Somewhere along the way you stopped believing you were allowed to come first.
It didn’t happen all at once. The family needed something. The job needed something.
And every time you put yourself at the back of the line, it got a little easier to believe that’s just where you belonged.
Then something shifted. Maybe the last kid finally moved out. Maybe you retired after decades of the job running your calendar.
And for the first time in years, there’s a little room. A little quiet. And in that quiet, a question you haven’t let yourself ask in a long time. What about me?
But right behind it comes the other voice.
“Who are you to spend that time on yourself? Isn’t it a little selfish?”
So you talk yourself out of it.
Again.
And you tell yourself this is just how life is at this stage. This is just who you are now.
We know that voice because we’ve both heard it.
There were years where putting ourselves first felt indulgent at best and impossible at worst, like a thing other people got to do.
Here’s what we eventually understood.
That feeling isn’t the truth about you. It’s just a habit of thought you built over a long time, and habits can be rebuilt.
You are not selfish for wanting to feel strong and capable in your own body.
You are not too late. And this is not just how it has to be from here.
The belief that you don’t deserve to come first is the heaviest thing you’re carrying.
Heavier than any ten or twenty-year gap. And it’s the first thing that gets lighter once you start.
