Bag lady, you gon’ hurt your back
Dragging all them bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you.
All you must hold on to
Is you, is you, is you
—Erykah Badu
Three months after turning 45, a widowmaker heart attack nearly took me out. And before you assume I was living on fast food and regret, let me clarify. I was a runner. Put in five miles on a treadmill at 5 a.m. every morning. I was a kale girl. A green-juice girl. A woman who thought stress was what happened to other people who did not own a blender.
Fun fact: Stress isn’t just a personality trait or an excuse to buy candles.Turns out stress can, in fact, kill you.
After the cardiologist saved my life and my nurse side-eyed me with that “Now Ma’am” energy, I had what my grandmother calls a “come to Jesus” moment. For those unfamiliar with the term, this is what happens when you’ve written a check your body can’t cash, and now you have to pay up. My check was this: I’d let my entire life be hijacked by everybody else’s expectations, emergencies, unsolicited opinions, and the relentless assumption that I would handle it.
And it nearly ended me.
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What We Were Praised for Believing
For most of my adult life—and most of my childhood and teenage life too, if I’m being honest—I treated strength like it was my full-time job. I carried stress like women with far more money carry Birkin bags, and I don’t even like carrying purses. I shouldered everyone else’s busted emotional suitcases before tending to my own, because somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that being the real-life Olivia Pope, who “has it handled,” was my alter ego.
So, no Erykah, nobody told me a thing.
But my story isn’t new, and it surely isn’t unfamiliar. Holding up the sky is what we as women do, and lord forbid we were ever to stop. The entire world would come crashing down like a cosmic Jenga puzzle. At least that’s what we have somehow convinced ourselves, and you better believe we had some help.
Anyone remember this Enjoli jingle?
I can bring home the bacon,
Fry it up in a pan.
And never ever ever let you forget you’re a man,
Cuz I’m a woman.
Tag line: “The 8-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman.”
By age seven, it was already imprinted on me that as a female member of the human species, my ultimate goal was to do ALL the things. Get the wash together, feed the kids, get to work, come home, cook, and manage the emotional needs of the man I was supposedly married to. Seven-year-old me didn’t know any better.
Fifty-two-year-old me has only one response: Absolutely not.
By now, you would think we would be free from this trope that paints us as unofficial members of the Avengers. But noooo. There’s a meme floating around now that shows the traditional silhouette of a woman on one side, and the same silhouette beside it, with the bottom part painted red like a cape. The caption says, “It was never a dress.” Okay. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a skirt or a really cute swing coat. But who decided it had to be a cape?
But this is the lie I bought into. The lie a lot of us bought into. We could do it all. In fact, we had an obligation to do it all because we were the glue holding it all together. At home. At work. In our communities. The responsibility, the successes, and the failures all fell on our shoulders, and we couldn’t let them (or ourselves) down.
But the honest truth? We’ve been conditioned to carry bags that weren’t meant for us, and to feel guilty when we finally set them down. Yet, we grab them like luggage at the airport that looks like ours but isn’t. We have to let it go—which is what I did.
And you can too.
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Strong Enough to Stop
First, can we acknowledge that women get rewarded for capacity? Look how much she can handle. Look how calm she stays. Meanwhile, your shoulders are on strike, and your spirit is screaming, “Lady, if you don’t put this down now!” I had to admit I was carrying too much, like some trophy, and do my best Elsa impression.
Second, once the bags were out of my hands, I had to look at what I was carrying. Checking on everybody. Holding space. Being the fixer. Being the one folks trauma-dump on because “you’re so strong.” Nope. Believing that rest is something I earned only after collapse? That asking for help meant I was weak and slipping? All lies. (Related: How To Fall Asleep When Your Brain Won’t Shut Up)
Third, putting down bags feels illegal when you’ve been praised for carrying them all so well. So, I became a felon and started leaving the bags right where I found them. Without comment. Silence was the explanation, and “no” is a complete sentence (I’m an English teacher by profession, so I would know). Turns out I was still me, and surprise! Agency showed up the moment I stopped over-functioning. Some people were annoyed. The world did not end. Everyone survived.
Fourth, admittedly, some bags I keep carrying because they make sense. If I leave the grocery shopping to my husband, we’ll be living off high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oil, and red dye #5. But anything that demands self-erasure or requires me to perform strength while neglecting my health gets returned to sender.
Don’t be fooled.
I don’t pack light all the time.
Old habits have excellent muscle memory.
But I’m learning that strength isn’t about how much you can carry. It is about knowing what is yours to carry—and having the guts to put down the rest.
And whenever I find myself reaching for what isn’t mine, I hear Erykah Badu in the background singing.
Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go.
And I do.
Related:
- Surviving the Sandwich Generation: How to Be a Generational Translator
- Is it Time to Walk Away from a Friendship?
- Smart Women are Going Fractional After 50—and Taking Control
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This article originally appeared on PROVOKED and was syndicated by MediaFeed.co.
