53 the year of me

53: The Year of Me

Sounds really selfish, right?

Like—how can I put myself at the top of the food chain?
Don’t I care about my husband, my kids, my grandbabies?

Here’s my answer:
If I don’t put myself first—if I’m not at the top of my own priority list—then I’m not really caring for them at all.

I’ve spent over 30 years caring for everyone else first. That’s what was modeled to me as a kid. My mom never put herself first, and she spent a lot of her life unhappy and miserable. Now, she was a great woman—an incredible nurse and an amazing friend—but she put everything and everyone ahead of herself. And in the end, when it was just her, she had to work really hard to find her own happiness.

You’d think I would’ve learned from that. But instead, I absorbed what she did, not what she said. I guess that’s proof that more is caught than taught. And honestly, it wasn’t until I started watching my own kids making the same mistakes I made that I realized we were repeating cycles.

So, sometime last year—maybe a little over a year ago—I made a decision.
I was done with the cycles.
It was time to figure out what made me happy.
Time to discover what I needed, so I could truly be the mom, the wife, and the grandma I want to be.

More than that, it was time to become the woman God created me to be.

He gave me all of these beautiful roles—wife, mom, grandma—but I realized I’ve never truly been the woman He intended for me to be in any of them.

I’ve hidden in the background. I’ve shrunk myself down. I’ve hidden behind my weight. I’ve hidden behind my health. I’ve hidden behind every wall I could find, afraid to fully become who I was created to be.

Afraid people wouldn’t like me anymore.
Afraid I wouldn’t be accepted.
Afraid I would succeed and then not like myself—or even worse, not like my family anymore.

I know that probably sounds crazy.
But we live in a world that preaches self-care, while also telling us that if we take care of ourselves, we’re bad moms, bad wives, bad partners. It’s the original Catch-22.

So, God isolated me—for my own good.
He stripped so much away. And I ended up in a place of total brokenness, where all I could do was cry at night. My marriage wasn’t good. My relationships with my kids weren’t good. And I was dying inside.

No amount of weight loss, or working out, or eating right—which are all good things—could fix the hole inside of me.

Because the hole was about identity.

I had built my entire identity around my roles. But when your identity is built around other people, two things happen:

1. You get lost.

2. When they have a problem, you have a problem.

So, when I turned 53 (a month or so before, actually), I made a real decision:
To figure out who I really am.

Who is Dawn?
And more importantly—who does God want her to be?

That part changed everything.

Because when I asked Him, He told me something powerful—one of many things He’s shown me along the way:

I’m too hard on myself.
He’s not looking for a practically perfect version of me.
He wants the broken, messy, can’t-always-hold-it-together me.
He wants the surrendered me.
The trusting me.
The me who puts Him first... and then puts me second.

I’ve heard all the cheesy sermons about "God first, you second, others third," but it’s not real until He becomes your first—personally.
Until then, you won’t want to care for yourself—or anyone else—the right way.

Now, I don’t want to be codependent.
I want to be dependent on God—and let Him teach everyone else in my life to do the same.
Because until we depend on the One who made us, we’ll never figure it out.

It’s a journey.
It’s a process.
It’s not always easy.
And it’s almost always messy.

But I’ve found a few things already:

✨ I’ve found my smile.
✨ I’ve found my laughter.
✨ I’ve found real joy in watching God work in the lives of those around me.

Instead of trying to control everything as a mom or wife, I now just sit back and watch what God is doing. And yes, it’s still messy. But there’s a deep joy and peace I had lost for so long—stolen by anxiety and depression.

And the more I embrace that joy and peace, the more the anxiety and depression lose their grip.

So maybe none of this makes sense to anyone else—but this year, I’m figuring some things out:

God is first.
I am second.
And I am enough.
I am worthy.
I am special.
I am unique.
I have a calling and a purpose.
And my gifts will make room for me in front of great men.

That’s a promise—and I receive it.