The philosophy
SELF INCLUDED began with a simple observation: the most capable women are often the most depleted—not because something is wrong with them, but because they have quietly become the person who holds everything together.
This is not a wellness routine or a productivity system. It is a worldview—a set of ideas about responsibility, attention, usefulness, caregiving, and agency that gives you permission to include yourself in your own life.
Responsibility is real. But not everything that lands on you is yours to hold. Some women are carrying an unfair distribution of responsibility. Others simply do not have enough adult hands. Those are different problems, and both deserve honest solutions.
Your attention is valuable, finite, and constantly requested. Deciding where it goes is not selfish. It is one of the clearest ways to reclaim agency inside an already-full life.
Being useful can be generous. But your value doesn’t disappear when your usefulness decreases. You do not have to remain constantly productive, competent, or needed in order to matter.
Loving people doesn’t require disappearing into their needs. You can care deeply for other people without making yourself endlessly available to them.
Agency is remembering that you have choices—even small ones—and making them on purpose. Reclaiming your life is rarely one dramatic exit. It is a series of deliberate decisions about what you will carry, allow, and choose.
Having some portion of your life in which your attention belongs to you.