The Things I Carried Nearly Killed Me

I survived a widowmaker heart attack. Now I’m done living up to everyone else’s expectations.

Bag lady, you gon’ hurt your back
Dragging all them bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you.
All you must hold on to
Is you, is you, is you

—Erykah Badu

Three months after turning 45, a widowmaker heart attack nearly took me out. Now, before you assume I was living on drive-thru fries and regret, let me clarify. I was a runner. Ran five miles on a treadmill before breakfast at 5 a.m. every morning. I was a kale girl. A green-juice girl. A “What do you mean stress can kill people?” girl.

Fun fact: Turns out stress can, in fact, kill you.

After the cardiologist saved my life and my nurse side-eyed me with that “Now Ma’am…” energy, I had what my grandmother calls a “come to Jesus” moment. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, this is what happens when you’ve written a check your body can’t cash, and now you have to pay up. My check was this: I’d let my entire life be hijacked by everybody else’s expectations, emergencies, and unsolicited opinions.

And it damn near ended me.

The Lie We Were Praised For

For most of my adult life (and if I’m honest, most of my childhood and teenage life too), I treated strength like it was my full-time job. I carried stress like women with far more money carry Birkin bags, and I don’t even like carrying purses. I shouldered everyone else’s busted emotional suitcases before tending to my own, because somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that being the real-life Olivia Pope, who “has it handled,” was my alter ego.

So, no Erykah, nobody told me a thing.

But my story isn’t new, and it surely isn’t foreign. Holding up the sky is what we as women do, and God forbid we were ever to stop. The entire world would come crashing down like a cosmic Jenga puzzle. At least that’s what we have somehow convinced ourselves. And you best believe we had some help.

Anyone remember this Enjoli jingle?

I can bring home the bacon,

Fry it up in a pan.

And never ever ever let you forget you’re a man,

Cuz I’m a woman.

Tag line: “The 8-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman.”

By age seven, it was already imprinted on me that as a female member of the human species, my ultimate goal was to do ALL the things. Get the wash together, feed the kids, get to work, come home, cook, and stroke the ego (among other things) of the man I was supposedly married to. Seven-year-old me didn’t know any better. Fifty-two-year-old me has only one response.

WTF.

And you’d think by 2026, we would be free from this trope that paints us as unofficial members of the Avengers. But noooo. There’s a meme floating around now that shows the traditional silhouette of a woman on one side, and the same silhouette beside it, with the bottom part painted red like a cape. The caption says, “It was never a dress.” Okay. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a skirt or a really cute swing coat. But who the hell told you it was a cape?

But this is the lie I bought into. The lie a lot of us bought into. We could do it all. We HAD to do it all because we were the Elmers holding it all together. At home. At work. In our communities. The responsibility, the successes, and the failures all fell on our shoulders, and we couldn’t let them (or ourselves) down.

The honest truth is this: We’ve been conditioned to carry bags that weren’t meant for us, and to feel guilty when we finally set them down. Yet, we grab them like luggage at the airport that looks like ours but isn’t. We have to let that sh*t go—which is what I did.

And you can too.

The Strength to Stop

First, can we acknowledge that women get rewarded for capacity? Look how much she can handle. Look how calm she stays. Meanwhile, your shoulders are on strike, and your spirit is screaming, “Lady, if you don’t put this down now!” I had to admit I was carrying too much, like some trophy, and do my best Elsa impression.

Second, once the bags were out of my hands, I had to look at what I was carrying. Checking on everybody. Holding space. Being the fixer. Being the one folks trauma-dump on because “you’re so strong.” BS. Believing that rest is something I earned after collapse? That asking for help meant I was weak and slipping? All lies.

Third, putting down bags feels illegal when you’ve been praised for carrying them all so well. So, I became a felon and started leaving the bags right where I found them. Without comment. Silence WAS the explanation, and “no” is a complete sentence (I’m an English teacher by profession, so I would know). Turns out I was still me, and surprise! Agency showed up the moment I stopped over-functioning. Some people were annoyed. The world did not end. Everyone survived.

Fourth, admittedly, some bags I keep carrying because they make sense. If I leave the grocery shopping to my husband, we’ll be living off high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oil, and red dye #5. But anything that demands self-erasure or requires me to perform strength while neglecting my health gets returned to sender.

Don’t be fooled.

I don’t pack light all the time.

Old habits have excellent muscle memory.

But I’m learning that strength isn’t about how much you can carry. It’s about knowing when to stop lifting despite what society and social media tell you.

And whenever I find myself reaching for what isn’t mine, I hear Erykah Badu in the background singing.

Let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go.

And I do.