"It's back-to-school season! September has always felt like a fresh start to me because, as I like to joke, I was a student all the way up to the 24th grade. (Kids usually widen their eyes in horror when I say that.) I loved back-to-school shopping, carefully picking my binders and notebooks, making sure my pencils were sharpened and ready."
"From family expectations to workplace standards, we're often handed scripts about who we should be and how to measure success. Sometimes those voices are so intertwined with our own that it takes real work to separate them. Part of the challenge is noticing when resilience or adaptability, which once helped us survive, starts keeping us stuck in patterns that no longer serve us."
September can function as a fresh start and an invitation to adopt a 'good enough' student approach to life. Ongoing learning and unlearning coexist, and life presents frequent informal challenges rather than formal tests. Many inherited rules about success, culture, and identity erode self-trust by imposing others' scripts. Resilience or adaptability that once aided survival can become a trap when it preserves outdated patterns. The motherhood mandate still ties worth to parenting and marginalizes childfree experiences. Unlearning is often uncomfortable and may strain relationships, but releasing rigid expectations reduces shame and burnout and enables alignment and growth.
Read at Psychology Today
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