The Awakening:

When You Realize You've Abandoned Yourself

There comes a moment in a woman’s life—often sudden, yet long in the making—when she looks around and realizes:

"I don’t know who I am anymore."

It’s not just exhaustion. It’s not just overwhelm. It’s something deeper, something more hollowing.

It’s a kind of emptiness that we don’t talk about.

The kind that creeps in slowly, so gradually that we don’t even realize it’s happening—until one day, we do.

Until one day, we wake up and feel like we’re staring at someone else’s life.

We see our partners, our children, our homes, our responsibilities, and we ask ourselves:

"How did I get here?"
"Why do I feel so alone?"
"Who is taking care of me?"

I know this feeling intimately. I am living it now.

Since having my third baby nearly a year ago, I’ve been navigating this quiet, aching realization—this truth that I have spent years, if not decades, prioritizing everyone else above myself. And I didn’t even see it happening. I didn’t feel it as I gave away piece after piece of myself in service to my family, my relationship, my home. I didn’t notice as I slowly erased my own needs, my own wants, my own identity.

But now I see it. I feel it.

And I want to break free.

I want to reclaim myself. I want to exist outside of being a wife and a mother. I want to be seen—not just as someone who keeps everything running smoothly, but as a whole person with desires, dreams, and needs of my own.

But here’s the hardest part: breaking free feels impossible.

Because the truth is, this isn’t just about me. This isn’t just about you.

This is about all of us—the women who have been conditioned to believe that we must be martyrs in order to be good wives and mothers. The women who have been taught that self-sacrifice is synonymous with love.

We carry it all. And because we have carried it for so long, we have created an environment where those around us have come to expect it. We have trained our partners, our children, our families, any everyone around us to believe that our needs don’t matter.

Not because they don’t love us. Not because they don’t care. But because we never demanded to be seen.

And now? Now we are drowning in the very narrative we built.

The Abandonment of Self

We didn’t wake up one day and decide to erase ourselves.

We were taught.

It started when we were little girls—when we were told to smile when we didn’t want to, to hug relatives we weren’t comfortable with, to be friends with the children who were mean to us. We were taught to apologize when we hurt someone’s feelings, even if we had done nothing wrong.

We learned that our role was to make others comfortable. That our value was tied to how well we took care of those around us.

Be nice.
Be quiet.
Be polite.

We were conditioned to believe that our wants and needs weren’t important. That taking up space was something to be ashamed of.

We were taught that our achievements were the magical equation to being loved. That the better we performed—the better grades we got, the more we accomplished, the more we pleased those around us—the more we would be seen, valued, and accepted.

And when we expressed our emotions?

We were told we were too much.

"If you're going to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about."
"If there’s no blood or broken bones, you’re fine."
"You’re too emotional."
"You’re too dramatic."
"You’re overreacting."

Over and over again, we were taught that our emotions weren’t valid. That our experiences weren’t real unless they were extreme. That our feelings were something to be ignored, suppressed, or minimized.

And so we learned.

We learned not to trust our emotions.
We learned not to trust ourselves.

We learned that the world doesn’t like us when we are too much.

So we made ourselves smaller.
We silenced our needs.
We erased parts of ourselves in the name of being easy, likable, and good.

And those small, seemingly harmless lessons?

They became the foundation for how we would live our lives.
They became the reason we stopped advocating for ourselves.
They became the reason we abandoned who we were, little by little, until one day, there was nothing left.

So here we are.

Exhausted. Overwhelmed.
Drowning in responsibility, feeling invisible even to ourselves.

And we wonder, how did this happen?

It happened because we were never taught how to value ourselves.

The Breaking Point

For many of us, it takes a breaking point to finally wake up.

Maybe it’s the exhaustion so deep that it manifests as physical illness. Maybe it’s the resentment bubbling beneath the surface, spilling out in quiet anger and frustration. Maybe it’s the realization that our lives are slipping away while we stand in the background, invisible even to ourselves.

Whatever the trigger, the moment comes when we realize:

"I cannot keep doing this."

And the first instinct? Blame.

Blame our partners for not seeing how much we do.
Blame our children for not appreciating us.
Blame the world for putting us in this position.

And maybe some of that is true.

But the hardest, most painful realization is that we taught them this was okay.

We showed them, over and over again, that we would handle it all.
We told them, in a thousand unspoken ways, that our needs didn’t matter.
We never demanded more—because we didn’t believe we were allowed to.

Reclaiming Ourselves

So now, we have a choice.

We can stay in this place—resentful, exhausted, longing for something more but never reaching for it.

Or we can decide to change.

We can decide to:

• Set Boundaries – Not as ultimatums for others, but as a declaration of self-respect.

• Ask for Help – Without guilt, without apology.

• Release Control – Trusting that others can step up, if we let them.

• Prioritize Ourselves – Not just our survival, but our joy.

And most importantly, we can decide to stop waiting for permission to take up space in our own lives.

The Hardest Part: Radical Accountability

The truth is, this won’t be easy.

Because not only are we battling the expectations of those around us, but we are battling the deepest parts of ourselves—the parts that whisper:

"You’re asking for too much."
"You should be grateful."
"You don’t deserve this."
"No one else can handle your children."
"Your children will feel like you abandoned them if you don’t tuck them in tonight."
"Your partner can’t handle all of this."

We have to be willing to call out those voices for what they are: lies.

We have to stop orchestrating every single minute, emotion, and scenario in order to keep everyone happy, emotionally regulated, and taken care of—believing that is the only way we will be loved.

Because it’s not working.

You Are Not Alone

If you are reading this and you feel like I have just spoken the words you’ve been afraid to say out loud—know this:

You are not alone.
You are not broken.
And you can reclaim yourself.

It starts with one choice.
One boundary.
One moment of saying:

"I deserve more."

And then? You take the next step.

Because you are worth it.

Your light is meant to shine—not just for those around you, but for you, too.

Until next time,

Kate