✦ Incompleteness Series
There are the expectations we are born into.
The ones whispered before we even take our first breath.
Be good. Be kind. Be strong. Be perfect.
Be everything, for everyone.
As we grow, more expectations are added, one by one, like stones slipped into a bag we didn’t agree to carry.
The silent comparisons. The invisible checklists. The unspoken belief that if we achieve enough — parent, child, partner, professional, friend — then finally, finally we will be enough.
But expectations are heavy.
They shape us, mold us, and press against us until sometimes we forget where they end and where we begin.
The Unspoken Burden
No one ever says it directly, but many of us carry it anyway.
- The expectation to smile when we are weary.
- The expectation to nurture while we ourselves are still healing.
- The expectation to be strong, reliable, unshaken, even when we feel fragile and undone inside.
This is the burden of performance — presenting ourselves as whole when we’re quietly splintering. Showing up as if completeness is our natural state, when really, we are stitching ourselves together each day, thread by thread.
It’s exhausting. Not just the doing, but the pretending. Exhausting to hold everyone else’s vision of who we should be, while losing sight of who we actually are.
What Lies Beneath
And here is the truth I am beginning to face: much of this weight isn’t theirs anymore — it’s mine.
It’s the way I internalized their words, their silences, their hopes, their disappointments. Somewhere along the way, I made their expectations my own. I began carrying them as if they were mine to bear, as if my worth could only be proven by their approval.
But what if I set them down?
What if I asked myself: Who am I without the weight?
The question terrifies me. Without the expectations, I might feel exposed, unmoored. But without them, maybe I could also feel free. Maybe I could finally hear my own voice again, softer but truer than all the others.
Listen…
Maybe the goal is not to meet every expectation but to name them. To hold them up to the light and ask: Is this really mine? Or did I inherit this burden from someone else’s dream?
Maybe completeness isn’t about perfection — about fitting every piece into place — but about presence. About showing up honestly in the middle of the mess, in the middle of the unfinished, and saying: this is me, and it is enough for now.
🌿 Today, I am choosing to loosen the grip. To unshoulder the weight, even if only for a moment. To breathe deeply without the pressure of performing, pleasing, or proving.
Because my worth is not defined by what I do for others.
My worth is not dependent on checking every box.
My worth is found in how I honor the truth of my own spirit — unfinished, imperfect, but still sacred.
Weighted Expectations (Part 3 of 7) ✦ Incompleteness · Part 3 of 7 ← Normalization | Next: Becoming
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