Perhaps many women have caught themselves thinking this at least once:
“I did rest. So why do I still feel so worn out?”
The weekend passes. A holiday ends. An ordinary week begins, and it feels as though no energy has returned. So we look for an explanation. Maybe it is age. Maybe work. Maybe we simply have not had a proper night’s sleep in a long time.
Sometimes that is exactly the reason.
But sometimes there is something else going on.
A tiredness that is hard to explain
I increasingly feel that we do not get tired from tasks alone.
Some things quietly drain us every day: having to be strong all the time; agreeing when we have long wanted to say no; conversations we keep postponing; wanting not to upset anyone; feeling that everyone else must be taken care of before we can turn to ourselves.
Each of these things may seem insignificant on its own. But sometimes a whole life is made up of such small things.
When everything seems to be the same
One day, you notice something strange.
The home is the same. So is the job. Your morning coffee is still on the table. In the evening, you put on your favourite series, but watch it more out of habit than interest.
Almost nothing has changed on the outside. Yet inside, a feeling appears more and more often—one that is hard to explain. It is as if your battery is permanently running on its last few percent.
Questions that have been waiting a long time
After forty, many women begin asking themselves questions that never occurred to them before.
When was the last time I did something simply because I wanted to?
Why has it become so hard for me to say no?
When did I stop noticing my own tiredness?
There are rarely quick answers to these questions. Perhaps that is not the point. Sometimes it is enough simply not to brush them aside.
Where the work begins
When we meet for the first time, I almost never ask:
“What do you want?”
Instead, I ask a different question:
What in your life do you no longer want to keep doing?
Sometimes this is where our work begins.