The Fixer, the Rescuer, the Mother — And the Me That Got Left Behind

by MissT

There’s a name they never taught us to say out loud:
The Fixer.
The one who rolls up her sleeves when shit hits the fan.
The one who reads your mood before you do.
The one who can spot broken from a mile away, and walks toward it like it’s a calling.

That was me.

They called it maternal. Nurturing. Strong.
But there’s a difference between being a mum and being everyone’s emotional ambulance.
I wasn’t strong — I was surviving on fumes and denial.
I wasn’t nurturing — I was breaking apart and calling it love.

I mothered men who should’ve known better.
I wiped grown-up wounds that never stopped bleeding.
I wrapped bandages round tantrums and trauma like they were toddlers in time-out.
I tried to be the salve, the silence, the solution.

I learned to anticipate pain before it landed.
To read the air like weather.
To give too much.
To stay too long.
To call it care when it was really fear —
fear of not being needed, not being chosen,
fear of being just me, unwrapped from duty and performance.

Some days, I wonder if they ever saw the woman underneath the cape.
Not the rescuer.
Not the fixer.
Not the crisis response team.

Just the woman.
The one who cried in the shower so no one would hear.
The one who Googled “How to be enough” at 2am with a glass of wine and a hollow chest.
The one who stayed awake while everyone else slept, replaying every moment she didn’t speak up.

Here’s what they don’t tell you about being the fixer:
Eventually, you forget how to be held.
You forget how to ask.
You forget that you have a body, a voice, a heart that also needs tending.

Being the mother in every room is a quick route to being the ghost in your own life.

But I’m learning now.
To unhook from their wounds.
To stop setting myself on fire just to keep them warm.
To let people fall and figure it out without me helicoptering their healing.

I am not your mother.
I am not your saviour.
I am not your sponge, your shield, your f**king rehab centre.

I am a woman who is learning how to love without losing herself.
And if that makes me selfish, so be it.

I’d rather be whole and called selfish
than shattered and praised for my selflessness.

This is me.
Not the fixer.
Not the rescuer.
Not the mother.

Just me.
And finally, that’s enough.