Hey y’all,

I’ve been working on something new, and it’s finally ready!

My latest digital journal, I Want More. And I’m Done Waiting., is now available to my paid subscribers as part of your Notes from Rah membership.

One of the benefits of being a paid subscriber is access to Subscriber Resources & Tools, which includes workbooks, journals, planners, works…

Read more

Now you’re selfish. You’ve changed. You’re “only thinking about yourself.”

Funny how your choices require an explanation, but your sacrifices rarely required a conversation.

You can love the people in your life and still want more than being useful to them. More affection. More freedom. A different career. An afternoon nobody has claimed before you’ve even opened your eyes.

In my latest video, Why Choosing Yourself Makes People Call You Selfish, we’re talking about what happens when the responsible woman starts taking her own desires seriously—and how to tell the difference between neglecting your responsibilities and refusing to keep postponing yourself.

If you’ve been quietly asking, “When is it my turn?” come watch. Then tell me: What have you been putting off because somebody else might have to adjust?

Watch the video below.

Why Choosing Yourself Makes People Call You Selfish

https://youtu.be/MxitCxLOwhk

You were having a decent day until somebody got quiet. Now you’re reviewing your last conversation, wondering whether you said something wrong, and figuring out how to ask without making things worse.

They haven’t told you there’s a problem. But you’re already trying to fix it.

That can take up more of your life than you realize. Dinner becomes checking their expression. A phone call becomes agreeing to something you don’t have time for. Even after you leave, you’re sending that message: “Are we okay?”

And when they finally seem happier, you can relax.

Pay attention to how long you made yourself wait.

Caring about someone doesn’t give you the ability to explain every silence or resolve every feeling. Yet you may feel guilty leaving them upset—even after you’ve listened, checked in, and offered what you can.

In my latest video, “Why You Feel Responsible for Everyone’s Emotions—and How to Stop,” we’re talking about that pressure. How to catch yourself assuming blame, offer support without taking over, and recognize when someone’s behavior needs to be addressed directly.

Before you watch, consider this: When someone you love is upset, do you feel free to continue your day—or does everything stop until they’re okay?

Watch the video below. Let’s talk about what happens in that space.

Why you feel responsible for everyone’s emotions and how to STOP

https://youtu.be/bGBL0D3mzq0

You could be tired and still answer the phone. Upset and still make somebody feel welcome. Already overwhelmed and somehow willing to take on one more thing.

They called you easygoing. You knew how much effort went into making it look that way.

Now you are noticing things you used to push past. The conversation that takes too much out of you. The invitation you accept out of obligation. The resentment that shows up after you say yes when you wanted an evening to yourself.

And instead of questioning what has been expected of you, you have started questioning yourself.

Why am I so irritated lately? Why do I need more time alone? I used to handle this.

You did. But how were you feeling afterward?

That part deserves an honest answer.

We often picture progress as becoming calmer, more patient, and less affected by other people. So when change brings uncomfortable feelings, it is easy to assume we are moving backward.

But becoming aware of a need can feel more disruptive than continuing to ignore it. Especially when acknowledging that need means changing an arrangement other people enjoy.

In my new video, “6 Signs Your Nervous System Is Healing That Nobody Talks About,” I explore changes you might be criticizing before you understand them—including why quiet can feel uncomfortable and why your own preferences can suddenly seem inconvenient.

These experiences are not proof of healing on their own. What matters is looking at the wider pattern: how you respond, what you keep overriding, and whether you can recover without making yourself smaller.

Before you decide you are becoming difficult, take a closer look at what being “easy” required from you.

Watch “6 Signs Your Nervous System Is Healing That Nobody Talks About” below.

Then tell me which part felt familiar. I want to hear what you have been noticing.

There comes a point when a daughter gets tired of understanding her mother.

Tired of making excuses for her behavior. Tired of being careful about what she says. Tired of considering her mother’s feelings before acknowledging her own. Tired of being expected to forgive things that keep happening.

And tired of hearing about everything her mother went through as though that somehow makes what happened to her less important.

I know because I’ve been that daughter.

I’ve spent most of my adult life protecting the woman who wounded me.

I protected her feelings. I made excuses for her behavior. I considered her childhood, her disappointments, her relationships, and the things she experienced long before I was born.

I gave her grace because I understood her story.

And for a long time, I convinced myself that understanding her meant I had to keep accepting the way she treated me.

But I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m no longer willing to do that.

I’ve been hurt enough. I’ve been understanding enough. And I’m tired of being expected to carry the emotional responsibility for a relationship that has caused me so much pain.

I’m not writing this because I hate my mother. I’m writing it because I’ve spent years considering her feelings, and I’ve finally decided that mine deserve some consideration, too.

And I know I’m not the only daughter who feels this way.

When Understanding Becomes Self-Abandonment

One of the things I’ve noticed about daughters who grow up with emotionally wounded mothers is how much time they spend trying to understand them.

They know their mothers’ childhood stories.

They know about the abuse, neglect, betrayal, abandonment, and disappointments.

They know why their mothers struggle to trust people, why they become defensive, and why certain situations trigger strong emotional reactions.

And because they understand these things, they become extremely forgiving.

Sometimes too forgiving.

They excuse hurtful comments because their mother had a difficult childhood. They overlook emotional manipulation because their mother has experienced so much pain. They tolerate disrespect because they know their mother never learned how to communicate in a healthy way.

And every time something happens, they find another explanation.

But here’s the problem.

At some point, all that understanding can become a way of avoiding the truth about how the relationship is affecting you.

You become so focused on why your mother behaves the way she does that you stop asking whether her behavior is acceptable.

You spend so much time considering what happened to her that you barely acknowledge what’s happening to you.

And eventually, you start treating your own emotional needs as though they’re unreasonable.

That’s not compassion anymore. That’s self-abandonment.

Understanding why someone hurts you does not mean you have to keep giving them opportunities to do it.

I wish more daughters understood that.

Because some of us have spent decades believing that being a good daughter means being endlessly understanding, even when the relationship is emotionally draining.

And I’m no longer interested in that definition of a good daughter.

Why Are Daughters Expected to Protect Their Mothers?

There’s something about family expectations that I’ve always found troubling.

People are quick to remind daughters that they only have one mother.

They tell you to forgive her. They remind you that she gave you life. They tell you that you’ll regret distancing yourself when she’s gone.

And if you try to explain why the relationship is difficult, somebody inevitably brings up everything your mother sacrificed.

But very few people stop to ask what you’ve sacrificed trying to maintain that relationship.

How much of your peace have you given up?

How many times have you cried after a conversation with your mother?

How often have you questioned yourself because of something she said?

How many years have you spent trying to become the daughter she would finally approve of?

And how many times have you walked away from an interaction feeling like that little girl who could never quite get it right?

People love to talk about respecting mothers.

But what about respecting daughters?

What about acknowledging that adult daughters have feelings, boundaries, and emotional limits?

What about recognizing that being someone’s parent doesn’t automatically give you the right to speak to them however you want?

I don’t believe respect should be a one-way street simply because someone gave birth to you.

And I don’t believe gratitude for being raised requires a lifetime of tolerating mistreatment.

You can appreciate what your mother provided while still acknowledging what was missing.

You can recognize the sacrifices she made without pretending those sacrifices erased the harm.

Both things can be true.

And daughters should not have to choose between acknowledging the good and telling the truth about the bad.

The Guilt That Comes With Choosing Yourself

For daughters who have spent their lives protecting their mothers emotionally, setting boundaries can feel almost unnatural.

You may know that a conversation is going to leave you feeling upset, but you answer the phone anyway.

You may recognize that certain topics always lead to criticism, but you keep trying to explain yourself.

You may leave family gatherings feeling emotionally exhausted, but you continue attending because you don’t want anyone to think you’re being disrespectful.

And when you finally decide to create some distance, the guilt shows up.

You start questioning whether you’re being too harsh.

You wonder if you should give her another chance.

You remind yourself that she’s getting older.

You think about her childhood and everything she’s experienced.

And before you know it, you’re right back where you started, putting her feelings before your own.

I want women to understand something about guilt.

Feeling guilty does not automatically mean you’re doing something wrong.

Sometimes guilt shows up because you’re making a decision that goes against what you’ve been conditioned to believe your entire life.

If you were raised to believe that your mother’s emotional needs always came first, choosing yourself may initially feel selfish.

But protecting your emotional well-being is not an act of cruelty.

You are allowed to decide how much access someone has to your life.

You are allowed to end conversations when they become disrespectful.

You are allowed to keep certain parts of your life private.

And you are allowed to create distance from relationships that repeatedly leave you feeling emotionally unsafe.

That doesn’t mean every difficult mother-daughter relationship requires estrangement.

Some relationships can improve when both people are willing to acknowledge the problems and change their behavior.

But reconciliation requires more than one person trying.

And daughters need to stop accepting full responsibility for repairing relationships they did not damage alone.

Read more

There are daughters walking around with emotional wounds that didn’t begin with them.

They carry fears they can’t explain, guilt they can’t seem to shake, and beliefs about themselves and relationships that were formed long before they were old enough to understand what was happening.

And some of those beliefs came directly from their mothers.

I want to talk about the mother who experienced so much pain in her own childhood that she brought that pain into her daughter’s life. The mother who shared things her daughter was never emotionally equipped to handle. The mother who made her daughter her confidante, her emotional support system, and sometimes even her therapist.

And the daughter who absorbed all of it because she loved her mother.

Nobody sat that little girl down and asked whether she had the emotional capacity to carry another person’s trauma. Nobody explained that the things her mother experienced were not hers to fix, manage, or worry about.

She was simply exposed to it.

And over time, her mother’s experiences became part of how she understood herself, other people, and the world around her.

The daughter grew up, but those stories, fears, and emotional responsibilities stayed with her.

And sometimes, she doesn’t realize how much of her adult life has been influenced by things that never happened to her personally.

When a Child Becomes Her Mother’s Emotional Support System

There’s a psychological term called emotional parentification. It describes situations where a child takes on emotional responsibilities that should belong to an adult.

This can happen when a mother repeatedly turns to her daughter for comfort, reassurance, advice, or emotional support that goes beyond what is appropriate for the child’s age.

The mother may discuss problems in her marriage, financial struggles, childhood abuse, betrayal, abandonment, or painful experiences with men.

And because the daughter loves her mother, she listens.

She may become protective of her mother. She worries about her happiness. She notices when her mother is upset and tries to make things better.

She learns how to read her mother’s moods before she learns how to understand her own emotions.

And eventually, she begins to feel responsible for whether her mother is okay.

Think about how much responsibility that places on a child.

A little girl should not have to worry about keeping her mother emotionally stable.

She should not have to become the person her mother depends on to process adult relationships.

And she certainly should not have to carry the emotional consequences of experiences she had no control over.

Children need to feel protected by their parents. They should not grow up believing it’s their responsibility to protect their parents from the world.

But in some families, those roles become reversed.

And the daughter becomes so accustomed to taking care of her mother emotionally that she doesn’t recognize how inappropriate that responsibility was until much later in life.

When Your Mother’s Experiences Become Your Fears

I want you to think about something.

What happens when a young girl grows up hearing repeated stories about how men cannot be trusted?

What happens when she hears about betrayal, abandonment, infidelity, emotional abuse, or relationships that left her mother feeling powerless?

What happens when her mother repeatedly talks about how difficult life has been, how people will disappoint you, and how nobody can be depended on?

Those stories can become part of the daughter’s understanding of relationships before she’s had the opportunity to develop her own experiences.

She may begin to associate love with disappointment.

She may believe that relationships require suffering.

She may learn that men are people you have to take care of, tolerate, or constantly prove yourself to.

Or she may become so afraid of being hurt that she struggles to trust anyone at all.

Of course, not every daughter exposed to these experiences will develop the same beliefs. Children respond differently depending on their personalities, relationships, and the support available to them.

But repeated exposure to a parent’s unresolved fears can influence how a child learns to interpret the world.

And here’s what makes this especially complicated.

Read more

There are mothers who will do everything in their power to make sure their daughters have a better life than they did. They want their daughters to have opportunities they never had, experience healthy relationships, become financially independent, and live without some of the struggles they endured.

And then there are mothers who seem to have a problem with their daughters having anything easier than they did.

We need to talk about those mothers, too.

Because not every mother celebrates her daughter’s success. Not every mother is happy to see her daughter become confident, independent, educated, financially stable, or emotionally secure. Some mothers struggle with watching their daughters experience things they were denied. And instead of dealing with those feelings, they take them out on their daughters.

I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. Especially when we’ve been conditioned to believe that mothers are naturally nurturing, selfless, and always want what’s best for their children.

But motherhood does not automatically make someone emotionally mature. Giving birth to a daughter does not mean a woman has worked through her own insecurities, resentment, childhood trauma, or disappointment with how her life turned out.

And sometimes, the daughter becomes the person who pays for all of it.

When Your Daughter Becomes Your Competition

One of the most painful things a daughter can experience is realizing that her mother may see her as competition.

Think about that for a moment.

The woman who is supposed to encourage you, guide you, and celebrate your accomplishments may actually feel threatened by them.

You get excited about something you’ve achieved, and she finds a way to minimize it. You make a decision that improves your life, and suddenly she has something negative to say. You express confidence in yourself, and she reminds you of your flaws.

You share good news, and instead of receiving genuine happiness, you get a dismissive response, an unnecessary warning, or a reminder of how difficult things were for her.

Eventually, you stop sharing.

You stop telling her about your accomplishments. You stop discussing your relationships. You stop including her in certain parts of your life because you’ve learned that not everything good that happens to you will be received with love.

And that’s a painful realization for a daughter.

Because who doesn’t want to share their happiness with their mother?

Now, I want to be clear. Not every critical mother is jealous of her daughter. Mothers and daughters can disagree, and mothers can have legitimate concerns. But when there is a consistent pattern of belittling, comparison, resentment, or withholding encouragement, we need to be willing to examine what’s happening.

A mother can love her daughter and still have unresolved feelings that interfere with how she treats her.

Love alone doesn’t make a relationship healthy.

“I Had to Struggle, So You Should Too”

This is one of the attitudes I find particularly disturbing.

Some mothers genuinely believe their daughters should experience the same hardships they did.

They had to work two jobs, so their daughters should know what that feels like. They struggled financially, so they see nothing wrong with watching their daughters struggle when they could reasonably offer some guidance or support. They stayed in unhealthy relationships, so they question why their daughters are unwilling to tolerate certain behavior from men.

And when their daughters choose differently, they get accused of being spoiled, entitled, weak, or thinking they’re better than everybody else.

But why?

Why would you want your daughter to experience the same pain you experienced?

If you know what it’s like to go without, why wouldn’t you want your daughter to have stability?

If you know what it’s like to be mistreated by a man, why wouldn’t you encourage your daughter to walk away from that kind of relationship?

If you know how difficult it is to navigate life without emotional support, why wouldn’t you want to be that support for your child?

I’m not suggesting parents should shield their children from every uncomfortable experience. Life comes with challenges, and our children need to develop resilience, responsibility, and independence.

But there’s a difference between preparing your daughter for life and deliberately making her life harder because yours was hard.

Your daughter does not need to repeat your suffering to appreciate your sacrifices.

And if seeing her avoid the hardships you experienced makes you resentful, that’s something you need to examine within yourself.

Your daughter didn’t create the circumstances you grew up in. She didn’t choose the relationships you stayed in. She wasn’t responsible for the opportunities you missed or the decisions you made.

So why should she have to pay for them?

The Resentment That Goes Unspoken

I think some mothers have a difficult time accepting that their daughters have choices they never believed were available to them.

Imagine a woman who spent most of her life sacrificing herself for other people. She was taught to put everyone else’s needs before her own. She stayed in relationships because leaving wasn’t financially possible, or because she believed marriage meant enduring whatever came with it.

She may have spent years feeling unseen, unsupported, and unappreciated.

Then she watches her daughter grow into a woman who refuses to live that way.

Her daughter sets boundaries. She leaves relationships that no longer serve her. She chooses not to have children before she’s ready. She pursues an education, builds a career, or decides that marriage isn’t a requirement for a fulfilling life.

And instead of celebrating that freedom, the mother criticizes it.

She calls her daughter selfish.

She says her daughter thinks she’s too good for people.

She questions why her daughter can’t just be satisfied.

What the mother may not recognize is that her daughter’s choices are confronting her with possibilities she never had, never recognized, or never felt empowered to pursue.

That can bring up grief, anger, and regret.

Those feelings deserve to be understood. But they do not give a mother permission to punish her daughter for living differently.

Your daughter’s freedom is not an insult to the life you lived.

And her decision to make different choices does not mean she’s judging you for yours.

Sometimes she’s simply trying to build a life that feels right for her.

When a Mother Cannot Celebrate Her Daughter

Let’s talk about the emotional impact of growing up with a mother who rarely celebrates you.

A daughter who repeatedly receives criticism instead of encouragement may begin questioning herself.

She might become overly concerned with making mistakes. She may feel uncomfortable receiving compliments or struggle to acknowledge her own accomplishments.

She may find herself constantly seeking approval, even as an adult.

And sometimes, she becomes extremely independent.

Not necessarily because she wants to do everything herself, but because she learned early that depending on certain people came with disappointment, criticism, or emotional consequences.

She learns to keep her problems to herself.

She learns to figure things out without asking for help.

She learns not to expect anyone to show up for her.

And from the outside, people admire how strong and capable she is.

What they don’t always see is the little girl who learned that needing something could make her feel like a burden.

Now she’s a grown woman who has difficulty asking for support, even when she desperately needs it.

These patterns aren’t inevitable, and they don’t all come from the same childhood experience. But repeated emotional criticism and rejection can shape how a person sees herself and what she expects from relationships.

And that’s why we cannot keep dismissing these experiences as ordinary mother-daughter disagreements.

Some daughters are carrying emotional wounds that have followed them well into adulthood.

Understanding Your Mother Doesn’t Mean Excusing Her

Here’s where I want to speak directly to the daughters reading this.

I know some of you understand your mother’s story better than you understand your own.

You know about her childhood. You know how she was treated by her parents. You know about the men who hurt her, the opportunities she didn’t have, and the sacrifices she made.

You know why she has difficulty trusting people.

You know why she’s angry.

You know why she struggles to express affection.

You know why she reacts the way she does.

And because you know all of these things, you’ve spent years making excuses for her.

You tell yourself she did the best she could.

You remind yourself that she had a difficult life.

You convince yourself that she doesn’t mean some of the things she says.

And even when you’re hurt, you find a way to consider her feelings before your own.

I understand that because I’ve spent much of my adult life doing it.

But I’ve reached a point where I have to ask a different question.

What about me?

What about the daughter who needed encouragement?

What about the daughter who wanted to feel emotionally safe with her mother?

What about the daughter who spent years trying to understand someone who didn’t seem nearly as interested in understanding her?

At what point do we stop using our mothers’ childhood trauma to explain away the damage done to ours?

I’m not interested in pretending that a difficult childhood doesn’t affect how someone parents. Of course it does. Unresolved trauma can influence emotional regulation, attachment, communication, and the ability to form healthy relationships.

But understanding someone’s behavior and accepting that behavior are two completely different things.

Your mother may have been deeply wounded by the people who were supposed to protect her.

That matters.

But what happened to you matters, too.

And you should not have to minimize your pain to demonstrate compassion for hers.

To the Mothers Who Recognize Themselves

If you’re a mother reading this and some of these behaviors sound familiar, I want you to consider something.

Your daughter is not responsible for making you feel better about the life you’ve lived.

She is not responsible for healing your childhood wounds.

She is not responsible for carrying your disappointments or proving her loyalty by repeating your struggles.

And she should not have to make herself smaller to protect your feelings.

If your daughter has opportunities you never had, celebrate them.

If she chooses healthier relationships than the ones you experienced, encourage her.

If she establishes boundaries that you were never taught to establish, respect them.

If she develops confidence that you struggled to find within yourself, be proud of her.

You don’t have to understand every decision she makes. You don’t even have to agree with all of them.

But you do need to recognize that she is a separate person with her own life to live.

And if you’ve hurt her, acknowledging that harm matters more than repeatedly explaining why you behaved the way you did.

An explanation is not an apology.

And an apology without changed behavior doesn’t repair much.

I believe people can change. I believe mothers can examine their own behavior, take responsibility, and build healthier relationships with their adult daughters.

But that requires honesty.

And sometimes the most important thing a mother can do is stop defending herself long enough to hear what her daughter has been trying to tell her.

I’m No Longer Making Myself Smaller

There’s something that happens when a daughter reaches a certain point in her life.

She gets tired of explaining herself.

She gets tired of trying to earn approval.

She gets tired of having her accomplishments minimized, her feelings dismissed, and her boundaries questioned.

And eventually, she begins to realize how much of her life she’s spent adjusting herself to accommodate someone else’s unresolved issues.

I know that feeling.

I’ve reached a place where I’m no longer willing to keep protecting someone else’s feelings at the expense of my own emotional well-being.

And yes, that includes my mother.

I can acknowledge what she’s experienced without accepting how she’s treated me.

I can recognize her pain without continuing to carry it.

And I can make decisions about our relationship based on what is healthy for me, rather than what keeps everyone else comfortable.

That doesn’t mean I have to hate her. It doesn’t mean I have to deny the good things she may have done.

It means I’m finally willing to acknowledge the things that hurt me without immediately finding a reason to excuse them.

And for some of us, that’s a significant change.

We’ve spent so much of our lives being understanding that we barely recognize when we’re abandoning ourselves.

We’ve been taught to honor our mothers, respect our mothers, forgive our mothers, and consider everything our mothers sacrificed.

But somewhere in that conversation, daughters were forgotten.

We have feelings, too.

We have emotional needs.

We have childhood experiences that shaped us.

And we deserve relationships where love doesn’t require us to constantly overlook the ways we’re being hurt.

Being someone’s daughter does not mean you owe them a lifetime of emotional sacrifice.

I want women to understand that they are allowed to stop participating in relationships that repeatedly leave them feeling diminished, exhausted, or emotionally unsafe.

Even when that relationship is with their mother.

You can choose boundaries. You can choose distance. You can choose to stop discussing certain parts of your life. You can choose to work toward repairing the relationship if there’s genuine accountability and change.

And you can make those decisions without needing everyone in your family to agree with you.

Because at some point, you have to decide that your own well-being deserves the same consideration you’ve spent years giving everybody else.

Your mother had a life before you.

She had experiences that shaped her, wounds that affected her, and disappointments that may have changed how she viewed the world.

But those experiences were never supposed to become your punishment.

You were her daughter. You were never supposed to be her competition.

And you do not have to spend the rest of your life proving that you deserve to be loved, respected, and celebrated.

You always did.

You needed something. Doesn’t matter what. People always want the specifics, like the details change the math, it doesn’t matter if it was money or a ride or somebody to just show up. What matters is you said it out loud, which for you was already rare, and you were a kid, so it should’ve been the easiest ask in the world.

And what you got back was: you’re old enough to handle this yourself.

Subscribe now

From a grown adult. To a child. Mature enough, capable enough, old enough, pick your favorite flavor of the same sentence. Funny how “maturity” only gets assigned to kids the moment an adult doesn’t feel like showing up. Nobody hands a six-year-old a mortgage and calls it character-building, but emotional labor? Sure, here you go, you’re basically forty now, good luck.

Here’s what that sentence actually was, underneath the compliment wrapping paper: I am not available, and I would like you to stop asking. You just heard “you’re capable” because you were a kid and kids take adults at their word. That’s the whole design flaw of childhood — you believe people before you have any evidence they’ve earned it.

So you learned the lesson. Not the one they meant to teach. The real one: asking gets you managed, not helped. And you took that into adulthood and built an entire personality around never needing anything from anybody, which everyone around you mistook for strength, because it looks identical from the outside. Nobody can tell the difference between “she doesn’t need help” and “she stopped asking a long time ago” unless they actually pay attention, and let’s be honest — most people don’t.

The Compliment That Isn’t One

People love telling you how strong you are. How independent. Said with real admiration, like you were issued this at birth. You weren't. Self-sufficiency isn't a personality trait — it's what's left after you stop expecting anyone to show up.

You were not born like this. You were built like this, the same way a callus gets built — by friction, repeatedly, in the same spot, until it stops hurting and starts looking like armor. Nobody compliments a callus for being tough. They just don’t notice how it got there.

Read more

We can see what she couldn’t have known. We understand why she made the decision she made. We don’t suddenly question her intelligence because she got something wrong.

Then it happens to us, and apparently all common sense leaves the building.

Now we should’ve known. We should’ve caught it sooner. We should’ve made a better decision.

That difference has been on my mind.

My new video is about the standard we use with ourselves and why it’s often harsher than anything we would expect from another woman.

And no, I’m not talking about letting yourself off the hook. Sometimes you were wrong. Own that.

I’m talking about being accurate about what happened instead of turning one mistake, one bad call, or one change of mind into a judgment about who you are.

If you recognize yourself in that, watch this one.

You Would Never Treat Her the Way You Treat Yourself.

You made one decision that turned out badly, and now you doubt yourself.

That is really what has happened.

Before that experience, you could make a decision and get on with your life. You considered what you knew, thought about what made sense, and chose.

Maybe you worried a little afterward, but you didn’t feel compelled to reopen the case every other day.

Then came the decision that embarrassed you. yikes....

The person you were certain about turned out to be someone else entirely. The opportunity you thought would change things became something you could not wait to get away from. You stayed when, looking back, leaving seems obvious. Or maybe you left and spent the next year wondering whether you gave up too soon.

Whatever it was, you didn’t simply decide that you got something wrong.

You started wondering what being wrong said about you.

That is where this became bigger than it needed to be.

Now you do something you probably don’t even recognize as connected to that experience.

You hesitate longer.

You ask more people.

You explain the situation to your friend, then your sister, then somebody else whose judgment you respect, hoping one of them will say something that finally makes you feel certain.

Sometimes you already know what you want to do before you ask them.

You just do not want to be the only person responsible for the decision.

That part is worth admitting.

Because asking for advice and asking someone to help you feel less accountable for your own choice are not the same thing.

And you know the difference.

There was probably a time when you did not need this much outside confirmation.

Read more

You tell yourself this time will be different.

Maybe they’ll finally listen without getting defensive. Maybe they’ll show some interest. Maybe they’ll take responsibility. Maybe they’ll celebrate what’s happening in your life without making it about them.

Then they do exactly what they usually do.

And somehow, you’re surprised all over again.

At some point, the question has to change.

Not “Why do they keep doing this?”

You already know what they do.

The better question is: Why am I still expecting something from this person that their history tells me not to expect?

That doesn’t excuse poor behavior. And it certainly doesn’t mean lowering your standards to accommodate people who repeatedly disappoint you.

It means becoming more accurate about who you’re dealing with.

Because sometimes what keeps us angry isn’t only what someone did. It’s the distance between who they actually are and who we keep insisting they should be.

And that distance can keep you arguing with the same reality for years.

I went much deeper into this in my newest YouTube video, “Stop Being Mad at People for Being Who They’ve Always Been.”

If there’s someone in your life who keeps disappointing you in a way that has become painfully predictable, I want you to watch this one.

Not because they need to hear it.

Because you might.

▶️ Watch the video here

Being liked feels harmless until you notice how much influence it has over the way you live.

You make a decision, feel good about it, then somebody reacts differently than you expected—and suddenly you’re questioning yourself.

You tolerate things longer because you don’t want to be considered difficult. You provide explanations nobody asked for because the thought of being misunderstood bothers you. You keep certain relationships functioning long after they’ve stopped working for you because you don’t want to be blamed for what happens if you leave.

At some point, other people’s perception of you can become more important than your own experience of your life.

That’s a problem.

My latest YouTube video gets into the real cost of needing approval and why being known as the “nice one” can become an identity you’re constantly working to maintain.

This isn’t about becoming inconsiderate or pretending opinions don’t affect you. It’s about recognizing when somebody else’s reaction has been given authority it never should’ve had.

Watch: Being likes is costing you more than you realize

Then ask yourself one question:

How many choices would look different if you weren’t worried about what somebody would think of you afterward?

That dream you keep calling unrealistic , who told you that?

I’m serious. Before you dismiss it again, trace it back. Before you list the reasons it probably won’t work, before you bring up your age, your responsibilities, your money, your past, your lack of connections, or how many times life has already knocked you off course, ask yourself where you actually learned to think about your dream this way. Because that voice didn’t start with you. Somebody, taught you what was reasonable.

Nobody had to sit you down and tell you to stop dreaming. It was subtler than that. You watched the adults around you choose survival because survival was the only thing they had time for.

I remember hearing versions of it myself: dreams are for when you’re asleep, right now you need to get to work, ain’t nobody got time to dream.

You heard people talk about money like there would never be enough of it.

You watched people stay in jobs they hated because the benefits were good — I did exactly that, stayed at a corporate job I despised, partly for the insurance and partly because failing scared me more than staying did.

You saw people postpone themselves year after year because somebody always needed them more than they needed themselves.

Be realistic.

Get something secure.

That’s too risky.

People like us don’t do things like that.

You have responsibilities.

You’re too old to start over — that one’s my personal favorite.

What if you fail?

Hear enough versions of that and something strange happens: nobody has to say it anymore, because you’ve started saying it to yourself. You get an idea and immediately explain why it can’t work. You get excited and then feel embarrassed for being excited. You picture yourself doing the thing you actually want to do, and before the image even settles, another thought shows up to put you back in your place.

Who do you think you are?

Maybe that’s the real question underneath all of it.

At some point in our lives, a lot of us learned that believing in ourselves was something we had to justify. We could believe in everybody else. Encourage our children. Support our friends. Tell another woman she deserves more. See possibility all over everyone else’s life and then turn around and treat our own like foolishness. That deserves a second look.

Read more

In this video, I’m getting into:

✔️ Why “we go way back” isn’t a reason to keep someone close

✔️ The real difference between proximity and loyalty

✔️ How to build your own “seating chart” for who gets access to you

✔️ Why moving someone to the back row isn’t the same as hating them

✔️ A practice you can do today to start reassessing who’s actually earned their seat

If you’ve ever felt guilty for pulling back from someone who’s known you for years but never really shown up for you, this one’s for you. This is for the women unlearning people-pleasing, healing from over-giving, and finally choosing themselves, without the guilt trip attached.

Watch it here:

You’re going to change in ways that don’t make sense to people who knew an earlier version of you.

You are allowed to need more space now, to change your mind mid-sentence, to protect your mornings, to leave a conversation early, and to say no without writing a five-paragraph defense of your character.

Then comes the part you can’t really prepare for: growth will make you inconvenient to the people who benefited from your wounds.

When you were operating from guilt, fear, abandonment, people-pleasing, or the need to be needed, you were predictable. Folks knew exactly which button to push. They knew you would call back eventually because they knew you would feel guilty if you didn’t. They knew that if they sounded disappointed enough, you’d cave. You always do. They knew you’d swallow what bothered you rather than “make things weird.” They knew you’d carry more than your share and then insist you were fine.

Fuck that! Not anymore.

So naturally, somebody has something to say about it.

You’ve changed. You’re distant. You think you’re better than everybody. You’re not as available. You’re being selfish. You’re acting funny.

Because you spent years reading rooms and tracking other people’s moods, those accusations can still pluck a nerve. They can make you want to explain yourself.

My bad, that’s not what I meant. I’m just trying to work on myself. I still love you. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.

And there you go again, apologizing for your own transformation.

Girl, put the apology down.

Read more

A couple months ago I put out a video on my Youtube channel about healing your visibility wound. Thing is, I didn’t go into my own story in it, so I want to do that here.

For me, healing my visibility wound was not easy, it didn’t happen overnight, as a matter of fact it took decades. Yes chile, decades.

The process of healing your visibility wound might sound simple packed into an eighteen minute video, but even now, today, I still have to consciously remind myself of who I am. A woman free to be who the fuck she wants to be. I can not, and will not, be controlled.

I grew up the eldest daughter. Took care of my younger brother. Raised him, raised us really. If you’re an eldest daughter, you already know what it is.

Share

If you’re not, here’s what people don’t understand: eldest daughters get handed a job they never signed up for, and they get handed it early. You become the built-in mother to your siblings, a second parent to your own parent(s), the housekeeper, the cook, the psychologist. And somewhere in doing all of that, you don’t get a childhood of your own.

This is your childhood.

You do as you’re told and you accept the role because you believe that’s just how it’s supposed to be.

I was 22 years old when my mother came home from work and blamed me for something my brother didn’t do.

She’d given him a chore that morning and as per usual he didn’t do it. Instead he decided to go galavanting around town with his friends. Classic high school kid stuff.

I was at work all day and had nothing to do with the situation. I didn’t even know she’d asked him to do anything,

But when she got home at the end of the day and it still wasn’t done, she turned it on me.

Told me I should’ve been paying attention to what he was doing.

“Where is your son?” huh

That’s what she said. Your son.

She caught herself half a second later and switched it up, “where is your brother”, but it was too late.

I heard the first version.

And when I told her I had no idea what she was talking about, that set her off. She slapped me. I grabbed her hand, pushed it away, we argued for a few seconds, and then it was over. Like it had never happened.

But I couldn’t let it go, because I’d been raising my brother since I was 10. And in one triggering slipped word, my mother told me exactly how she saw me.

Not as her daughter.

But as his mother.

She said a whole lot without saying that much.

People hear “visibility wound” and may picture invisible, like nobody ever looked at you. That’s not what completely happened to me. My mother looked right at me. She just didn’t see me.

She saw the role, the built-in babysitter, the housekeeper, the on-call psychologist for a household that needed managing. She saw a function.

I wanted her to see me, her daughter.

When you’re invisible, at least nobody’s looking, this was being looked at every single day and still not being known.

And what people don’t realize is that this role doesn’t only damage a child when she’s young. She carries it into adulthood and it ruins her relationships, self esteem , ability to trust people, hell, to trust herself, her boundaries, sense of identity outside of taking care of everyone, her capacity to rest without guilt, and her ability to receive help instead of always giving it.

And when I say seen, I don’t mean loud, obnoxious or jumping up and down for attention. For me, being seen means feeling safe enough to speak up and be heard without having to brace myself for what happens after. Being me, unconditionally, without editing myself down first. Wearing my hair the way it actually grows out of my head without somebody turning it into a joke. Telling my story without wondering if people will like me less for it. Talking about how I feel without waiting for the punchline.

I found that out the hard way when I worked in corporate. I cut my hair and went natural. I thought the people I worked with, the ones I considered work family, would be in my corner. Instead, they clowned me. The people I expected to cheer me on were the ones laughing.

That’s a different kind of hurt than a stranger doing it. A stranger doesn’t know you. These were people I trusted. And it confirmed the thing I already believed deep down, that even my own people weren’t a safe place to just be myself.

For most of my adult life, whenever I suppressed myself, swallowed what I actually wanted to say, shrunk down to keep the peace, I felt like I was standing on the outside looking in at my own life.

That version of me on the outside, would watch me do it over and over again and shake her head and be like… Girl, you did it again. Why didn’t you say something? You should’ve said... next time, do... girl, you know you deserve better than that... don’t let that mutha fucker get away with that... You need to believe in yourself and trust your intuition. (this one right here was always tapping on my shoulder)

Well, I started listening to her in small doses and making tiny adjustments. Unfortunately, more times that I care to admit, I reverted back to the old behavior. That was the pattern for years, like taking two steps toward myself and one step back into hiding.

But here’s what finally broke it for good.

March 2024, my grandmother passed away. Instead of allowing myself to grieve her, I spent that time “managing” my mother’s emotions. She’s always had a turbulent relationship with her mother, so me and my brother call ourselves preparing for how she’d react when she passes. We started having this conversation at least a year prior. That’s how deep this runs. It’s so deep I can’t put it in this essay.

I remember being at my grandmother’s memorial, sitting on pins and needles, waiting for the shoe to drop, exhausted, rubbing my head, and neck trying to release tension, anger and anticipation. The weight was so heavy it literally sat in my body like i was carrying a sack of boulders on my back.

Six weeks later, April 20th, 2024, my daughter called 911. They rushed me to the hospital. I’d suffered a brain bleed.

I was told it was a chaotic day to put it mildly, the kind where the details still shake me when my dad tells the story. If they’d transferred me to the hospital they’d originally planned to, I wouldn’t have made it. If they’d waited another thirty minutes, same outcome. My dad says the surgeon just appeared, out of nowhere, right when the doctor he’d been talking to said there wasn’t a surgeon available in the building. By the grace of God, that doctor showed up in time to operate.

I woke up in the ICU after the surgery feeling blessed with uncertainty if that makes sense. A few days there, a few more in a regular hospital room, then a rehab facility for 3 weeks. And in between the family visits and the doctors and the nurses, I finally had time to just sit and think. To exhale for the first time in decades…. exhale…I was so tired.

How the fuck did I get here?

Every suppressed moment of my life came rushing through me at once, and lying in that hospital bed, I made a decision: I am no longer going to be invisible.

That was the most pivotal moment of my life, not the hospital itself, but the conversations I had with God while I was in it. I promised myself that when I got out, I was going to start living the way I was actually meant to live.

God put more in me than I’d been letting myself have. And getting visible didn’t start with other people. Other people are secondary. It starts with you seeing yourself. If you’re not comfortable seeing who you really are, nobody else is ever going to be comfortable seeing it either.

So I made the decision, right there. No more managing other people’s emotions. No more managing other people’s chaos. No more fighting battles that are not mine to fight. No more suppressing what I think and feel. No more giving everybody else more of me than I give myself. No more feeling guilty for resting. No more feeling unworthy for wanting anything. I was 48 years old, and this was a complete shift in how I was raised and how I had been living my life in every way imaginable.

And honestly, I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. I was recovering from brain surgery. Brain Surgery! I physically didn’t have the capacity to carry anyone else’s mess anymore anyway, so the adjustment wasn’t optional, it was survival. Saying it is one thing. Living it is another, especially when managing everyone else is the only pattern you’ve ever known. But I was forced to stop, and looking back, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I should never have been carrying it in the first place.

Admittedly, this took about two weeks to write. Partially because some of the memories are difficult to talk about, but also because getting visible is genuinely one of the hardest things people like us do. It’s easier to stay invisible. There are a hundred reasons to. But getting visible means unlearning everything you were taught, everything you were basically brainwashed into believing about your own worth. It means getting out of your comfort zone. It means doing the shadow work. It means changing the parts of yourself you don’t want to change, even when you know you have to.

I wanted to change all of it. I just didn’t know how, not at first.

There are still little glitches, where somebody says something or does something that triggers me and I catch that old pull to disappear again. But now I pause. I don’t reply right away. I sit with what I’m feeling until I’ve got my thoughts together, and then I respond, instead of swallowing it like I used to. I journal when I need to release something, not on a schedule, just whenever it hits. No more suppressing. That’s the whole practice now.

I’m not writing this because it was easy to heal. I’m writing this because it wasn’t, and I did it anyway. And if you’re still on the outside looking in at your own life, you can too, because I know I'm worthy of healing, and so are you."

Stay soft. Stay clear. Stay yours.

Share

Subscribe

I wanted to give my paid subscribers a quick update because it’s important to me to always be transparent with you about what you’re paying for and what you can expect from me here.

When I opened up paid subscriptions, I originally committed to publishing three articles a week. As my workload has shifted, I’ve realized that pace isn’t something…

Read more

Okay, real talk. You’ve got a scoreboard running in your head, and that thing does not sleep.

It clocks her house, her body, her calm, her marriage, the way she seems to float through life like nothing costs her anything and it clocks you right alongside her, every single time.

Nobody sat you down and taught you the rules. You just picked it up somewhere along the way, and you’ve been keeping score since you were a little girl.

Never once stopped to ask yourself the one question that actually matters: what happens if I put this down?

So let’s ask it right now, before we go any further. What would actually happen if you stopped ranking yourself against her?

Here’s What the Scoreboard Actually Tracks

Let’s just say it plain, because you already know: you’re not comparing one thing. You’re running a whole audit from the rooda to the tooda …

her house against your house, her body against your body, her “she makes it look easy” against every single thing you’ve had to fight for, on a woman who doesn’t even know she’s being measured.

And that scoreboard never closes out. No final buzzer and no season that ends. You’re carrying this running tally into every room, every scroll, every family function, doing math before you’ve even said hello.

You've been so busy keeping score that you forgot to ask who wrote the dag on rules.

Subscribe now

Rock with these for a second. No performing, just be honest with yourself:

• When’s the last time you saw a woman winning and felt nothing but joy for her? No math running underneath it. Just straight up joy?

• How much of your actual day, your real, limited hours is going toward arithmetic nobody asked you to do?

• If she disappeared off your radar tomorrow, no more posts, no more updates, nothing left to measure would you actually feel free? Or would you just go find somebody else to measure yourself against?

It’s not really about her sis.

The Scoreboard Was Never About Her

She’s not the point. She’s just the mirror you’re using to check yourself in. The scoreboard isn’t measuring her against you, it’s measuring you against some standard you never even wrote down and can’t fully name. So you borrow her as the ruler.

Ahead of her, oh, you’re good.

Behind her, you’re failing.

Either way, you’ve handed the verdict on your own life to a woman who never signed up to hold it.

Ask yourself, real honest: whose voice is actually running this math? Is it really about her or is it the same voice that’s never once believed you were enough on your own, with nothing to measure yourself against?

That voice didn’t just show up from nowhere. Somebody, somewhere, taught you your worth needed a comparison to be real. And you’ve been paying that bill every time you open her page.

Pause for a second and feel what your body’s doing right now, reading this.

Tight somewhere low in your stomach? Breath gone a little shallow without you asking it to? That’s not nothing, that’s your body bracing for a verdict before it’s even come in. It’s been running that program so long you probably stopped clocking it as a choice.

1. Next time you catch yourself mid-comparison, stop and say it out loud, even just under your breath: “I’m keeping score again.”

2. Put a hand somewhere on your body…chest, stomach, wherever the bracing’s at and just notice it. Don’t fix it yet. Just notice.

3. Ask yourself one real question: what am I actually trying to find out about myself right now?

4. Answer it yourself, straight up… not through her. “Am I proud of how I’m spending my time?” gets answered by you, not by her calendar.

5. Let the scoreboard close out. You don’t have to win it or lose it. Just stop opening the app.

And listen, if you’re doing this because some part of you doesn’t trust that you’re enough without the comparison, without proof you’re ahead of somebody, that’s not who you are. That’s a self-abandonment habit wearing a productivity costume, and it’s the exact pattern Stop People Pleasing: Reclaim Your Time. Your Boundaries. Choose Yourself. was built to interrupt. Get the workbook here.

What Actually Changes When You Put the Scoreboard Down

Not much changes about her, sis. She keeps posting. She keeps living her life, mostly not even knowing she was ever your measuring stick. What changes is everything you get back.

Picture her for a second, the version of you that walks into a room and doesn’t do inventory. Sees another woman thriving and just feels glad, all the way through, no asterisk attached. Can you see her? What’s that feel like in your chest? Lighter? A little unfamiliar? Maybe a little bit like grief for all the years you weren’t her yet.

The woman who isn't keeping score has more room in her for everything else.

That’s the trade nobody tells you about. The scoreboard felt like vigilance, like staying sharp, like protecting yourself from falling behind. It was never that. It was just an expensive way of never fully arriving anywhere, ’because you were always half-checking the standings instead of living your actual life.

So ask yourself, one last time, for real: are you ready to stop keeping score?

Nobody’s handing you a trophy for winning a game you were never required to play. And the woman on the other end of your comparisons was never your opponent. She was just over there, living her life, while you turned her into a ruler.

Put the ruler down, girl. Go see how much of your own life you actually got room for.

Stay soft. Stay clear. Stay yours.

Share Come home to yourself

You have never once let yourself finish being angry, and you already know it. You catch it halfway, every single time, and hand yourself a smaller word instead.

Annoyed. Frustrated. Fine. You swap it out so fast the real word never even makes it all the way to your own mind, let alone your mouth.

You did that to yourself before anyone else ever got the chance to react to anything. You took the realest thing you felt and talked yourself out of it before it reached your own face, and then you called the silence peace, ‘cause it was easier than calling it what it actually was.

You lied to yourself first, and that’s just the truth of it. Everyone else just got what was left over, and they never even knew the original version existed, ‘cause you made sure it never made it out of the room in your own head.

Read more

“I just hate confrontation,” she says. Twenty-six years old, sitting across from me, and she says it the way you’d mention a food allergy. Like a fact about herself. Like something she was born with.

“Me too,” I almost say, out of old reflex. Then I stop, because I’m not sure it’s true anymore, and I’m not even sure it was true the first time I said it thirty years ago.

Read more