Welcome back to Unfiltered with Love. I'm your host, Carrie Love, and I'm so glad you're here. Let's get into today's conversation. The last few days have been difficult for me. Not catastrophic, nothing dramatic has happened. I've just been frustrated with various aspects of my life, and I kept having this feeling that I was enduring. That was the word that kept coming to me. Enduring. And a couple episodes ago I talked about stagnation, what it feels like when certain parts of your life just aren't moving. And I think this is almost the next layer of that conversation. Because when something stays stagnant long enough, sometimes you stop trying so hard to move it and you start enduring it. You adapt, accommodate, make adjustments, and you tell yourself, well, I can handle it. And after a while, whatever it is starts becoming normal. And that got me thinking about endurance and strength. Because we tend to put those two things together. And sometimes they absolutely belong together. There are seasons when endurance takes incredible strength. Sometimes staying is brave. Sometimes persevering is exactly what you're supposed to do. Sometimes relationships require work, and sometimes families require patience. Sometimes faith requires continuing when you have absolutely no idea what happens next. I believe all of that. But I think there's another side of endurance that we don't talk about nearly as much. Sometimes we continue enduring something simply because we've learned that we can. And I think there is a really important difference between I am capable of carrying this and this belongs to me to carry. Because those are not the same thing. Just because you can carry something doesn't mean it's yours to keep carrying. And I think that's what I've been wrestling with. I've spent a lot of my life being the person who handles things. I figure things out, I make things work, I help, accommodate, clean things up, solve the problem, make sure everybody's okay. And if you do that long enough, people become accustomed to you being that person. But I think something else happens too. You become accustomed to being that person. You stop asking yourself whether something should actually be your responsibility. You just think, I can do it, I'll figure it out. I've handled worse. And honestly, I've handled worse can become a really dangerous standard for deciding what you can continue to accepting. Because yes, technically, I could probably handle a lot of things. I have evidence. I have handled some shit. But is that really the bar? Well, it probably won't destroy me, so I guess I should keep doing it. That doesn't sound particularly healthy when you say it out loud. And some of this has really been coming up for me around being a mother to adult children, because nobody really explains that transition. When your kids are little, your role is obvious. They need you, you make the decisions, you provide the home and solve the problems, you feed them, make sure they don't accidentally kill themselves doing something ridiculous, like skateboarding or riding their bike, places they shouldn't be riding their bikes. But you know, you're responsible for them. And then they grow up and the love doesn't change, but the role has to. And I think that transition can be much harder than people talk about. Because at what point does supporting your adult children become carrying things that they are capable of carrying themselves? At what point does being available become being taken for granted? At what point does being mom stop meaning that everybody automatically assumes mom will be fine with it, mom will figure it out, mom will make room. That's something I've been confronting recently. There was a situation in my household where one of my adult children made a decision that affected the shared living environment. It involved another person being in our home for an extended period of time, and there really wasn't a conversation beforehand. I wasn't asked, the other person living in the house wasn't asked. It was essentially just this is what's happening. And initially, because I am who I am, I adjusted. Okay, fine, we'll make it work. I accommodated it, but the longer it went on, the more I realized, actually, this really bothers me. And it wasn't necessarily about the other person. That's important. What bothered me was the assumption. It was the lack of consideration. This is a shared home. Something that changes the dynamic of the household affects everybody living here. And I thought, why didn't anybody think that they should ask? And that's where I started realizing that sometimes what looks like a boundary issue is also a consideration issue. I want to be considered. Does this affect anyone besides me? Should I have a conversation before I make this decision? And maybe that sounds obvious, but I think when you're the accommodating person in a family, people can unconsciously begin assuming your accommodation. Not necessarily because they're trying to disrespect you. I don't think somebody sits around plotting, how can I disrespect Carrie today? Well, at least I hope not. But intention and impact are different things. You can love somebody and still fail to consider them. You can be a good person and still make a selfish decision. And I can love someone and still say, that wasn't considerate of me. Those things can coexist. And I think what I've learned about myself is that I often accommodate first, and then I realize how I feel about it later. Something happens, and I think, fine, I can handle it. We'll figure it out. And then several days later, my brain apparently catches up and goes, excuse me, we actually hated that. And maybe that frustration is useful information. Maybe resentment sometimes shows up because something inside of us knows you need to speak here. You wanted to be consulted. You had a limit. You didn't actually agree to this. And I think that's part of what I'm learning in this stage of motherhood. I can love my children enormously and still expect consideration from them as adults. I can help them without assuming responsibility for every problem. I can want them to succeed without removing every obstacle. And I can eventually want my children to have lives and homes of their own, while wanting a life and home of my own too. That doesn't lessen the love. It changes the relationship. And honestly, I think that's healthy. But then something happened with my mom recently, too, that made me realize that maybe this pattern didn't begin with me. My mom was telling me about someone in her life whom she loves and has tried to support for a long time. And this relationship can be emotionally exhausting for her. The person asked things of her sometimes, various things that they're doing that they want my mom to support. And my mom feels this sense of responsibility to show up. So recently there was a request that involved my mom spending money on something she really didn't care about and didn't particularly want to spend money on. It wasn't a necessity. Nobody was in danger or needed food. It was simply something this person wanted support with. And my mom was sitting there feeling guilty about whether she should do it. And so she starts telling me about it and she's asking me, you know, what do I think about it? And I'm like, mom, you don't have to do that. No, why do I have to tell her that? But, you know, like it was the simplest thing in the world. You are not obligated to spend money on something just because somebody asks you to. You can love that person and support them emotionally and want good things for them and still say, no, I'm not doing that. And I could see it so clearly from the outside. I could hear that my mom wasn't really asking herself, do I want to do this? She was asking herself, if I don't do this, am I a bad person? And those are very different questions. And then because life likes to humble you, I realize, oh, hello, I do this too. Maybe in different circumstances, but I do it. And it is so much easier to recognize somebody else's pattern than your own. I could immediately tell my mother, someone else's request does not automatically create your obligation. And then I had to sit there and think, okay, Carrie, you might want to write that one down for yourself too. Because how often do I say yes because I don't want somebody else to be disappointed? How often do I accommodate because having the boundary conversation feels harder? How often do I help people because technically I can help? And how often do I confuse being loving with being endlessly available? That's when I started wondering if some of this is generational. Not necessarily in some dramatic generational trauma way. Sometimes I think patterns are passed down much more quietly than that. You just watch and you watch the women around you, you see women keeping the family functioning, taking care of everybody, making things work, smoothing things over, making room, giving, helping, holding everyone together. And maybe nobody ever explicitly tells you this is what being a good woman looks like, but you absorb it. A good mother sacrifices, a good daughter helps, a good wife accommodates, a good woman can handle things. And eventually endurance doesn't even feel like a choice anymore. It feels like character, like love. Feels like goodness. And that has made me ask a question I think is really important. Why do we sometimes believe love requires us to carry things that belong to other people? Because I don't think love and boundaries are opposites anymore. I think maybe I used to without realizing it. Maybe somewhere underneath everything I thought, if I love you, I help you. If I love you, I make room. If I love you, I make it easier. If I love you, I fix the problem. If I love you, I don't let you struggle. But sometimes maybe love can also sound like, I believe you're capable of figuring this out. I trust you to handle something difficult. I'll listen, I'll encourage you, I'll be here, but I'm not going to take over something that belongs to you. And I think that's especially important when we're talking about other adults. Because sometimes allowing another adult to carry their own responsibility isn't abandonment. It might actually be respect. I'm saying, I believe you're capable. And that's hard for somebody like me. Because I know how to fix something. My instinct is to fix it. If I know how to make something easier, my instinct is to make it easier. But maybe making somebody else's life easier is not always the same thing as helping them grow. And maybe exhausting myself is not evidence that I'm loving people exceptionally well. That one is uncomfortable. Because endurance gets praised. She's so strong. She handles everything. She always figures it out. She's always there for everyone. And those sound like compliments. And they are to a degree. But there can be a hidden cost of being known as the person who can handle anything. Because eventually nobody asks should she have to. Including you. I've had moments where I've thought, when does somebody carry me? And I don't mean rescue me. I don't want to be incapable. I don't want somebody running my life. I mean, when do I get to set something down? When do I get to trust that somebody else can handle something? When do I get to stop proving how capable I am? Because honestly, I think I've proven it. We've have plenty of supporting documentation at this point. I can handle difficult things, I know. Maybe I don't need to continually create or accept circumstances that require me to demonstrate that. And I want to put an important qualifier here. This isn't an episode about quitting whenever something becomes difficult. I don't believe that. Sometimes endurance absolutely is strength. Sometimes a relationship is worth fighting for. The commitment matters. Somebody you love is going through a difficult season and needs more from you for a while. Sometimes parenting requires sacrifice. Sometimes faith requires waiting. Sometimes growth is incredibly uncomfortable. So the question isn't, should I ever endure anything difficult? Of course we should. The question I'm asking myself is, what is my endurance serving? Is it serving love? Growth? Commitment? Something meaningful? Is there reciprocity? Is there movement? Is the difficult season actually a season? Or have I gotten so good at tolerating something that I've forgotten I have choices? That's the distinction I'm interested in. Because I don't want survival to become an identity. I can honor what I've survived without spending the rest of my life proving that I can survive more. I can appreciate the strength I've developed without believing strength means endlessly carrying. I can love someone and dislike their behavior. I can understand why somebody did something and still say it wasn't okay with me. I can be grateful and still want change. I can love my family and have boundaries. Two things can be true. And maybe that's what I'm redefining right now. Strength. Maybe strength isn't always caring more. Sometimes strength is putting something down. Maybe strength is saying no. Maybe strength is allowing somebody to be disappointed. Maybe it is asking to be considered. Maybe strength is letting another adult solve their own problem. And maybe strength is saying, I love you. I'm here, but this part is yours. And maybe one of the hardest versions of strength is admitting, I don't want to keep living this particular way simply because I've proven that I can. And that actually connects very naturally to something else I've been working on. Return to yourself, the women's retreat I'm creating. The more I work on this retreat, the more I realize how many of these conversations connect to it. Because so many women are carrying roles: mom, partner, daughter, employee, business owner, caretaker, problem solver, the person everybody calls. And sometimes there is so much noise around who everyone else needs you to be that you don't have a lot of space to hear yourself. And that's really what return to yourself is about. It's not about fixing yourself. It's not about going away for a weekend and becoming a completely different person. It's about creating enough space to reconnect with who you already are underneath all those roles and responsibilities. And connection is a really important part of that for me. I've attended retreats where everything was beautifully organized and you moved from one session to another, but there wasn't necessarily that deeper sense of belonging. I want this to feel different. It's intentionally limited to a small number of women because I want people to actually know each other. I want women to feel seen, cared for, included. I want there to be room for real conversation, laughter, reflection, rest, and space just to breathe. Return to Yourself is taking place at the beautiful La Playa Beach and Golf Resort in Naples, Florida, right on Vanderbilt Beach. And if you're listening to Unfiltered with Love, I'm offering podcast listeners $100 off registration with the code LOVE100. I'll put the link and all the information in the episode description. And because the retreat is intentionally small, if you're listening and thinking that actually sounds like something I need, I would take a closer look sooner rather than later. Once those spaces are filled, that's it. And next week, I'm really excited because I have a special guest joining me, Liv, who is one of the facilitators for Return to Yourself. She'll be leading beach yoga, meditation, and crystal sound healing at the retreat. And I just love her energy and the way she talks about the body and intuition connection and coming back to yourself. So next week we're going to dive into embodiment, the mind-body connection, the nervous system, intuition, and even some of the bigger conversations around nature, the universe, and how connected we really are. And I think it's going to be a really natural continuation of this conversation, because maybe returning to yourself isn't only about changing your thoughts. Maybe it's also about learning to hear yourself again. And before I go, I want to leave you with two questions. The first one, what are you still enduring simply because you've gotten really good at enduring it? And the second, what are you caring because it genuinely belongs to you? And what are you caring because somewhere along the way you learned that loving someone meant carrying it for them? Maybe don't rush to answer. Just notice what comes up. Because just because you can carry something doesn't mean it's yours to keep carrying. Thanks for hanging out with me today. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love to hear from you. Send me a message, leave a review, or share this episode with someone who might need it. Until next time, keep asking good questions, keep being curious, and most importantly, keep showing up as yourself. This is Unfiltered with Love. I'm your host, Carrie Love, and I'll see you next week.