Episode #453 – They’re Watching How You Treat Yourself

Welcome back to The Brilliant Balance Show. Today’s episode is: They’re Watching How You Treat Yourself. Or maybe I should have said, “They’re watching how we treat ourselves,” because I am definitely in this right along with you.

And when I say “they,” I’m thinking about all the people who are watching us and our behavior and internalizing the lessons we’re teaching—not necessarily through what we say out loud, but through how we live. But I’m especially thinking about our children and the observational lens they have on our lives and how it influences theirs.

Whenever I think about this, it brings me back to Mother’s Day and the card aisle. Now, you’re not crazy—this episode is airing well after May, so you’re not in the wrong place. But I want to tell this story because every year around Mother’s Day, I walk down the card aisle and read what feels like every single card.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I really feel like I know the pattern. And once you see it, it’s hard to unsee. So that’s where we’re going to start today.

Here’s the pattern: card after card, all these different shades of pastel and all these different fonts, but the same message underneath all of them. It’s some version of, “Thank you for everything you gave up for us.”

Thank you for putting yourself last. Thank you for never once thinking of yourself. Thank you for sacrificing everything.

I feel like that’s the most dominant theme. There’s always some version with a really tired-looking woman on the front smiling anyway, as though the smile is the whole point—proof that the sacrifice didn’t kill her, even if it took everything else.

Of course, there are funny cards and all the tropes and memes about moms that get trotted out during Mother’s Day season. But this story of self-sacrifice, of complete abdication of self in the name of mothering, seems to be the dominant theme.

For years, I thought maybe I was being overly sensitive about this. I was trying to buy my own mother a card that made sense, and then I became a mother myself and started looking through that lens.

One year, I stood there in the aisle and thought, “Wait a minute. These aren’t really Mother’s Day cards. They’re not really thank-you cards. They’re like we’re thanking women, as a culture, for disappearing—completely giving themselves up. And we’ve gotten so good at it that we’ve wrapped it in glitter and put a price tag on it.”

And I remember thinking, “God, I hope I never get one of these cards. I hope this isn’t the sentiment my children choose for me.”

Fast forward a number of years, and I want to tell you what’s actually happening in my life. The first time this happened, I was so gobsmacked. I thought, “It’s like I manifested this. I can’t believe this is actually happening.”

Instead of buying cards, they make me handwritten cards.

And I think this might be evidence that they also can’t find the sentiment they want in that card aisle.

What they write in these letters—these little handwritten missives—lands very differently. It’s not, “Thank you for giving up everything for us.” It’s much closer to, “Thank you for showing us what it looks like to have a life you actually want.”

Thank you for being someone we love spending time with, and also someone who has her own thing going. Someone who lights up about things that have nothing to do with us.

You still get the gratitude for mothering, but you also get things like, “Thank you for being a role model in life.”

I’m not going to read all of them to protect their privacy, but one said, “Thank you for being a trusted advisor and a confidant.”

I would rather get that any day than “Thank you for giving up everything.”

One year they made a little fill-in-the-blank book. I pulled it out of a drawer recently. Here are a few of the responses:

“I’m humbled by your resilience.”

I love that one because I teach resilience so much.

“I’m thankful I got your intelligence and organization skills.”

That’s the child who knows me.

“I hope to be as financially savvy as you one day.”

“I’m not telling you which kid wrote each one because they took turns and initialed the pages.”

“I love how you never quit.”

Here’s a great one, because we talk about making time for yourself all the time:

“When I was little, I loved to watch you work out in the basement.”

Okay, all the moms who can’t make time for the workout—there you go.

“If I had to describe you in one word, it would be brilliant.”

“I’m skipping some because they’re silly family inside jokes.”

“I love that you encourage me to never stop.”

“Sometimes your ability to know the right answer to seemingly every question amazes me.”

“I’d be lost without your advice.”

“I love that you taught me how to make a plan.”

There are so many delightful little sentiments in there, and I’m sure you get these kinds of things from your own children—or you would if you asked them.

But why aren’t these the things we’re putting into the Mother’s Day card aisle?

I want to be clear: I did not sit my children down and coach them toward this language. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t say, “Don’t buy me a card. Write me something.”

But somewhere in these years of raising three people, something got transmitted that’s practically the opposite of what the card aisle sells.

And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think that essence—what got transmitted—might be one of the most important things I’ve ever taught them. And I never sat down and taught it overtly. I showed them through the way I was living my life.

So let’s back up.

The card aisle isn’t really about Mother’s Day. It’s a visible manifestation of a much older story we hand women starting very young about what makes them good.

What makes you a good girl?

Be agreeable. Don’t make waves. Don’t rock the boat. Say yes before people finish asking. Read the room and adjust yourself to fit it. Blend in.

Put your own preferences so far down the list that eventually you don’t even have preferences anymore.

I may be exaggerating a little bit—not much—but I want to emphasize that this is the dominant narrative we hand to girls and women: this abdication of self.

And I am all for service to others. If you read through those cards, you would see themes of being there for them, listening to them, and meeting them where they are.

But not at the expense of having a sense of self.

That’s what I really want to focus on in this episode. It can’t come at the expense of having a sense of self, because those little people in our houses—who grow up to become big people in our houses—are watching.

There is a name for this personality pattern I’m describing. It’s sometimes called Type C.

You know about Type A people—that would be me. You know about Type B, which is the more laid-back personality.

Type C is the conflict-avoidant type.

They’re endlessly capable. They’re willing to do whatever it takes. You can count on them because they’ll never say they’re at capacity.

The trap is that every trait inside that pattern gets praised by the world around you.

People love Type C women.

“She’s so easy to work with.”

“She’s so giving.”

“She never makes anything about her.”

We hand out gold stars for exactly the behaviors that teach everyone around us—including the smallest people in the house—what a woman is supposedly for.

Again, I’m not saying those traits are bad on their own. Being capable, kind, generous with your time, and easy to be around are all positive attributes.

But the problem comes when they’re the only traits anyone ever sees.

When that capable, easy, accommodating version of you becomes the whole show.

Every day for years.

That’s not a personality anymore. That’s a performance.

The real personality gets shoved down. It becomes invisible. And eventually all anyone sees is the performance.

Then they assume that’s the whole truth about their mother.

Or maybe it starts to look like what they’re supposed to expect from people who love them: complete abdication of self.

And that’s the part I really want to sit with, because I don’t think we talk about it enough.

Kids are always watching.

And if you don’t have children, this could be nieces, nephews, younger people at work, or extended family members.

They’re not just watching what we say. They’re watching what we do.

What do we do when we think no one is paying attention?

Is there a self left in there at all?

They notice when we’re tired all the time.

They notice when we say, “I’m fine,” and our voice doesn’t match our face.

They notice when we’re getting snippy about things that have nothing to do with what’s actually wrong.

Because what’s actually wrong doesn’t even have a place to be talked about.

If the only model a child has of motherhood—or of a woman who loves people—is someone who’s depleted, quietly resentful, and apologizing for her own needs, that child is taking notes.

And a lot of them are drawing a conclusion that’s becoming more common:

“I don’t want that.”

I hear this a lot lately from women in their twenties and early thirties.

It’s coming up in audience questions when I speak. It’s coming up in messages after episodes like this one.

Some version of: “I’m not even sure I want kids.”

Or: “How would I even do that? My life is already so complicated.”

And when you sit with someone long enough to get past the first answer, part of it—not all of it, but a real part—is that they watched their own mother disappear a little more every year.

It didn’t read as love.

It read like a warning label.

“Don’t end up like this.”

Now, I’m not trying to take you on a guilt trip.

They’re not trying to take us on a guilt trip either.

They’re simply observing what’s right in front of them.

And it tells us something about what we’re actually transmitting.

If they’re watching us be exhausted, depleted, resentful, and constantly saying we’re too busy, what example are we setting about adulthood?

I’ve had to check myself on this a thousand times over the years.

It’s not easy to show up as a fully developed person with your own needs while also meeting the needs of others.

That’s a real trick.

Some of you may think I’m about to tell you to go get a massage or spend a day at the spa.

I’m not.

I don’t think that’s the answer.

I don’t think layering on performative self-care practices solves something that’s actually much more foundational.

A bubble bath isn’t going to undo the structural problem underneath all this.

Twenty minutes once a month isn’t going to do it.

What we need are practices woven into the fabric of daily life.

Kids don’t learn from exceptions.

They learn from what’s normal.

What’s the rhythm of your life that they see over and over again?

When you sit down at the table, do you have a plate for yourself?

That sounds like a ridiculous question, but I’ve talked to countless women who fix a plate for everyone else and then stand there watching them eat.

Do you treat yourself like you deserve an equal seat at the table?

I’ve come to think of this as “microdosing.”

Not that kind of microdosing.

The first time I said that to a room of coaching clients, I immediately realized we were headed down the wrong path.

What I mean is: How do you get small, regular amounts of the things that matter to you and build them into the actual structure of your life?

So that one day you get a note that says, “One of my favorite memories is watching you work out in the basement.”

That’s a structural memory.

Not something that happened once.

Part of the fabric of their childhood.

And notice they’re not saying, “It was so annoying when you were working out instead of getting me cereal.”

They’re saying, “That was one of my favorite things.”

I think what exhausts us is trying to escape our daily life to do the things that support our health, well-being, and balance.

If we integrate those things into daily life, we get an entirely different result.

Microdosing, to me, means building these things into your day in whatever quantity that day can hold.

Some days that’s an hour.

Some days it’s four minutes.

The size of the dose isn’t the point.

The point is that it happens regularly.

And that it never goes to zero, even when life gets loud.

And that the people around you can see it happening.

They need to witness you prioritizing your own needs and desires.

That’s part of the practice.

They need to know that you matter.

Because most of us were never taught that.

So this is where I want to gently push back on the idea that you don’t have time.

Most of us have more discretionary minutes than we think.

We’ve just never been taught how to notice them, let alone protect them.

Because we don’t get praised for protecting our time.

We get praised for noticing what everyone else needs.

So the shift isn’t really about finding more time.

It’s about deciding that some of the time you already have belongs to you.

Let me show you what this looks like in real life.

One example: I often write on our porch. It’s one of my favorite places in the house.

Sometimes I’m right in the middle of a sentence, completely in the flow, and one of my kids wants something.

For a long time, my instinct was to put everything down immediately because that’s what a good mom does.

Sometimes that’s still the right call.

But sometimes I’ll say, “I’m on a roll. Can this wait fifteen minutes?”

Almost every time the answer is yes.

That’s the moment.

It’s not dramatic.

I’m not asking forgiveness.

It’s just acknowledging that my train of thought matters.

Whatever your work looks like, if it requires concentration, being able to say, “Can you wait?” can be powerful.

And yes, it’s different with a two-year-old than with a sixteen-year-old.

Different seasons require different approaches.

Another example is exercise.

My kids grew up watching me work out most mornings.

When they were little, they often woke up before I finished.

I could either stop immediately or bring them into it.

Most of the time, I brought them into it.

Maybe they had Cheerios. Maybe they played with toys. Maybe they banged on the StairMaster while I worked out.

It wasn’t serene.

It wasn’t Instagram-worthy self-care.

It was loud and chaotic.

But it happened anyway.

And now it’s part of their memory.

Not something I gave up over and over again.

The same thing happened on family vacations.

I often got up before everyone else, grabbed a coffee, took my journal, went for a walk, or did a little work.

I didn’t hide it.

I didn’t pretend to still be asleep.

Sometimes it inconvenienced people a little.

And that was okay.

Nobody had to disappear for someone else to be okay.

That’s the vision I want to set for you.

Taking care of yourself doesn’t have to be invisible.

Sometimes people will be mildly inconvenienced while you get your needs met.

That’s part of living together.

The same thing applies to work travel.

I hear women talk about making every trip as short as possible to minimize disruption at home.

Sometimes that’s appropriate.

But sometimes you need a thinking day.

Sometimes you need the flight that lets you arrive rested instead of taking the red-eye.

Sometimes your well-being matters too.

And that’s another opportunity to model what it looks like to care for yourself while making a contribution in the world.

This isn’t a “fill your cup” episode.

It’s not about pampering.

It’s about developing skills that help you meet your needs so you can function well at work and at home.

And because you deserve it.

You deserve it as a human being with inherent worth.

And I want your children to see that modeled.

Those moments aren’t selfish.

They’re foundational.

They’re what keep you steady.

This is exactly the territory we’re going to explore in the Coaching Circle call in July.

The masterclass is built around the idea of being strategically selfish.

I’m using that phrase intentionally because I know the word selfish has been used as a leash for women for as long as most of us can remember.

Many of us flinch when we hear it.

But what if the most generous thing you could model isn’t sacrifice?

What if it’s being fortified?

What if it’s strategically taking care of yourself so that what you give comes from abundance rather than depletion?

This is a critically important skill.

And there are real barriers to practicing it.

You can probably already feel them surfacing.

Notice your resistance.

What comes up when you hear the word selfish?

What comes up when you imagine doing some of the things I’ve described?

That’s your clue.

If something in this episode is landing, give yourself the gift of being in that masterclass.

The link is in the show notes. If you register, you’ll not only get this class, but access to future masterclasses as well.

We cover a different topic every month in the Coaching Circle, and I love the community of women growing there.

After each masterclass, we do a coaching call where you can ask questions about applying the concepts in real life.

The whole point is skill-building: learning what to do, trying it, and then coming back to refine the practice.

If this resonates with you, I hope you’ll join us.

And if someone in your life would benefit from hearing this, feel free to forward them the episode or the email that came with it.

Next week on the podcast, I’m going to take listener questions in this territory—specifically around the question, “Is this selfish or not?”

It’s a continuation of today’s conversation, and I hope you’ll tune in.

Until next time, let’s be brilliant.