I remember being here—feeling like the anchor for everyone.
My family. My siblings. My parents. My children. My husband. Even the parent group I was supporting at work.
I was constantly pouring, managing, keeping things afloat. And in the process, I was sinking.
The exhaustion was unrelenting. The resentment was creeping in. My patience thinned with every “Mommy, can I have a snack?”—the tenth one that day. The way I wanted to scream when my husband asked, “Everything okay?” because, of course, it looked like everything was under control.
Then last night, something happened that stopped me in my tracks.
I had just let go of our chef, so I spent my evening in the kitchen—prepping dinner, planning breakfast and lunch for the next day, making sure everything was in order for my family.
After I served my husband his meal, he casually mentioned that he was already on the lookout for a new chef—which, great, that’s exactly what needed to happen.
But then he said something else.
“I mean, I didn’t really ask you to make dinner… it was something you wanted to do.”
And I was shocked.
Because he was right. He never asked me to make dinner. No one did.
So why was I in the kitchen instead of resting? Who asked me?
The Realization
And that’s when it hit me: no one had to ask.
I’ve been conditioned to anticipate, plan, and take on responsibilities before they even have a chance to become problems.
To be proactive in care while others wait to be assigned a task.
To step in before there’s a gap.
To carry the weight of an entire household’s operations, often before anyone else even notices the need.
And this is exactly why women are exhausted.
Not because we’re being asked to do too much—but because we’ve been programmed to believe that if we don’t do it, it won’t get done.
Women are often the emotional anchors in our homes and relationships. But carrying everyone’s emotional burdens isn’t sustainable.
Some problems are not yours to solve. Some fires are not yours to put out.
Emotional labor—managing feelings, preventing conflict, soothing egos—is work. If this isn’t acknowledged and shared, it will drain you.
Setting Boundaries Is Not Selfish—It’s Necessary
Women are often conditioned to believe that saying “no” is selfish. But saying “no” is what allows us to say “yes” to what truly matters.
🚫 Not everything is urgent.
⏳ Not every request needs an immediate response.
💤 You don’t need to earn rest.
🕰️ You don’t need to justify taking time for yourself.
Your time is already valuable. The world just hasn’t been acting like it.
This Is What The Big Reclaim Is About.
Unlearning. Undoing. Unwinding ourselves from the reflex to do it all.
This final week of Reclaim Your Time, I want you to sit with these questions:
🔹 What are you doing out of obligation rather than necessity?
🔹 Where are you stepping in before anyone else has a chance to?
🔹 What would happen if you simply… didn’t?
🔹 Where have you overextended yourself to the point of depletion?
🔹 Who in your life assumes everything is under control because you make it appear so?
🔹 Where do you need to set a firm time boundary to reclaim yourself?
Because the reality is, when we stop overfunctioning, other people step up.
No one is coming to rescue you from the responsibilities you never questioned.
But you can reclaim your time, your energy, your sanity.
This week, we close out Reclaim Your Time with the most important lesson of all:
✨ No one will move you to the top of the list except you. ✨
Your time is not a limitless resource. Protect it. Value it. Reclaim it.
💬 Drop a comment: What’s something you’ve been doing that no one actually asked you to do?