Spill the Strawberries: Foster's Struggle with Carrying Too Much

Are you feeling burned out and buried under everything you're carrying? Foster opens up about losing herself in her workload, sacrificing personal joy for potential collective success, and how that pattern affected both her relationship with Cesar and her own vibrancy. They discuss the gendered nature of caretaking and burden-carrying and how women especially take on too much. This conversation is for anyone who feels gray inside from carrying too much, has lost touch with what brings them joy, or needs permission to disappoint others for the sake of finding themselves again.

In this episode they explore: 

• Why Foster disappeared from the vibrancy of her own relationship
• The waiter metaphor that perfectly explains burnout (and why you can't accept help)
• How sacrificing current joy for potential future success steals your life
• The gendered reality of who carries the burden
• Why "let me know if you need anything" doesn't actually help
• How to actually help someone who's carrying too much

Also mentioned: 

• Loonshots by Safi Bahcall

If this episode spoke to you, you will love Why It’s Never Equal where we explore gender roles and invisible labor. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram and TikTok. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Receive his newsletter Insights That Matter
• Get guided meditation from Cesar on his website 
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

This episode is brought to you by Jamaal Pittman. You can donate to his scholarship at WheelerScholarship.com, supporting college enrollment.

Transcript

The burnout is so real and destructive.

You would look at me like I can't believe I let myself be in relationship with this guy.

What?

Yeah.

And I felt buried under everything that I was carrying.

Welcome to Beauty and the Break.

Here we explore stories of how barriers are broken, both within ourselves and within the world.

I'm Foster Wilson.

And I'm Cesar Cardona.

This is a home for you, questioning the rules you inherited and choosing your own path forward.

We are here with you on this messy and courageous journey.

Let's dive in.

Today, I want to share with you a little bit about the messy middle of what's going on in my life right now.

You and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about me disappearing a little from, I would say, the vibrancy of our relationship.

Yeah.

I feel like the pattern in relationships with me can be to get really close with someone, to get really involved and intimate, but also like invested.

And very present and very much in the now and then get excited to work on projects with that person, create with that person, which we have done here with the show.

And in the past, it's been other things, other projects or children or whatever we're building together as we build a life.

And then I become very focused on the building of the thing. And I forget the texture of what's underneath the building that the foundation of it.

I'm just focused on the big picture part.

It was affecting me, but I didn't notice it as much as it was affecting you.

Yeah, I could see it in your demeanor, your eyes.

You would look at me and there was less of a habitual bid for connection and how you would look at me.

This part I'm projecting, but you would look at me like, I can't believe I let myself be in a relationship with this guy.

What?

Yeah.

Well, that's a complete projection.

Yeah, complete projection.

I hope.

Yeah.

And it just looked like you looked at me like, God, what have I done in a sense?

That's what it seemed like.

Now, to be more literal, your energy was lower.

Anytime we were trying to be funny or silly, I could see your head was somewhere else.

I'm trying to dance.

I could see your eyes were just not there.

You laughed less.

You weren't affectionate to me.

And if I was affectionate to you, I could tell you were just reciprocating until it was done.

I noticed it all.

And at first, my first thought was like, well, you're fucked this one up too.

You might as well just give it up then, right?

And I know that's not the case.

I know that thought.

I'm like, oh, you're still here.

Well, I hadn't seen you in some years, but you're still here.

And then the next thought was just to kind of be a little, maybe angry in a sense.

Like, I'm doing all the things I'm here for her.

And I'm loving on her.

What?

You know?

And then a lot of it after that, the third part was, you know, just soften up and be there

for her.

Just be there.

Just keep being friendly and cordial and tell her you love her.

Give her a little space, probably, but just be cordial and love on her.

It's - god, it's such a

a shitty thing to hear because we basically had a lot leading up to this

conversation.

I could feel it, obviously.

I basically felt like a lot of the, again, the vibrancy was sucked out of me.

And I felt buried under workload and everything that I was carrying.

Mind you, it's all relative, right?

Like, what I'm carrying is the weight of putting a show together that we get to be together

and have fun and talk about stuff and meet cool people and have great conversations.

Like, it's not all that serious.

And I made it pretty serious.

And I'm still, this is messy middle episode, okay?

So like, I'm still, this is not fixed yet.

But it's embarrassing to me that I could suck the fun out of something.

And it really had nothing to do with you in a way.

In a way, it had nothing to do with you as entirely me because a deeper thing that I've

realized in analyzing what the hell's going on with me is that I think for a long time

now I've gotten away from the things that bring me individual joy for the sake of potential

collective joy between the two of us.

And that's part of this, like, losing myself in a relationship thing.

And I've done that in the past very much.

And I thought I had a lot of it under control here, like, handled in that, you know,

we didn't completely enmesh our lives.

We don't live together.

That's not on the horizon.

We don't want to get married and have biological children.

But I did put a lot of that into the show.

And it's sort of this idea of like, oh, for our potential future joy of, you know,

the show being successful and polished and whatever, I'm going to sacrifice my current joy.

And when I look back at the last maybe six months and I see what are the things that I do for me.

I can't name that many things anymore.

That means I'm not going to as many events that I like to go to spiritual events or sound baths or just things that fill my cup.

Right.

I'm not, I'm not seeing my friends as much.

I see more group settings, but I don't one on one.

I'm not seeing a lot of my friends, a lot of texting and voice notes, but I'm not having lunch, going on hikes, going to coffees with my friends.

Person to person.

Yeah.

That thing.

One on one thing that fills a lot of my cup, especially before I met you, especially in my days being single and trying to figure myself out.

I'm not reading as much.

I don't have a lot of the like extra curricular and I'm not trying to figure out what side hobby should I get into to add something else into my schedule.

When I had less in my life, when I was single, when I was working less, when I didn't have a big main project on my plate, I had more downtime to find fun.

A lot of it would be like, I'm just going to go for a walk around my neighborhood and like stumble upon this little store and have this running in with a stranger and chat them up.

And I just made a new friend today and then go and sit at the coffee shop with like just a latte and nothing to do and talk to people around me.

And like that kind of expression of self I've gotten very far away from.

And yes, there are some sacrifices you make for collective joy in relationship.

But actually, not that it's a comparison, you do have all of those things.

You have quite a lot of your own fill your cup experiences that are yours and yours alone.

Lunches with your friends, events that you go to without me.

Not like without me, like you don't want me there, but time wise I have the kids a lot and I love that for you.

I want that for you.

I want that to continue.

I want it for me too.

And I wonder how much of this is self sabotage.

This is a bigger picture question in my life, but this is part of my inner battle with creativity and artistry because the artist in me is a little scared.

I have fear about the showing up to the thing and doing the thing, the pouring my heart out on the mic, right?

I freeze up sometimes.

I'm not so much scared, but I do get like a little fear frozen about am I any good at this?

This is my current form of expression, right?

Like I have many forms of expression.

I write and I make films and all of that.

But in this moment, my ADHD is hyper focused on this form of expression.

And you have mentioned this concept of every project or business or entity needs artists and soldiers.

It's from a book called "Loonshots" by Safi Bahcall.

He wrote this book, but it's been told since the beginning of time.

I've thought about it this way a lot and then I read that book, I go, finally somebody can help me put words to it.

So there's artists who innovate and create and form new thought and there are soldiers who execute and it makes me explain that right?

Yeah, they execute and they hold tradition.

They hold the fundamentals of what we know has worked.

And the innovators are the ones that break the mold and move us to the next thing.

But they're supposed to be separate from each other.

There's connection, but they can't be in the same room.

And you as an individual metaphorically speaking should be the one to be the middle road between the two.

You communicate between the two. You're the liaison.

Well, in every entity needs both soldiers and artists, both are incredibly important, vital.

Nothing can exist without both of them.

And that is true of any creative entity.

If you think about making a movie, we have writers creating something out of nothing and directors putting their spin on it and actors.

And these are artists.

And then there are also and there are creative producers as well, but there are also producers and PAs who can crew.

And look, it's a blend here because there are artists within the crew, in some of the crew team, and then there are soldiers within the crew team.

But both are vitally important.

You know, if you've ever put just a bunch of actors in a room, we're not going to make a movie like that.

Okay, there's no going to be no structure.

And it's going to be like wild and crazy.

So you need people who have the structure.

Here is where I feel like I'm dancing.

I'm towing the line because I have skill sets of a soldier.

And as we've pointed out before, I'm very detail oriented.

I can figure out all of the steps that are needed to get something done.

And I've been a good producer in my life.

And I'm also an artist.

And I sometimes worry that my soldiering is better than my artistry.

But my joy lives in the art.

I have fear, but I also have great joy.

And so actually my greatest highest self wants to step fully into the artistry role.

The reason I say it self sabotage is because I have voluntarily chosen to take on a lot of the duties of the soldier.

You're on this particular project and often in my life.

Let me just get the things done.

And then I don't know, it's an inner child thing.

Then maybe I'll be noticed.

Then maybe I'll be important enough.

Maybe someone will recognize me for getting the things done.

But I find that that is actually for me, not where the joy is.

That's where the grind is.

That's a hamster wheel.

There are people who thrive in that space and we know people who make the show happen too.

Who thrive in the getting the things done and that is where their joy lives.

I think this self sabotage is I keep coming back to the soldier things, these smaller tasks within the entity of a project.

The getting the way of me being able to express myself fully and step into the role.

And I'm scared of what's going to happen if I'm no longer doing those things.

The conversation you and I had is I'm literally scared of like, well, who's going to do it then if it's not me?

Because you don't want to do it, right?

I'm going to correct you. It's not that I don't want to do it.

I may say that for the sake of the conversation without getting too deeply intellectual about it.

But I know how to taper down my soldier.

We all have the soldier and the artist within us.

Your job is to be neither.

You're the head metaphorically speaking and not just you, the general you.

You're the person who is doing the liaison between the two.

So then you have to know which sides abilities are limited and which sides are exuberant.

That's the craft.

So it's not that I don't want to.

I just know like, no, my soldier, they only get X amount of time.

And just like I don't want you to not see your friends for lunch because I'm not seeing my friends for lunch as much, right?

I don't want you to amp up your soldier.

You're a beautiful artist who's making great strides in their art.

I want that for you.

And while we are good, yin and yang in this way, if I continue to remain the soldier,

I then don't get to express my artistry into its fullest to a way that feels joyful to me.

Yeah.

And I don't want that for you whatsoever.

So I asked this question on my Instagram stories.

Do you feel like you are carrying more than you're able?

And I got an overwhelming reaction from people, not ironically, not one of them was a cis man.

A lot of people are carrying soldiering more than they're able to.

I don't have an answer for what to do there, but I just think we should recognize that that's happening.

And then the question I go inward with is I'm not going to tell anybody else what their situation is.

However, how much of this soldiering am I doing to myself?

And how much is completely beyond my control?

Because my fear is if I drop this, oh, you had a great metaphor.

Okay, there is a person who is carrying a tray, a waiter carrying a tray full of plates, way too many.

It looks like it's going to just topple over, right?

You come to them and don't say, here's more strawberries for your plate, right?

Because that excellent waiter who's so good and so well-intentioned is trying to carry all the things.

They can't catch the strawberries. They would have to remove a hand from the tray and everything would fall apart.

So they can't add anything more, right?

So then your job, I'm speaking to you, Caesar, is to say, hey, let me take some of this off your plate.

Let me take this off your tray, this food, this heavy things.

And that's great if you can carry it, but what if you can't carry it?

And what was heavy to me, heavy to me is if I'm going to put this down,

because what you were saying to me the moment was, you're carrying too much, put that down.

I don't know how to put it down without it all breaking.

This entire plate, if I put it down, everything's going to break apart.

So, but how much have I taken on?

How much have I said, I'll be the waiter, I'll take that plate. Oh, I'll do it. I'll do it.

It's a delicate balance, because for me, I would say, well, I took this on because this isn't a skill set you have.

So I took this on for the both of us.

And now I'm suffering. And now you're suffering because I'm not fully present and I'm not my full self.

And I'm not bringing myself, my whole self to the relationship anymore.

I don't know whose responsibility it is, but there's a part that I play that I need to have clearer boundaries, I think.

And I need to one by one systematically take things and put them somewhere else or decide that small dessert is actually going to end up in the trash.

I don't like to waste food, but it's going to end up in the trash. That thing goes.

And that's really sad and devastating to say that I don't, that I can't do it all.

On the flip side, what I gain from that is the ability to find myself again.

And honestly, I miss myself. And what if it all just works out in the end anyway?

Meaning what if I choose to just be weird in this moment and dance and forget about my to-do list and talk to myself and bounce around my house and not give a shit.

And this deadline gets missed. Oh well. Then what? I don't know.

I really don't know, but I think it's worth experimenting with disappointing everybody else, anybody else, for the sake of finding myself again.

Otherwise, I'm a hamster on a hamster wheel that then dies on the hamster wheel.

I don't know. That's the only alternative I see.

That's a very beautiful thing for you to say about giving yourself, yourself back.

Sometimes we have to just let the thing fall off the tray and break, especially if you've gotten to this juncture.

You've gotten this far where you're guaranteed to break something because you're taking something else off the other side of the tray in your hand.

When we were having that conversation and in the metaphor of carrying the tray, you said, "But those strawberries are going to fall."

I said, "Let them fall. Let them fall. Let them fucking fall."

To follow the metaphor, I'm not even trying to take everything I'm trying to take off from your tray.

I'm not trying to hold it all either.

Metaphorically speaking, I will look to my left and say, "This person's got big pockets. Can you hold these pairs in your pockets?"

Thank you. Appreciate it.

And on a different topic, we're talking about a project, but that also means relying on your community too.

I think a lot of the things that people are carrying are bigger, harder things, life things.

Not harder. It's not a comparison, but we can't try to do it all ourselves.

And I know that's like cliche, but as we try to do it ourselves, everyone suffers.

We do have our community around us for a reason, and we're fucking scared to ask people for help.

Yeah.

I think we said this a couple of weeks ago, the previous episode, there's no self-made person.

It's a farce. It's not a real thing.

And how come every story we've ever heard, the main character is going along to find the thing that they want,

and they end up gathering a bunch of friends?

Because it's tried and true to this society that we live in.

We're social animals who need to communicate and to be around each other.

You want to go fast, you go alone.

If you want to go far, you go together.

Lean on me.

I don't know how many times I can, how many references I can bring up in the world,

but we've gotten to some point thinking that we're supposed to be just one.

Some individual can carry all the things.

My personal internal piece, I will not break for it.

I won't do it.

There'll be times where it's disrupted, for sure.

But I have practiced getting back to it as quickly as I possibly can,

because I've spent so long looking for that piece, I'm not letting it go.

I won't do it. I just won't.

I just want to name the genderification of it all.

That's not a word.

Not gentrification.

The genderification of it all, which is to say that a lot of women that I know

feel it is their duty, their job, their responsibility to carry anything

that anyone else can't carry.

And the people who, when we do this project for the shelter every year at Christmas,

consistently the people I know who are every year showing up,

it's lopsided in the amount of women that are helping and supporting.

There's a lot of amazing men who help as well.

And it's always the people who have so much on their plate already.

It happens to be a lot of women.

It happens to be a lot of moms.

It happens to be a lot of moms who are also going through cancer treatment

or are also having to be evicted from their house and are moving.

And they also find time to help me.

What the hell is going on?

I love these women for it.

I love them for it.

And as a society, why do we keep taking on so much to the point where then I feel it,

other people feel it, the burnout is so real and destructive.

If that's you, if you feel that burnout, that like yourself is depleted,

that you feel gray inside, which is how I would feel.

That's how I describe it.

I feel like gray inside because the heaviness of the burdens are too much for me to carry alone.

Unburden yourself.

And I don't really know how to tell someone to do that.

But all I want to say is that you are worth the finding of yourself again.

You are worth it.

You are worth more than the strawberries that are going to fall and crash on the floor.

I can't speak for women because I'm not one.

I can't speak for the heroine's journey because that's up to women to speak for

and tell their story and their tale.

But I can say if I can offer any sort of suggestion, let those strawberries fall.

Say no, not doing it.

Let it crash.

Let it fall on the weight of other people.

I can't tell you if it's going to get done right or not.

I can't tell you if it's going to be done better or worse, but you're worth more.

You're worth more than holding on to all the heavy shit that the society has told you you should be doing.

Your life, your joy, your peace is worth way more, way more.

And if you are not someone who typically takes on the burden of things,

but you know people like that in your life, go to them and ask them.

Don't ask them what you can do.

Go to them and say, "I would like to take this off of your plate.

I'm going to do this for you."

Make it really easy for them to say yes to that.

Make it a small thing, but take something off of their plate.

Physically go into and do it.

Yeah, well said.

We'll report back on the unburdening of self, TBD.

Thanks for listening and as always, be kind to yourself.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.

And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty and the Break wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

Beauty and the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar + the Clew.