Episode 199 | The Grief Series
A few weeks into summer, I caught myself white-knuckling through a season I actually love.
Not because anything was falling apart. Not because the structures weren’t working, they were. Not because my kids weren’t thriving, they were. But every single day, I was ending on this low hum of “it’s too much.” And what scared me, when I finally caught it, was that the voice saying that had been running so long I didn’t even notice it anymore.
I’d wake up in the morning after a full night of sleep, body actually rested, and my first thought would be: I’m exhausted.
That’s not a scheduling problem. That’s a story problem.
What I Realized on a 4 AM Walk
I go on long walks most mornings, usually somewhere between four and five thirty, because I’m up anyway and it’s the only time the world is actually still. On this particular morning, I made a decision I don’t always make: I didn’t put anything in my ears. No podcast, no music, nothing. Because I had enough awareness to know something wasn’t cooking right, and I needed to actually listen.
And here’s what came up. It wasn’t therapeutic. It wasn’t gentle. The voice that surfaced was essentially: you’re being a whiny bitch.
Now look, I’m a therapist. I know the value of self-compassion. I practice it, I teach it, I genuinely believe in it. And also, sometimes the most loving thing you can say to yourself is the honest thing. And the honest thing was: I have been spending an enormous amount of energy complaining about a season that I chose, that I love, and that is not going to change no matter how many times I narrate how hard it is.
The kids’ sports schedule is not going to slow down because I talked about it enough. The mental load of meal planning, tracking everyone’s symptoms, holding all the logistics in my head, that’s not going anywhere either. And I have a husband who genuinely shows up. He’s active as a dad, active in the house, and we have real equity in how we run our home. And I was still carrying this low-grade, constant sense of isolation around the mental load.
None of that is solved by the story I was telling myself. In fact, the story was making it worse.
The Narrative Your Brain Runs Without Your Permission
Here’s what I want you to really hear, because this is the thing that got me.
I didn’t decide to be stressed. I didn’t sit down one morning and go, “You know what would be helpful? If I woke up every day already exhausted.” It just happened. Slowly, without my permission, my brain started running a loop. It’s too much. I can’t fit it in. I’m falling behind. I’m so exhausted. And the more it ran, the more real it felt, until even the things that are actually enjoyable, a full day with my kids, a busy evening at a game, started to carry this weight that they didn’t deserve.
This is what I mean when I say 80% of it is what we believe and what we think. The circumstances don’t create the experience. The story about the circumstances does.
And here’s the part that really got me: I’ve done this work. I’ve made these shifts before. I’ve caught my brain running stories that weren’t serving me and I’ve rewired them. I know how to do this. And I still found myself in the middle of a narrative spiral I didn’t even notice was happening. Because that’s how it works. You don’t just fix it once and move on. The seasons keep changing, the kids keep growing, the business keeps evolving, the logistics keep shifting. And if you’re not paying attention, your dick brain will take the wheel and start narrating your life for you.
What the Shift Actually Looked Like
By the end of that walk, I made a decision. I’m no longer willing to put up with this.
Not the season. The story about the season.
And I want to be really clear about what changed and what didn’t. The schedule didn’t change. The mental load didn’t shrink. I didn’t suddenly get extra help or more hours in the day. What changed was that every time the automatic thought came in, “this is too much, I’m so exhausted, I can’t do this,” I started meeting it with something different.
I am more than capable of this. I am the person for this life. I am enjoying the chaos.
It sounds simple. It is simple. But simple is not the same as easy, and it is absolutely not the same as automatic. It took intention every single time. And within just a few days, I felt different. More rested in the mornings. More energetic throughout the day. Less of that frantic, low-grade panic following me around everywhere I went.
Nothing outside of me changed. Everything inside of me did.
You Have the Life You’re Willing to Put Up With
I recorded this episode from my car on the way to pick up a friend from the airport because I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want to take notes and come back to it later and lose the rawness of it. Because I know what it feels like to be in the middle of a season you actually love and still feel like you’re barely surviving it. And I know how quickly you can flip that, not by changing your circumstances, but by changing what you’re saying to yourself about them.
You have the life you’re willing to put up with. That’s not a judgment. It’s an invitation.
If your brain is currently running the show, if you’re waking up already exhausted, if you’re narrating your way through a season you actually wanted, this is your moment to catch it. To name it. To decide you’re no longer willing to put up with the story that’s making everything harder than it has to be.
The season is what it is. What it means is up to you.
“You have the life you’re willing to put up with. The circumstances don’t have to change. The story does.”
If this hit home, I’d love for you to share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you’ve been thinking about working together, the new website is live and the pricing is still at its current rate through July. After that, rates go up. You can explore everything at ashmcdonald.com.
This is The Grief Series. Listen now!
xx, Ash
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