🔥 You’re allowed to keep your energy.

Sadie Speaks is my personal writing — short, honest essays from the deep middle of things. They started as emails to my list, but they’ve become something more: snapshots of truth, power, and self-return, written in real time.

🎧 Want to hear it how I meant it? Listen to me read it below.

💬 Prefer to read? Here’s the original text.

I’ve always cared deeply about being a good person. A nice person. Someone who makes others feel safe and comfortable and seen. It’s part of who I want to be — and probably part of who you want to be, too.

But lately, something in me has been shifting.

It started when I realized that not everyone is able to meet my care with care. That some people take my softness as a signal that I’ll absorb whatever they throw — last-minute cancellations with no follow-up, disappearing in the middle of making plans, treating my time like it’s flexible but their is sacred…or sending vague, chirpy check-ins that ignore the hard conversation they bailed on.

If you’re someone who’s naturally attuned to others (or trained yourself to be), it’s easy to think: this is just part of being a good friend. A good partner. A good human.

So we let it go. We stay nice. We make excuses. We hold the door open even after it slams in our face.

Because people are human. And humans deserve grace — especially when they’re hurting. Right?!

But at some point — maybe after the five hundredth no-show, half-apology, energy-sucking interaction that went nowhere — I started to wonder…where’s my grace?

The truth is, constantly being the bigger person isn’t noble. It’s exhausting. And usually it doesn’t truly serve the person we’re trying to love.

That was the hardest part for me to see.

Because when we keep absorbing the impact of other peoples’ unaccountability without naming it, we teach them it’s fine. That care doesn’t need to be mutual. That harm can go unacknowledged as long as they’re having a hard time. But that’s not actually kind. That’s enabling.

And enabling isn’t grace. It’s codependence in a nice dress.

Refusing to carry someone’s emotional slack isn’t abandonment. It’s a kind of truth-telling. It says: I care about you enough to not let you keep showing up this way.

I’m learning to stop chasing clarity where it’s not being offered. To stop making excuses for people who keep showing me exactly who they are. To stop over-functioning just to keep the peace. Not out of anger — but because that emotional labor should never have been mine to begin with.

And if you’ve been feeling worn down, too — not just tired, but tired of yourself for letting it keep happening — maybe it’s not burnout after all. Maybe it’s your boundaries waking up. And maybe that’s the beginning of something better.

With all my wild heart,

Sadie xo

P.S. If something I said resonated — and you’re craving a space to unpack your own story — you can book a session with me here. I’d be honored to hold that space with you.