The Overwhelm Inheritance (and How I’m Finally Letting It Go)

Have you ever felt overwhelmed?
Not just busy or behind—but that bone-deep, soul-tired kind of overwhelm?
The kind that whispers, You should be doing more, while simultaneously shouting, And you should look good doing it.

Yeah. That kind.

I learned overwhelm early—though I couldn’t name it at the time.
What I did know, without question, was that being a woman meant you kept going. No matter what.

From the sidelines of my childhood, I watched my mother, Doreen, step into marriage at twenty. She said “I do” to a man, a home, a life—and, somewhere in the fine print, to invisibility.

I don’t think she planned it that way.
She was just following the map handed to her: marry young, support your man, have babies, look perfect. She was going to be a nurse once. She had dreams, too. But within a year, she had a baby instead. And then another. And a house to run. And a husband to get through college. And a life that didn’t leave room for questions like, “What do I want?”

To the outside world, she looked composed. Proper. In control.

But inside our home, I learned to tiptoe around clouds of quiet resentment. Not because she was mean or unloving—but because she was buried. Her sparkle had been traded for duty. Her voice, hushed. Her identity, absorbed into everyone else’s needs. 

She did it all. And she did it all… while quietly disappearing.

I didn’t know it then, but I was studying her.
And like any good daughter, I took notes.
Be selfless. Be pretty. Be capable. Be small. Be silent—this was the unspoken code of conduct.
Be everything to everyone and don’t you dare complain about it. 

So, I became the good girl teetering the pedestal of perfection.
Smart, but not too smart. Pretty, but not too much. Capable, but not threatening.
Oh, and don’t forget—make it all look easy.

Only…it wasn’t.
I was suffocating under the weight of expectations I never agreed to in the first place.

And here’s the thing: this isn’t just my story.
It’s not just Doreen’s story, either.
It’s ours.

Every week, I meet women carrying versions of the same invisible load.
Women who are so tired—not just from what they’re doing, but from who they’ve been pretending to be.

And underneath it all? A longing.
To stop performing.
To stop striving.
To just be.

To take off the mask and finally whisper, “I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

That whisper is sacred. It takes courage. It’s where the real work begins.

Please know that this isn’t about blaming our mothers (although there was time when I did).
Our mothers did the best they could with what they knew and had at the time.
But it is about noticing what we’ve inherited—not just in our DNA, but in our beliefs.

Some things—like Doreen’s affinity for beautiful clothes or her impeccable taste in lipstick—are worth keeping.
But the overwhelm?
The martyrdom?
The slow, silent erasure of who we really are?

No, that’s not for me and it’s time to give that back.

So if you’re reading this with a lump in your throat, wondering how much of your life has been shaped by what someone else needed from you—I see you. And it’s your time. 

Schedule a free discovery call.
Let’s uncover what you want.
Not the You who learned to contort herself for approval.
Not the You who kept it all together for everyone else.

The real you.
The one who’s been quietly waiting for permission to come home.

And let’s do something revolutionary together: Let’s unlearn overwhelm.

Because you don’t need to carry what was never yours to hold.