What if everything you believe about your value is tied to the opinions of others?
What if the reason you feel unfulfilled, unworthy, or unseen isn’t because you’re not enough, but because you’ve been trying to prove that you are?
This is a story about wrestling with those questions. About pulling back the curtain on what we’ve been taught to believe about worth. It’s messy, personal, and might hit a little too close to home. But maybe, just maybe, it’s exactly what you need today.
I’ve always been told I’m too much.
Too deep, too emotional, too curious, too complicated.
For a long time, I wore ‘too much’ like a scarlet letter—an unshakable brand I thought I’d have to peel off to belong, or worse, to succeed.
Because being “too much” isn’t marketable.
Being “too much” doesn’t make money.’
To this day, my family loves to share the story of how, as a kid, I’d come home from school and recount every single detail of my day at the dinner table. They tell it like it’s an innocent, lighthearted joke—but to me, it’s more than that.
It haunts me because as I outwardly smile, laugh, and own it like I’m meant to, my insides fold in on themselves because all they’re really saying is,
“Yes, she’s always been a lot.”
So I learned to compartmentalize.
I asked myself:
What parts of me are valuable enough to present?
Which parts of me do people want?
What pieces of this ‘too much’ puzzle do I need to hide so I don’t overwhelm them—or worse, get left behind?
But recently, I started to wonder:
Who told me that my value comes from what other people think of me?
I started peeling back the layers—slowly, carefully, because taking a scalpel to your own identity is terrifying.
What I found underneath was this glaring, undeniable truth:
So much of how I’ve deemed myself valuable has come from the validation of others.
Their applause, their approval, their willingness to stick around. And every time I was praised for being ‘enough,’ another part of me—another piece that was ‘too much’—withered. It died quietly, hollowing out a space in my chest.
There’s this audition we all go through.
It’s not formal or announced, but we show up for it every day. Every interaction, every post, every relationship—it’s all part of the audition.
It’s the way I’d rehearse conversations in my head before a meeting or second-guess my tone in texts to a new friend.
The audition isn’t always obvious, but you feel it every day.
We step onto the stage, waiting to see if we’ll be deemed worthy, lovable, relatable, enough.
And when we don’t get the part?
When someone scrolls past, ghosts us, or tells us we’re “too much”?
It feels like confirmation that the deepest, most tender parts of ourselves don’t belong.
I’ve been thinking about that audition lately. About how I’ve handed over the reins of my self-worth to the opinions of people who don’t know the half of me—and probably couldn’t handle it if they did.
And honestly? I don’t blame them.
This isn’t about vilifying anyone. We live in a world that rewards the surface, the digestible, the viral, the bite-sized.
A world that asks us to boil down our big, messy, beautiful humanity into marketable soundbites and shiny profiles.
We’ve all been trained to measure our worth in metrics:
The Likes
The Followers
The Paychecks
The Promotions
The Praise
We’ve been conditioned to believe that our worth is tied to our output, to what we can produce, to how we can fit ourselves into boxes that make other people comfortable.
But what if the parts of us that don’t fit are the most valuable?
Here’s where I get personal, though, because I’ve been wrestling with this in ways that feel too big to hold on my own.
For most of my life, I’ve believed that I’d never make money simply by being the whole of me.
Because “me” is not palatable or relatable or easy to define.
I’m not the girl next door or the boss babe or the relatable self-help coach who has a three-step process to solve your life.
I’m Cait, the girl who feels too much, questions too much, and loves too hard.
And for a long time, I thought that was a problem.
I thought I had to fix myself.
Dilute myself.
Find a way to make this “too much” girl marketable.
And you know what? It worked—for a while.
I’ve built things I’m proud of, reached goals I once dreamed about.
But beneath it all, there’s always been this dull agony—a restless, gnawing ache that whispers, ‘This isn’t it. This isn’t all of you.’
I don’t want to live with that agony anymore.
Because here’s the thing:
A deeply feeling existence can’t—and shouldn’t be shoved into marketable boxes.
We’re not meant to cut off pieces of ourselves to fit into molds that were never made for us.
We’re not meant to measure our value by how well we perform on the stage of other people’s expectations.
We are not meant to shrink into the labels that we carry for other people’s comfort.
A daughter, a mother, a friend, a partner, a boyfriend, girlfriend, a sister, a wife.
Who are we before we put any of that on? What would we have room to lift up within us if we didn’t carry the baggage of all that?
Maybe this is the part where you’re expecting a neat resolution, where I tell you I’ve figured it all out and tied it up with a bow.
But that’s not what this is.
This is messy and raw and ongoing.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this:
I’m done auditioning.
I’m done trying to prove my worth to anyone but myself.
And maybe you are too.
Maybe you’ve felt this same hollow ache, this same exhaustion from trying to be everything for everyone else while losing little pieces of yourself along the way.
Maybe you’ve been told you’re too much or not enough or too something to be worthy of what you want.
I’m here to tell you:
Those whispers? Those messy, deep, unmarketable pieces of you?
They’re the best part.
What if we stopped asking, “How do I make this version of me valuable?”
and started asking, “What makes me valuable to me?”
What if we got curious about the ways we’ve tied our self-worth to external validation?
What if we questioned the systems, the stories, the beliefs that taught us to measure our value in applause?
I think it’s time.
Time to stop auditioning.
Time to stop fitting ourselves into boxes we were never meant to live in.
Time to start showing up as the whole, messy, too much, just right versions of ourselves that we’ve been hiding away.
I don’t have a three-step process for this. I don’t have a neat little solution.
And I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do know this:
When we stop faking it, we finally make space for our whole selves to take the stage—and that’s where the magic begins.
I’d love to know what this stirred up for you—if you’re ready to share. Or maybe just let it sit with you for a while. Either way, I’m glad you’re here.
If this piece resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it too.
To the brave thing. Let’s start there.
Please don’t ever dilute yourself ❤️❤️
Good job @Cait Pearson! Dropping in to support. Thank you!