The Day I Stopped Trying to Keep Up With My Younger Self
One afternoon, I found myself furious over something absurd.
Not a crisis. Not even a bad day. The grocery store was out of something I needed. That was it. Yet my annoyance felt completely out of scale with the situation, and driving home I caught myself asking the question so many of us ask during this season of life: what the fuck is wrong with me?
Ten years ago I would have shrugged it off. Twenty years ago I probably wouldn’t have noticed at all. Instead I spent the entire drive trying to figure out why every small thing seemed to get under my skin.
Eventually the answer became clear. I was exhausted. Not physically. Not emotionally. Completely. The kind of tired that doesn’t come from a single hard week but from years of running without enough recovery built in.
Midlife has a way of surfacing things we’ve been too busy to look at.
The Expectations We Never Question
For decades, I believed pushing through was the answer. More effort. More responsibility. More availability. If someone needed help, I stepped in. When a problem appeared, I handled it. Carrying extra weight felt so normal I stopped noticing I was doing it.
At some point, normal became unsustainable.
Many of us were raised to be everything to everyone. Reliable. Capable. Helpful. Strong. Those qualities are genuinely beautiful. Constant self-sacrifice is not, and menopause has a particular talent for exposing the difference.
The old strategy simply stops working. The body starts demanding recovery in ways it never did before. Energy becomes more precious. Stress becomes harder to push past. What once felt manageable starts feeling like too much, and the gap between who we were and who we are right now can feel disorienting.
What nobody tells you is that this is not a malfunction. It is information.
Asking Myself A Different Question
These days I ask myself something I almost never used to ask.
What do I need?
For most of my adult life, my attention moved outward by default. Who needs help? What still needs doing? How much more can I fit in? I was good at assessing everyone else’s capacity. My own was something I just assumed would be there.
Now I pay attention to it. Some days there is plenty. Other days there is not. I’ve learned that both are acceptable, and that admitting the difference is not weakness. It is just honesty.
That single shift has brought me more peace than any system, strategy, or productivity framework I ever tried.
Quick Check In
What expectation from your younger years are you still quietly carrying?
Being available whenever someone needs you? Doing everything yourself rather than asking for help? Never letting anyone see that you’re running low? I’d love to hear what comes up for you in the comments.