enough disappointment, people build armor.

That makes sense.

You stop expecting much because expecting hurts.

Or you create impossible standards because disappointment hurts.

Or you test people because trust hurts.

Or you stop saying what you need altogether because not being heard hurts.

I understand all of that.

I really do.

But I also wonder if sometimes our armor accidentally blocks the very thing we want.

Because there is a difference between having standards and making connection impossible.

There is a difference between discernment and self-protection that becomes isolation.

There is a difference between being selective and becoming unreachable.

And if I’m honest?

I don’t want to be hard to please.

I want to be easy to love well.

There is a difference.

I want the people in my life to know me.

Really know me.

I want them to know that maybe I love thoughtful things more than expensive things.

That I pay attention to effort.

That consistency matters to me.

That listening matters to me.

That presence matters.

That consideration matters.

And if I tell you those things, I don’t want to feel guilty for expecting them.

I don’t want to spend my life translating my humanity into smaller and smaller words so people can comfortably step over it.

No.

I did enough of that already.

Now I say what I need.

And I pay attention.

Not because I’m hard to please.

Because I finally believe that being pleased matters too.

And after the second chance…

maybe the third if I’m feeling generous…

I move on.

Not because I’m angry.

Not because I’m punishing anyone.

But because once I become the person working the hardest to make myself understandable, suddenly I’m carrying the weight.

Suddenly I’m doing hard labor.

And I spent too many years making life harder than it had to be.

I happen to enjoy being pleased very much.

And I no longer believe I have to make it hard.

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I stayed in something longer than I should have.

Actually... if I'm being honest, more than once.

And it wasn't because I was miserable every day. It wasn't because there weren't good moments. It wasn't because I didn't know something felt off.

I knew.

You know how you know something without fully admitting it to yourself yet?

Like your spirit has already packed a bag, but your mind is still sitting there saying, let's give it more time.

That.

I kept telling myself I was being patient.

I was being understanding.

I was being loyal.

I was being committed.

I was being hopeful.

And some of that may have been true.

But looking back now, I think I was doing something else too.

I think I was waiting.

Waiting for things to get better.

Waiting for things to feel clearer.

Waiting for some undeniable sign.

Waiting for some magical moment where everything suddenly clicked into place and I would know exactly what to do.

Waiting to be chosen.

And before y'all start clutching your pearls thinking this is a relationship article, stay with me.

Because I realized I wasn't only doing this in relationships.

I was doing it with myself.

I was waiting to be chosen in rooms where I had already been invited.

Waiting for confidence before speaking.

Waiting for certainty before moving.

Waiting for permission to rest.

Waiting for someone else to recognize something in me that I had not fully recognized in myself.

And here's the sneaky thing about waiting:

It can dress itself up as something noble.

Patience.

Loyalty.

Hope.

Being understanding.

Being a good woman.

Giving people grace.

Now don't get me wrong. Those things matter.

But sometimes they become disguises.

Because sometimes we're not being patient.

Sometimes we're postponing ourselves.

Sometimes we're sitting in places we've already outgrown because leaving feels like rejection.

Sometimes we're hoping if we stay long enough, somebody else will finally make us feel chosen.

And can we talk about that for a second?

Because somewhere along the way, many of us learned that being chosen meant something.

Chosen by a partner.

Chosen by friends.

Chosen for the opportunity.

Chosen for the promotion.

Chosen for the invitation.

Chosen by everybody except ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that being chosen meant we mattered.

That it meant we were enough.

That it meant we were worthy of staying for.

And I don't think we consciously decide that.

I think we absorb it.

We absorb it from messages about being a "good woman."

From being praised for being accommodating.

From shrinking.

From sacrificing.

From being needed.

From being picked.

From being wanted.

We absorb it so quietly that we don't even realize we're carrying it.

Until one day we look up and realize we've been standing in places far longer than our spirit wanted to stay.

Not because we didn't know.

Not because we couldn't see.

But because leaving felt like giving up the possibility that we'd finally get the thing we had really been waiting for.

Proof.

Yep. That.

Because I kept asking myself why I stayed.

Why I waited.

Why I kept giving things more time.

And for a while I came up with all the answers people usually come up with.

Love.

Hope.

Fear.

History.

Potential.

But I don't think that was the whole truth.

I think underneath all of that was something quieter.

Something I almost missed.

I think somewhere along the way I learned that being chosen meant something about me.

Not about them.

About me.

If they stayed, I mattered.

If they picked me, I was enough.

If they saw me, valued me, fought for me, wanted me...

then somehow I became more real.

And if that's true, then maybe I wasn't waiting for a relationship to work.

Maybe I wasn't waiting for clarity.

Maybe I wasn't waiting for timing.

Maybe I wasn't even waiting for them.

Maybe I was waiting for proof.

Proof that I was worthy.

Proof that I mattered.

Proof that I deserved to take up space.

And baby, that's when it hit me.

Because no one can hand you proof of something that was already true before they ever arrived.

Not a relationship.

Not applause.

Not validation.

Not being picked.

Not being wanted.

Nothing.

Because if I need somebody else to choose me in order for me to believe I matter...

then I gave them a job that was never theirs to carry.

I thought I was waiting for someone else to choose me.

Turns out I was waiting for someone else to convince me that I was already worthy.

And baby...

that means I wasn't just waiting.

I was bargaining.

Staying longer.

Giving more.

Understanding more.

Shrinking more.

Hoping more.

Trying to become someone who could finally be chosen.

Because the realization that slapped me in the face was this:

I wasn't waiting for love.

I was waiting for permission to believe I was enough.

And if I needed somebody else to choose me before I could choose myself...

then I wasn't asking them to love me.

I was asking them to define me.

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I want to tell you something I have heard more times than I can count.

From clients sitting across from me.
From women in my life I love deeply.
From conversations that stopped me mid-thought because I recognized something in them I had felt in my own bones.

“I can’t… because what will people think?”

“A good woman puts others ahead of herself.”

Two sentences. Said in different rooms, by different women, in different circumstances.

Same cage.

And you know exactly what I mean.
You’ve said some version of this yourself.

Here is what I want you to really hear:

Nobody sat you down and handed you those rules.

There was no orientation. No manual. No moment where someone looked you in the eye and said, your needs come last, and by the way, you should feel good about that.

It came from everywhere.

All at once.
Over time.
Your whole life.

It came from watching your mother pour herself out for everyone in the house and never once ask for anything back.

It came from church, where sacrifice was preached as virtue and selflessness was upheld as the highest form of love.

It came from culture — from every story, every image, every message that quietly repeated the same thing:

A good woman gives.
She adjusts.
She makes herself smaller so everyone around her can be comfortable.

And then it just stuck.

You absorbed all of it.

Not because you were weak.

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