You’re allowed to be included in the care you offer.
After a wreck last month and a totaled out vehicle (everyone is fine), I am in the middle of car negotiations right now. I give the whole enterprise zero stars, thanks for asking. The shady salesmen, the “the market is volatile” excuse for raising the deal since YESTERDAY, the frustrating victim mentality (“we’re just losing so much money on this car” which they decidedly are not), the constantly moving goalposts; I hate everything.
But a Jen emerges during this theater that I barely know, and she is a bad bitch. She does not care for men talking over her and yanking her around by the nose. She is no fan of being shaken down. She can do basic math and the numbers don’t add up, LORENZO. She says things like, “This is a zero negotiation situation for me. Let me know if we can move forward or I will move on.”
It is like I accessed the pent-up rage collected after 51 years of smiling politely and prioritizing someone else’s comfort at the expense of my own. Turns out that car buying is a delightful proving ground for assertive energy.
Because I’ve learned to investigate my own responses with curiosity, I am asking myself: “Who is this tigress, and what ferocity has she been restricting?”
Oh boy. Manipulative communication triggered a lifetime of relational conditioning that apparently got pissed. Many of us learned that disappearing a little was the cost of “loving well,” so when that bruise gets pressed these days, evidently Lorenzo gets to be the recipient of I’m-done-with-that-shit energy. I was taught for half a century that goodness looked like accommodation and virtue equaled concession. It was my job to keep the peace. “Loving” meant being endlessly flexible, endlessly forgiving, endlessly understanding. Most of you know the script.
So we adjusted with the social precision of an acrobat. We smoothed things over, carried more than our share, told ourselves this was maturity until our bodies, our resentment, or weariness finally told the truth.
I learned this on an exam table insisting to a very kind doctor that I was “actually really strong” while my blood pressure was shutting down consciousness and my clothes were still damp from panic attacks. I hadn’t slept in two days, and my nervous system was collapsing from months of holding everything together—kids, crisis, fear, responsibility—while telling myself this was what strength looked like.
After listening quietly, he said something I’ll never forget: “Jennifer, your body has done so much. It got you this far. It worked overtime on adrenaline for almost a year, and it is simply telling you it can’t do any more. It has gone as far as it can on its own. That’s all. It helped you survive. Now it is time to help your body back.”
My body wasn’t betraying me; it was communicating.
At that moment, my story changed. Exhaustion wasn’t weakness but evidence — proof of how much I had loved, endured, and held. But that clarion call sent a clear signal: love without limits has a price, and eventually it costs you… yourself. You know what often follows a wake-up call? A reckoning. Compassion without boundaries doesn’t make us kinder. It makes us disappear.
For many of us in midlife, this reckoning arrives after decades of being the capable one, the dependable one. Always the emotional first responder. We learned how to anticipate needs, how to surrogate someone else’s discomfort, how to “stay pleasant” while unraveling. We became experts at giving love that asked nothing in return.
The truth is, no one ever taught us how to stop.
Recently, I hosted Nedra Tawwab on the For the Love podcast, and she named something that felt clarifying: Compassion and accountability are not opposites. You can be gentle and honest. Supportive and boundaried. Loving without excusing what harms you.
That distinction matters, because we often confuse boundaries with coldness (the WAY I still battle this old programming). We label limits as selfishness and assume saying no means being less loving, less faithful, less worthy of belonging. So we keep saying yes, yes, yes even when our bodies sound the alarm. We override the signals and call it virtue.
But the body keeps score, man. Fatigue becomes chronic. Resentment leaks out sideways, because that shit gets buried alive. Compassion turns brittle and runs out of fuel, and my god what terrible timing, because we need compassion desperately right now. What we call “peace” is really unspoken conflict living somewhere else: in our sleep, our stomachs, our psyches. Avoiding an appropriate boundary doesn’t remove anxiety. It just relocates it.
Another thing Nedra said stayed with me: For many people, over-giving and over-functioning weren’t flaws. That was how we learned to love. It kept families afloat and held relationships together. Those behaviors made us useful and needed. It’s hard to stop speaking a language that once held the thing together.
So this moment doesn’t call for shame but for wisdom, darlings.
Real compassion has shape. It knows where you end and someone else begins and does not require self-erasure to prove its sincerity. It doesn’t demand silence to keep the peace. It won’t ask your body to carry what your heart cannot, and should not. Because the sticky truth is that we rob people of growth when we carry the load they should appropriately carry themselves. Codependence isn’t neutral; it actually harms everyone, not just ourselves. Compassion stays present without staying trapped (or keeping others trapped).
Midlife has a way of clarifying this because the margin for pretending is mostly gone. Our give-a-damns broke. Our bodies are less willing to absorb the cost, and our nervous systems are less interested in performative relationships. We notice where we’ve confused endurance with morality.
And in that particular wake up call, something tender happens: we start listening again.
To ourselves.
We listen when our bodies say they need rest instead of more long-suffering. (Did you know that healthy relationships don’t actually require a great deal of suffering?? I HAD NO IDEA.) We listen when our spirits bristle at dynamics that now feel depleting. We listen when love begins to feel like an obligation instead of a delighted choice.
Love should simply include ourselves in its reach.
Here’s what I’m learning: when we stop abandoning ourselves, other people are finally free to just love us. Not fix us or lean on us endlessly, which isn’t sustainable for anyone, a dynamic we cultivate with codependence, ahem. No one should depend on our silence or self-sacrifice to keep things running smoothly. That rebalance of responsibility changes how we partner, how we parent, how we lead, how we say yes, and how we say no without endless explanation.
February, for us, is about learning this kind of love.
Not the kind that performs goodness but the kind that sustains it. Love that doesn’t collapse under the weight of everyone else’s needs but stays whole long enough to keep caring.
If you’re increasingly unhappy being overextended, over-giving, or quietly disappearing, there is nothing wrong with you. You’re not becoming less compassionate but simply waking up to the truth that love does not require your exhaustion to be valid.
You’re allowed to be included in the care you offer.
You matter too.
Stay Awake With Us
If something in this piece stirred something in you, that’s exactly why I created The AWAKE Collective.
It’s a quiet, ongoing space on Substack for women in midlife who are paying attention — not to fix themselves, but to stay awake in real life.
If you joined the Wake-Up Call live, watched the replay later, or are just finding this space now—you’re not behind. This work unfolds in real time, and it keep unfolding.
Inside The AWAKE Collective, you’ll receive:
- Monthly Awake Videos — grounded check-ins to help you orient to the season you’re in
- Monthly Live Gatherings — honest conversations and light coaching
- Monthly Reflection Kits — gentle prompts and practical tools for real life
- Private Community Conversation — a members-only space to process without pressure
- Weekly Substack essays + bonus voice notes shared more personally and more deeply
The AWAKE Collective is included with a paid subscription to Letters from the Middle for $8/month (cancel anytime).
If you’re already a paid member, you also have access to the Wake-Up Call Reflection Guide — a simple companion to help you integrate what’s stirring in your relationships, your body, your faith, and your inner life.
There’s no urgency here. Just a place to return.
There is room for you.
Reflect With Us
This guide is for AWAKE Collective members and is an invitation to slow down after the Wake-Up Call and listen more closely — to your body, your faith, your relationships, and your inner life.
It’s not about doing more. It’s about staying with what you noticed.
Inside the Reflection Guide:
- Part One: Journaling
Guided prompts designed to help you explore your thoughts, emotions, and truths with openness and curiosity. - Part Two: Affirmations
Grounding affirmations to return to daily — choosing a new one each day or staying with a single phrase that steadies you. - Part Three: Practices for Living Awake
Low-demand, real-life practices that support awareness, presence, and intentional living. - Part Four: Closing Reflection
A final reflection to help you integrate what you’ve discovered and carry it forward with clarity and grace. - The Voices of the Wake-Up CallA curated collection of links and resources to help you stay connected with the voices and contributors who guided the Wake-Up Call experience.
This guide exists so the moment doesn’t pass before it has time to settle. Access the Reflection Guide below.