My Life Lately: Notes On Figuring Things Out

Dear Worthy Woman,

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote my traction report from the bathroom. A traction report is an ongoing Google Doc I maintain with my coach, where I report on my progress and the areas I’d like to focus on during our session.

That week, 10:30 at night in my bathroom felt like the only three minutes I could carve out to sit down and think, and the report I produced wasn’t exactly inspiring.

My sense of momentum had gone sideways. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything particularly well, and I was frustrated.

Life Lately

In the past few weeks, my family found a house, lost the house, and found another one. (We are still in our short-term rental after our cross-country move). My husband’s work demands have increased, so we are defaulting to solo parenting more often. There are childcare gaps coming up this summer that we haven’t figured out yet. And I am busting my butt trying to reach my health goals for the year. The progress there feels slower than the turtle running that race with the hare.

In addition to all that, my calendar integrations between two client platforms are not syncing reliably, so I have been showing up double-booked. An email sat in my drafts for days, and a client waited longer than she should have for the resources she needed. And I have all of these long-term business goals and plans that have just been sitting there waiting for me to turn them into action. All of this is happening while I am trying to show up fully for coaching clients, rewrite a book proposal, grow my practice, and be a good parent and a halfway decent partner.

I am sharing all of this because I suspect I am not the only one writing reports from the bathroom right now. If you have ever looked at your to-do list and felt nothing but bone-tired exhaustion, I want you to know that feeling does not mean you are failing. It usually means your support structure has not kept up with the size of your life.

Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

Sometimes we aren’t maximizing our possibilities. That’s when coaching, time management strategies, and a shift in perspective can help. But then there are other times when we are simply trying to do more than our space, time, bodies, and minds will allow.

When we push past our limits, we are on a short road to a physical and mental health breakdown. For most of us, we’ve come too far to go back down the burnout road. So instead of spiraling around why you can’t get it together and get everything done, we need to think about who can carry which loads.

In my conversation with my coach, we discussed the reality that I have been the bottleneck in my own life because I have been trying to manage an increasingly full life with a level of support that no longer fits.

We got specific about what it would look like to get the support I really needed and about the risks and benefits of doing so. And then, because internalized oppression is nothing if not punctual, the guilt showed up right on cue.

The Guilt Is Part of the Work

There is a particular kind of guilt that women of color know well. It arrives the moment you try to take care of yourself at any real scale, and it sounds like, “Why are you spending money on that? You should be able to do that yourself.”

It is hard to overcome the belief that support is not indulgence when you have been trained to be the support for everyone else. But support isn’t a luxury; it’s infrastructure. If I want to write, coach my clients with real presence, execute on my business goals and health goals, be present as a parent and partner, and still have something left over at the end of the day, somebody else needs to be handling the things that do not require me specifically.

In other words, there must be scaffolding to support the building if I want to add another level without the entire structure caving in.

Acknowledging the tension between what it means to be a strong Black woman and what it means to be a healthy, human, and sane Black woman helps me make decisions that create that support scaffolding and allow for my humanity in the process.

The logistics of the support I will need are still being worked out. But I am no longer spinning in place, and that feels like enough for right now.

If you stripped away everything you think you should be able to handle on your own, what kind of support would you actually ask for? I would love to hear from you in the comments or by reply.

In power and solidarity,

Toya

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I’m Toya Gavin, a coach for women of color who have made “it” and realize that “it” isn’t it. If this resonated, let’s talk so you can learn to stop performing fine and start allowing everyone the privilege of knowing your full humanity. Click here.