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The other day someone tried to use my title against me. We were discussing a decision that belonged to another leader. Mind you I had already explained that. Somewhere along the way, the conversation stopped being about the decision and became about my title. She said something like, “With a big title like yours…” Cue the eyeroll. I knew exactly where the sentence was headed. Apparently, my job title meant I should simply absorb one more responsibility because the person who should give the direction I needed couldn’t be bothered. I kindly reminded the person that my title already reflects the work I do, the teams I lead, the decisions I’m responsible for, and the problems I’ve already been entrusted to solve. Taking on someone else’s responsibility wouldn’t have been leadership and I wasn’t about to be shamed for it. The conversation faded into the background as the noise that it was. A few days later, during a session with my therapist, she asked me a question she intended for me to wrestle with, “Are you aware that people value you?”. The question settled into the room between us. I knew exactly what she was asking. This wasn’t about whether people valued my work. That part has never been difficult for me to believe, because I earned that. Her question reached for something much more personal. Did I believe there was anything about me worth valuing before I solved a problem, carried a burden, met a deadline, or helped someone else reach the finish line? The silence that followed answered before I did. And I told you before that my therapist is dope. She pointed out that I obviously believed there was value in me because of the way that I invest in my self-care. She had a point, but I was still at a loss when she asked me to spend the next two weeks documenting what was awesome about me. Later I told a friend about the conversation. She listened for a minute, and responded, “Can I tell you what I think is amazing about you?” I said yes. I was curious and I knew her question was rhetorical. She thought for a moment. “You’re one of the safest people I know.” Then she kept going. “You make people feel seen. You notice things everyone else misses. You make people believe they’re capable of more than they thought.” By the time she finished, I wanted to crawl under the nearest piece of furniture. I wish I were exaggerating. There I was, a woman who has stood in front of thousands of people, defended million-dollar budgets, preached sermons, earned four degrees, negotiated difficult conversations, and somehow the thing that made me want to disappear was someone saying kind things about me. Apparently, my nervous system has a fascinating relationship with compliments. That moment revealed something I had never put into words. I have a great deal of experience being valued because of what I do. I have far less experience believing I could be valued simply because I exist. My nervous system had been trying to have that conversation with me for months. I just hadn’t learned how to listen yet. When I reflected, I realized that Saturday mornings had developed a rhythm I never intended. I’d sit on the couch for a minute before heading outside to deal with the weeds. Then I’d look at the clock. Somehow two hours had magically negotiated their release without consulting me. Meanwhile, the weeds were outside making excellent progress. Books that used to pull me into another world began losing their grip after a page or two. The bookmark remained much more optimistic than I was. Cooking surprised me most. For the past few years I had come to love opening the refrigerator just to see what could happen with a handful of vegetables, leftover chicken, and half a lime. Somehow dinner would emerge at the end, a tasty dinner.. It felt creative. Playful even. Lately I open the refrigerator hoping one of the shelves has a better idea than I do. The refrigerator has yet to contribute anything useful to the conversation. Dinner occasionally becomes toast. The reflection made me realize that somewhere along the way, my brain had become an air traffic controller. Before I answered a question, it had learned to quickly and adeptly sort through half a dozen others. How much context does this person need? Is this misunderstanding worth untangling? Will directness help here? How much explanation will make this easier? By the time I spoke, my mind had already completed work nobody else in the room knew existed. Eventually those calculations became so automatic that I stopped recognizing them as work. The same thing happened with translation. I became so fluent at anticipating, adjusting, softening, clarifying, and carrying that I stopped noticing I was performing. The thing is, every nervous system needs a place where it doesn’t have to perform fluency. Mine had quietly started looking for one. It found me on the couch staring out the window, or standing in front of an open refrigerator waiting for dinner to introduce itself, or closing books I desperately wanted to read. Long before my mind understood what was happening, my body had begun asking for a place where it could simply exist. I’ve thought about that conversation at work many times since then. At first I assumed it stayed with me because someone was being passive aggressive and to be quite frank, annoying. Now I think it lingered because it reflected something I had quietly believed about myself. She had tried to measure my value by everything I was capable of carrying. And although I recognized the measurement immediately, the aha moment came when I realized I had been using the same one. I pushed back against what she had been trying to do. I’m still learning how to push back against what I’ve been asking of myself.My therapist’s question is still causing me to

I remember sitting in my room on what was supposed to be a family vacation, staring at the same paragraph for so long that I began to resent individual words. Outside, my family was doing vacation things. There was laughter somewhere in the distance. Somebody had made it to the beach. I vaguely remember hearing a debate about whether we should go to dinner that night or cook. Meanwhile, I was locked in a tense standoff with Chapter Four of my dissertation. To be fair, Chapter Four was not fighting back. That didn’t stop me from acting as if the future of higher education hinged on my ability to improve a transition sentence. Every so often someone would stick their head in the room to see if I was coming outside. My answer was consistent, “Just give me a few minutes.” If you’ve ever known a doctoral student, you already know that “a few minutes” bears no relationship whatsoever to actual time. An hour later I was still there. The beach was inviting, the weather was beautiful, and every body else was having a good time. And in the face of all that, I was in my room acting like peace, happiness, and personal fulfillment were all waiting on the other side of a successfully revised chapter. Looking back, that’s what strikes me most. The certainty. The absolute conviction that I would finally exhale once I finished whatever was sitting in front of me. At the time, this seemed perfectly reasonable. But I was lying to myself. There was always something important that needed my attention. A degree. A promotion. A child who needed me. A deadline. A family responsibility. A problem that required solving. Life kept presenting me with things that mattered, and I kept saying yes to them. The strange thing is that I wasn’t chasing accomplishments for the sake of accomplishment, I was chasing relief. I was convinced there was a version of my life waiting for me where everything would finally settle down. In my head, I imagined that the to-do list would stop reproducing overnight, people would stop needing me, and I would have the time to sit still without mentally rearranging the next six months of my life. I never found that version. What I found instead was that every finish line seemed to have a finish line of its own. The degree led to the next responsibility. The promotion introduced a new set of expectations. The thing I thought would create breathing room somehow arrived carrying its own luggage. And because I was good at handling things, life responded by handing me more things. That seems rude, but it does appear to be how this works. Looking back, what I remember most isn’t the exhaustion. Although don’t get me wrong, I was TIRED! What stands out to me is that I normalized it. There were times when I looked at my reflection with travel bags under my eyes and said, “This seems like an unreasonable amount for one person to carry.” I had become so accustomed to being capable that I lost track of joy. Then I opened my laptop and kept going. I had become so accustomed to being capable that I lost track of joy. Or maybe I noticed its absence and assumed that was what adulthood felt like. To be clear, that was not the most reliable conclusion I’ve ever reached. What nobody told me was that achievement and joy are not the same thing. One can make a very impressive appearance without the other. For years, I treated joy like a reward that would be distributed upon completion of all assigned tasks. Unfortunately, the assigned tasks never seemed to end. And somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that joy wasn’t waiting at the finish line. It had been knocking on the door of that vacation house all along asking if I was coming to the beach. Before I assumed I had time to answer that call. These days I recognize the pattern, I don’t always get it right but I tune into joy way more.