I Have a Good Life. Why Do I Still Feel Like Something Is Missing?
I hear some version of this from women all the time.
They’ve done everything they were supposed to do. Went to college, graduated, got a good job, met a partner, raised some kids. They have a nice home, a good circle of friends, maybe they take a nice vacation every year. Their life is full of things they genuinely appreciate.
And they are grateful. That’s the thing. These aren’t women walking around complaining about how terrible their lives are. They know how much they have. They recognize the abundance in their lives. Most of the time, they would probably even tell you they’re happy.
But then there are the quiet moments.
The moments when they aren’t rushing to get somewhere or handling the next thing on the list. When nobody needs anything from them and they’re alone with themselves for a minute.
And they feel it.
Something is missing.
The most frustrating part is they can’t put their finger on what it is.
I should be happy
That’s usually where the guilt starts.
I have a good life. I should be happy.
And maybe you are happy. I think we’ve created this strange idea that if something feels missing, it must mean we’re unhappy or ungrateful. Like the two can’t exist at the same time.
Of course they can.
You can love your husband and wonder what happened to the woman you were before you became someone’s wife.
You can adore your children and recognize that you spent a couple of decades putting their needs ahead of your own.
You can be proud of the career you built and realize that the job that once challenged and excited you doesn’t anymore.
You can be grateful for the life you created and still wonder what else you want.
None of that takes anything away from what you already have.
I think sometimes we’ve been so conditioned to be grateful for what we have that we use gratitude to shut down our own truth. You have so much. Other people have it worse. You should be grateful.
Yes. You can be grateful.
And you can want more.
Somewhere in all the things, you stopped paying attention to yourself
Think about how many years you’ve spent handling things.
The job. The marriage. The kids. The house. The bills. The school schedules. The aging parents. The appointments. The holidays. The friendships. The groceries. The thousand little things that make up a life.
Some of those things you chose. Some you loved. Some you probably wouldn’t change even if you could.
I don’t think the answer is to look back and decide you did your life wrong. And I definitely don’t think you need to quit your job, leave your marriage, sell everything you own and go live in a hut somewhere to find yourself.
But somewhere in the middle of doing all the things, you may have stopped asking a really important question.
What do I want now?
Not what did I want when I was 25.
Not what should I want.
Not what makes the most sense for everyone else.
What do I want now?
That can be a surprisingly difficult question to answer when you haven’t asked it in a long time.
Maybe you didn’t lose yourself
We talk about “losing ourselves” like some part of us disappeared.
I don’t really believe that.
I think we lose connection with ourselves.
Your truth is still there. Your intuition is still there. Your curiosity, your creativity, your dreams, your desires, your weirdness, your playfulness, your passion, all the things that light you up...they’re still there.
Your inner fire didn’t go out.
Maybe you just haven’t been tending it.
And after years of not paying much attention to it, you might not even know what lights you up anymore.
That can be scary.
Things you used to enjoy can start to feel empty. You go out with the same people, take the same vacation, do the same things you’ve always done and wonder why they don’t feel the way they used to.
Maybe it’s because you’ve changed.
We expect our bodies to change as we get older. Our relationships change. Our children grow up. Our careers change. Our priorities change.
Why wouldn’t what makes us feel alive change too?
Maybe the problem isn’t that something has gone wrong.
Maybe something inside you is trying to get your attention.
You’re probably not going to find yourself by doing the same thing over and over again
This is the part I think we avoid.
We want something to change, but we keep living inside the exact same patterns that got us here.
Same routine. Same conversations. Same people. Same responsibilities. Same way of responding. Same things we do for fun. Same things we say yes to. Same things we tell ourselves we’ll get to later.
And then we sit in the middle of all of it trying to figure out what’s missing.
Sometimes you have to shake things up enough to see what you can’t see from inside your normal life.
I’m not talking about blowing everything up. I’m talking about allowing some space for your truth to be seen.
Do something you’ve never done before. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Take the class that makes absolutely no practical sense but sounds fun. Go to dinner by yourself. Make something. Travel somewhere without your usual people. Say no when your automatic response would have been yes. Say yes to something that scares you a little.
Put yourself in situations where you don’t already know exactly who you’re supposed to be.
It might feel uncomfortable.
Good.
Sometimes discomfort is just what it feels like when we step outside a pattern we’ve been running for twenty years.
Your fire needs your attention
I think that’s what so many women are actually feeling when they tell me something is missing.
It isn’t necessarily a missing person, career, house, purpose, hobby or accomplishment.
Maybe you miss you.
The part of you that gets excited. The part that wants things. The part that is curious.
The part that doesn't have to justify why something matters to her. The part that knows when something feels right before she can explain it.
She’s still there.
But she needs some attention. Some nurturing. Some oxygen.
You have to tend the fire if you want it to burn.
And maybe that starts with ten minutes today. Maybe it starts with trying something different this weekend. Maybe it starts with finally admitting that something you’ve been doing for years doesn’t feel good anymore.
Or maybe you need more than ten minutes.
Maybe you need to actually step outside your life long enough to hear yourself again.
That’s a big part of why I created Reclaiming Your Sacred Fire, a four-day women’s retreat in Florida.
I wanted to create a place where women could step away from their normal routines, roles and responsibilities for a few days. Different surroundings. Different conversations. Ceremony. Nature. Creativity. Laughter. Rest. New experiences. Other women asking some of the same questions.
Not so you can escape your life.
So you can get enough space from the patterns of your life to see yourself a little more clearly.
And then you go home.
To the husband you love. The job you chose. The kids. The friends. The house. The life you’ve built.
But maybe you come home paying a little more attention to the woman living inside all of it.
Maybe you start asking her what she wants.
Maybe you start trusting the answer.
Maybe you start tending your own fire again.
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