Sober Sis Blog

Written By Jenn Kautsch

Who’s Taking Care of You?

When you spend your whole day pouring out, it makes sense that by 5 o’clock you’re looking for something to pour back in.

I have spent a good portion of my life being the responsible one. You know the one. The planner. The fixer. The helper. The person who remembers the birthday, makes the reservation, answers the text, brings the thing everyone else forgot to bring, checks on the friend, schedules the appointment, keeps the family calendar moving and somehow knows that we are almost out of toilet paper before anyone else in the house has even considered the possibility. I’m not saying I did all of this perfectly. Lord knows I have dropped plenty of balls. But if I dropped one, I usually picked it up so quickly that nobody had time to notice.

I liked being dependable. I still do. I love people, I love helping people, and I genuinely believe serving others is part of how God wired me. But there was a problem I didn’t recognize for a very long time. I was showing up for everybody else while slowly disappearing from my own life. Maybe you know what I mean. There is a load so many women carry that nobody can actually see. We call it the invisible load, and goodness gracious, is it real. It isn’t just the things on your to-do list. Those are actually the easy things because at least you can check them off. It’s everything underneath the list. The remembering. The anticipating. The worrying. The emotional support. The decision-making. The noticing what everyone needs before they even ask for it.

If you’re a mother, wife, daughter, grandmother, caregiver, teacher, nurse, business owner, ministry leader or simply the person everybody calls when something goes sideways, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. Everybody sees what you’re doing, but they don’t necessarily see what it costs you to keep doing it. They see the checked boxes, the dinner on the table, the appointment you remembered and the problem you solved. They don’t see the mental and emotional energy it took to hold all of those things in your head at the same time. And when you do that day after day after day, eventually you run into a capacity problem.

We are human beings, after all. You can stretch a rubber band pretty far, but eventually something has to give.

For me, that something often showed up around 5 PM. I wasn’t necessarily experiencing some dramatic, collapse-on-the-floor kind of burnout. It was more like a daily mini burnout, the cumulative effect of a hundred little things. One more person needing something. One more decision. One more dinner to figure out. One more email. One more question. One more problem. And by late afternoon, ONE MORE THING felt like it might be the thing that sent me right over the edge.

And then came wine o’clock.

When Wine Becomes Your Reward

Ahhhhh. There it was. My reward. My exhale. My little signal that said, “Jenn, you have done enough for everyone else today. This is for YOU.” I had worked hard. I had taken care of everyone. I had been responsible. I had checked the boxes. I had earned this. At least that’s what I told myself, and I think a lot of women have been handed some version of that same message. Work hard, play hard. Survive the day, pour the wine. Mommy needs her wine. You deserve it. Treat yourself.

Except it really wasn’t a treat.

That’s what took me years to understand. I thought I was practicing self-care. I thought wine was the thing I did for myself after spending all day doing things for everybody else. And to be fair, I did need something. I just didn’t need alcohol. I needed rest, restoration and quiet. I needed connection. I needed to stop outputting for five minutes and ask myself a question I rarely stopped long enough to ask: Jenn, what do you actually need right now? Not what will give me the fastest relief. Not what will help me check out. Not what have I earned. What do I actually need?

Those are two very different questions, and learning the difference between relief and restoration has been one of the biggest shifts in my sober-minded life.

Alcohol is very good at promising relief, and that’s part of why the habit can become so deeply wired. Even before the first sip, there can be pleasure in the anticipation. You grab the wine glass, hear the cork, start pouring, and your brain already knows what comes next. Ahhh, relief is coming. The anticipation itself becomes part of the reward loop, and eventually the whole sequence can become so automatic that we barely realize we are doing it. The clock hits a certain time, we walk into the kitchen, we reach for the glass, and the brain says, “Oh good, here comes the thing that makes everything feel better.”

And for a little while, maybe it really does feel better. Your shoulders come down. You get a little lift. The day doesn’t seem quite so demanding. But the problem is that the feeling doesn’t last, so you have to keep chasing it. One glass becomes two because the first glass doesn’t keep doing what it did in those first twenty minutes. Then maybe two becomes three. Maybe you wake up at 3:00 AM. Maybe your sleep isn’t restorative. Maybe you wake up foggy or anxious or disappointed in yourself, and now the woman who was already depleted yesterday is beginning a brand-new day with even less in her tank.

That isn’t restoration.

That’s borrowing relief from tomorrow, and tomorrow always sends the bill.

Maybe You Don’t Need Relief. Maybe You Need Rest.

I can see that so clearly now. I was exhausted from pouring myself out all day, so I reached for something that promised to fill me back up. But alcohol wasn’t filling anything. It was simply helping me temporarily stop noticing how empty I felt. What I actually needed was restoration, and restoration often looks a whole lot less exciting than relief. It might be going to bed early, making a cup of tea, eating something because you forgot to eat lunch, sitting outside, moving your body, calling someone who fills your tank, praying, reading Scripture or simply telling your family, “I love all of y’all dearly, but Mama has nothing left to say tonight,” and then going somewhere quiet.

I personally need a lot of quiet, which may surprise anyone who has ever watched me talk for an hour on a Friday workshop without appearing to take a breath, but it’s true. After I have poured out all day, I need some input before I can give any more output. I’ve had to learn that this isn’t selfish. It’s actually one of the most loving things I can do for the people around me because I cannot give them something I do not possess myself. If I have no patience, peace, presence or energy left in me, I’m going to have a very hard time offering those things genuinely to someone else.

That’s also why I’ve changed the way I think about self-care. We’ve somehow turned self-care into this very Instagrammable event involving spa robes, cucumber water, expensive candles and possibly a hotel room overlooking the ocean. And listen, I am not opposed to any of those things. If someone wants to send me to a spa in the name of Sober Sis research, I will prayerfully consider that assignment. But most of the self-care that has actually changed my life is much less glamorous. Sometimes self-care is eating lunch. Sometimes it’s saying no. Sometimes it’s going to bed. Sometimes it’s turning off the phone, setting a boundary, moving my body, sitting quietly with God or admitting that I simply do not have the bandwidth for one more commitment.

Real self-care isn’t necessarily indulgent.

It’s restorative. It’s intentional.

And it doesn’t come with a hidden cost.

That last part matters because alcohol absolutely has hidden costs. We notice the obvious ones, like the actual money we spend on it, but there are plenty of others. There’s the sleep cost, the anxiety cost, the energy cost, the mental bandwidth cost and the cost of spending part of the next day recovering from the thing we used to recover from the day before. I think back to how tired I used to be, and it wasn’t only physical tiredness. I was tired from being misaligned. I was tired from living with a divided mind. I would spend the day being responsible Jenn, doing all the things and showing up for all the people, and then around 5:00 I would give myself permission to check out. The wine gave me that initial burst of relief, but then I had to keep drinking to maintain it while simultaneously working to make sure I didn’t look like I was drinking too much. Talk about exhausting. I was using energy to escape the fact that I had no energy left.

The Divided Mind Is Exhausting

I think this dividedness is something many women understand, even if alcohol isn’t the thing dividing them anymore. We can want two things at the same time that simply do not go together. I want the wine, and I don’t want what the wine is doing to me. I want to be available to everyone, and I desperately want everyone to leave me alone. I want to be the person people can count on, and I’m resentful that everyone is counting on me. I want to take care of myself, but I feel guilty whenever I do.

Two competing desires create tension inside us, and carrying that tension around all day is tiring. This is one reason sober-minded living has become about so much more than whether alcohol is in my glass. For me, sober-mindedness means being awake, alert, aware and present in my own life. It means noticing when my mind is divided and knowing how to course-correct instead of expecting myself to stay in some magical state of perfect alignment all the time.

The goal isn’t, “I’ve got this.” The goal is learning what to do when I realize, “Okay, I don’t got this right now.” I can stop. I can pay attention. I can renew my thinking. I can ask what is actually true and which of these competing desires is going to lead me toward the life I really want. I can become present again instead of floating through my day trying to be good, responsible, productive and liked while being completely disconnected from myself.

That presence matters because when we are disconnected from ourselves, we can begin giving to other people from a place that isn’t particularly healthy either.

We say yes when we want to say no. We help when we don’t have the capacity to help. We give and give and give, and then somewhere underneath all that giving is a tiny little voice saying, “Does anybody see everything I’m doing around here?” I know that voice. I have heard that voice. And usually when she shows up, it’s a pretty good indication that I’m not giving from overflow anymore. I’m pouring from an empty cup and starting to resent people for being thirsty.

That’s not the kind of love I want to give.

If I really love the people around me, one of the best things I can do is become a more wholehearted woman. Not a woman who never gets tired or never needs anything, but a woman who recognizes that she has limits and honors them. A woman who knows when she needs connection and when she needs solitude. A woman who can help without needing to be needed. A woman who can serve without abandoning herself in the process.

Care for the Caregiver

Women are caregivers in about seventeen thousand different ways. We care for children, spouses, aging parents, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, employees, clients, churches, classrooms and communities. Some women are professional caregivers. Others have simply become the person in the family everyone relies on. There is nothing wrong with being a caregiver. Caring is beautiful. Giving is beautiful. Serving is beautiful too. But somewhere along the way, we have to remember to care for the caregiver too.

We’ve all heard the oxygen-mask analogy so many times that I almost hate to use it, but there’s a reason it sticks around. You put your own mask on first because if you pass out, you aren’t going to be much help to the person sitting next to you. That isn’t selfishness. That’s reality. And yet so many of us spend our days walking around emotionally oxygen-deprived while trying to make sure everyone else can breathe.

Maybe a better question than “Am I practicing enough self-care?” is simply, “What actually restores me?” The answer is going to look different for different women. Maybe it’s exercise. Maybe it’s getting outside. Maybe it’s sitting with a friend who doesn’t need anything from you. Maybe it’s an hour without your phone. Maybe it’s solitude because your entire day has been filled with people and words and noise. Maybe it’s going to Bible study, journaling, praying, breathwork or taking a nap without feeling the need to justify it to anyone.

The point isn’t to create another self-care checklist for high-functioning women to excel at. Good grief, we’d probably turn that into another thing we have to accomplish. The point is to start noticing ourselves again. To ask what we need before we get so depleted that we will grab whatever offers the fastest escape.

Because I can tell you from experience, when your cup is fuller at 5:00, you are a whole lot less desperate to pour something into a wine glass.

Where I Go When My Cup Is Empty

There’s another piece of this that I can’t leave out because it wouldn’t be honest for me to write about how I fill my cup without telling you where I actually go.

For me, self-care can’t only be about filling myself up with more of myself. There are days when I simply don’t have enough. My husband is a human being too, and as much as I love him, there are days when he’s tired and I’m tired. My friends are human. My family is human. Everybody around me can be busy, weary or carrying an invisible load of their own. I need a source that isn’t depleted when I’m depleted.

That source for me is God.

There is an image from Scripture that has become deeply meaningful to me: come, cast and be caused to rest. I come to God carrying all the things I was never designed to carry alone, and then I cast them. I love that word because casting isn’t gently setting something down and then keeping one hand on it just in case God needs a little help. Casting is getting the thing OFF of you. The invisible load. The worry. The decision fatigue. The need to fix everyone. The need to control the outcome. The need to be everything to everyone everywhere every time. I can finally say, “This is too heavy for me. I am one human woman, and I cannot carry all of this.”

And then comes the part I love most: I can rest.

I think about the picture of God as the great Shepherd and how sheep apparently aren’t always very good at knowing when to stop. They wander. They keep going. They get themselves into situations they can’t get themselves out of. Frankly, I find this extremely relatable. I can keep trying and trying and trying long after I should have stopped. I can apply more willpower, make another list and decide that surely I can manage just one more thing. Sometimes I can’t even cause myself to rest because my mind is still going a hundred miles an hour when my head hits the pillow.

But I can come. I can cast. And I can trust the Shepherd of my soul to hold what I cannot.

That has changed the way I understand being filled up. I used to think strength meant having enough of myself to handle everything. Now I think strength sometimes looks like emptying out enough of myself to make room for more of Him. It means admitting I have limits. It means surrendering things that were never mine to control in the first place. And strangely enough, when I stop trying to be everything, I have so much more of myself available to genuinely love the people God has put in front of me.

Maybe the Wine Was Never the Real Need

I think this is one of the gifts of taking a break from alcohol. You begin to see things you couldn’t see while you were using wine to blur the edges of your exhaustion. You start noticing the patterns underneath the pour. Maybe wine wasn’t really about wine. Maybe it was the only way you knew how to signal that the day was over. Maybe it was the reward you gave yourself because you didn’t know another way to receive. Maybe it was how you created a boundary because you didn’t know how to say, “I’m done for today.” Maybe it was how you quieted a mind that had been carrying everybody else’s needs since the moment your feet hit the floor.

That doesn’t make you weak, and it doesn’t mean there is something fundamentally wrong with you. It means it might be time to get curious about what you’ve actually been thirsty for.

Maybe you don’t need another drink. Maybe you need a boundary. Maybe you don’t need to check out. Maybe you need to rest. Maybe you don’t need to numb yourself. Maybe you need someone to know how tired you really are. Maybe you don’t need to keep proving how much you can carry. Maybe you need permission to put something down.

And maybe the woman who has spent years caring so beautifully for everyone else needs to turn some of that care toward herself.

Not because we are trying to become women who only think about ourselves. That isn’t the goal at all. The goal is to become women who can love others from a place of wholeness rather than depletion. Women who know the difference between being needed and being called. Women who can give without disappearing. Women who understand that caring for ourselves allows us to stay present for the people we love instead of giving them the exhausted fragments that happen to be left over at the end of the day.

So, Sis, if you’re the one everybody depends on, I want you to ask yourself a question today: Where are you in all of this?

Not where are the kids. Not what does your husband need. Not what needs to happen at work. Not what’s for dinner. Not who needs a text back. Not what you forgot to order from Amazon.

Where are you?

What would restore you today? What have you been calling self-care that is actually just temporary relief? What are you carrying that is too heavy? Where might you need a boundary? Where do you need some input before you give one more ounce of output?

And if 5:00 tends to be the hour when the wine starts whispering your name, maybe instead of immediately asking, “Can I have a drink?” you could try asking a different question.

What do I really need right now?

Then listen for the answer. You may discover you weren’t really thirsty for wine after all. You were thirsty for rest. For connection. For peace. For God. For yourself.

And Sis, those are things worth pouring into.

Keep going and growing,

Jenn