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“When you say yes to others, make sure you’re not saying no to yourself.” ~paulo coelho
I grew up as the first daughter – responsible, helpful, the one who didn’t want to cause trouble. I quickly learned how to be “good.” Good meant quiet. Good meant easy. Good means not needing much.
What I didn’t realize then was that I was learning how to abandon myself.
School was hard for me in many ways I don’t know how to explain. I struggled to read. I struggled with focus. I struggled to keep up – especially compared to my younger sister, who could read something once and immediately understand.
I stayed up late studying. I rewrote the notes. I worked twice as hard to reach half the distance. No one ever said the words dyslexia or ADHD to me. At the time, girls like me didn’t have “ADHD” – we were labeled sensitive, scattered, anxious, dramatic, emotional, or “just not trying hard enough.”
So I tried harder. I pushed. I worked more than necessary. I internalized the belief that there was something wrong about me – that comfort was for other people. And since I was the oldest, I didn’t want to be the difficult one. I didn’t want to be a problem. So I worked quietly. I continued to struggle silently. I lived smaller than my needs.
Self-sacrifice does not begin with dramatic sacrifice. It starts with small moments of choosing everyone else’s comfort over your truth. By the time I became an adult, that pattern was deeply ingrained.
Then I became pregnant for the first time. I didn’t tell many people at first. I was careful about my happiness. Attention. Quietly hopeful.
When I had a miscarriage, the loss felt invisible to everyone but me. There was no baby shower to cancel. No nursery to destroy. Just an empty space where a future lived for a while.
I told myself to move on. I told myself this was “not” like losing a child. I told myself not to make a big deal out of it. But the sorrow that is not allowed to be felt does not go away. It gets buried in the body itself.
Shortly after, I became pregnant again. And then again. By the time I became a mother, I already knew how to overcome my fears. How to work despite pain. How to remain calm when everything inside me was trembling.
When my first child was born, I didn’t say, “I’m overwhelmed.” I said, “I’ve got it.”
When my second baby arrived too early and was taken straight to the NICU, I didn’t say, “I’m scared.” I said, “Tell me what to do.”
When my body began to break under the weight of stress, exhaustion, and fear, I didn’t say, “I need help.” I said, “I will proceed.” This is what first born daughters do.
We choose harmony over honesty. We choose to need more than we need. We choose peace – even if we pay the price for it.
The NICU days blurred together. Hospital parking ticket. beeping monitor. Wire and alarm. A breast pump on the kitchen counter. At home a child needs stories at dinner and at bedtime. And because I didn’t qualify for leave and we couldn’t afford for me to not work, I went back to my job almost immediately.
I had no choice. I had used up my holidays, my wife was still in college, and I was the only person standing between my family and complete financial disaster. I was income. I was insured. So I took it all.
For years, I looked like I was handling it. But inside, I was teetering on the edges.
Every January—the anniversary of that stroke—my nervous system would just ignite. I told myself I had “seasonal depression” or just a “bad winter,” but the truth was that my body was keeping track of all the things my mind was too busy to process.
Trauma doesn’t always look like a dramatic flashback. Sometimes it’s a quiet, constant obsession with having everything “just right” because you’re terrified that if you drop one thread, the whole world will come crashing down. Eventually, that bill comes due. You can’t keep disappearing for everyone else’s sake and expect that you will have a self to come back to.
Ultimately, the cost of sacrificing oneself became impossible to ignore. Burnout settled in my bones. Anger was boiling under my skin. Resentment followed me like a shadow.
For me this change did not happen in one dramatic moment. This happened to a thousand little people – every time my body told me to slow down and I ignored it, eventually she stopped whimpering and started screaming.
The true cost of this “reliability” became painfully clear during my second pregnancy. I was in a hospital bed, physically fragile under the burden of preeclampsia – a condition where my body was literally affected by my blood pressure. In that moment, the world should have been reduced to just me and my breath. Instead, I was playing “Calm One”.
I was talking on the phone to my wife outside biology class. I was managing my mother’s frustration over a child’s tantrum in the background. I was absorbing their angry tone and their worry, acting as a human shock absorber while my own blood pressure rose.
I decided not to take it personally because I was too busy making sure they didn’t fall apart. Twenty-four hours later, my body could no longer bear the pressure, and I was forced to undergo an emergency premature delivery. My body was screaming, but I was too busy listening to everyone else.
When I finally started listening — to my body, to my grief, to my long-suppressed exhaustion — I felt something heartbreaking and liberating at the same time: Self-abandonment had once kept me safe. Now it was trapping me.
Listening to my body also meant remembering the old grief I had nursed for years, including my miscarriage.
For the first time, I allowed myself to realize the miscarriage instead of minimizing it. I allowed myself to mourn years of unknown struggle in school. I allowed myself to grieve the young mother who never found rest. I allowed myself to feel sad for the little girl who learned that less needs were safe. And instead of judging those versions of myself, I met them with compassion. I didn’t fail them. I protected them the only way I knew how.
Choosing yourself didn’t happen all at once. It happened in small, unsteady ways. I paused before saying yes. I let people down. I told him my needs without apology. I spoke when I should have remained silent. When I pushed I relaxed. Instead of swallowing my feelings, I made space for them.
I remember one particular Saturday. The house was a disaster, the laundry was a mountain, and I could feel my family’s eyes on me, waiting for me to handle the chaos of the day. Normally, my script was to struggle to exhaustion until I finally collapsed on everyone. This time, I just stopped.
“I’m going upstairs to lie down for an hour,” I said.
My heart was beating fast as if I was confessing to a crime. I walked away and left the laundry on the floor. I let my wife handle the inevitable snack-time meltdowns. I let them be disappointed in me. And the world didn’t end. I got some pushback, mostly because I broke the easy status quo, but it didn’t matter.
Sitting on my bed, staring at the ceiling in complete silence – not once thinking about the to-do list – felt like a revelation. You don’t have to be pushy or selfish to choose yourself. It’s a calm, still realization that your peace is just as non-negotiable as everyone else’s.
Gradually, the patterns that once ruled me began to loosen. Emotional eating softened. The resentment went away. Anger lost its edge. Without even waiting for the other shoe to drop, I started feeling happy. I could look at my children and feel their presence instead of panic. Gratitude instead of fear. Love instead of constant vigilance.
I am still a work in progress.
And for the first time in my life, I completely agree.
If you are a first born child who has learned to be small…
If you are someone who has worked twice as hard to get ahead…
If you have never been identified as a struggler because you have internalized everything…
If you learned to disappear to keep the peace…
If parenthood aggravates every old wound you never have time to heal…
Listen to this: You are not broken. You were brilliant at surviving. But surviving is not the same as surviving.
You are allowed to have needs. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to relax without earning it. You are allowed to say no without explaining yourself. You are allowed to be cared for, not just trusted.
You don’t have to choose yourself too hard. You just have to choose yourself constantly. Even slowly. Even incompletely. Even a small limit at a time. You don’t just disappear. And you don’t even come back to yourself right away. You come back in pieces. In the breath. In honest sentences. In those moments when you stop and ask: What do I want right now?
And then slowly you start answering yourself.
About Erin Vandermore
Erin Vandermore is a licensed therapist, mother of two, and creator of the neuroscience-informed mental hygiene app Mind Circuits™. After years of survival, she now shares gentle tools for treating the nervous system. When your body needs more relief than advised, you can experience one of her 60-second “Brain Flossing™” calming resets for free through her app Mind Circuits. Follow @mindcircuitapp Instagram And Facebook.
