I grew up watching people call self-abandonment love, and it taught me what happens when a woman never claims her own life.

My mom’s purse used to sit on the kitchen counter in this little desk nook.

I knew where she kept her mad money.

The extra cash from my stepdad. The grocery trip ATM money. The ones and fives she saved and tucked away so she could slip it to me and my brother on the DL.

She would hand it to us and say, “This is all I have to give.”

This is all I have to give.

This is all I have to give.

This is all I have to give.

As a child, hearing that, what pressure to hold.

As an adult, how shitty to put that on a child.

So I would sneak a few ones and fives when she wasn’t looking.

I justified it.

They were going to be mine anyway.

That is what a kid tells herself when she feels guilty and entitled and hungry and ashamed all at once.

I wasn’t stealing from my mother because I was a criminal mastermind in jelly shoes. I was taking from the place that told me there wasn’t enough, so I better get mine. 

I was taking from a woman who believed she had emptied herself and still had to find more.

She didn’t know better.

She was doing what she knew best.

Living for us.

Even when she said it was all she had, I believe she believed that.

I don’t think she believed more was coming.

But somehow, there always was.

That was the part that confused me.

There was never enough.

And yet, each week there was always another way to give more.

I grew up watching the people around me die a slow death while living for other people in scarcity, in lack, in fear, in worry, in concern, and in desperation.

My mom for her kids. Then her grandkids.

My dad for his wife.

My stepdad for his corporate climb and for my mom.

My stepmom for her rise to the top to break out of her trailer park life that she should have never been born in.

My brother lost in his mind. In drugs. In grief. In ridiculous intelligence that was too large for his brain to hold. His insane genius perpetuated his breakdown.

My stepbrother to his alcoholic mother and younger brother out of guilt, I suppose. To food. To the loss of his innocence because he had to be a caretaker when his own couldn’t care for him.

They said yes again and again and again to things that didn’t belong to them.

Their yes murdered their future self.

It came down to their inability to own their own lives, chase their childhood dreams, be the grownup kid God created them to be.

It caged them in a life that left them paralyzed in what was and used to be, and all the could haves, should haves that never will ever be.

I witnessed this with a front row seat.

It unhinged me.

It rattled me.

And it shamed me.

I didn’t realize this until well into my twenties and thirties.

I didn’t realize it until well after many mistakes and failures and choices I chose that left me abandoned and rejected and degraded and ashamed and guilty of living a life hidden with a spotlight on me.

The independent one.

The fierce one.

The get-it-done one.

The find-a-way one.

The she’s-ok one.

The don’t-worry-about-her one.

The good one.

Those labels sound flattering until you realize they are also instructions.

Don’t need too much.

Don’t ask for too much.

Don’t fall apart.

Don’t inconvenience them.

Don’t make anyone pay attention.

Don’t be one more thing somebody has to carry.

Don’t be a burden.

This left marks that made me a rebel.

I thought I was rebelling against what I came from.

I wasn’t.

I was no different from them.

I cheated.

Stole.

Lied.

Betrayed.

Hid.

Fought.

Yelled.

Screamed.

Ripped out parts of myself and others until everything that was good was gutted.

I’d find ways to self-destruct.

Food.

Money.

Men.

Sex.

Alcohol.

Skipping classes.

Making shit up.

Repeat and rinse whenever the situation fit.

That is what happens when a good girl has no honest place to put her hunger.

She gets sneaky.

She gets reckless.

She gets loud in all the wrong places and silent in the rooms where her truth could have saved her.

I didn’t know how to own my life cleanly, so I took it sideways.

I wanted more, but wanting more felt like betrayal.

I wanted out, but leaving felt cruel.

I wanted to be seen, but being seen felt dangerous.

I wanted to stop being the woman everyone could count on while I quietly counted the cost of being needed.

The people who loved me taught me how to abandon myself because nobody taught them how not to.

That does not make them villains.

It makes the pattern expensive and urgent and heavy.

I can love my mother and refuse to live inside the sentence she handed me.

This is all I have to give.

Nope.

Not on my watch.

My giving will always be unending.

On my terms. 

From desire and heart and grit and purpose and freedom and from the rawness of what I’ve overcome. 

From being unyielding and sticking to the plan. 

From believing in myself and my path. 

From breaking the chain of them and what they couldn’t do. 

From macheting my way when there was and is none, so me and my kids get a little farther without the strings attached. 

Without the guilt and desperation and scarcity and lack and fear of “enoughness” and availability. 

It will come from an avalanche of belief and faith and fight and fire built on unwavering trust in living outloud, alive and for myself. 

But it will not come from the place that taught me to disappear.

I refuse to settle until my insides call it. 

And as of now. 

They are still rebelling against “this is all I have to give.” 

I Changed the Sheets Today  is my weekly publication series for high-performing rebel women in the ugly middle, where survival is no longer the full-time job and the life they built no longer fits the woman God is calling forward.

Weekly raw-footage essays on identity, faith, self-abandonment, aliveness, usefulness, motherhood, ambition, and the strange space between who you were trained to be and who you are returning to.

By Robyn Lynn Tanner, Author of The Machete Mentality, Founder of The Edit™, Host of the The Daily Fight Podcast, and leader of the 500 by 50 Mission: 500 women. 500 life-changing decisions. 500 lines crossed.

Follow me on Instagram: @robynlynntanner
Join the 500 by 50 Mission: www.robyntanner.com/theedit
Book me to speak: [email protected]