0
Share on bsky
It’s my favorite time of year, the quiet coffee morning moments surrounded by the soft glow of white Christmas tree lights and the aching moans of my midlife body as I wrap presents, sitting on the cold laminate floor, bathed in wrapping paper, assorted bows, scissors, tape, and a lost sharpie marker.
Every December, my family’s stockings appear above the crackling electric fireplace—hung with care, fluffed for photos, bursting with small proofs of thoughtfulness. Mini Lego sets. New socks. Chocolate. A handwritten note. The stocking is never the main gift, yet it’s the most intimate one. It says, I saw you.
And yet, if you look closely—really look—there is often one stocking that grows lighter, even at times empty, each year.
The woman’s.
This is what I’ve come to call The Empty Stocking Effect: the quiet, cumulative exhaustion of women who give so consistently that depletion becomes invisible—and eventually, expected.
Women who fill everyone else’s stocking while insisting they “don’t need much.”
Women who shop, plan, anticipate, remember. Women who become the emotional infrastructure of their families—while slowly disappearing from themselves. And it happens painstakingly slowly, to where one day, we stand in front of the bathroom mirror asking ourselves, “Who is this woman looking back at me?”
And the most dangerous part?
We’ve been trained to believe that wanting our own stocking filled is selfish.
If you find yourself still reading, clearly this motif is symbolic—of loss, quiet sacrifice, an almost silent desperate cry to be seen. Let’s be honest: women are praised not for having needs, but for enduring without complaint.
We are applauded for being low-maintenance, adaptable, endlessly forgiving. For making magic out of scarcity. For producing warmth without ever asking for fuel.
But sacrifice without replenishment isn’t love—it’s erosion.
Somewhere along the way, many of us internalized the idea that our value is tied to how much we can carry without breaking. That exhaustion is a badge of honor. That if we need rest, softness, care—something must be wrong with us.
So we give on empty.
And then on fumes.
And then on memory alone.
And the craziest part? This isn’t a trend with a million-plus TikTok views—what we’re witnessing is a downright reckoning.
A generation of midlife women—especially those who married young, raised children, built households, supported careers while also building their own career, managed emotions (at least tried), survived betrayal, grief, trauma, and invisible labor—is no longer willing to pretend that depletion is sustainable.
We are burned out.
We are f*cking tired.
And we are done romanticizing it.
This is not about wanting “more stuff” or chasing luxury. It’s about reciprocity. About presence. About being poured into with the same intentionality we’ve given to everyone else for decades.
Midlife strips away the lies because the body starts keeping receipts. The nervous system refuses to cooperate. The soul begins to revolt.
You wake up one morning and realize:
I have been the stocking. And nobody, not even myself, was filling it.
~
Read 3 comments and reply