I Was the Last One to Know

It was 2012. I was recovering from back surgery, lying on my therapist's couch -- yes, literally lying down, which I realize is about as cliché as it gets -- and she looked at me and said: What are you going to give up?

I stared at her like she was speaking a language I had never heard.

She said: You cannot manage everything you have been doing. It has been breaking you. Literally breaking you. Your body just told you so.

And then she asked the question I was not prepared for. What would happen if you stopped being the one who coordinates everything? The holidays. The family gatherings. The plans. What would happen if you just... stopped?

I answered without even thinking. I said: We wouldn't get together.

That was the moment. I didn't know it yet, but that was it.

The Role I Thought Was Me

There's a Yiddish word -- balabusta. It means the woman who runs the home, keeps everyone fed, pulls the whole operation together. The one everyone depends on. It's meant as a compliment.

I had been living inside that role for so long I couldn't tell where it ended and I began. I was the coordinator. The host. The one who designed the experience, made sure everyone showed up for it, kept the family connected. That was my story about myself. And I had no idea it was a story. I thought it was just who I was.

My therapist saw it. My body saw it. I was the last one to know.

That's what was getting in the way. Not fear. Not laziness. Not other people. A story I had been living inside for so long I couldn't see it from the outside.

I'm Still Working on It

I want to be honest with you: that conversation in 2012 did not fix anything. I am still working on this.

My kids are all married now. Their families have expanded. And what I've had to learn -- slowly, imperfectly, over many years -- is that you cannot design other people's lives for them.

I have this thing I do. I build a construct in my mind of how an experience should go. I can see the whole thing -- who comes, when, what we eat, how it feels. I put real care into that design. And then people don't want to play a part in it. Because they're not characters in my story. They're people living their own.

The clinging -- that's the word for it. Clinging to the design. And it keeps you from actually being present in the experience you're supposedly trying to create.

The Sushi Dinner

A few weeks ago, my son-in-law called. He wanted to plan a surprise birthday weekend for my daughter and he was inviting us to come. He had already chosen the restaurant -- a place he knew she had been wanting to go. He had the whole thing designed.

His design. Not mine.

It was a sushi omakase experience -- twelve guests maximum, a chef's tasting of seventeen courses. He had curated something magnificent.

I'm vegan. So I called ahead. The restaurant was gracious -- they offered to make me udon and tempura. Really lovely of them. I thought about it more than once. I talked it through with my husband.

But I kept coming back to the same thing: if I'm sitting there with one bowl of udon while everyone else moves through seventeen courses together, I'm not really in the experience. I'm adjacent to it.

I should say -- I don't have a medical reason for eating the way I do. It's a choice I make because I believe in it, and I think of it as a nutritional invitation rather than a restriction. But it is a choice. And choices can be revisited.

I decided not to be vegan that night.

We had seventeen courses. We sat around that table for hours. It was one of the best nights.

I didn't get my own way. I showed up inside someone else's plan. And what I got was better than anything I would have designed.

What I Want to Ask You

So here's the question I want to leave you with.

What is the story you are living inside right now that you cannot see from the outside?

Maybe it's a role you've been playing for so long it feels like identity. The one who holds it together. The one who doesn't ask for help. The one who keeps going no matter what. Maybe it's a belief about what you're allowed to want at this stage, or what other people need from you versus what you actually have left to give. Maybe it's a blueprint you've been clinging to that is keeping you from being present in the actual experience.

That thing. The one that just came up when you read that. That's probably it.

I'm not going to tell you it's easy to put down. It took back surgery, a therapist, a decade of practice, and a really good sushi dinner for me to start getting it. But I will tell you this: what's getting in the way is almost never what we think it is. It's not the circumstances. It's not other people. It's the story we've been telling about ourselves for so long we stopped noticing we were telling it.

The first step -- the only first step -- is seeing it.

Next week, Part 3: what's actually possible. Once you start to see the story, something opens up. I want to take you there.

Listen to the Full Episode

Episode 23: I Was the Last One to Know (A Bridge, Part 2)

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About Dvora Citron

Dvora Citron is a Registered Nurse, National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner, and the founder of Slant2Plants®. She hosts Sexy in Your 60s to bring women the real ingredients of vibrant aging through science, story, support, and soul. Her work helps women 50 and older create the health, confidence, and longevity they want in ways that feel realistic and sustainable.

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