Under Pressure

There is a song sung by Helen Reddy, I Am Woman, and the lyrics haunt me…

“If I have to, I can do anything.”

And while the song might be unfamiliar to you, it shaped a whole generation of women.

Burn the bra.
Take charge.
You can do anything.

I grew up with this song playing in the background of my mind, and if I allow it, I can still faintly hear those words floating into my thoughts.

I detest that song.

There. I said it.

Because somewhere along the way, “I can do anything” quietly became…

Those words guided me for years.

Until they didn’t.

Until one sunny morning I woke up and realized:

I am not happy.

I didn’t want to keep pushing.

I didn’t want to keep being the woman who figured it out. Took charge. Said yes. I had the answer. Keep going. Carried what other people couldn’t.

Give me a puzzle and I will put it together. I didn’t want to be that woman any longer. I started to detest her.

And yet I was good at being that woman.

There was a weird satisfaction in it.

Recognition.

Pride.

People knew they could count on me. My ego was very proud of my accomplishments.

And perhaps, without realizing it, all that pressure had become my proof.

See, Carolyn? You are capable.

I Am Woman playing in the background.

Look how much I can handle.
Look how much I can accomplish.
Look how much people need me.

Pressure.

Bring it on… I got you. I got this.

But somewhere in all that capability, I began to wonder:

Where was I, Carolyn, in the mix of things… in my own life?

The pressure to live up to those standards had simply become too much.

The hustle.

Being “on guard.”

Always having something that needed doing, fixing, handling or figuring out. How high do you want me to jump?

I was no longer interested.

I knew who I was. But the world thought they knew me, they didn’t, I had made the ultimate sacrifice. Me.

I didn’t need, or want, to keep proving it to the world outside my front door.

But apparently, I still had something to prove to myself.

Because when you’ve spent years being the woman who can handle anything, putting something down isn’t quite as simple as putting something down.

A peculiar question appears:

That one got me.

Because I had to start “debugging” an idea that had been running quietly in the background for decades:

If I’m not carrying a lot, am I doing enough?

If I’m not taking charge, am I still capable?

If I’m not pushing toward the next thing, am I wasting something in myself?

And perhaps the most uncomfortable one…

If no one needs me to perform a small miracle today, do I still feel as significant?

And then something clicked…

My generation was told we could do anything.

Ohhh and I get really good at this strategy, if I didn’t have something to do,I created more “projects”. Those projects filled in the gap of doing and resting, stopping.I could have earned a PhD in turning an empty afternoon into a project. Somewhere along the way, I turned that glorious possibility into a personal requirement to handle everything.

CAN became SHOULD.

SHOULD became MUST.

And finally, I decided:

No more living by society’s rules.

I have one chance at this game of life.

I am done.

Hey, listen. I’m not saying “pressure be gone.” I’m not that naive. Pressure is part of life. Sometimes it’s even a good thing.

Now it is simply something I experience.

I could see it…

There is nothing to conquer.

Nothing to rescue. Nothing to prove.

Because here’s what took me decades to understand:

I didn’t become capable because I could handle the pressure.

I could handle the pressure because I was already capable.

Pressure proved my capability. It gave me a persona I knew how to present to the world.

And those are two very different ways to live.

You see I understand pressure, I have lived with it just like you. I spent years struggling with it.