Becoming Heidi

...On Being Cracked Open

“I might be off the mark here,” she said gently, “but I’m curious about something. Did you ever feel like you had to earn approval or love? And if so, do you think that might have carried into the fact that you do *so much* for everyone in your life?”

She asked it calmly, but the question landed like a quiet lightning bolt.

We were in couples counseling, and while I know her question was connected to our conversation, it still seemed to come from left field in my brain.

*Doing so much for everyone else* was such an ordinary part of my life that I hadn’t even noticed it was on the table.

For years, I was the glue that held our life together.

Mike worked sixteen-hour days and was only guaranteed twenty-four hours off each week.

Almost everything that needed to be done - the house, the kids, the bills, the invisible load that keeps a family running - fell to me.

He helped when he could, but often his time at home was spent simply trying to recover enough to survive his schedule.

I was in survival mode too.

Just as I’d started to crawl my way out of it - to do a few things *for myself* - the pandemic hit.

Suddenly, his colleagues were leaving, his department was collapsing, and he was left to hold the whole thing together. Even at home, his phone buzzed constantly with messages from coworkers who needed him to fix the chaos.

But this time, I didn’t collapse inward the way I had before.

My kids were older. I had a community. I knew what it had cost me the last time - literally - to disappear into survival mode.

So I refused to vanish.