Who's That Girl?

Have you ever felt like you were carrying way too heavy of a load? Life has felt like that for a long time for me. It’s been years of living with the weight of the world and if it wasn’t one thing it was another. The issue is that my personality and typical behaviour is to keep taking on more and more and more without skipping a beat or fully acknowledging and dealing with that load. That was until more recently when I finally broke. I finally cracked and feel as if I am unable to do anything. Even the simplest of tasks or decisions are just too much. I’ve struggled with trying to explain it all and it’s not even as if one specific thing caused me to crumble but it’s as if I’ve been carrying this backpack throughout my life and as I’ve experienced things, Ive been filling that bag up. It could be positive and negative things but over the last several years there was quite a bit of deep, heavy, hard emotional stuff which took over the positive. Each obstacle, challenge and hurdle thrown my way got stuffed down in my backpack to be dealt with at a later time because there was no time in the moment. So how do we manage it and when do we actually work through it all?

Well, what I’ve been learning is that one way is through setting boundaries. It is something that I have never been quite good at, but realize now how very important it is. I have allowed certain things in my life or I have taken on more than I could carry all in an attempt to make sure that others were ok, happy, fulfilled and even themselves not being overwhelmed. That is both personally and professionally. Well, that finally caught up to me and now as part of my healing comes the important task of setting boundaries as I begin clearing out my backpack.

It’s not to say that I can’t do for others like I did in the past, or that I would want to stop being a giver and doer because it’s part of who I am at the core. It’s more like looking at things at that specific moment and gauging my capacity. When my backpack starts to feel too full and the load is just too much to carry as one person then you start to say “no”, push back on things that aren’t acceptable or at the very least you take a pause until you are able to relieve some of the other weight being carried. Most importantly you do that without worrying about what people will think of you and never, ever look at yourself as a failure (that will be the hard part if I’m being honest) as I always viewed myself as being a failure in some way if I couldn’t do it all.

How I should be looking at it now is that with an overloaded backpack are you even doing the best you can for each task? Probably not because you have taken on too much and can’t give your full attention to anything when stretched too thin.

My new perspective is to visualize my backpack, gauge its capacity every day and ensure that I push back, step away or set those important boundaries BEFORE the bag rips apart. I need to ensure that there is enough flexible space for the unexpected things that may come flying at you because life always has its fair share of surprises too. I also need to ensure that I am not just unloading the items in the backpack temporarily or shuffling them around to accommodate everything else, but that I am genuinely working through each item as I unpack it so that they are resolved and won’t keep coming back. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this one as we all carry things within us that can even be all the way back from childhood that we haven’t fully worked through. Sometimes those things can pop back up because of triggers or situations in your current life. Those things take up valuable space and we need to work on them as well. Each item we carry takes up real space and room both mentally and emotionally and we need to clear it out in order to manage, function and to be able to handle whatever else comes our way.

It may sound like a silly analogy or perspective as I know that different strategies or techniques work differently for everyone, but for me this resonated and it is now how I need to envision things so that I feel and heal better. Slowly I am starting to see that I’m no less of a woman, mother, daughter, friend, wife, partner for not being able to take it all on and that some things I can’t fix at all whether it be for myself or for others and that’s ok too. One day at a time, one task at a time and one piece at a time. It’s all part of this healing journey.

My hope is that each of you reading this today can understand and be compassionate as I set these important boundaries and that you yourselves take the time to evaluate and work through anything heavy in your backpacks too.

LM