Have you ever heard the expression “I’ve hit a wall”?
We use it at the Thanksgiving table sometimes. Somebody pushes back from their plate and says, “I’ve hit the wall. I cannot eat another bite.” It means one thing: I am full. There is simply no more room.
That is exactly what is happening when we hit a wall in our lives.
We are full. Completely stuffed. And full is something we can actually work with.
The Accumulation Nobody Talks About
Here is what usually happens. We keep going. We take on more responsibilities. We care for more people. We manage more things. And we keep making room for all of it, stuffing more in, doing our best to fit everything into a life that is already at capacity.
This is an accumulation problem. Life kept asking, and we kept saying yes.
We carry everyone else’s emotions alongside our own. We hold the mental load, the anxiety, the weight of being the person who keeps everything running. Then there is the physical accumulation too. The sentimental items that stay longer than we expected. The closets and drawers that hold stories we have been too busy to deal with. All of it builds, brick by brick, until one day the wall is so high we can’t see past it.
The wall is information. It is your life telling you that something needs room.
What the Wall Is Really Made Of
For so many of the women I know and coach, the wall shows up around caregiving and grief. Or that season of life where you are right in the middle of everything. You have aging parents or a sick loved one who needs you. You are running a business or working a job and running a family. You have been showing up for everyone, and somewhere along the way your own name came off the list.
I know this from the inside.
I was running a business and working a job, caring for my mother, managing my family, doing all the things that needed doing. On the outside, life looked fine. Dinner was on the table. The kids got to their activities. I was showing up.
But I was going through the motions. After my mother passed, months later I found myself surrounded by the physical items from her home and from my childhood, and Irealized I had nothing left to give. I could not think clearly. I drove my kids places some days and honestly could not tell you how I got there. I did what had to be done, but I was somewhere far away from all of it.
That was the wall. And I had been building it for years.
Two Things Happening at Once
When you hit the wall, two things are true at the same time.
The first is simple. There is no space left to receive anything new. Like Thanksgiving dinner, there is nowhere for more to go. But think about the next day. You wake up and there is room again. You can have that turkey sandwich with no trouble at all. The body made space on its own. That same thing is possible in your life when you give it a chance.
The second piece is the one that usually stops women. When the wall is that high, the view disappears. You lose your sense of what is possible. The vision of who you might be on the other side goes dark. Without that, everything feels like a dead stop.
I have had clients who lost a spouse and the wall was stacked with logistics, finances, decisions they had never had to make before. Grief and fear and loneliness on top of all of it. What those women needed was someone to help them find the bricks for vision and dreaming, because those bricks exist. They just get buried.
This Is Where You Start
Spring has a way of making the wall feel more visible. Everything outside is blooming. The season is saying it is time to grow. And you are standing there feeling the weight of everything that has piled up. That contrast is striking. And it also means this is exactly the right time to start making space.
Bricks can come down. Space can be made, internally and physically, for what wants to come next. The work I do with women helps them see life on the other side of that wall and lighten the load of accumulation in all the places it has settled.
You start with one brick. Just one. And from there, things begin to become clearer..
One Thing Before You Go
If you are at that wall right now, understand this.
You are full. And full is something we can work with. You don’t have to stay full forever. Remember, Thanksgiving is only one day a year. This week, just notice. Notice where the accumulation is. Physical, mental, emotional. You are just looking at it honestly. One brick at a time.
See you next Monday.
Meryl
