I spent years learning how to stand up for myself.
Nobody warned me I’d end up standing alone.
For most of my life, I was a pushover.
I avoided confrontation. I worried about upsetting people. I let things slide that probably shouldn’t have been allowed to slide. I swallowed my opinions, ignored my frustrations, and convinced myself that keeping the peace was more important than speaking up.
And you know where that got me?
Absolutely freaking nowhere.
So I started changing.
I learned to say no. I learned to speak up when something wasn’t right. I learned that having an opinion didn’t make me a bad person and that disagreeing with someone didn’t automatically make me disrespectful.
My husband was one of the people who helped me get there.
He encouraged me to stand up for myself. To stop letting people walk all over me. To recognize that my thoughts, feelings, and opinions mattered.
And I did.
I found my voice.
What I didn’t expect was how lonely using it would become.
Apparently, I’m the Problem. Again.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately examining my own behavior.
I’ve admitted that I can be controlling. That I have a temper. That sometimes my mouth moves faster than my brain can evaluate whether what I’m about to say is actually helpful.
Shocking revelation, I know.
I’ve written about being the problem before. I’ve acknowledged my part in conflicts, questioned my reactions, and tried to understand why I respond the way I do.
But here’s something I’ve been wrestling with:
At what point does taking accountability for my own behavior turn into accepting responsibility for everyone else’s?
Because somewhere along the way, I became the person everyone expects to have the answers.
The person who knows how things work. The person who notices when something hasn’t been done. The person who reminds everyone about deadlines. The person who steps in when nobody else does.
And then, when I finally get frustrated enough to say something?
I’m controlling. I’m difficult. I’m creating problems.
Apparently, identifying a problem is now the same thing as causing it.
I’ll be sure to update my résumé accordingly.
The Problem With Letting Go
People love to tell you to let things go.
Stop trying to control everything.
Delegate.
Trust other people.
Let them figure it out.
And I understand the concept. I really do.
But can we talk about what happens when you actually try it?
Because I’ve tried.
I’ve handed responsibilities over to people who volunteered to take them. I’ve shared the systems I’ve created, explained how things work, and stepped back so someone else could take ownership.
And then I’ve watched deadlines pass, work remain unfinished, and information turn out to be inaccurate.
Sometimes I discover the problems because I happen to check.
Other times, the consequences become impossible to ignore.
And suddenly I’m right back where I started.
Except now I’m not only dealing with the original responsibility. I’m also dealing with the frustration of having trusted someone else to handle it.
Here’s what I wish people understood:
My need for control didn’t develop in a vacuum.
It developed through years of watching what happens when things aren’t done, aren’t done correctly, or aren’t done on time.
It developed from being the person who had to fix the mistakes.
The person who had to follow up. The person who had to explain why something went wrong. The person who had to figure out how to make everything work anyway.
And eventually, you start believing it’s easier to do something yourself than to hand it over and wonder whether you’ll end up doing it twice.
Is that healthy? Probably not.
Is it understandable? I think so.
Does understanding where it came from excuse every time I’ve been controlling?
No.
But I think it deserves to be part of the conversation.
Because telling someone to relinquish control without acknowledging the experiences that taught them to hold on so tightly is missing half the story.
Everyone Has an Opinion. Nobody Has a Hand Raised.
Here’s another thing I’ve learned.
People will privately agree with you all day long.
They’ll tell you something isn’t working. They’ll complain about how things are being handled. They’ll acknowledge that expectations are unreasonable or that someone needs to address a problem.
But when it’s time to actually say something?
Crickets.
Suddenly, everyone has somewhere else to be.
Or they don’t want to get involved. Or they don’t see the point in continuing the conversation.
And there you are.
The only person who spoke up. The only person whose disagreement is visible. The only person who gets associated with the conflict.
Being the loudest person in a disagreement doesn’t mean you’re the only person who disagrees.
But when everyone else stays silent, it sure can look that way.
And that has been one of the hardest lessons for me.
Because I don’t need people to blindly defend me.
I don’t need everyone to agree with everything I say. I don’t even need someone to fight my battles for me.
But when we share the same concerns, when we’ve discussed the same problems, when we’ve privately agreed that something needs to change?
I need you to own your position, too.
Don’t leave me standing there looking like the only person who has a problem with what’s happening.
Especially when you helped me recognize the problem in the first place.
The Loneliness of Finding My Voice
This is the part that hurts more than I want to admit.
My husband helped me learn to stand up for myself.
He saw the woman who used to let people walk all over her, and he encouraged her to change.
And I’m grateful for that.
But there have been moments when I’ve been standing up for myself, facing criticism or confrontation, and desperately wanting him to speak up beside me.
And he hasn’t.
He has supported me in other ways. I don’t want to erase that.
But I’ve learned that there’s a difference between someone agreeing with you privately and someone being willing to say so publicly.
There’s a difference between having someone on your side and feeling like someone is standing beside you.
And when the person who helped you find your voice stays quiet while you’re using it, that silence can hurt in a way that criticism from strangers never could.
I know my husband loves me. I know he supports me.
But I also know what it feels like to look around a room and realize I’m the only one speaking.
And I hate that feeling.
I hate that I can be surrounded by people who say they agree with me and still feel completely alone.
If I Do Something, I’m Controlling. If I Don’t, I’m Responsible.
Here’s the part I still haven’t figured out.
When I step in and take charge, I’m accused of being controlling. When I step back and let someone else handle things, I watch responsibilities go unfinished. When I point out that something hasn’t been done, I’m accused of being negative. When I say nothing, the consequences eventually show up anyway.
And somehow, whether I get involved or not, I still end up feeling responsible.
It’s an exhausting cycle.
Because I don’t actually want to do everything.
I don’t want to spend my days reminding grown adults to follow through on things they agreed to do. I don’t want to be the keeper of every deadline, every spreadsheet, every process, and every unanswered question.
I would absolutely love to hand something over and never think about it again.
Seriously. Someone please give me that experience.
But when you’re the person with the most history, the most knowledge, or the clearest understanding of how everything connects, people keep coming back to you.
They want to know why things are done a certain way. They want you to explain the process. They want access to the systems you’ve built.
But when you point out that changing a process has produced incorrect results, suddenly your experience becomes a problem.
And that leaves me asking:
Why is my need to control a situation treated as the problem, while the repeated failures that created that need are treated as normal?
I don’t have a perfect answer.
I just know I’m tired of being expected to prevent every problem while simultaneously being criticized for trying.
I Don’t Want to Go Back to Who I Was
So where does that leave me?
Because I know one thing for certain.
I am not going back to being the woman who let people walk all over her.
I worked too hard to find my voice.
I spent too many years believing that keeping everyone else happy was more important than being honest about what I needed.
And I’m not interested in returning to that version of myself just because some people find this version inconvenient.
But I also don’t want to keep living like this.
I don’t want every disagreement to become a battle. I don’t want to spend my energy trying to make people care about responsibilities they’ve already accepted. I don’t want to feel personally responsible every time someone else drops the ball.
And I certainly don’t want to keep sacrificing my peace trying to prevent consequences that were never entirely mine to prevent.
Which brings me to the question I’ve been sitting with:
How do I keep using the voice I worked so hard to find when using it has started costing me relationships, peace, and joy?
Maybe the next stage of growth isn’t learning how to speak up. Maybe it’s learning when I’ve said enough. Maybe it’s understanding that I can identify a problem without volunteering to become its permanent solution. Maybe it’s accepting that other people are allowed to make decisions I disagree with—and that they’re also responsible for the outcomes of those decisions.
But I need to be clear about something.
That’s not easy for me.
Because I don’t know how to stop carrying everything when I’m still afraid of what happens if I put it down.
And that fear isn’t based entirely on imagination.
It’s based on experience.
God, I’m Trying. But This Is Hard.
There’s a verse I’ve been thinking about as I wrestle with all of this.
“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” — Galatians 1:10 (ESV)
For years, I was so concerned about other people’s approval that I struggled to stand up for myself.
Now I find myself on the opposite side of that struggle.
I’m no longer willing to stay quiet just to keep everyone happy.
But I still care deeply about what people think of me.
I still hate being misunderstood. I still want people to recognize when I’ve been trying to help rather than hurt.
And I still get angry when I feel like I’m being blamed for things I didn’t cause.
I don’t think God is asking me to become a pushover again.
But I also don’t think He’s asking me to carry every responsibility, fix every mistake, or win every argument.
Somewhere between silence and control, there has to be room for wisdom.
For discernment. For speaking truth without feeling obligated to force everyone to accept it. For doing what is right without making myself responsible for every outcome.
I wish I could tell you I’ve figured out how to live there.
I haven’t.
Right now, I’m still frustrated. Still hurt. Still trying to understand how to stand firm without constantly being on the defensive.
And if I’m being completely truthful, there are days when I want to throw my hands in the air and let the whole damn thing fall apart.
Not because I want anyone to suffer.
But because I’m tired of being the person who catches everything before it hits the ground.
Maybe that’s something God and I still need to work through.
Actually, scratch that.
It definitely is.
Still Standing. Just Tired.
I don’t regret finding my voice. I don’t regret learning that I deserve to be treated with respect. And I don’t regret becoming someone who is willing to speak up when something isn’t right.
But I am grieving the realization that speaking up doesn’t guarantee anyone will stand beside you.
That doing the right thing doesn’t guarantee people will understand your intentions. That being capable doesn’t mean you have the capacity to carry everything.
And that sometimes, no matter how hard you try, people are still going to decide you’re the problem.
I’m learning that I can be accountable for my reactions without accepting responsibility for everyone else’s decisions.
I can care about something without being the person who fixes it. I can speak up without spending the rest of my life defending the fact that I spoke.
At least, that’s what I’m trying to learn.
Because the woman I used to be stayed silent to keep the peace.
The woman I became learned to speak up, even when it made people uncomfortable.
And the woman I’m becoming?
She’s trying to figure out how to use her voice without losing herself in the process.
She’s not there yet.
But she’s not going backward, either.
And maybe, for today, that’s enough.