Say it with me…”Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get back up!”

Let’s face it, we will be forever quoting that line until it no longer is funny. Which won’t happen until we are in our 90’s, in a heap on the bathroom floor unable to get up. Then it will all feel like some perverse cosmic joke.
But what if we have already fallen?
Not in the physical definition, but rather in the mental and emotional definition.
What if we’ve gotten to a point where we have fallen so far down the rabbit hole of fatigue and low self-esteem that we can’t figure out how to get back up?
Many of us grew up being told that we could indeed have it all. Our mothers didn’t have the opportunities we did, they saw possibilities for us.
They encouraged us (ok maybe forced us) to grab the brass ring and “get it all.”
They meant well, but they had no idea the toll it would take.
Fast forward and we are in fact worse off. We are women that are highly stressed, filled with anxiety and suffering from low self-esteem.
We take pills to sleep, pills to relax and more pills to help us focus just to survive each day. Or we are filling ourselves with food, or wine, to try and relax, or fill the void of joy.
All of this creates a great big spiral down. We ask ourselves,

“Why can’t I get my crap together?”
“Why am I miserable when I have what looks like a great life to everyone else?
“When am I going to figure out my purpose, because this isn’t working!”
“Will I ever get to feel happy with myself?”

We have fallen down, and we can’t seem to figure out how to get back up.
We fill our days with checking off items on our “to-do” that do not fulfill us.
We feel pulled in a million different directions, answering to too many bosses and left overwhelmed because at the end of the day there is zero time or energy left for ourselves.
Everyone is getting a piece of us, but no one is really getting the best of us.

We slice off what energy we can
for work,
another chunk for kids,
a portion for the spouse
and then there’s nothing left.

It feels like we are just half-assing everything.
Life has become survival of the fittest, and somedays (ok many days) we would just rather chuck it and runaway to a deserted island.
At least then there would be no one wanting something from us.
It is time for us to stop living in this world of fear we have created for ourselves.

Fear we aren’t good enough moms,
Fear we aren’t good enough wives,
Fear we aren’t good enough employees,
Fear our house isn’t clean enough,
our kids aren’t succeeding enough,
and our bodies aren’t fit enough.

Fear that we will never know our purpose.
Fear that we will never clearly understand ourselves.
If this is you, I’m here to tell you that enough is enough. And it’s time to discover your joy.