Love Yourself First

The Oxygen Mask Principle

You can’t lead with an empty soul,
or raise the future from a fractured past.
The love we give the world begins
in the small act of choosing ourselves,
not once, but over and over again.

Because wholeness is the foundation.
Of strong leaders.
Of safe homes.
Of a country worth believing in.

A photo of my mother when she was 21

Growing up, I believed that love, at its core, was a force capable of filling the dark holes within us. I thought that once you found the right person, everything — every insecurity, every shadow that trailed you through life - would magically disappear.

I fell for those three simple words: 'happily ever after.' Hook, line, sinker.

At that age, everyone I knew seemed to believe the same thing. I bought into the fairytale promise of eternal bliss, never once questioning what came after the carriage turned back into a pumpkin, after the glass slipper was stored away in some forgotten closet.

Then I watched my mother's life slowly unravel.

I remember her hands folding laundry. Always the same careful movements, repeated through days that became years. Her wedding ring would catch the evening light, sending tiny prisms dancing across the unpainted ceiling.

That ring, a symbol of eternal love and partnership, became something heavier over time. A golden shackle that tethered her happiness to another person’s existence.

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Love isn’t a fixer-upper.

After seeing love break, then mend, then transform over the years, I understand now it isn't meant to fill our empty spaces. It's more the light that finally lets us see those spaces clearly for what they are.

It illuminates corners of ourselves we've spent too long ignoring. My mother's marriage wasn't a failure because it couldn't patch the hollow places inside her — it was the mirror showing her all the work she had left to do for herself. Work she never started.

I think about how she’d smooth each wrinkle from Dad’s shirt as if pressing out those wrinkles, she could somehow iron away the complications in their relationship. The air would smell of rose water and fabric softener, and she’d hum the latest bhajan (religious song) soft and sad, a melody that seemed to carry the burden of all her silent aspirations.

Sometimes her hands would stop mid-fold, and she'd just stare out the window. The longing in her face made my chest hurt.

That's her in my memory. It's why going home feels both sweet and painful, even now.

Now I see that what we call love is a tango between two whole people, each carrying their own constellation of scars and dreams.

We each learn to fill our own, like two trees growing side by side, roots intertwined, but reaching toward the sun on their own terms.

My mother never figured this out. She kept pouring herself into all the empty spaces in my father's life, thinking that if she loved him perfectly enough, completely enough, their wounds would both heal.

But love doesn’t work that way.

It’s not meant to be a bandage.

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My mom and dad on their wedding day.

The fantasy of the “other half”

The most difficult lesson wasn’t learning that fairytales weren’t real — it was understanding that real love, with all its imperfections, is more beautiful than any story of happily ever after.

My mother died heartbroken, not because my father was inherently a bad man — his gambling addiction was its own kind of prison — but because she had surrendered her identity to the altar of marriage.

She spent her life trying to fix him, heal him, save him until there was nothing left of herself to save. Each time my father lost at cards, she would pawn another piece of jewelry, gold bangles that had been her mother's, earrings from her wedding day - exchanging her past for his future until even her memories were mortgaged.

She had bought into what I now call the Disney Delusion, the idea that finding your “other half” automatically equals finding yourself.

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The magical thinking that keeps us stuck

Last week at dinner, someone claimed that returning to the office would solve the loneliness epidemic in our society. I laughed, not from humor but recognition — it's the same magical thinking that destroyed my mother.

We’re still doing it, aren’t we?

Pinning our happiness on external solutions: a spouse, a building, a car, a corner office. It is as if concrete and steel could fill the void that only self-discovery can address. As if proximity to other equally lost souls could somehow find our own.

No one really says this out loud, but here it is: marriage and life were never meant to be about finding someone to complete you, or building a life around things that look good on paper. It’s about showing up as your full self, not hoping someone else will fill the gaps.

You’ve got to do that work on your own. No partner, no job, no dream house can do it for you.

According to research from The Gottman Institute, couples who support each other’s personal goals and keep their own interests alive tend to have more satisfying relationships. Yet somehow, we’re still feeding ourselves and our daughters the fairy tale ending that suggests otherwise.

I see it a lot in my consulting practice: successful women who can navigate billion-dollar deals but can’t navigate their own happiness without checking their partner’s emotional GPS.

One client came to me last spring, her Hermès scarf knotted as tightly as her anxiety. “I have everything,” she said, gesturing vaguely at her corner office view of the Pacific Ocean. The husband, the kids, the career. So why do I feel like I’m disappearing?”

The answer, I’ve learned, lies in what I call the Oxygen Mask Principle.

You know that safety demonstration on airplanes?

“Put your own mask on before assisting others.”

Marriage works the same way — you can’t sustain a healthy partnership if you’re emotionally suffocating.

Leadership works the same way. You can’t lead a team if you’re running on fumes.

You can’t be a good friend if your empathy is burned to a crisp. And you certainly can’t be a thoughtful citizen if your sense of self is always in crisis mode. We talk a lot about service and sacrifice, but rarely about sustainability.

My mother never put her oxygen mask on. She was too busy making sure my father’s fit perfectly. She abandoned her dreams of opening a small bakery because she couldn’t imagine pursuing something that wasn’t directly tied to her role as wife and mother.

It was too late when she realized she had lost herself. She died suddenly, without warning.

The coroner listed it as a heart attack, though she’d never had heart problems before. Sometimes, I wonder if hearts can break, if years of disappearing into someone else’s life can cause physical pain so deep it stops you from breathing.

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My husband and I are just playing the fool

Marriage and self-discovery

I think about my own marriage — how my husband supported each of my career pivots, my craziness, my oddities, and championed my writing endeavors even though he views social media as a toxic wasteland where humans are mean and shout at each other.

But he understood eventually that these platforms were tools for my voice, not just distractions. In turn, I’ve celebrated his promotions and stood beside him through life-altering decisions, knowing that his growth doesn’t diminish mine.

Marriage is fucking hard, but after twenty-seven years, we’ve learned to be each other’s cheerleaders without becoming each other’s crutches.

The truth about “happily ever after” isn’t that it doesn’t exist — it’s that it doesn’t come pre-packaged with a wedding certificate.

It’s built day by day, choice by choice, in the tiny moments when you choose yourself without guilt. And in the big moments when you bring your whole, complicated, ever-evolving self to your partnership.

My father, in the years since my mother’s death, has finally started to understand this. “Your mother,” he told me recently, his voice thick with revelation, “she should have opened that bakery.” He paused, turning his own wedding ring around his finger. “I should have pushed her to do it.”

But that’s the point — she shouldn’t have needed pushing.

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The courage to save yourself

So here’s my suggestion: what if we rewrote the fairy tale?

What if “happily ever after” meant two whole people choosing to build something together rather than two halves desperately trying to become whole?

What if the true measure of a successful marriage wasn’t how much you need each other but how much you help each other grow?

I’m not one for prayers, but I hope that somewhere between grief and understanding, my father finds his way to that same truth.

Maybe it’s not too late for him to discover who he is beyond being my mother’s widower, beyond being our father, beyond being the man who couldn’t save her.

Because happily ever after isn’t about saving someone else, but about having the courage to save yourself while loving deeply enough to let others do the same.

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Thank you for taking the time!

I’ll be off starting Thursday for the long Memorial Day weekend, attempting to master the art of doing absolutely nothing….except eating and drinking.

I’ll catch up once I’m back and re-caffeinated.

Wishing you a great week and an even better weekend in advance!

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