Put it down

unlearning the belief that love, safety, and worth come from managing the emotional and physical messes of others.

I don’t know about you guys, but for me summer break is really like prime existential crisis season.

Probably because I have three kids at home. It’s hot and buggy and gross outside. The volume is all the way up on two TVs at all times. Everyone is living off snacks and popsicles. Every inch of my house is perpetually covered in toys and/or food crumbs no matter how much I clean. I have no idea what day it is. You get the picture.

Toddler nap time (and big kid “I don’t care what you do but I am unavailable for the next 90 minutes” time) is my sacred zone-out window. If I’m feeling ambitious, I might even journal.

And the other day, mid-zoning/journaling, something clicked:

I’ve been carrying this deep, unspoken belief that it’s my job to clean up the emotional and physical messes of everyone around me in order to be safe. In order to be valuable. In order to be good.

The reason I’m sharing this in a substack essay is that this belief doesn’t really feel like a personal one exactly. I mean, sure, I can point to moments in my life where it’s been affirmed. Moments when I’ve been praised, rewarded, or even just relieved when things were “fixed” (because then everyone is ok and I can relax).

But the more I sit with it, the more I realize it’s not unique to me. It’s a belief that feels older than me. Bigger than me. Like it didn’t start in my body but has just slowly seeped into my cells over time.

Maybe it’s an ancestral belief. Something baked into my genetic expression and passed down from the generations before me.

But honestly? I think it’s a woman thing. (Of course some men can have the belief as well, but I’m generalizing here through cultural gender norms and I do believe this is a much more common belief among women).

Because that’s what we end up teaching girls. Not always with our words, but with what we celebrate and respond to. We show them that their value lies in how much they can handle, how much they can hold, and how little they ask for in return.

No one says, “Hey, your worth depends on how well you clean up the chaos around you.” But we model it. As moms. As wives. As friends. Sisters, daughters, bosses, etc.

In all of our roles we become the cleaner uppers. Not just of toys or laundry or dishes. But of feelings. Of atmospheres. Of awkwardness. Of tension. Of conflict. We learn to sense the temperature of a room before we even know what we’re feeling inside of ourselves.

Very early we learn on a subconscious level that order equals love. That being easy equals safety. That it’s better to be needed than to need. That if we’re going to take up space, it better be in the service of someone else’s comfort.

Oof I know.

But it’s true. We praise this behavior. And then we expect it. We call it maturity when a little girl wipes her own tears, picks up after her siblings, doesn’t complain, doesn’t need, and doesn’t crumble.

Look how grounded she is. How wise beyond her years.

And so she tethers that “maturity” to her identity. She learns that her value comes from being self-sufficient, emotionally restrained, and tidy in every sense of the word. She is smart, easy, quiet, and independent. She is a good girl.

And she believes that to be lovable is to be low-maintenance. That control equals safety. That it’s her job to make sure nothing spills over—feelings, tempers, Legos, you name it.

Meanwhile, boys are taught something else. Not intentionally, but through the absence of those same expectations. Their messes are more tolerated. Their emotions more externalized. Their socks picked up for them. Their meltdowns explained away. The loud, messy chaos of boys is simply expected.

And so, unconsciously, boys internalize a buffer: someone will handle it. Someone will manage the mess. Someone will tell them what to do and when to do it.

Because someone always has. (why do you think patriarchy loves hierarchy so much?).

…I’m sure you can see what’s coming from a mile away…

Fast forward twenty years and you get the dynamic we know so well: women exhausted from managing invisible labor, and men completely unaware it is even happening.

We might get away with this over-functioning habit for a little while. When we are young couples with minimal responsibilities outside of ourselves. It’s cute being able to manage the household, make dinner, and plan everything.

Then (dun dun dun) some of us little self sufficient girls become mothers. And that cleaner upper belief that has served us so well? It goes into hyperspeed.

Because part of early motherhood is literally cleaning up messes. And emotional triage becomes a full-time job. It’s necessary. It’s even beautiful at times. We’re good at it. But the danger lies in never being able to stop.

So many of us moms stay stuck in this mode for years low key believing that love equals over-functioning. That being a “good mom” means staying ten steps ahead of every meltdown, every messy countertop, every subtle mood shift in the household. That if we don’t clean it all up, something bad will happen. Or worse, it means we’ve failed.

And honestly? We stay stuck because it’s really damn hard to turn it off. You can’t go from chronic fight/flight to chill overnight.

But eventually, we have to disrupt the pattern. Not just for ourselves, but for our children. I’m in this phase right now with my two boys who are 9 and 7. And I’ve realized that the longer we carry the weight of everyone's inner and outer worlds, the more we reinforce the exact dependency we say we want to avoid.

By seeing this pattern in myself, I can see now that teaching a child (regardless of gender) how to clean up their own emotional and physical messes isn’t just about giving mom a break. Nor is it a punishment. It’s love.

It’s about setting their foundation for the true mind-body-soul sovereignty we all crave. To know: you can go do and be whoever and whatever in the world because you’ve got yourself.

When we teach our kids to tend to their own emotional experiences—to sit with frustration, to name their needs, to apologize, to clean up after themselves—we’re not abandoning them. (I realize this sounds incredibly obvious but when you are living it it can feel less obvious.) We’re entrusting them with their own wholeness. We’re giving them the tools to move through a messy, beautiful, unpredictable world without always needing someone else to absorb the fallout.

In turn, this gives them the skills to have real, intimate relationships with other people (romantic or platonic) that are not predicated on need. What a freaking gift.

This is especially vital for girls. Because so often what gets praised as “caring” or “helpful” or “mature” is really a quiet lesson in self-erasure. We must teach them that their value isn’t in how well they manage or soothe others, but in how deeply they know and trust themselves. That their safety doesn’t come from holding it all together, but from their capacity to not shrink or merge or bend in the presence of other people’s feelings and needs.

And for boys, the lesson is just as urgent: that tenderness and responsibility are not opposites. That being loved is not the same as being rescued (this goes both ways!). That emotional labor is real and not a debt owed to them by the women in their lives.

As I am very much fumbling my way through this parenting gig alongside everyone else, I have my arrow aimed at raising humans (regardless of gender) who can tolerate the discomfort of their own chaos and still know they are safe and loved.

Humans who know they can fall apart and put themselves back together. Because they’ve done it before. Because they know that death and rebirth are inescapable parts of existence.

Humans who don’t collapse into dependence or inflate into control, but find something steadier: sovereignty.

Because of course, this isn’t just about parenting. It’s about pulling the thread on an old cultural myth and unraveling the parts of ourselves that have been living inside it for too long.

There is strength in being able to hold things together. But there is wisdom in knowing when to set them down. And even greater wisdom in knowing what is not, and never was, ours to carry in the first place.

Til next time,

Marissa