Sometimes, it’s an old version of you.
When someone asks you who’s weighing you down, your mind probably goes straight to another person. A friend who drains your energy. A relationship that feels heavier than it should. Someone who always needs something from you. Someone who makes you feel guilty for wanting more.
And sometimes, yes, those people are part of the problem.
But I’ve been thinking about something lately.
What if the person holding you back isn’t someone else?
What if it’s a version of yourself you’ve been carrying around for years?
The woman who needed everyone’s approval. Who felt responsible for everybody’s happiness.
Who said yes when she wanted to say no. Who convinced herself that wanting something different was selfish, unrealistic, or maybe just a little too much.
What if she’s still making decisions for you, even though you’re not that woman anymore?
The Woman Who Got You Here
I think we need to give our old selves a little more credit.
Because that woman wasn’t weak. She wasn’t stupid. And she certainly wasn’t doing everything wrong.
She was doing the best she could with what she knew at the time.
Maybe she was raising children, building a marriage, working, keeping a household together, or simply trying to survive a period of her life that nobody knew was as difficult as it was.
Maybe she learned that being needed meant being loved. That keeping the peace was easier than having an uncomfortable conversation. That putting herself last was just part of being a good wife, mother, daughter, or friend.
And somewhere along the way, those things stopped being decisions and became her identity.
I understand that woman because I’ve been her.
There were years when I made decisions based on what other people might think, what was expected of me, or what felt safe. I spent so much time being the person I thought I was supposed to be that I stopped asking myself whether I actually wanted the life I was living.
And the thing is, that version of me got me through a lot.
I’m grateful for her.
But I don’t want her making all my decisions anymore.
Just because she got you here doesn’t mean she has to take you everywhere you’re going.
When Your Old Identity Becomes Your Biggest Limitation
Here’s what I find fascinating about all of this.
We can spend years talking about how much we want our lives to change, while still behaving like the women who created the lives we’re trying to change.
We say we want more freedom, but we still feel the need to ask permission.
We say we want peace, but we keep explaining ourselves to people who are committed to misunderstanding us.
We say we want confidence, but we keep worrying about what everybody else will think.
We say we’re ready for a new chapter, but every time an opportunity comes along, we consult the same old fears.
And then we wonder why nothing is changing.
I know. It’s a little uncomfortable to look at it that way.
Because it’s easier to believe that our circumstances are holding us back. That once something changes, once someone behaves differently, once we have more time or fewer responsibilities, we’ll finally be able to live the way we want.
But sometimes the circumstances have already changed.
The children are older. The responsibilities are different. We have more experience, more wisdom, and a much clearer understanding of what matters to us.
And yet, we’re still living by rules we created twenty years ago.
Rules that made sense then.
Rules we might not even believe in anymore.
You Don’t Have to Keep Being Who You Had to Be
This is the part that really gets me.
I think so many women reach midlife carrying an enormous amount of loyalty to who they’ve always been.
We’ve been the responsible one, the strong one, the accommodating one, the one who figures everything out.
And after doing something for so long, changing it can feel almost like betraying ourselves.
Who am I if I’m not always available?
What happens if I stop making everybody comfortable?
What if I decide I want something that doesn’t make sense to anyone else?
What if I simply don’t want to be that woman anymore?
But changing doesn’t erase everything you’ve done.
You don’t lose the years you spent being a wonderful mother because you finally start making room for yourself. You don’t become selfish because you’ve decided your happiness deserves some attention. And you don’t have to keep proving how strong you are by carrying things that are no longer yours to carry.
You can be grateful for the woman who got you here and still refuse to let her decide where you’re going next.
I wish more women understood that.
We can love who we were without continuing to live exactly as she did.
The Change Happens in Ordinary Decisions
I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about reinvention is that we expect it to come with some enormous, life-changing decision.
Quit the job. Move to another country. End the relationship. Start completely over.
And sometimes those things happen.
But most of the changes that have mattered in my own life started with much smaller decisions.
Choosing something because I wanted it, not because it made sense to everybody else.
Saying no without preparing a ten-minute explanation. Allowing myself to want more without immediately feeling guilty about what I already had.
And probably the biggest one: realizing that just because I’d always done something a certain way didn’t mean I had to keep doing it.
That sounds so simple, doesn’t it?
Except when you’ve spent decades living according to a particular identity, doing something differently can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.
You almost have to catch yourself in the moment.
When you’re about to say yes out of guilt. When you’re talking yourself out of something you genuinely want. When you’re choosing what’s familiar simply because it’s familiar.
And ask yourself:
Is this what I want now, or is this what the old me would have chosen?
Because that’s where things begin to change. Not necessarily in some dramatic moment of clarity, but in the ordinary decisions that make up your days.
One different decision. Then another.
Until eventually, your life begins to reflect the woman you’ve become instead of the woman you used to be.
Maybe It’s Time to Put Her Down
I don’t believe we need to reject our past selves to move forward.
Actually, I think we should have a tremendous amount of compassion for them.
I look back at certain versions of myself and feel so much tenderness for that woman. For what she didn’t know. For what she tolerated. For how hard she tried to make things work.
And for how much she survived.
I’m proud of her. So freaking proud.
But I also know she made decisions from places I no longer live in.
Fear. Insecurity. The need to be accepted. The belief that happiness was something I had to earn or receive from someone else.
I’ve worked too hard to keep living from those places.
And maybe you have too.
So perhaps the next time you find yourself wondering what’s weighing you down, before you start looking at everybody around you, take a moment to look at the version of yourself you’re still carrying.
Not with judgment. Not with regret.
With gratitude.
She did her job. She brought you this far.
But you don’t have to keep carrying the weight of a woman you no longer need to be.
And I’d love for you to think about this:
What part of the woman you used to be are you still carrying, even though you no longer need her?
Maybe that’s exactly where your next chapter begins.
Always with so much love,
GABY