Ep #182: When Holding It Together Costs You Everything

In this episode, I’m sharing a deeply personal truth about what happens when we spend years holding everything together… but quietly lose ourselves in the process. After my marriage ended in betrayal, I didn’t fall apart — I became the woman who could handle it all. I built a life that looked strong, functional, and even admirable. But underneath it, I was exhausted, disconnected, and no longer honest about what I truly needed.

Midlife has a way of waking us up. For me, it forced me to confront the roles I had been playing for over a decade — roles that helped me survive, but were never meant to define my life forever. This episode is about what it looks like to finally tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable, and begin reclaiming who you really are.

If you’ve been holding everything together but feel like you’re disappearing inside your own life, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The roles that helped you survive may now be holding you back

• Midlife is not a crisis — it’s an awakening

• Telling the truth is painful, but deeply liberating

• You are allowed to choose differently, at any point

If something in this episode resonates, I’d love for you to reach out and continue the conversation. Book a clarity call today... https://calendly.com/coachwithmikki/co-parent-breakthrough-call

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Full Episode Transcript:

What if the reason your life suddenly feels so misaligned in midlife isn't because something is going wrong, but because something inside of you is finally waking up? Well, welcome to Led from Within. I'm Mikki Gardner, and this is a podcast for women who are done outsourcing their authority and are ready to claim a life aligned with who they are today. Because midlife doesn't need to be a crisis. It can be a return to yourself, to clarity, to courage, and to inner authority. So let's begin.

Welcome back to Led from Within. You know, this podcast has taken a shift. We named it. We're moving into a new direction. And that new direction is all about integrity and honesty and how we navigate midlife in a different way, with alignment, with integrity, with truth telling from a place of authenticity and ownership. And so part of that is me owning my story and owning the parts of me that I haven't shared before because I haven't been able to.

And so today, I think it's important that we have a conversation, because as we go through these episodes, I get so excited to come and talk to you, because I feel like I'm talking to you. Like, I get to sit down with my friend right over coffee, and we get to have a conversation.

And part of that is letting you see me, see me in who I am today and also who I was. Because I think that we can all identify with those different versions of ourselves through our life.

And for me, after my marriage ended, after it ended in betrayal, I didn't fall apart the way that I thought I might have or people expected me to. I actually did something that I think a lot of us do, is I got really, really good at actually pulling it all together. I became a version of me that could handle all of it. And I did.

And that's where I want to talk about today, because I think so many of us have experienced a lot of pain. Traumas, both big and small. I hate that. Small traumas. It's like we say big T trauma and small T, but trauma is trauma, right?

When our body experiences something that overwhelms our capacity to handle it, it is so much. And I've recently been reminded of this, walking with a friend who's going through finding out about infidelity in her marriage. And it is a gut punch. Uh, I mean, that doesn't even go into the feelings that you have.

And I know if you're listening to this and you have experienced it, you know, it is a before and after. There is a before moment. And There is an after moment. And the before moment is when you think all of this is true about your life.

And then it happens. The awareness, you become aware of it. The betrayal happens and then there's after. And the after is nothing is the same. Nothing, like literally nothing is the same.

And once you move through the shock and kind of the devastation of it, this is where I'm going to start my conversation from. Because after the shock wore off, I decided that, okay, well, now what?

Now what am I going to do, right? This is my quote unquote new reality. If this is my life, I'm going to do it right? And so I pulled myself together.

I decided to become the best co parent and divorced mom. I was like, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it so good, right? And I did. I did really well.

I was respectful, I was collaborative. I tried to be as easy as I could to work with and listen. My ex did the same. He met me there. We were able to really create a new path forward.

And I was really proud of that. And I am proud of that because I never wanted my son to have to carry the weight of what happened within the marriage.

And here's the other thing. As I was creating this new version of me, when I was just not falling apart, but actually pulling it all together, people noticed. I started to get praised for it.

And, uh, people thought, after everything you've been through, you know, it's amazing that you can do this. And I took a lot of pride in that. I took a lot of solace in that.

I used to love to tell people privately the story, right? Because then I got praise for that. Am I proud of saying that now? No. But it's the truth.

The truth is I took all of that praise in because it gave me something to hold onto and I needed something to hold onto. Right? We create these roles because they help us survive the devastation.

They help us cope with what is going on. But the part that I didn't mention here and what I didn't know at the time and what I actually skipped over completely was myself.

What do I mean? I didn't process the betrayal. I didn't let myself be angry. I didn't let anyone see, really see me.

I created a version that everyone could love, but it wasn't actually me.

M and I don't regret it. I want to say that really clearly. I don't regret it. I created that version unconsciously and consciously because she helped me survive and she helped me cope with what was going on, and I think you can probably feel that way too, is that we create roles, we step into expectations, we do what is expected of us and asked of us.

Because yes, it may be easier, but we get praised for it, we get accolades, it feels good, other people like it and so we go along with it.

Well, for me, fast forward about 12 years until I realized that I've been living this for like over a decade.

And I wasn't pretending. I mean, I was her. I, um, embodied it.

I became a co parenting coach. I was the person that people came to right, whenever there was something going on in their marriage or divorce.

I mean, I was sort of like the person that they came to.

And I was grateful to be that. Right. I had lived experience that I could share and I was grateful.

I really did not take it. I really embodied it. I built a life that worked.

Until this past summer.

Something broke and I felt like I just couldn't carry it anymore. Not one more second.

It was like I was suffocating inside of a life that looked completely fine and frankly, everyone else was really happy with.

But what I started to realize is I was exhausted. I mean, exhausted and the pressure to live up to what everyone needed me to be.

But there was an overwhelming heaviness that I felt because I, uh, was realizing, as midlife does, that while I built this role, while I was living this life, while I created this whole thing, no one knew me.

But most importantly, I didn't know me.

I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know why I continued to put myself into situations that I really didn't want to be in.

Why I said yes when I really meant no. Why I wouldn't leave a relationship when I knew that I should.

Like there were all of these competing things going on and the heaviness and the exhaustion and the pressure was suffocating me.

And this is where it got really intense because I realized that I could continue to play these roles and be exhausted by it, to be depleted and to be angry, or I could start to tell the truth.

And I started to tell the truth in tiny ways. And then I started to tell the truth in bigger ways.

I ended a long term relationship.

I sat down with my ex and his wife and shared with them, um, that I could no longer play the role and hold the secrets of our family.

And that was going to involve telling my son things that we hadn't shared before.

I had to start telling the truth in all of those places where I was just trying to manage everything.

And it was really hard because I knew in my bones I couldn't keep living the way that I was living, where I was not honest with other people.

It, like, it literally felt like I was being choked by this role that I had on me. It was just so heavy.

But the hard part in that is that we have to disappoint the people around us.

We have to rock the boat.

We have to then let everybody else have a reaction and a feeling.

The hardest part was watching my son's face as I spoke to him.

The hardest part was after wondering, is he going to be okay? What does he think of me?

What does he think of everyone?

Is he gonna be able to move through this sitting and having the conversation to end the relationship that I had been in was intensely hard because I had built a life that, uh, looked okay, but it wasn't okay for me.

And when I zoom out, right, when I look at this, not the woman who's living in the life, right?

But when I zoom out with the experience, with the knowledge, with the expertise that I have, I can look at myself and realized that I could not have done any of that 12 years ago, because 12 years ago, 10 years ago, eight years ago, five years ago, she was surviving, she was coping.

She didn't yet have the resources to be able to tell the truth.

She didn't have the resources to access the courage that it takes to move in that direction.

I didn't have the capacity.

This version of me, uh, was not wrong. She was protecting me.

And I am extremely grateful for her.

But what I realized is that the roles that I created to make it through and to survive and to cope with what was going on was never meant to be where I stayed.

And I feel like I stayed a little too long because I was avoiding the healing, I was avoiding doing the work, the nervous system work, the emotional work, to really evolve into a next version of me.

But once I started down that path, once I started to allow myself to feel angry, once I allowed myself to feel rage, that was inside of me.

And this is where midlife really brings it for you, right?

Because all of the. The ability to tolerate the BS just goes away, right?

We don't have that capacity. We don't have the ability to tolerate it anymore.

We feel the anger. We feel, feel the immense tightness of these roles in midlife.

And, uh, that's not by accident. It is not random.

This is why I want to have this conversation now on this podcast, and why I changed the theme, because I see it so often.

In the people that I work with, in my friends, in the people around me, that women who have built beautiful, functional lives are actually not living within them.

They're absent from it. They're empty, and they feel exhausted, they feel pressure, they feel overwhelmed, and they cannot take it one more second.

They feel like they are absolutely gonna burst.

And so I ask you, where have you become a role?

Right, Instead of the person who's living inside of your life?

Where have you been holding everything together but, uh, losing yourself in the process?

Because these are the questions that we actually want to ask.

It's not about everything else.

Yes, we have to understand how we got there, what are the roles that we use to create, to survive, to cope.

But it's not.

It's about letting ourselves really move forward from that by asking those questions about assessing where am I?

What are the patterns that I'm in, and how do I want to change that?

Because the weight that you are feeling, this overwhelm, the intensity of it is not random, the weight you're feeling, it's not random, but it is the weight of a version of you that was never meant to carry you through your whole life.

So at some point, we either keep carrying it or we start telling the truth.

And this is the part that I have been living for the past year of my life where I can either continue to carry it for everybody else to keep everybody else happy, or I can start telling the truth.

But, you know, the most beautiful part of telling the truth?

People start to see us that, yes, it's uncomfortable.

Yes, we have to go through the disappointment.

Yes, we have to be able to handle when people are upset, when they're angry, when they're confused, when they're frustrated, maybe when they leave, these things do happen.

It's not all roses and rainbows and puppies.

Telling the truth is actually excruciating at times.

And it is also the single liberating moment of your life.

I feel more alive in my life today than I ever have.

But it comes from being willing to do the work, to grow our capacity to tell the truth so that we can start to allow God to pour in all of the goodness that we're actually here to have.

Because we are here to experience all of the goodness.

Right?

God, um, created a world that is good, inherently good.

And when we do our work, when we heal our nervous system, when we process our emotions, when we learn how to heal from what's happened, we actually create this beautiful container that can receive all the good stuff.

But as long as we just keep putting, uh, kind of band aid on a bullet hole, or we keep just adding different roles and different layers to it.

We can't receive all the goodness.

And that's what midlife offers us, is an opportunity to really shift perspectives, to shift what's going on inside of our bodies, inside of our hormones.

Our bodies can't carry it anymore.

And so it's a point, and this is the point that I ask you, where are you at?

And are you willing to start to look at what you've been holding and how has that affected you in the process?

Because you get a choice.

You do get a choice.

You can choose differently.

You can choose a different role.

You can choose different relationships.

You can choose the same relationship, but renegotiate them.

Right?

You get to choose.

And I just want you to know that, and I want you to hear that from me.

I'm, um, sending you much love and many blessings, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.

I hope that it spoke to you and you found something useful to take away from it.

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Thanks so much for being here, and I can't wait to talk to you again next week.