TLDR
- If you are always the one who does everything at home and at work, you are probably running on “line” thinking, a hierarchy where one person has to be in charge and carry the load.
- That pattern is patriarchal conditioning, not a personal flaw. It teaches women to overwork for less and to defer their own dreams in service of everyone else.
- The fix is circle thinking: everyone in the group is in service to everyone else, and there is enough to go around. You look at what needs doing and ask who has capacity today.
- Circle thinking also frees you to stop hiding your wins. In a real circle you can be witnessed without being ousted, because everybody brings value.
- Moving from the line back into the circle takes time and an energetic shift on your end, but it is how you actually reclaim your time and your energy.
Here is a confession to open us up: I am a deeply introverted person. Like, super introverted. And at the same time, I crave real connection. I want communities where I feel supported and where I get to support other women right back. I have been the founder of The Sisters Enchanted since 2016, which is a full decade of helping women reclaim their energy and their sense of self, and I still catch myself doing the exact thing I want to talk about today.
Somewhere along the way, I built a little shell of protection around myself. Because every single time I step into a group or a circle or a collaboration, it feels like somebody always needs something from me. Can you relate to that? Are you the one who did all the work on the group project but everybody got the A? The one everybody turns to? You kind of become the sun of the universe, so when it is finally time to be in community with other women, you do not let yourself be witnessed. You do not let yourself be seen. You are too busy protecting yourself from becoming the person who has to do it all, again.
So here is the question I want to sit in with you. Is it really that we are scared of how we will be received? Or is something older going on, where we are just falling in line with structures that say somebody has to be in charge, somebody has to be last, and somebody always has to defer her own dreams? Let’s get into it.
DEFINITION: CIRCLE THINKING VS. LINE THINKING
Line thinking is the hierarchy most of us were trained into: one person is in charge, one person is right, and one person carries more and more of the load for less and less in return. Circle thinking is the alternative. In a circle, everyone is in service to everyone else, there is enough to go around, and the group simply asks who has the capacity to handle what today. It is a Sisters Enchanted way of describing how to reclaim your time and energy inside community instead of at the head of a line.
Why do I always end up being the one who does everything?
Because you have been taught that someone always has to be the point person, and you are good at it, so that someone is usually you. It is not a character flaw. It is conditioning. We live in a world where somebody is expected to put herself last in service of everybody else, and that role tends to land on the leading lady, the woman running the home or the team or the whole show.
It shows up in the smallest ways. Somebody does not load the dishwasher the way you would, so now nobody can do it but you. Somebody does not clean the floors the way you would, so now that is yours too. You will overwork yourself so the people around you get the time off, because you are faster and stronger at the task and it is easier to just do it yourself. And I want you to notice the shape of that, because that shape is the whole problem.
What does patriarchy thinking have to do with being overworked?
Everything, because being overworked is not random. It is a repeating pattern where one person has to be right, one person directs everything toward a specific outcome, and one person does the most and the most and the most while getting less and less and less out of the deal. There is always someone deferring her dreams, her wishes, her body, her desires for another time, in service to the collective.
When I catch myself gripping control that tightly, I try to remember it is a learned pattern, not proof that I am the only capable person in the room. That distinction matters, because a pattern can be changed. A personality cannot.
“I’ll just do it. I’ll just take care of that. I’ll just answer that phone call. I’ll just make that appointment. I’ll just, I’ll just, I’ll just.”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
Sound familiar? That is not you being helpful. That is you doing all the things for everybody because you can and you always have, and it is not in service to you or to your community.
What is circle thinking, and how is it different from a hierarchy?
Circle thinking is a way of being in community where nobody sits at the head of the line, because there is no line. Everyone is in a circle, everyone is in service to everyone else, and the work gets distributed by capacity instead of by rank. Instead of “I am the mom, so I am in charge” or “I am the manager, so I decide,” the circle looks at what has to happen and asks a different question: we all agree the dishes need doing, so who has the capacity for that today, because I am handling this other thing over here.
I am not talking about a matriarchy in the simple sense, where you just swap men out and put women in power. That is still a line. I mean something wilder and older than that. Think about the empress energy versus the emperor energy in tarot, or lunar energy versus solar energy. The empress does not rule the collective from the top. She nurtures it, and every single piece of the collective is nurturing too. That is the shift.
“In a circle, everybody brings something to the table.”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
A woman who makes less money or has less formal education brings exactly as much value as anyone else, because of her lived experience and the wisdom she earned inside it. We all get to learn from each other that way. Nobody is less than.
A SISTERS ENCHANTED LENS: INTENTIONAL INVISIBILITY
Intentional invisibility is what happens when you make yourself smaller on purpose so you will not be asked to carry more, and so you will not be resented for what is going well in your life. It is the shell of protection I keep describing. It is one of the ways the old visibility fear (what we call the witch wound) actually shows up in a normal week. Circle thinking is the antidote, because in a real circle you can be seen without being punished for it.
Why do I hold back my wins in community?
Because somewhere you learned that sharing the good stuff will cost you, so you hide it to keep the peace. I do this too. I am a successful business owner, I have taught thousands of students, I homeschool my kids, and I live a life a lot of people just cannot relate to. So when I join a community, I catch myself holding things back. I do not want to share the wins or the different way my family lives, because people will ask questions, and then I will feel like I made somebody else feel bad.
But look at where that comes from. It comes from the same old model, the one where somebody is less than because she has not hit some threshold. In a circle, that math does not exist. Everybody is valuable for whatever it is they are valuable for, which means your wins are not a threat to anyone. They are just part of what you bring.
How do I actually move from the line back into the circle?
You start by noticing where you have quietly appointed yourself the person in charge, and then you let some of that go, on purpose, over time. This is the honest part: it is slow. Everybody around you is used to you being the one who shows up and makes everything happen, so the shift has to start with you, and it takes an energetic effort to change the pattern for the whole collective.
Think back to preschool. You sat in a circle on the carpet. Then somewhere in school we came out of the circle and got sorted into rows, with the studious kid up front and the daydreamer in the back, and where you sat started to mean something about you. Home and work do the same thing to us as adults. So the move is to consciously step back out of the rows.
“There’s truly nothing witchier than gathering with people in a circle, sharing energy, creating energy, and creating experiences.”
— Sara Walka, Founder of The Sisters Enchanted
The most practical support I know for this is other women who are doing the same work. Women who will hold you in community for everything you are, instead of needing you to shrink or dumb yourself down to be accepted.
Why does gathering in a circle help me reclaim my time and energy?
Because the circle redistributes the load that the line dumped entirely on you. When the group shares energy and supports each other by capacity, you stop being the bottleneck for everything, and that reclaimed time and energy is the whole point. Circles are also just deeply witchy. We circle up for the moon, we circle up for ritual, we even circle our tarot cards to read the ones that sit opposite each other. The shape itself is magic.
I have felt both sides of this. When I try to hold everything myself, I burn out and quietly resent it, and I am no good to anyone. When I let the circle carry its share, the time and the energy come back almost right away, and I actually get to enjoy the people I am with instead of managing them. That is the whole trade, and it is a good one.
So this week, notice where you are running on line thinking and see if you can circle up instead. Find your people, bring that energy into your work and your home, and watch how much time and energy comes back to you. Until next time, stay magic, y’all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does becoming a matriarchy just mean putting women in charge instead of men?
No, and this is the part people miss. Swapping men out and installing women at the top is still a hierarchy. It is just a line with a different person standing at the front, and the pattern underneath it has not changed at all. That is not what I am pointing at when I talk about a matriarchal way of being. What I mean is something wilder and older than a change of management. Picture empress energy instead of emperor energy, or lunar energy instead of solar energy. The goal is not a new boss, it is a circle where everyone is in service to everyone else and there is enough to go around, so nobody has to be right and nobody has to be last. So if you are trying to shift your home or your team, resist the urge to simply crown yourself the new person in charge. That is the same old pattern in a different costume. Aim for shared capacity instead, where the group decides together who has the bandwidth for what.
Is it selfish to stop doing everything for everyone?
No, and I want you to really hear this: doing everything for everyone is not actually serving anyone. When you insist on being the one who handles it all, you keep yourself depleted and you keep everyone around you dependent on you, which is not a gift to them or to you. Stepping back is not abandonment. It is trusting that there is enough to go around and that the people in your circle are capable too. It will feel uncomfortable at first, because everybody is used to you saying yes to everything, and that discomfort is not proof you are doing it wrong. It is the old pattern loosening its grip, which is exactly what you want. The women I know who make this shift do not become less generous. They become generous on purpose, from a full cup, instead of automatically from an empty one. That is the difference between over-functioning and actually showing up for the people you love.
What do emperor and empress energy have to do with reclaiming my time?
They are a shorthand I reach for because tarot gives us clean images for two very different ways of holding power. The emperor is the top-down, in-charge, someone-must-be-right energy, which is the same shape as the line I keep describing. The empress is maternal, and here is the key part: she does not rule the collective from above, she nurtures it, and every piece of the collective nurtures back. You can also think of it as solar energy versus lunar energy, or paternal versus maternal, whichever image lands for you. I bring tarot into a conversation about your time and energy because the cards make the abstract concrete. When you can actually see the difference between emperor energy and empress energy, you can start to feel which one you are running on in your own kitchen or your own team meeting. Most of us have been defaulting to emperor energy for years without ever choosing it. Naming it is the first step to choosing something else.
How long does it take to shift the people around me into a circle?
Honestly, longer than you will want it to, and it helps to know that going in. Everybody around you is used to you being the one who shows up and makes everything happen, so when you step back there is a lag while the rest of the circle adjusts to holding what you used to hold alone. The shift has to start with you, and it takes a real energetic effort on your end to change the pattern for the whole collective, not just for yourself. I will not pretend it happens in a weekend. What helps most is expecting the awkward middle instead of being blindsided by it. Things may get a little messier before they get lighter, because people have to actually pick up the pieces you are no longer grabbing first. Stay with it. The reason it is slow is the same reason it works: you are retraining a whole system, not just deciding to do a little less this week.
Can I build this kind of circle if I am introverted or do not have people nearby?
Yes, and I say that as someone who is deeply introverted and finds most of her circle online. You do not need a big local friend group or a room full of people to do this. I homeschool, I travel, and I help care for my grandmother, so for me the circle lives largely in virtual community, where I can open up the feed and talk with women all across the country, and that has been genuinely meaningful to me. Being introverted is not a disqualifier, it is just information about how you will want to gather. What actually matters is that the people you circle up with hold you for everything you are, instead of needing you to shrink or dumb yourself down to be accepted. The hardest part for me is never the logistics, it is putting my guard down and stepping out of the protective shell, because sharing feels vulnerable when you are used to being in charge. But in a true circle, being seen does not get you ousted. You get to belong as your whole self.