Being a Marie Kondo disciple taught me, perhaps ironically, that I am no minimalist. In fact, I love being surrounded by the things that light me up: my knitting and sewing supplies, books that have shaped me, art and tchotchkes that feel like bits of my soul on a shelf.

And then add on ADHD — or being a creative, or hell, just growing and evolving — and I have a graveyard of supplies for hobbies that I’ve drifted from. Photography equipment, cookie decorating tips, paper craft supplies for scrapbooking and card making. Experience tells me that I won’t return to all of these, but I will come back to some and will be grateful that the supplies are ready.

Right there is the tension so many of us live in: how do you have a home that feels manageable and prepared and enough (whatever that means), while not drowning in objects that you “might need” “just in case” or could “work with.”

Because when I dig out the old supplies or the orphan cords or the jeans that would make a cute skirt, I think “I can do something with this.”

“I can make this work.”

Whew. A sentence that stops me cold. Because I don’t just try to make my belongings fit in my house. “I can make this work” could be on my tombstone. I can make just about anything work and if I’m sacrificing my peace of mind, my nervous system, my own health? Well, that’s the price of admission baby!

Oof.

Maybe for you it looks like making a city or neighborhood work that doesn’t actually align with your values, that feels a bit off, a bit lonely. Or maybe it’s the relationship that is comfortable or loving without actually meeting your needs. Perhaps you’re making work the job that pays the bills and provides health insurance, but slowly erodes your sense of self.

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I see these choices every day, in myself, in my community, in my clients. The decisions that aren’t necessarily wrong, just harder than they could be. And I see the ways we think we can make something work for us if we just try hard enough.

As if a square peg and a round hole just needed more discipline and patience to fit.

And all the while making it work is costing you something. All of us have a limit to how much hard we can metabolize. Living on this rock is hard enough. We will lose the people we love, suddenly and slowly. We will lose our own bodies’ capabilities. We’re taught that doing hard things and discipline is good, godly even, but there’s enough hardship in just being a person.

There’s no getting out of this alive.

So here’s what I’m learning: that my life is not an endurance test. That this wonderful, devastating life is more like a sunset to be taken in while I can, knowing it’s fleeting and finding it even more beautiful for it.

It means asking myself when I’m sorting through cabinets of old things: “Is this aligned with how I actually live?” instead of “can I make this work?” And the stuff that isn’t aligned anymore gets lovingly released to someone for whom it will be aligned (Marie Kondo would be so proud).

So goodbye to the Milton tips and food dye because this Rachel doesn’t actually have the patience to decorate cookies that I’ll eat in ten minutes. Goodbye to the funky scissors and decorative paper and stamp pads because I have literally never scrapbooked a day in my life despite moving scrapbooking supplies across two states and five apartments. But I’ll lovingly keep my Canon DSLR because I know there’s a future Rachel who will pick it up and take photos around Lake Merritt with gratitude.

Because this was never really about having less. It certainly is not about deprivation — I will remain surrounded by my plants and books and yarn and records and — but instead about knowing yourself well enough to discern when you’re stewarding something for the future versus holding onto something out of fear and obligation and misplaced loyalty.

And let’s be realistic: some things can’t be released without devastating consequences. Rage quitting without resources to sustain yourself is risky. And we can repair some relationships and objects with a bit of elbow grease. Refurbishing something to fit your needs is more gratifying than buying fresh. So this isn’t a call to burn your life down. It’s an invitation to check in with yourself: what kind of hard am I choosing?

So much of this process requires faith in a future version of ourselves to figure shit out. If Future Rachel one day wants to decorate cookies, I trust that she will ask a friend to borrow piping tips. She’s so okay. Future You has got this too.

When I set up my donation box today, I realized that I don’t need to protect Future Me by holding on to every object, project, or relationship that might one day come to fruition. I only need to set up my life sustainably so Future Me doesn’t inherit a mess. The stuff that aligns with my values, that works for me in the here and now, gets precious real estate. I’m letting go of what might work, one day.

Because no matter how big your space is, there isn’t enough room for “I can make this work” or “what if I need this later” in your closet, babe.

Cue face palm emoji. 🤦🏼‍♀️

I’m making my life’s work about community, and vulnerability, and creating a life that feels true to you. Yet here I was trying to be palatable and manage expectations with the people who love me the most. Which got me curious: what’s behind the urge to be palatable? What happens when we expect ourselves to manage everyone else’s expectations? What’s lost when we force ourselves to be composed when life is a cyclone?

I know I’m not alone — I see this pattern in so many women around me.

The woman who hates to cry because it ruins her makeup.

The one who apologizes when she cries. Or when her stories come with a lot of context.

I’ve had clients apologize for telling me a particularly distressing part of growing up. Yes, we even apologize to our therapists for talking about our childhoods.

Whew.

So let’s start by naming where this came from. Because none of us entered this world thinking we needed to be palatable. No, we entered this world screaming at the top of our lungs. Palatability and respectability are taught through generations of white patriarchy. Women, people of the global majority, queer folks all learned that to be too loud, too emotional, too powerful was to draw the wrong kind of attention.

Don’t get too big for your britches.

Don’t be too angry.

Don’t be too... much.

When being wholly yourself brings rejection and punishment, we learn to be palatable, to mind-read others’ expectations then conform to them, to soothe everyone around us. This is a survival mechanism. It also comes with real costs.

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So much of my work — both in myself and in these letters — is about creating a life that is truly aligned to who you are and who you want to be. A life that doesn’t need to be survived as much as it needs to be experienced. A life that has ease and community and love.

A life where you can re-evaluate learned survival mechanisms and decide if they get to stay with you.

So yeah maybe your boss really will punish emotional expression. Maybe they aren’t safe for you to bring your tender heart to. If you know that, trust it. Brené Brown, the patron saint of vulnerability, has always said that we need to be vulnerable with people who’ve earned the right to hear our story. That condition — someone earning the right to your vulnerability — is essential.

But where do you wear your armor when you don’t actually have to? Are you so used to armoring up or deflecting with the right joke that you aren’t even choosing it anymore?

The tricky part is that armor comes in all different styles. The best, most efficient armors are the ones that don’t even look like armor.

There’s the outright reserved armor. The one that presents as quiet, or prickly, that discourages follow up questions. This is the most obvious armor, but can work for so long, it starts feeling like a personality.

There’s the “I’m fine, everything’s fine” armor. Putting on the mask when no one knows you’re struggling. Just brute force faking it. This one has a huge energy cost and works moderately well for the less perceptive, but fails deeper scrutiny.

There’s the stand up comedian style. You know, when you sound vulnerable because you say the hard thing, but you wrap it up in a joke. Maybe so that no one looks too closely at the pain. Or maybe you don’t want the vulnerability of “bringing down the room.” You talk about yourself, but you’re really entertaining.

Then there’s the polished, processed armor. The “I went through something hard and here’s the life lesson I’ve distilled.” My personal favorite, this one can have you feel competent and put together and honest without being “too needy.”

All of these fundamentally are lonely places to be. Because no one can sit with you in the muck of it all when you’re deflecting and polishing. No one can hold your hand if it’s encased in armor. There’s being in relationship, and then there’s performing relationship. Only one of those nourishes us.

And hear me when I say there is a time and place for armor. Not everyone has earned the right to hold your hand in the muck of it all. But eventually someone has to earn the right. And if no one has yet, then taking a reasonable risk might be the only way to see if they can meet you in that tender place.

I’m still learning to be in the midst of something and let people love me there. And I have to tell you: having someone wade through the muck to meet me is a profoundly beautiful experience. Laughing off suffering or packaging it in a palatable way feels mature in the moment, but it doesn’t actually help me move through life better. It isn’t aligned with the life I’m cultivating.

A life that is nourishing and connected and honest even when — especially when — the truth is messy.

And if you’re curious, here’s how my friends responded to my little “but I won’t be a fun hang” text:

“oh rachel.”

“It’s not just that I want a fun hang, love.”

That’s what happens when we let someone be in the muck with us. On the other side of vulnerability and risk and honesty, there’s care and love and truth.

As it turns out, shrinking ourselves makes us feel more shrunken.

But here’s another example: on a different Saturday, I decided I would connect with my social, active, most vital self. I saw three friends — one for a long walk and another for a 5+ hour hang — then took another long walk that night. It might not come as a surprise that I woke up Sunday with a very cranky ankle that took days to heal. I had pushed past my need for rest.

Many of my messy perfectionists will recognize what my therapist and I call the bulldoze/collapse binary. And both are exhausting. Staying small, shrinking, playing it safe all deplete us because there’s nothing life-giving in those states. But bulldozing past our limits and needs also is depleting.

So when is it rest and when is it avoidance?

Let me be clear: rest is essential and not something you earn. Our society focuses on the health benefits of exercise — and movement is certainly one of the most efficient ways to regulate a nervous system — but sleep deprivation is actually dangerous to our bodies. So you probably need more rest than you give yourself.

But if you’re like me, you’re trying to create a life that includes deep rest alongside vitality, adventure, and sustainable activity. And that’s where things start to get confusing. Guilt shows up when we are avoiding important parts of our lives, but it also shows up when we rest and break the rules our culture has around constant productivity.

Imagine a Saturday where you cancel all plans, nestle into the blankets in a cozy part of your home, and make yourself tea. Maybe order takeout and watch a movie (or three). You read a book that is purely pleasure reading.

If this scenario feels farfetched from the constraints of your life, still try to imagine it, just for a minute.

Do you imagine waking up the following Sunday, recharged and ready to jump back into your responsibilities and meaningful activities?

Or do you imagine waking up feeling strangely hungover?

One experience is deep rest. The other one is collapsing and hoping you wake up a different person. Same day, wildly different consequences. And maybe what starts as needed rest — one movie, a cup of tea and a nap — turns into collapsing — cancelling all plans, couch rotting.

And guilt often comes with both experiences. You likely know the guilt of collapse: the tight, constrained feeling that you’re missing something, that you’re going to get in trouble, that you’re breaking yet another commitment to yourself.

Unfortunately, that same voice shows up when we are practicing something new. When you choose rest after a lifetime of white knuckling and effort and showing up for everyone else, you will likely have that old programming telling you that you’re doing something wrong.

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So on this mythical Saturday morning, you can’t know how you’ll feel come Sunday — recharged or depleted — and the guilt showing up either way makes it hard to tell the difference too. So how the hell do we know what we need when we have the weight of expectations and exhaustion and worries quieting our inner voice?

The bad news: there isn’t a magical shortcut to figuring out what we need. I’m pretty sure we have to just make a choice and then take notes on how it plays out for us. Really pay attention. I haven’t figured out another way through.

It’s helpful if you already know your default direction on the bulldoze/collapse spectrum. If you know that collapse is your go-to, finding active ways to rest (slow walks, quiet moments making art that no one will see, talking to someone) might challenge you in the right way. If your natural inclination is to push through, your challenge might be finding ways to slow down — yes, it will feel uncomfortable.

But if you’re like me, you might find your default is to swing between the two. I find it helpful to ask myself: is this sustainable to do most days or most weeks?

The work starts by shifting away from our unworkable default.

And then we just have to do the damn thing — take the day off and couch rot, go to bed early, do a gentle walk instead of a run — and see how it feels in your body, in your chest.

Collapse feels like constriction to me. It feels tight and pressured and its own kind of exhaustion. It lives in my chest and throat. But rest? That feels like answering a call I’ve been putting off for too long. Even when there’s guilt, there’s also bone-deep relief, a sense of rightness. It feels open, a little optimistic. It feels like trust.

This week, I had a meaningful conversation with a friend that brought us closer. I went on my first run in a month, but kept my pace slower than I wanted. I went to bed early. I walked to a cafe and chatted with humans in my neighborhood even when I felt awkward. I wrote this piece and allowed some emails to stack up. I’ve learned that movement and leaving the house every day matters. I’ve learned that I need more wind down time than I usually give myself. The point isn’t perfection, it’s sustainability.

You have the same needs for connection, community, movement, nourishing food, play, sleep, and active rest. Maybe the point isn’t to Figure It All Out™, but to approach ourselves like a wild garden that has different needs in different seasons, that needs tending and attention. But also let some of those weeds live a little; let’s not optimize out the wildness.

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