There is a script that has been handed down from generation to generation. Go to school. Get married. Have kids. Live happily ever after.
But nobody ever stopped to ask — happily ever after for who?
I watched my mother live that script to the letter. She worked day in and day out looking after us, showing up for everyone around her, carrying the weight of the entire family on her shoulders. And in all of that giving, it never once occurred to her that she had her own choices. Her own autonomy. Her own life that was hers to live.
She never got told that. Nobody gave her that permission slip.
The sacrifices we make for our families carry with them the self we lose while doing so.
My mother gave everything she had. And what did it cost her? Her health. Her body kept the score when she never let herself feel it. She died of an aneurysm. The weight she carried for everyone else showed up in her body and took her life.
I used to think that was just how it was. That women gave and gave and that was love. That was devotion. That was what a good woman did.
Then I was diagnosed with two aneurysms of my own.
My doctor looked at me point blank and gave me two choices. Have the procedure — which carried its own risks — or do nothing and wait for them to rupture. There was no third option. There was no more time to put myself last.
I chose the procedure. And I'm here to tell the tale.
But more than that — I'm here to tell you what I wish someone had told me. What I wish someone had told my mother. What I wish had been passed down through generations instead of the script we were handed.
You are not here to give until there is nothing left of you.
You are not here to shrink yourself into whatever shape is most convenient for everyone around us.
You are not here to follow a script that was never written with you in mind.
We have been indoctrinated to believe that our purpose is to give and give and give some more. To be everything for everyone while quietly disappearing in the process. And that era — that generational lie — is done.
Your mother believed it. Her mother believed it. And it cost them both something they can never get back.
You don't have to.
Choose yourself. Not because it's selfish. Because you are worth choosing. Because the women who come after you are watching. Because somewhere there is a daughter — yours, mine, someone's — who needs to see what it looks like when a woman decides she is done performing for others.
That decision starts with you.
BSBG out.