The Gospel of the Feminine Self

I’ve been carrying a weight lately, though I didn’t notice how heavy it had become until recently. It’s not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. It’s the kind that settles into your bones, the kind that lingers in your breath, the kind that makes even small joys feel muted. And when I started looking closely at why, I realized it isn’t just one thing. It’s the way my life has splintered into a hundred little pieces, and every piece keeps asking for more.

I wake up every day and move between so many different roles that it’s no wonder I feel fractured and exhausted. I’m a wife, a mother, a program director, an instructor, a Ph.D. candidate, a creator, a writer, a coach, a friend, an activist, a community coordinator, the list goes on and on. Every one of those identities needs something from me. Every one of them asks to be fed, maintained, and perfected. And I have been trying (really, I have) to keep all of them alive, all at once, as if giving less than one hundred percent to any part of my life means I am failing. But the truth is, there’s only one of me and lately, I have been waking up tired and angry.

I wanted to understand that anger. I wanted to find the source of this exhaustion, so I started searching for answers outside myself. I thought maybe I’d find clarity, something validating, something that made sense of this constant stretching-thin that so many women experience. So I went to the one place we all go when we’re lost: Google. I typed in “roles of women,” expecting something modern, nuanced, maybe even hopeful.

What I found stopped me in my tracks.

The very first definition I read said the roles of women are “diverse and evolving, spanning the traditional responsibilities of caregiver, mother, and homemaker to modern roles as professional, entrepreneur, leader, and activist in all sectors of society.” At first glance, it sounded fine, even progressive, maybe. But the longer I sat with it, the more frustrated I became. Because every single role listed was defined by what I could offer to other people. My worth, according to this narrative, lives entirely in my ability to serve: to raise, to provide, to lead, to heal, to nurture. It framed womanhood entirely around my usefulness.

And I thought, maybe that’s just the women’s page. So I searched “roles of men,” curious to see how that narrative was framed.

And that’s when the bottom dropped out.

The very first sentence I read said, “The role of men encompasses evolving traditional, contemporary, and individual expectations.” That single word, individual, hit me like a lightning bolt. The men’s narrative starts by centering him, his inner world, his desires, and his expectations. His identity is rooted in who he is, not just what he produces. And I sat there staring at those two definitions side by side, and something in me cracked open.

Because nowhere in the roles of women was there room for me, my individuality, or my wholeness. For the parts of me that exist outside of service, outside of output, outside of performance. I will be honest, I don’t even know if those parts exist because they are so far buried under the roles I need to fulfill. It would take an entire archeological team to unearth them. That’s when I realized why I’ve been so angry. Somewhere deep down, I’ve been waiting for the world to hand me permission to stop performing, to stop holding all these fragmented roles together with both hands. But that permission isn’t coming. It was never coming. There has never been a definition written that makes room for all of me. Maybe that’s why I need to write one myself.

When the Fragmenting Begins

If I’m honest, I don’t think this fragmentation starts when we grow up. I don’t even think it starts the moment we take our first breath. I think it begins before we are even born.

We live in a world where, more often than not, we already know the baby’s gender long before we ever meet her. The moment those words appear on the screen, “It’s a girl!”,  something subtle, almost invisible, starts to happen. She hasn’t yet drawn her first breath, but pieces of her are already being claimed. She will be someone’s daughter. Someday, someone’s wife. Likely someone’s mother. She’ll be a sister, a friend, a caregiver, a homemaker, and a coworker. Without even realizing it, we begin breaking her into roles before she’s even had the chance to decide who she is.

Boys, though… boys are treated differently. Boys are born whole. They carry their father’s name, his lineage, and his story. There’s an unspoken wholeness granted to them by default. But girls? Girls are fragmented before they’ve even opened their eyes and the breaking doesn’t stop there.

As we grow up, that fragmentation deepens. We’re told, in a thousand quiet ways, who we’re expected to be. At school, we learn not just our ABCs and long division, but the hidden curriculum: how to be the “right” kind of girl, the “right” kind of student, the one who doesn’t make waves, who learns quickly when to stay quiet, when to smile, when to accommodate. underneath it all, we learn something far more dangerous: that our boundaries are negotiable.

When we’re little, we hear phrases like “boys will be boys” or “he’s only teasing you because he likes you.” These messages seem harmless, but they are the opening cracks in the foundation. They teach us early on to ignore discomfort, to reinterpret violations as affection, and to make room for other people even when we don’t want to. Every time we swallow those lessons, a piece of us splinters away. Because here’s the truth: boundaries hold us together. They are the walls that keep the Self intact. Without them, we become fragments scattered across the expectations of others. A fragmented woman is easier to control.

This is why the breaking starts early and why it never stops. The more broken we become, the easier it is to keep taking pieces of us away. When we grow up, the consequences become even clearer:

We still can’t tell men no without calculating the risk of violence, shame, or backlash. We’ve learned to make our refusals sound soft, polite, palatable, or to pretend that we might be open, even when we aren’t. Not because we want to, but because survival demands it. Even as adults, we’re trained to manage their reactions before we’re allowed to consider our own safety.

I don’t think this is accidental. The closer women get to wholeness, the harder the world pushes back. You can see it everywhere right now, in every headline and every political fight:

·       The stripping away of abortion rights, because how dare we claim sovereignty over our bodies.

·       The attacks on no-fault divorce, because how dare we choose freedom over obligation.

·       The framing of the so-called male loneliness epidemic as our fault because the narrative is always that women exist to soothe men’s unmet needs, and if we refuse, we’ve broken something in society.

Even the projections about the future, like the warnings that nearly 45% of women may be single by 2030, are framed as a crisis, not a choice. The subtext is clear: women are supposed to serve, to accommodate, and to be available. When we aren’t, the entire system convulses, grasping for control.

Because wholeness, a woman choosing herself fully, terrifies people and rips the fabric of society. It always has.

So the chipping continues, boundary by boundary, piece by piece. We are served up on platters, our labor, our beauty, our bodies, our emotional caregiving, asked constantly, “What part of you can I take today?” When we begin to refuse, society calls us difficult, broken, selfish, or unnatural.

But maybe we’re none of those things. Maybe we’re simply trying to remember who we were before the splitting began.

The Costume Changes

This fragmentation isn’t just emotional. It isn’t just an idea or a metaphor, it’s embodied. It lives in our muscles, our breath, our voices, our posture, and the choices we make about how to enter a room. I see it in myself all the time, but it hit harder when my husband pointed it out. He notices when I pick up a different mask, when I slip into a different version of myself. He can tell when I’ve stepped into my coaching voice…soft, measured, warm, or when I’ve shifted into my clipped, confident professional voice for a Zoom meeting, stripped of anything that might sound too personal. He hears the playful lilt I use when speaking to my daughter and the lower, steadier cadence when I speak to him. He notices before I even do.

It's not just my voice. It’s my posture, the way I stand, the clothes I choose, the way I hold myself. It’s the tilt of my head, the way my shoulders soften or tense depending on what the moment demands. These aren’t imagined fragments; they live in my body. This is the hidden choreography women are taught from a young age: the art of compartmentalization. Each role comes with its own costume, its own approved movements, its own script. We become fluent in switching, toggling between fragments without even realizing it anymore. One minute we’re the poised professional presenting to a client; the next, we’re crouched on the kitchen floor tending to a crying child; then we’re answering texts from a friend in crisis; then stepping into caregiver, mediator, partner, mother, teacher, and coach all within the span of an hour.

We learn the art of becoming palatable. We read the room, sense what’s welcome, and shape ourselves into whatever form will keep the peace, meet the need, or ensure belonging. We master transformation, constantly shape-shifting into whichever version of ourselves is most acceptable in the moment. But the cost is staggering. Every costume change carries a weight. Every mask leaves an imprint. The body keeps score. Our voices tighten. Our shoulders rise. Our breath gets shallow. Our nervous systems stay on high alert, constantly scanning for cues about who we need to be and what we need to hide. Over time, it gets harder and harder to remember who we are underneath it all, who we were before the splitting began.

Here’s the part I need to name clearly: this isn’t universal. Men, broadly speaking, are granted a freedom women are not. They get to show up as themselves, messy, unpolished, unfiltered, and the world, by and large, accepts them. For women, authenticity is rarely safe. We learn early that we cannot bring our whole selves anywhere. We can’t let coworkers know too much about who we are personally. We can’t bring our professional selves home to our families. We can’t show our tenderness in spaces where strength is expected, and we can’t bring our strength into spaces where we’re supposed to be soft. So we adapt. We curate ourselves, carefully selecting which fragments are safest to show and which must be hidden. We become offerings, holding ourselves out on a platter:

Do you need my care?

My body?

My work?

My comfort?

My silence?

My smile?

We learn to serve and, in that constant serving, in that endless translation between roles, we exhaust ourselves into forgetting. We scatter so many pieces of who we are that we grow too tired to gather them back up again, too depleted to imagine gluing ourselves whole.

Maybe that’s part of how the system sustains itself. Because if we’re drained from the performance, if we’re always tending to everyone else’s needs, we have no energy left for reclamation.

Standing here, I can see how deep this goes. I can see how this early breaking, this lifelong habit of splitting ourselves into fragments, makes us more vulnerable later. Because at some point, all the roles we’ve been trained to carry start falling away. We give, and we give, and we give, until the giving becomes who we are and then one day… it shifts.

The kids grow up and leave, and suddenly the identity of mother, that whole, consuming part of us, is no longer needed. Menopause arrives, and with it, the quiet ending of another role society told us defined us: the potential to bear children. Another fragment slips away. Time passes, our faces change, our bodies soften, and the world tells us beauty is fading, another piece gone.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand: the “empty nest” was never the house. The nest was her. The roles we once wore like armor, mother, caretaker, fixer, nurturer, were never just responsibilities; they were the scaffolding holding up our sense of self. When those roles fall away we’re left with the silence inside. The nest isn’t empty because the children are gone; the nest is empty because we’ve given so much of ourselves away that there is nothing left to return home to. We become, in many ways, like the Giving Tree at the end of the story, stripped bare, branches gone, bark peeled away, and hollowed out from decades of handing over pieces of ourselves until there is nothing left but the stump. Then there we are, sitting in the quiet, whispering the same question over and over:
“What do I do now?”

Some of us pour ourselves into new identities: charity work, community care, teaching, nurturing other people’s dreams when our own feel too foreign to reclaim. Others cling tightly to the remnants of the roles we once carried, gripping the identities we built our worth around as if letting go of them would erase us completely. And some of us… we simply get lost.

But this isn’t the end of the story.

This isn’t about rebuilding the fragments we once were, forcing ourselves back into old costumes or roles we’ve outgrown. This is about something harder, something deeper: stitching together a whole new narrative that belongs only to you. A story that isn’t borrowed, trimmed, or rewritten to fit someone else’s expectations. This is the point where we begin to turn inward, where we stop asking who we used to be and start asking who we are when the masks fall away.

The Mosaic of Me

I don’t have a tidy takeaway or a list of five bullet points to help women reclaim their identities. What I do have is something much harder to write about, an invitation into a much bigger question. Because somewhere along the way, we stopped being seen as whole people and started being seen as roles.: caregiver, mother, supportive partner, good employee. In losing the clarity of our individual identity, we also lost the permission to center ourselves.

It’s wild, isn’t it? The way society hands out invisible job descriptions based purely on the body we were born into. As if genitalia alone determines whether we’re allowed to be the center of our own story or are expected to constantly orbit around others. For cisgender, heterosexual men (especially those performing traditional masculinity) centering themselves isn’t questioned. It’s assumed and supported. They’re encouraged to pursue fulfillment, identity, and personal growth as if it were their birthright. But for women and for anyone who embodies the feminine or performs roles of care, the unspoken rule is different: don’t make it about you. We’re handed this role of support system, caretaker, and background character. Our “self” is allowed to exist only in relation to others: someone’s wife, someone’s mother, or someone’s employee. Our identity becomes a disjointed mosaic of what we do for others instead of who we are for ourselves.

But just because we care deeply for others doesn’t mean we must disappear in the process. We can still be loving, generous, dependable people and choose ourselves first. That’s not selfish, it’s foundational. It’s the principle they repeat every time we board a plane: secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Not because you don’t care, but because you can’t help anyone if you can’t breathe. The same is true in life. You can’t keep showing up for your kids, your partner, your community, or your job if you are gasping for air emotionally, mentally, or physically. Yet, the moment we even think about putting ourselves first, something inside us hesitates…Guilt…Fear…That old echo of conditioning whispering, “But what if everything falls apart without you?”

But here’s the thing, this isn’t about everything else. This is about how we reclaim the Self, and I do mean Self with a capital S. The part of us that exists before the roles, before the responsibilities, and before the fear. The part that simply is.

But reclaiming that Self requires us to get honest about what we’re afraid of.

I know what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of letting go. I’m afraid that if I stop doing what I do, it won’t get done. I’m afraid of the resentment that might come if I ask for help. I’m afraid of the judgment I might face if I say “no” or “I can’t” or “that’s not mine to carry.” But more than that, I’m afraid that I’ll be left holding the ball, just like always.

It’s funny, actually, this metaphor of “the ball.” It showed up today, in the most mundane moment. I went to the store to get carpet cleaner for the stairs. They’ve gotten bad, stained, dusty, and neglected. When I told my husband what I was doing, he asked why, and I said, “Have you seen the stairs?” He paused, nodded, and I added, “I’ll get kiddo to help.”

He responded the way a lot of people do, out of reflex, out of comfort, “It’s her day off. Don’t make her.” Instantly, I felt that familiar guilt rise up in me, the guilt that tells me just do it yourself. But instead, I pushed back. I said, “I need help. I don’t know when it happened, but cleaning the stairs has somehow become my job and it shouldn’t be.” He started making excuses: his knees, his discomfort. I used that small spark of speaking up and responded, “I get it. My back hurts too.” (for those who don’t know I have extensive back injuries due to my accident in the military). In that moment, something shifted. He looked at me and said, “You’re right. We should be splitting this.”

That small moment was actually a very big one. I named something I normally would have swallowed. I let go of the fear that he’d deflect or dismiss me. I stopped holding the ball silently. And that’s the thing I want to ask you: what are you afraid of? Are you afraid the ball will fall? Are you afraid no one else will catch it?

But most of all, is it even your ball to hold?

Let’s be clear: I’m not talking about dropping everything. We’re still going to take care of the essentials like our kids, our health, and the people we love. We’re still going to honor our values. But in all those other spaces where we’ve been conditioned to quietly pick up the slack, to carry what isn’t ours, and to hold it all together while no one notices the toll, what if we just dropped the ball?

What if we didn’t ask permission to let it go?

Because when you drop the ball and nothing truly falls apart, you start to see the cracks in the story you were told. The one that said you’re the only one holding this family, this job, and this life together. The one that kept you glued to the floor out of guilt.

But your feet? They aren’t glued, not anymore.

Once you realize that, you can take that same glue and use it to start piecing yourself back together. Not in the shape you used to be. Not in the role you were assigned. But in the shape that fits you now. The Self that’s been waiting.

That’s why I call this the Mosaic of Me. Because I’m made of fragments, yes, but I am not broken. I’m not ruined. I’m assembled with intention now. Each piece tells a story of what I’ve handed over, and what I’ve taken back.

I’ll leave you with this: if I don’t choose myself, if you don’t choose yourself, who will?

Because when no one else does, and we do it anyway, we become whole again.
Not perfect.
But true.

A side note:
Let me be clear about something... I’m not dismissing men or pretending they don’t carry wounds of their own. They do. But those wounds, including their origins, their consequences, and their healing, are not mine to define. I can only speak from where I stand, from the landscape I know. Part of what I’ve had to unlearn is the belief that it is my responsibility to carry the weight of their healing. We are conditioned into that role early, too, the silent expectation that we will soothe, accommodate, and fix. How many times have we seen the story play out? The tired cliché of “I can fix him” still hums beneath so many of our cultural narratives, shaping us long before we even know it. But here’s the truth I’ve come to: that role isn’t mine anymore. It never should have been. Men will need to turn toward their own work. They will need to reckon with the systems they built and sustained, the same systems now harming them, and find their own way forward. That labor of healing, of repair, does not belong to me simply because I am a woman. When we finally set that piece down, when we refuse to carry what was never ours, we take one small step back toward wholeness. So, this space isn’t for that narrative…and I am not sorry for that.