Beyond the Luisa Complex: Why Asking for Support is Your Greatest Strength
Finding Strength in Expansion: Why Motherhood Wasn't Meant to Be a Solo Act
You know the movie Encanto - the one where every family member (minus Mirabel) is gifted with a special kind of magic? For me this movie isn't just a catchy soundtrack; it’s has been a voice and a mirror in different seasons of my life.
There is one character in particular who seems to speak the unspoken language of my early years of motherhood: Luisa.
She’s the rock. The "strong one." The one who carries the literal donkeys and the weight of the entire village on her shoulders without breaking a sweat. Or so it seems. She sings:
I move mountains, I move churches
And I glow, 'cause I know what my worth is
I don't ask how hard the work is
Got a rough indestructible surface
Diamonds and platinum, I find 'em, I flatten 'em
I take what I'm handed, I break what's demanded
But under the surface, I feel berserk as a tightrope walker in a three-ring circus
...
Under the surface, I'm pretty sure I'm worthless if I can't be of service.
In my eight years of motherhood, here is what I have experienced: the pressure of motherhood doesn’t stop. It’s that "drip, drip, drip" that never lets up.
In early motherhood, I was Luisa. I wore my strength like a badge of honor, believing that holding the whole world together was my magic gift. But the truth? I was breaking and screaming on the inside.
I find myself circling back to that place even now - wanting to be the strong one, wanting to prove I can handle it all, while my inner world knows this tight rope and can now CHOOSE something different..
That is knowing what I need and asking for help.
What if asking for support wasn't a sign that your magic is fading, but the actual magic. the magic and the moment you step into your greatest expansion?
The Cost of the "I Can Do It All" Narrative
The belief I carried that "I can do it all" created behaviors that pushed myself and others away. I pushed through, I denied what my body was communicating, and I rejected others' offers for support. The result wasn't a trophy; it was overwhelm, depletion, and a short fuse.
Living in overwhelm became my default setting. It was a chaotic way of being that translated to being hurried, irritable, and simply annoyed with the people I love most. I was so comfortable pushing past my limits that I wasn't even aware I had capacity. I thought I was limitless - not in the beautiful, abundant sense of potential. limitless meaning could be the strong one always. I was totally disconnected from my body. I was ignoring 90% of my own needs.
If you're like me, it’s so easy to justify help when a crisis hits. But I want us to move past the "extreme circumstances" justification. You shouldn’t need a tragedy to deserve a support system.
Reframing Support as Strength
The expansion in asking for support begins with knowing what it is I need. This is where the transformation happens: tuning into what is happening in and around me. It is vulnerable.
Even today, I have been riding the waves of shame and the messages associated with it, AND I reached out to my core group of women simply for a witness. I was asked the most vulnerable question: "Can you identify your need, and how can we support you?"
I mean, how blessed am I to lean on these women? Tuning into what I need and asking for it is a clunky dance—riding the waves and crashing at times.
So, how do I tune into my needs?
Journaling - to clean the fog and find clarity and my truth
Meditating - to bring stillness and inner quiet and also possibility
Touch - to bring me back into my body and meet God
Simply sitting - in the message (in my case today, shame) , the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Reclaiming My Energy in Motherhood
It also doesn't always need to be the "inner work." Sometimes, expansion is simply about the actionable ways I resource my life, asking for help and outsource the things that I feel drained by.
In business, we hear this all the time and it seems more acceptable. We outsource marketing, copy, web design, bookkeeping without a second thought because we know it makes us more effective. Yet, in motherhood, we cling to the "shoulds" - I should be able to _____… until we collapse, missing the very rituals that support our regulation.
And is it really worth it?
In this season, here is how I am resourcing myself and choosing to receive support:
In the Kitchen: Dinner is handled by my partner (and if it’s me cooking dinner, we’re having breakfast).
In My Work: I use the park, library, and play spaces to work. I’m actually writing this at the playground right now while my youngest moves between playing in the sandbox and sock puppets on the bench next to me.
In My Self-Care: I use coffee shops, the gym with childcare, or the park as spaces to be "poured into" with a nourishing drink and a good book.
In My Home: We have a housekeeper once a month, and I use screens (praise the heavens for TV) when I need a moment of quiet.
In My Community: I reach out to neighbors and friends for playdates both for fun and also when the kids (or I) have "lost it" or when life feels heavy and lonely.
With My Village: I hire a babysitter and I’m learning to let things go - knowing which balls are made of glass and which ones can bounce.
I realized as I wrote this list that I’m not necessarily always calling a friend to pull me out of a chaos, trust me I do this… and I am resourcing myself with spaces and places that keep me from living in the chaos in the first place. I’m moving away from the fear of being seen as "not enough" and from the need to prove I can do it all.
Step Into Your Becoming as Mother
Just like Luisa finally letting go of the boulders to find her own joy, I’m realizing that my worth isn’t measured by how much I can do. When I trade that heavy "strong one" mask for actual support, I’m not losing my magic - I am finally clearing the space TO BE the magic and give it room to breathe.
I believe that asking for support makes me more expansive. It makes us all more expansive. For me, perhaps it shows more strength rather than showing how much I can “suffer” through by carrying it all. I am doing no one a favor by white-knuckling my way through motherhood. Help is active, and receiving it creates a sense of aliveness in me that naturally overflows into my family and my community.
The Next Step: The Art of Receiving
There is another side to this coin, though. It’s not just about asking for support - it’s being able to actually receive it. Receiving requires naming the blocks, which usually look like guilt or that nagging sense of unworthiness when we actually get what we want. It can feel icky at first. But if we want to be expansive, we have to open ourselves up to let the help in.
I'll be sharing more on the practice of receiving soon.
If you are feeling that full-body dread or the weight of "holding the world" right now, I’d love to walk through that clunky dance with you. You don't have to be the Luisa of your family, carrying every load and every should alone. Step Into Your Becoming is my Holistic Postpartum Planning container and is designed specifically to help expecting mothers identify those energetic drains, open yourself to receive and build your own version of "the village" before the baby comes.
And if you’re looking for that intentional, physical community to lean on, come join us at The Village Reimagined, where we move out of our isolated silos and into the collective support we were always meant to have.
Sending you so much love,
