The Things I Carry

Lately, I’ve been feeling the weight of the journey.

Maybe it’s turning fifty, that moment when looking back becomes unavoidable.

Maybe it’s the emotional density that surrounds me right now.

But something has shifted.

I feel how much I am carrying and how long I’ve been carrying it.

There are the emotional complexities of raising children.

They are deep, layered, and demanding in ways no one prepares you for.

When my child goes through heartbreak, I carry it in my own body.

When there is a rupture between siblings, I ache with them.

Their pain doesn’t stop at the end of that moment. It stays.

There are the people I work with.

Their stories live inside me.

I dream about them.

I feel their emotions long after our sessions end.

And then it flows into everything else

the meals I cook,

the way I wake up in the morning,

the energy I wrap around my home,

what I bring to the table at dinner,

what I write in birthday cards or holiday greetings.

All of it goes into the invisible bag I carry

the bag of the soul,

the bag of life.

I’m starting to understand how much of what I carry is deeply tied to femininity, to motherhood, to the roles I’ve been taught to inhabit in the world.

I was never taught how to stop.

How to put the bag down.

How to say: I’m tired.

I need help.

I can’t carry all of this anymore.

So what does it actually mean to unpack this weight?

What can be put down?

What can be shared?

Who can I lean on, and how do I learn to ask?

This place opens many emotions.

Some of them are grief. Real, deep grief

for years I missed,

for too many roles I took on,

for moments I didn’t protect myself,

didn’t know how to draw clear boundaries,

didn’t know where I began and where I ended.

That grief lives in the body,

in exhaustion,

in soul-deep weariness.

And yet there is also gratitude.

For all that was.

And for the realization that it’s never too late.

Here I am, finally pausing.

Standing still long enough to look inward

at the fear,

the sadness,

the tenderness.

Learning how to draw new lines around what I can carry,

what I want to carry,

and how I want to move forward from here.

Learning how to keep walking

but lighter.

How to put the bag down sometimes.

How to let go of some of the weight.

And how to give, at last,

to myself.