You're Not Dramatic. You're Braced.

I caught myself yesterday about to do something I've done a thousand times. This time I didn't. Here's what I learned.

The Day I Stopped Using Information to Regulate Myself

The call came from my eldest daughter. She wanted me to know about my grandson, a revservist in the US Army. He may be required to switch to active duty to retain his benefits. If he does, there’s a strong possibility he could be deployed to Iran.

That’s not neutral information.

That’s the kind of news that lands in a grandmother’s chest and just sits there.

We had a lovely Sunday morning conversation. We talked through it. We were steady - and I learned something about myself.

And then, almost reflexively, a thought flashed through my mind:

I need to tell Greg about this.

And just as quickly, another thought followed:

Why?

That question stopped me cold.

Why did I need to tell him? Was it because he needed to know? Was there something to decide? Did I need advice?

No.

It was something else entirely.

I realized I used to take dramatic, uncomfortable, emotionally charged information and move it outward — fast. I would share it. Emphasize it. Frame it. Sometimes even heighten it.

Not because I was malicious. Not because I wanted chaos.

Because I was regulating.

I was using information to steady myself.

If something big happened, I didn’t want to sit alone with the sensation of it. I wanted it witnessed. I wanted someone else to hold it with me. Sometimes I wanted to be the center of it. Sometimes I wanted reassurance. Sometimes I just wanted to feel relevant.

That’s where the old label came from.

Drama queen.

But what I see now is that it wasn’t drama.

It was dysregulation.

When your nervous system is constantly braced, information becomes currency. You move it fast. You broadcast it. You turn it into something that proves you are relevant, involved, needed, affected.

You don’t even know you’re doing it.

This morning, I didn’t do it.

The impulse rose. I watched it. And it dissolved.

Not because I don’t care. Not because I’ve become detached or cold or indifferent to my grandson’s life.

But because I can sit with the weight of something without flinging it outward to feel stable.

That’s new.

And it changes everything.

I woke up peaceful this morning. Leisurely. Made my bed. Got dressed. Took my time. No urgency to report something to someone so I could feel important or held.

Just space.

Later, my daughter said something that caught me quiet.

“We’re really looking forward to you coming. We hope there’ll be more of these trips in the future.”

We haven’t seen each other in a year. That year had distance in it. Tension neither of us named out loud.

And I understood something in that moment.

When you are self-contained, people relax around you. When you are no longer leaking need, people feel the difference — even when they can’t name what changed.

You don’t become harder. You become quieter inside.

And that quiet changes how people meet you.

Here’s what I think many of us were never taught — especially women who spent decades managing households, churches, families, reputations:

We confuse sharing with intimacy.

But sometimes sharing is just outsourcing regulation. Sometimes it’s a nervous system saying help me hold this and dressing it up as connection.

There’s nothing wrong with being witnessed. Being witnessed is human and holy.

But there is something deeply liberating about discovering you can hold it yourself.

I didn’t lose my compassion yesterday, nor do I expect to.

I lost my frantic need to distribute discomfort.

And in its place — clarity. Simplicity. Ease.

It turns out I was never dramatic.

I was braced.

And when the bracing stopped, so did the performance.

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If you’ve read this far, I want you to know something.

I wrote this for you. Not for an algorithm. Not for a content calendar. For the woman who recognized herself somewhere in these paragraphs — the one who has been called dramatic, who has been braced for so long she forgot what it feels like to just be still.

You are not too much.

You were never too much.

You were carrying too much. There’s a difference.

And you don’t have to keep carrying it alone.

This is what women are saying when they find their way here:

This is your invitation.

Become an annual subscriber to The Daily RE-WIRE and join our inner circle — the Monirose Soul community of women who are done performing, done shrinking, and done waiting for a permission slip that was never coming.

Every Tuesday at 7pm we gather on Zoom for our weekly Breakthrough Workshop. Real women. Real talk. Real shifts. The kind of conversation that makes you feel less alone in the ocean and more like you’ve finally found your people.

And as my personal thank you — our official We Don’t Retire, We RE-WIRE mug ships straight to your door. Just send me your mailing address after you subscribe and consider it done.

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