The Most Important Relationship You're Neglecting
A warm, honest guide for the woman who has poured herself into everyone else's cup and quietly forgotten she has one too. This post reframes self-care from a checklist into something deeper: knowing, trusting, and choosing yourself.
You’ve had to pee all day! Running around picking up decorations for the party, dropping kids off at practice, picking up the grocery order for not only dinner but party hors d'oeuvres, you have to call your mom back and make sure she’s taken her meds, call your co-worker to check on the filing of that important presentation, and oh yeah! Stop and grab a birthday card and gift for your husband’s party tonight. Gosh dang it! You still have to pee! Argh!! When you finally make it home, arms full of flowers, streamers, and balloons, phone in one hand with car keys, and a bag of groceries on the other, you feel like your bladder is literally going to pop! Everything gets dropped, and you take your post-pregnancy bladder to the anticipated toilet. Finally! A quiet moment. And you wonder — when did this happen? How has it gotten to this point where everything else takes precedence over your poor bladder?
If you can relate to this scene at all, welcome, dear one, to this quiet moment where you’re no longer alone. There are many of us recovering self-neglectors here, taking a moment to do some much-needed self-reflection on what the hell is going on and where you disappeared to.
The Stranger In The Mirror
At a time in our human evolution where we are the most connected to everything and everyone, we are still total strangers to ourselves. This isn’t meant to be a judgment on you, nor does it require you to be ‘fixed.’ This is simply what has happened when we, as women, were taught that love means selflessness. We learned that our worth and value come from making everyone else’s lives easier. We’ve even worn it as a badge, finding our identity in slowly disappearing into the curtains and lampshades of our partners', families', friends’, children’s, etc., lives. But is that who you really are?
The hard truth is the way we treat ourselves teaches everyone around us — our children, our partner, our friends — what we believe about ourselves.
Being a lampshade used to work for me. I was the one who would show up no matter what. And then Covid hit, and it turned my world on its head. I was anxious, isolated, and at my max capacity worrying about my family, especially my mom, who I started to notice was developing dementia. And that’s when the panic attacks kicked in. I would find myself, for no reason, on the floor in the kitchen, hyperventilating, crying, and thinking I was dying. Luckily, my partner has been through his bouts with panic attacks and helped me breathe through and out of these scary moments. I sought out counseling and worked through my long-neglected issues. I started letting go of my grip on trying to control everything in my world and of what I no longer wanted to carry. Day by day, I felt freer to be my true self. I hired a life coach to start taking steps towards myself again. I realized I really missed myself. That wild, creative, fearless, and BRAVE woman who would point her skis straight down a steep mountain without even thinking twice about it. With some much-needed support, I went from a neurotic, worth-and-belonging, needy seeker to a self-assured, trusting woman who genuinely feels that people are doing their best and they know what’s best for themselves, and so do I. This is a practice I continue. The difference now is I like myself, and I no longer need to beat myself up for being a human. I give myself permission to make mistakes, to listen to myself, what I need and want, and give myself a ton of grace when I steer myself into that old rut of self-doubt and disappearance. I gently remind myself, “It’s ok. I’m with you. I love you. I’m going to get through this.”
The relationship with yourself shapes every other
Think, for a moment, about the way you talk to yourself in your head. What do you say when you make a mistake, don’t meet the deadline, drop the ball, wish you said it differently, or burn dinner? If you are like me, your self-talk can get pretty brutal and downright mean. Now, imagine saying those things to your 8-year-old self. We tell ourselves we are these adults who are supposed to handle all the weight of responsibility. The truth is, you are still that little 8-year-old! The one is curious, excited, confident, friendly, and makes magic in her mind!
There’s a lot of talk about being kind to others, but what about YOURSELF? When are you kind to YOU? And why is it important to be kind to ourselves?
Three reasons it’s vital to build a relationship with ourselves
#1: COMPASSION TOWARD OTHERS - “Self-compassion is the prerequisite for compassion toward others,” says researcher, storyteller, and storyteller Brené Brown, who’s spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. Brown says directly, "We can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly."
If that statement doesn’t knock you on your ass, you might have a secret sauce the rest of us would like the recipe for! This statement summarizes her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, including discussions on shame, perfectionism, worthiness, and living a whole-hearted life. This is a body of work I refer to often when working with exhausted women. So often, our exhaustion comes from trying to fit in boxes we don’t belong in.
#2: MENTAL TOUGHNESS - Research from Stanford's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education found that self-criticism makes you more emotional and unable to learn from your mistakes, while self-compassion makes you more resilient. Brene Brown puts it this way, “self-compassion is actually the core of mental toughness — not weakness.”
The same research shows that self-compassionate people are better able to deal with stressful situations like natural disasters, military combat, health challenges, raising special needs children, and divorce.
Why would self-compassion make you more resilient and mentally tough?
Let’s think about it this way - what happens when we mentally beat ourselves up? The words we tell ourselves when we are in the grips of shame, failure, and/or self-doubt, we hardly feel resilient. I don’t know about you, but I have had my fair share of times I crawl back into bed with a pint of ice cream and binge a Netflix show, avoiding all those hard self-doubts. The last thing I wanted to do in those moments was jump up and face that fear. But what would happen if, instead of the negative self-talk, we talked to ourselves with compassion? What if it sounded more like this: “It’s ok. Everyone makes mistakes. I’m having such a human moment. I know it hurts really bad, but I’ve been through way worse. I’m here for myself. I’m really going to be ok.”
When we practice talking to ourselves with compassion and understanding, we become our own best friend and ally. Self-compassion and understanding are how we build a trusting relationship with ourselves.
#3: HEALTH & WELLBEING - In his article, Self-Trust is the New Self-Care, Psychology Today, Dr. Jan Bonhoeffer, M.D., explains the health benefits of self trust staying, “Self-trust isn’t just an abstract quality; it’s embodied. When we trust ourselves, our nervous system shifts from chronic hypervigilance into regulated alertness. Heart rate variability improves. Cortisol levels drop. We guide decisions from the prefrontal cortex (logic + empathy) rather than the amygdala (fight-or-flight). Conversely, when we doubt ourselves, the body interprets even small decisions as threats. The stress response fires. We second-guess, hesitate, and sometimes paralyze ourselves into inaction.”
When I was diagnosed with kidney disease, I learned compassion for myself and others. I thought I was a loving person before that, but I also had some skewed ideas about “couch potatoes” and “bootstrapping.” The first time I sat in the dialysis room full of other people doing their best to survive, something broke in me.
I was 23 and had just won the overall World Cup in women's sit skiing. I was experiencing my greatest high and my greatest low within the span of three months. Ski racing is both a team and an individual sport. When you hit the race course, you are on your own. If you win, it’s because you personally worked hard. If you lost, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough. I took that same approach when it came to my disease - it felt like a personal failure. I loathed myself and felt deep shame. But I didn’t see anyone in that dialysis clinic feeling sorry for themselves. Some people brought treats to share with their other dialysis friends. Some folks had their family with them. I no longer felt alone in that room. I knew everyone there felt similar to me - exhausted, drained, and like every moment of life was precious. I didn’t see couch potatoes in that room. I saw people, just like me, doing their very best.
Their example of resilience broke the self-berating spell within me and helped me begin to have compassion for myself. I mean, come on, what is the point in beating myself up for burning dinner when you’re on dialysis? Nothing is a big deal after that. Solutions seem simple and available - we’ll order pizza! When you're sitting in a cold chair for three hours while your blood gets pumped through a big, loud machine, priorities change, and nothing feels impossible anymore. Over the course of the year, I stopped beating myself up for taking naps, saying no to friends and family who wanted to stay out late, and taking time to do things I both enjoyed and that took my mind off the physical struggles I was experiencing. I learned to love myself through self-kindness.
My mom used to say, “Love is a verb.” Taking care of myself, listening to my body, and attending to my biological needs were acts of love.
It took me seven years to learn self- compassion and trust. I believe it was the building of my relationship with myself that enabled me to accept the gift of my sister’s kidney. Giving a kidney is an unbelievable gift that I could never repay my sister for, no doubt. The experience, I can confidently say, changed us both. Accepting this gift is the other challenging part. It’s really difficult to accept such an immense gift when you don’t like yourself, and you don’t trust yourself. I had to shed all of my old go-to feelings of shame, loathing, failure, and accept that I am worthy, enough, loved, etc., enough to receive the gift of life. That doesn’t mean I had all my shit together, and I was like this perfect example of self-relationship. No. This has been an ongoing practice throughout my life - the accepting of me! The knowing and trusting of myself!
Do I still have moments like the one at the beginning of this blog post? Absolutely. The difference is that I don’t hate myself for reverting back to some of my old patterns. Instead, they are reminders that I have lost myself in the noise, and it’s a good time to check back in with this person I care about and listen to the message of my heart.
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Brave Lace is a trauma, disability & chronic illness-informed life coach for exhausted women and founder of Vital Accord, LLC. Her work helps women silence the noise of everyone else's expectations so they can finally hear their own voice — and build a life they actually chose.
A two-time Paralympic medalist, World Champion Alpine ski racer, and two-time kidney transplant recipient, Brave coaches from lived experience — not theory. She's also a songwriter, mountain biker, dedicated dog mom, and advocate for mental health, conservation, and trail access in Wisconsin.
She helps women stop living by "should" — and start living by self.
