Almost every woman I know can name that moment — the one where she’s smiling in the carpool line, answering emails at a stoplight and quietly falling apart on the inside.
We’ve gotten so good at holding it together that we’ve forgotten to ask ourselves a simple question: How am I actually doing?
As a therapist here on the Coast, I sit with women every week who are exhausted in a way sleep doesn’t fix. They’re caregivers, professionals, mothers, daughters and leaders — often all in the same day. Too many of them believe that needing support is a sign of weakness rather than what it really is: a sign of being human.
NOTICE WHAT YOU NEED
Summer is winding down now. School schedules are shifting, and for many of us, the pace of life quietly speeds back up before we’ve caught our breath. It’s a good time to pause and check in with ourselves the way we’d check in on a friend.
Mental wellness isn’t just the absence of crisis. It’s the everyday work of noticing when we’re running on empty and having the courage to refill before we hit zero. That might look like therapy. It might look like a walk on the beach with no phone in hand, a deep conversation with a friend or simply saying “no” without a paragraph of justification behind it.
I often tell my clients that self-care isn’t selfish; it’s maintenance. You wouldn’t drive your car for years without an oil change, yet so many of us go months, even years, without checking in on our own wellbeing. Our minds deserve that same care.
GIVE YOURSELF GRACE
If you’re reading this and something in your chest just tightened a little, that’s worth paying attention to. You don’t have to wait for a breakdown to ask for help. Reach out to a licensed therapist, confide in someone you trust or simply give yourself permission to rest without guilt.
My hope for every woman reading this is simple: Give yourself the same grace, patience and attention you so freely give everyone else. You are allowed to take up space in your own life. You are allowed to not be OK sometimes. And you are absolutely worth the effort it takes to heal.