That Guilt Isn’t Yours

The guilt that hits when you choose yourself? You inherited it.

If this is your first time here, welcome. Pull up a chair—you’ve landed in a space where we tell the truth about what it takes to choose ourselves first, without pretending it is always easy or comfortable. To learn a little more about me, this community, and what you can expect here, start with my very first article: Welcome to Whole, Well & Unapologetic. And to those of you who have been here for a while, thank you for still being at the table.

I haven’t published an article since July 8th.

As I sit down to write this on Saturday afternoon, August 1, 2026, it has been twenty-four days.

And yes, I started to feel guilty about it.

I thought about the people who subscribed because they wanted to hear from me. I thought about everyone who follows along, reads my words, shares their thoughts with me, and supports this space—whether they are free or paid subscribers.

I thought about how long it had been since I had given you something new.

And the guilt started talking.

You should have written something by now.

People are waiting to hear from you.

You are neglecting them.

What kind of consistency is this?

You know how guilt does.

It does not gently tap you on the shoulder and ask whether you are okay.

It walks into the room with a clipboard and starts listing everything you have failed to do.

For a moment, I listened.

Then I had to tell myself the truth.

I was not carelessly neglecting my subscribers and followers.

I had not forgotten about you.

I had not decided this space, or the people who gather here, did not matter.

Life had been lifing.

Things in my own life required my attention, my energy, my presence, and sometimes whatever little bit of me I had left.

And I could not keep telling women to choose themselves first while punishing myself for needing to do the same.

Well, I could.

Plenty of people teach one thing and live another.

But I do not want to be one of them.

I do not want to build a body of work about self-priority while secretly believing that I must override my own needs to keep producing.

I do not want to encourage you to rest without guilt while treating my own rest like a failure.

I do not want to tell you that your humanity matters, then behave as though mine becomes inconvenient the minute somebody expects something from me.

So I let the guilt go.

Not the responsibility.

The guilt.

Because those are not the same thing.

I can care that I haven’t written in twenty-four days without beating myself up for it.

I can appreciate everybody who subscribes to or follows my work without acting as if their support purchased unlimited access to me.

I can acknowledge that I want to show up more consistently without pretending that consistency means never being affected by life.

And I can return without crawling back in here on my knees, handing out apologies for being human.

That is the kind of guilt I think many of us are carrying.

The guilt that comes up whenever we can’t keep performing at the level people expect us to.

The guilt that appears when life requires us to turn inward.

The guilt that tells us that slowing down is the same as letting people down.

The guilt that tries to convince us that needing time, space, rest, or care makes us unreliable.

But guilt is not always proof that you have done something wrong.

Sometimes it is proof that you have stopped doing what you were conditioned to believe a good woman should always do.

Keep going.

Keep giving.

Keep producing.

Keep smiling.

Keep showing up.

Keep answering.

Keep helping.

Keep carrying.

No matter what is happening inside your own life.

No matter how tired you are.

No matter what your body is saying.

No matter how much grief, confusion, transition, disappointment, or plain old life you are trying to hold together behind the scenes.

A good woman keeps going.

At least, that is what many of us were taught.

We inherited that message from women who were praised for how much they could take.

Women who kept moving when they were exhausted.

Women who stayed quiet to keep the peace.

Women who cared for everybody else while quietly falling apart themselves.

Women who were dependable because they did not believe they had permission to be anything else.

But let’s pause here, because I do not want us looking back at those women and judging them as though they simply did not know any better.

Many of them knew they were tired.

They knew they deserved more.

They knew they were carrying too much.

They just did not always have the freedom, the money, the protection, or the choices to do anything differently.

For a lot of Black and Brown women, putting other people’s needs first was not some cute little lesson in being a “good woman.”

It was survival.

Sometimes keeping the peace kept a roof over her head.

Sometimes staying quiet kept food on the table.

Sometimes being agreeable helped her keep a job she could not afford to lose.

Sometimes taking care of everybody else meant making sure the family survived another day, another bill, another crisis, another season when there simply was not enough.

Black women, in particular, have a long history of being expected to work both outside and inside the home. Their labor-force participation has been especially high for at least 150 years, and they were often expected to earn money while still carrying most of the responsibility for children, elders, meals, homes, and everybody’s emotional well-being.

And it was not always work that offered dignity, fair pay, or protection.

Racism and sexism shut many Black women out of better-paying jobs and pushed generations of them into domestic service, agricultural work, laundry work, caregiving, and other essential labor that was undervalued and poorly protected. Domestic workers, most of whom were Black women, were initially excluded from Social Security protections in 1935.

So when our mothers and grandmothers taught us to work hard, keep going, make ourselves useful, avoid upsetting the wrong people, and never let anybody see us fall apart, those lessons did not come out of nowhere.

Some of those lessons were passed down because, at one time, and still sometimes even now, being useful could mean being employable.

Being agreeable could mean being safe.

Being needed could mean not being abandoned.

Being the one who held everything together could mean the family did not go under.

That does not mean every sacrifice they made was healthy.

It does not mean we have to keep repeating the pattern.

But it does mean we should understand where it came from.

Because there is a difference between saying, “Our mothers taught us to neglect ourselves,” and saying, “Our mothers taught us the survival skills they had available to them.”

Some women had choices.

Many women had very few.

And some had no real choice at all.

They were doing the best they could inside systems that expected their labor, depended on their care, and still offered them very little protection in return.

Even now, Black women are likely to carry major financial responsibility for their families. In 2023, 69 percent of Black mothers were their family’s sole or primary breadwinner.

So this habit of carrying everybody is not only emotional.

It is historical.

It is economic.

It is cultural.

It has been reinforced by generations of women knowing that if they dropped the ball, there might not be anybody standing behind them to pick it up.

That is the truth underneath all that strength.

Sometimes she kept going because she was conditioned to.

Sometimes she kept going because people praised her for it.

And sometimes she kept going because stopping was a luxury she did not have.

We watched women be celebrated for never dropping the ball.

But nobody asked why they were holding every damn ball in the first place.

Nobody asked what it cost them to be counted on by everybody while being cared for by almost nobody.

Nobody asked whether being “strong” was truly who they wanted to be, or simply who life required them to be.

Nobody said, “Maybe she needs to sit down.”

And honestly, even if someone had said it, who was going to take over while she rested?

And somewhere along the way, we learned the rule:

A good woman does not inconvenience other people by having needs of her own.

A good woman adjusts.

A good woman understands.

A good woman pushes through.

A good woman finds a way.

A good woman does not disappoint people.

A good woman does not disappear for twenty-four days because her own life needed her.

Even when she is telling everybody else to make themselves a priority.

Do you see the trap?

We have been taught to measure our goodness by how little our humanity affects anyone else.

We are allowed to struggle, as long as dinner is still made.

We are allowed to grieve, as long as the emails are answered.

We are allowed to be exhausted, as long as we still show up smiling.

We are allowed to have needs, as long as nobody else has to notice them.

And when we finally do notice them?

Guilt appears.

When you say no, guilt appears.

When you rest, guilt appears.

When you cancel, guilt appears.

When you stop rescuing someone who has become use to your labor, guilt appears.

When you choose not to explain yourself for the seventeenth time, guilt appears.

When you let something wait because you cannot keep making everything urgent except your own well-being, guilt appears.

But guilt is not always your conscience speaking.

Sometimes it is conditioning.

Sometimes it is your mother’s fear.

Sometimes it is your grandmother’s survival strategy.

Sometimes it is religious teaching that glorified suffering but never taught you that you were also worthy of care.

Sometimes it is culture.

Often - usually, it is patriarchy.

Sometimes it is the voice of every person who benefited from your belief that you must always be available.

And sometimes guilt is not saying:

You did something wrong.

Sometimes it is saying:

You broke the rules.

Maybe you broke the rule that said you must remain productive, even when life is pulling on you from every direction.

Maybe you broke the rule that said other people’s expectations should outrank your capacity.

Maybe you broke the rule that said you have to earn rest by first reaching complete exhaustion.

Maybe you broke the rule that said being dependable means never having a season when you cannot give as much.

Maybe you broke the rule that said your value lives in what you can consistently provide.

Good.

Some rules need to be broken.

Because being responsible does not mean being endlessly available.

Caring about people does not mean abandoning yourself for them.

Honoring a commitment does not mean ignoring the reality of your own life.

And choosing yourself does not mean you no longer care about anybody else.

It means caring about everybody else will no longer require you to disappear.

That is what I had to remember during these twenty-four days.

I did not stop caring about this space.

I did not stop caring about the people who read my words, subscribe to my work, and follow along.

I thought about you.

I missed writing.

I had ideas.

But thinking about something is not the same as having the capacity to do it well.

And I do not want to throw something together just to prove that I can keep a schedule.

I do not want to serve you words that I have not had the space to feel.

I would rather return honestly than remain visible dishonestly.

Because there is a difference between neglecting something and temporarily not having the capacity to tend to it.

Neglect says, This does not matter to me.

A pause says, This matters, but I also matter.

And I am learning not to confuse the two.

I am also learning that guilt loves to erase context.

It does not care what has been happening in your life.

It does not care what you have been carrying.

It does not care whether you are tired, overwhelmed, grieving, changing, healing, or simply trying to hear yourself think.

Guilt looks only at what you did not do and builds a whole case against your character.

You missed the deadline, so you must be irresponsible.

You did not return the call, so you must be selfish.

You needed space, so you must not care.

You changed your mind, so you must be unreliable.

You took care of yourself first, so somebody else must have suffered.

That is a lie.

You are allowed to consider the full story.

You are allowed to ask yourself whether you acted carelessly or whether you simply reached your limit.

You are allowed to make repairs where repairs are needed without making yourself wrong for having needs.

You are allowed to take responsibility without picking up shame.

And you are allowed to return.

That part matters too.

Sometimes guilt does not just make us feel bad about stepping away.

It makes returning feel so heavy that we stay away even longer.

We think we need the perfect explanation.

The perfect apology.

The perfect comeback.

The perfect piece of writing that somehow makes up for all the time we were gone.

We do not.

Sometimes we simply need to walk back through the door and say:

Life happened.

I needed to tend to it.

I am here now.

No performance.

No groveling.

No public self-punishment dressed up as accountability.

Just the truth.

So yes, I noticed the guilt.

I listened long enough to see what it was trying to tell me.

Then I put it down.

Because I am not interested in recreating the very thing I am asking other women to free themselves from.

I am not going to teach self-priority as a pretty idea while refusing to practice it when it becomes inconvenient.

I am not going to tell you to choose yourself only when nobody else is disappointed by your choice.

That is not choosing yourself.

That is waiting for permission.

Real self-priority will sometimes interrupt the schedule.

It will sometimes require you to disappoint someone.

It will sometimes make you look inconsistent to people who cannot see what you are carrying.

It will sometimes ask you to trust that the people who truly value you will not disappear because you needed time to live your own life.

And yes, guilt may still come.

Let it come.

Let it sit in the corner and pout.

You don’t have to obey every feeling that enters the room.

You can feel guilty and still rest.

You can feel guilty and still pause.

You can feel guilty and still tend to your own life before returning to everybody else.

You can feel guilty and still choose yourself.

The goal is not to wait until choosing yourself feels comfortable.

The goal is to stop allowing discomfort to make your decisions.

Every time you choose yourself and survive the guilt, something inside you begins to change.

Your body learns that rest does not have to be earned through collapse.

Your mind learns that disappointing someone is not the same as harming them.

You learn that a pause does not erase everything you have already given.

You learn that your value does not disappear because you were not productive for a while.

You learn that people who care about you can handle your humanity.

And you learn that you can come back without apologizing for having a life.

You may have inherited the guilt.

But you do not have to keep carrying it like a family heirloom.

So the next time guilt rises because you needed time, space, rest, or room to deal with your own life, do not immediately put yourself on trial.

Pause.

Tell yourself the whole truth.

Then ask:

Was I being carelessly neglectful—or did I simply need to choose myself for a while?

If there is something to repair, repair it.

If there is a responsibility to honor, honor it.

But if the only thing you are guilty of is being a human being with limits, put the guilt down.

That is what I did.

And now I am back.