The Cost of a Good Yes
Not burnout. Not boundaries. Just the grief of what quietly slips away.
Something was wrong. I couldn’t name it.
I was writing about grief. I even posted about it last week. Sat with it. Turned it over. Wrote it down.
And the whole time, something in me was aching.
Not metaphorically. Actually.
I kept thinking: but I’m not grieving. So what is this?
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The Yes
January. A new role. Something real, something that mattered, and I said yes without hesitation.
I still don’t hesitate. I still love it. It’s fun, challenging, exhilarating, and exciting. All the things!
But it took up space. The way water fills a room… you don’t notice the level rising until you’re already standing in it.
Some days I was wired. Just wired. My brain was buzzing from the moment I woke up until long after I should have been asleep. Other days, I was hollow. Not alive. Just... going. And some days—and I still don’t know how this works—I was both. Wired and numb at the same time?
Everything was asking for something. And I kept giving. Because it mattered. Because I wanted to.
And the first thing that went wasn’t something I chose to give up. Nothing so deliberate as that.
The thread just loosened. The consistency. The small thing I’d been doing every day that kept me tethered to myself.
Yoga.
Some days it was twelve minutes. Some days an hour. The amount never mattered. What mattered was that I showed up. That I kept coming back.
And then I didn’t.
And I didn’t notice.
What He Saw
Luis said it casually. Had I been practicing yoga lately?
Not with concern. Just an observation. The kind of thing someone says when they know you well enough to see what’s shifted without needing to make it into something.
I sat with that for a moment.
And then the ache I’d been carrying for weeks—the one I’d been writing about on the page without knowing I was writing about myself—suddenly had a shape. A name. Feelings.
I’d been grieving. I just didn’t know what for.
The First Thing That Goes
Here’s what I know about the thread.
It’s not the thing that looks important. It’s not the thing other people notice. It’s the quiet, invisible thing that keeps everything else from collapsing.
And it’s the first thing that goes when life expands. Not the obligations. Not the work. Not the things that have deadlines and consequences.
The thread. The one that, when it’s there, you don’t notice. And when it’s gone, you don’t notice that either.
Not until someone who knows you says something simple. And suddenly the grief is right there.
It was there the whole time.
What This Is Not
This is not a story about doing less.
I said yes to something I wanted. I still want it. Nothing about that has changed, and I wouldn’t change it. Not a thing.
This is a story about what quietly disappears when you say yes to something that matters. The small loss. The kind that doesn’t earn sympathy or make for a good cautionary tale.
The thread loosened. I kept going. I didn’t notice until I did.
And then I grieved it.
The Exemption
This week, the department issues an Exemption from More.
More means: more output, more emotional labor, more responsiveness, more being “fine.”
Not a suggestion. Not a maybe. An exemption. The kind of thing that doesn’t require justification.
Over-capacity is not a mindset. It’s a calendar. A body. A set of obligations that will not negotiate.
And the thread—the small, invisible thing that was keeping you tethered to yourself—it went quiet. Not because you failed. Because there was no room left for it.
So here is what the exemption grants:
You are allowed to stop giving. Not permanently. Not dramatically. Just long enough to feel your own pulse again.
You are allowed to notice what’s gone. To grieve it.
You are allowed to put something down so that you can feel it again.
A small thing went quiet.
That’s enough. Sometimes the knowing is enough.
Not Yet. Soon.
I haven’t solved the arrangement, the new role and the thread and the grief and the wanting.
But I can tell the truth: the thread is still there.
It didn’t break. It loosened.
And now that I can feel it again, I know how to return.
Soon.
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I've noticed the ways grief is quietly showing up in my life, too, Alex. It looks different than it used to. Many people, I notice, are encouraging rage. I've been there. I get it. I know what rage looks like for me, and I don't want to invest in that kind of energy anymore. To me, rage is one component of grief. Grief is far more than simply feeling enraged. Rage activates and mobilizes; grief retreats and metabolizes. That's the stage of life I'm in - I want to slow down and absorb instead of instantly move to action. I want to respond, not react. And grief helps me do that, because it is wiser than rage, I've found.
After 12 years of daily practice, yoga slipped away from me during the chaos of Covid. I was working from home from then on. Politics exploded into an abusive thing. Life was unrecognizable and I clung on to managing everything I could. I no longer had that peaceful feeling, nor did I have time to find it and bring it back. Your explanation is the only one that makes sense. The thread loosened. My anxiety increased but there were a gazillion reasons for that. I gained weight. My muscles knotted and stiffened, which is not unusual for a woman in her 60's. Now I'm missing yoga specifically but am frustrated that it doesn't fit in. Why can't I get back in the daily habit. Maybe when I retire on 4/1/26 I'll find the spot in my routine for it. Something else has to loosen to let yoga back in?