The measuring stick we never put down

We know the comparison that stings from the outside. This is about the one we do in private.

I caught myself doing it - - - AGAIN!

Not comparing myself to another woman. Not my body to someone younger, or my bank account to someone luckier, or my marriage to someone else’s highlight reel.

I was comparing myself to me.

To the version of myself from five days ago.

Five days ago, my daughter called for a FaceTime catch-up. An hour of real conversation — the good kind, the kind that leaves you warmer than you started. And near the end she said something that made me sit straight up.

Mom, it is so nice not to see you living your life as a performance. It’s like we have our mom back.

She doesn’t know everything I’ve been working through. She just felt the shift — from hundreds of miles away, through a phone screen — and she named it. I carried that with me for days. I felt seen. I felt real. I felt electric.

And now as I am writing this, it’s Six o’clock at night. Still in my pajamas. Multiple naps. Snack-eating my way through the day with no real hunger and no real plan. I stared at my easel and felt absolutely nothing. I stared at the blinking cursor and thought: I have nothing to say.

And then the quieter thought moved in underneath: What happened to her? Where did she go?

That’s comparison too. I just hadn’t recognized it dressed up that way.

* * *

And before you go where I know some of you might go — this isn’t about mood swings. It isn’t about bipolarity or instability or anything that needs a diagnosis. It’s about the nervous system doing exactly what nervous systems do after days of intense creative output, unexpected exposure, and the kind of emotional aliveness that lights you up from the inside. It needs time to put itself back together. That’s not a malfunction. That’s biology.

What I’ve learned — and what I kept reminding myself of as the day wore on — is that my energy moves like the tide. It comes in full, strong and electric, and then it goes back out. And then it comes in again. At 70, I still catch myself comparing the woman at low tide to the woman when the water is high. The comparison doesn’t disappear. But when I remembered what was actually happening in my body, it got quieter. Less dark. Less convincing. By evening it had loosened its grip almost entirely.

The tide going out isn’t failure. It’s just the tide.

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We know the other kind of comparison. We’ve all felt the specific sting of scrolling through somebody’s vacation photos while sitting in our own ordinary kitchen. The shiny marriage. The thriving family. The grandchildren piled in someone’s lap like warm laundry. We recognize that pain. We’ve named it, written about it, tried to talk ourselves out of it.

But I’m beginning to think the deeper wound is the one we quietly inflict on ourselves — the running war between the woman we are today and every more impressive version we’ve been before. The younger self. The more energized self. The self who had momentum, had a plan, had it together. The self who wasn’t tired at noon or unmotivated at six. The self from five days ago who felt electric and alive.

Every time we drag her out for comparison, something small disappears. This mightily contributes to our sense of being invisible — to ourselves.

Because we stop actually seeing the woman who showed up today. The tired woman. The overstimulated woman. The one whose nervous system has simply decided it needs rest whether or not we’ve penciled that in. She doesn’t get seen — she gets measured. And she keeps coming up short.

She becomes invisible.

Not because the world erased her.

Because we did.

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I wonder sometimes if this is the real reason so many of us feel exhausted — not from life’s difficulty alone, but from the relentless internal audit. Am I healing enough? Producing enough? Moving enough, thriving enough, grateful enough? The soul gets tired of being evaluated. It starts going quiet in self-defense.

Here’s what I know about where this started. Not in us. It was handed to us.

I have a memory of my mother looking at me and saying, “Why can’t you be more like your cousin Kay? She likes fashion.” I didn’t want to go shopping. That was the whole of my crime. But the message arrived anyway, neat and clean: there is a preferred version of you, and you are not it.

That was my introduction to the measuring stick. And I carried it, the way we carry things we didn’t choose, until it felt like my own hand holding it.

Parenting did it. School did it. Society did it. And — I say this as someone who spent thirty years inside it — the mental - emotional - spiritual wellness world did it most relentlessly of all. Take stock. Monitor your progress. Track your growth. Are you healing? Are you thriving? Are you enough yet?

I remember the moment this piece was born. I was walking down my hallway, literally pulling at my hair, saying out loud to no one: I am so tired of monitoring myself. What happened to just the joy of living the day?

That’s where this started. Not from wisdom. From exhaustion.

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Comparison is not going to release its grip after one article, or one morning of insight, or one good day when the tide is in. It runs too deep, comes from too many directions — other women, other teachers, other timelines, other versions of ourselves. We are going to have to look at it from every angle before we can begin to set it down.

So this is the first of several conversations. I’m glad you’re here for it.

But for now — here’s what I want to ask you, because I suspect I’m not the only one who does this:

Who is the version of yourself you keep holding today up against? The you from a year ago, a decade ago, some golden season when everything felt like it was working? When did that become the standard you’re failing to meet?

You’re still here. She’s still here — the one in the pajamas, the one who’s tired, the one who hasn’t figured it all out yet. She’s not a lesser version of you. She’s you, right now, in this moment, doing the actual living.

And she deserves to be seen.

If this connected with you , I’d love for you to bring it with you on Tuesdays.

Every Tuesday a small group of us gather on Zoom — not as a workshop, not as a class, but as women who are done being invisible to themselves and to each other. We talk about exactly this kind of thing. We recognize each other in it. And that recognition, it turns out, is its own kind of medicine. 7 PM EST.

The BREAKTHROUGH opportunity is waiting for you. But honestly? So are we.

Shoot an email or DM on Substack with your email and address and I’ll send you my BREAKTHROUGH Workbook that we use in our sessions. Totally free of charge. Offer for all paid subscribers.

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.