There’s a game we play when we forget who we are.
It doesn’t start with strategy.
It doesn’t start with sabotage.
It starts with a wound.
A story we make up to survive.
You’ll know you’re playing the game by the tension in your jaw, the weight in your chest, the impulse to prove or disappear. Because when you're not in your power, you're in a role.
Unconscious. Unexamined. Unrooted.
We collapse into the deflated identity—
🙇 I am the failure.
🙇 I am the burden.
🙇 I am the one no one saves.
Or we inflate, armor up, and sprint to the opposite extreme—
⚔️ I am the hero.
⚔️ I am the smartest person in the room.
⚔️ I will never be like them.
Both sides of the game are lies.
Both are masks.
And both are exhausting.
For me? The game I played on autopilot was Victim vs. Savior.
It still stings to name it.
I’ve spent 40+ years trying to “rise above” my childhood.
Trying to fix myself.
Trying to outshine the story that made me.
And in a moment of clarity, I saw it:
That very language—rise above, fix, save—was the game.
The more I tried to transcend, the more I stayed tethered.
So I built a business around being needed.
Offered my brilliance with a side of martyrdom.
Served with strategy but secretly hoped it would prove my worth.
It wasn’t until COVID hit and everything crumbled that I felt the full weight of the game. When the clients dried up and the inbox went quiet, I felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I wasn’t sure if I’d built a business… or just a sophisticated coping mechanism.
That’s when the whisper started:
I don’t want to be needed.
I want to be wanted.
Even then, I didn’t have the language for it.
But I was already starting to walk away from the roles.
And then recently, my coach asked me the question that snapped the last thread:
“What need is still being satisfied by playing the victim?”
Oof. That landed.
Because when I feel powerless at home, I get controlling in business.
When I feel unseen in my personal life, I overcompensate by trying to fix others professionally.
It’s not love. It’s not generosity.
It’s the victim keeping herself alive through the savior’s performance.
So I put both roles down.
Not because I’ve perfected presence.
But because I’m devoted to sovereignty.
To the truth that I am whole.
Now.
Not when they approve.
Not when I fix it all.
Not when I prove I’ve transcended.
Now.
Even in the mess.
Even in the magic.
Even in the murky, in-between moments when I’m not sure who the fuck I am anymore.
Presence isn’t passive.
It’s the fierce act of returning to yourself—again and again—without apology or agenda.
It’s the quiet rebellion of not playing a role.
It’s the stillpoint beneath the noise.
It’s where your source lives. And where your truth has never been wounded.
I’ve played the game.
I’ve lost. I’ve won. I’ve disappeared. I’ve dominated.
And now?
🌀 I choose presence.
🌀 I choose breath.
🌀 I choose to remember I am already resourced.
🌀 I choose not to play.
Because there is no sovereign prize at the end of a rigged game.
Reflection + Expansion
✨ What’s the unconscious game you’ve been playing?
✨ How does your inner wound try to prove or hide itself?
✨ Who do you become when you’re disconnected from your truth?
✨ What role are you ready to retire—for good?
✨ Who might you be without the performance?
PS: When you stop playing the game and start building from your whole self—your resourced, radiant, rooted self—your profit no longer seeks approval.
It speaks your truth.
It honors your needs.
It doesn’t beg.
It builds.
Because profit is protest, and presence is the most potent kind of power.
Song of the Day: I Want You To Want Me by Letters to Cleo