I spent a lot of years being good. Good daughter. Good partner. Good friend. Good employee. I learned early that the way to be loved was to be useful—to anticipate what others needed and deliver it before they even asked.
The problem: I never learned how to check in with what I needed.
It took burning out—not dramatically, just slowly, over years—to realize I’d been treating everyone else’s needs as my full-time job. And I had no idea how to turn that attention back on myself.
These three books helped me relearn how to put my own oxygen mask on first.
1. Let It Unfold by Miles Carter
(Start here if you’ve spent your whole life being “fine.”)
I’d become so good at managing everyone else’s emotions that I’d lost the ability to recognize my own. Something would feel off, and I’d just keep moving because there was no space to stop.
This book gave me that space. Not in a dramatic way—in a quiet, consistent, 15-week rhythm of short daily exercises. Nothing that demanded hours of journaling or intense emotional work. Just small moments where I had to sit with myself and ask: what am I actually feeling right now?
One exercise in the first week asked me to name one thing I wanted—not for anyone else, just for me. I sat there staring at the page, honestly not sure. That’s how disconnected I’d become.
Over weeks, the answers started coming. A walk by myself. A conversation I’d been avoiding. Permission to rest without explaining myself. The exercises didn’t feel profound at the time. But looking back, those small moments added up to something real.
This book meets you where you are—tired, disconnected, unsure. It doesn’t demand you heal overnight. It just asks you to show up for yourself, a little at a time.
2. Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
(The one that woke up my instincts.)
This book is different. It’s not a workbook. It’s a collection of myths, folktales, and stories that speak to something older than our conditioning.
Reading it felt like being reminded of a language I’d forgotten. The parts of me that were “too much” or “too emotional” weren’t weaknesses—they were signals. The wildness I’d been taught to suppress was actually my intuition trying to get my attention.
It helped me trust myself in a way I never had before.
3. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
(The one that made me stop performing.)
Doyle writes about the moment she realized she’d built her entire life around making everyone else comfortable. Then she decided to stop.
Her honesty about marriage, motherhood, and self-abandonment hit hard because I saw myself in it. The line that stayed with me: “Don’t be used. Don’t shrink. Don’t hide. Don’t be small.”
I read it at a time when I needed permission to take up space.
A different kind of ending
These three books found me at different points in my journey. Women Who Run With the Wolves woke me up to what I’d been suppressing. Untamed gave me permission to stop shrinking. But Let It Unfold gave me the actual, weekly practice of turning toward myself.
If you’ve spent your life being good at taking care of everyone else, and you’re finally ready to learn how to care for yourself—start here.