Someone asks what you want to do this weekend.
And you genuinely don't know.
Not because you don't care or don’t have an opinion. You just haven't thought about it.
You know your kid has somewhere to be Saturday morning. Someone needs something picked up. There's a thing Sunday afternoon. Your husband mentioned something he wanted to get done, and you've already mentally worked out when the laundry needs to happen around all of it.
But what do you want to do?
Huh.
It's such a simple question.
Why can it feel so hard to answer?
I think that's one of the strange things that happens when you become really good at being needed.
You spend so much time knowing what everyone else needs that your own preferences can start getting surprisingly quiet.
And nobody did anything wrong.
Your family didn't steal your identity.
Your job didn't take it from you.
You probably didn't wake up one morning and announce, “I shall now stop being a person with interests and become primarily responsible for logistics.”
It happened because life got full.
You were good at helping, so you helped. You were capable, so people counted on you. You remembered things, handled things, solved things, anticipated things.
And honestly? Some of that feels good.
I like being someone people can count on.
I like taking care of the people I love.
I like being capable.
But somewhere in all of that capability, I think it's possible to get really good at knowing who you are to everyone else and a little fuzzy on who you are when nobody needs anything from you.
Mom.
Wife.
Employee.
Leader.
Friend.
Volunteer.
The one who remembers.
The one who handles it.
The one who figures it out.
Those are real parts of us. Some of them are parts we love deeply.
But they're still roles.
And roles answer a different question than identity does.
A role tells me where I belong in someone else's life.
It doesn't necessarily tell me who I am in my own.
That's the part I've been thinking about.
Because when life stays busy long enough, you can stop noticing the difference.
You make decisions based on what needs to happen next. You wear what works for the day you're having. You spend your free time catching up on whatever didn't get done during the not-free time.
Someone asks what you like to do for fun and suddenly you're mentally scrolling through hobbies you had in 2007.
Does Target count?
I'm kidding.
Mostly.
But I think there's something underneath that joke that a lot of women understand.
We haven't necessarily lost ourselves.
We've just spent a really long time practicing everybody else's needs.
And maybe ours haven't had much airtime.
I don't think reconnecting with yourself requires some dramatic reinvention.
You don't need to run away to a cabin, discover pottery and come home with bangs.
Unless you want to. No judgment on the bangs.
Maybe it starts much smaller than that.
What do I actually enjoy now?
What makes me curious?
What have I been saying I don't have time for?
What do I miss?
What am I doing because I still want to do it, and what am I doing because I've simply become the person who does it?
Those aren't questions you have to answer all at once.
Actually, I think turning “find yourself” into another project with a deadline would be very on-brand for some of us and also completely miss the point.
Maybe we just start paying attention again.
There may be a version of you from before the kids, before the career, before the responsibilities piled up that you miss.
There may also be parts of her you've completely outgrown.
That's okay too.
Finding your way back to yourself doesn't have to mean going backward.
Maybe it's getting reacquainted with the woman who's here now.
The one underneath all the job descriptions.
The one who still gets to have preferences even when nobody needs them.
The one who can love taking care of people without disappearing into taking care of people.
The one God created before anyone handed her a role to fill.
So maybe the next time someone asks what you want, notice how quickly you start factoring everyone else into the answer.
Then give yourself a second.
What do you want?
You don't have to rearrange your entire life around the answer.
Just hear it.
Because maybe finding your way back doesn't begin with becoming someone new.
Maybe it begins with remembering that you're still in there too.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Episode 28: How Overcommitment Steals Your True Identity →