On putting down what was never yours to carry
I have a very old hat.
Grey. Threadbare. Worn in a way that shows overuse rather than love – the kind of worn that happens when you wear something not because you want to, but because somewhere along the way it became expected.
The fabric never felt right. Too tight. More fibrous than soft – cord where there should be silk. Even on its best days, this hat made me feel self-conscious. Slightly less than. Like I was taking up space I hadn’t quite earned.
And here’s the thing I didn’t realise until recently.
I didn’t even know I was wearing it.
| You can’t put down a hat you don’t know you’re wearing. |
So I spent some time getting to know this hat. Looking at it. Feeling it. Learning more about it.
This hat has a message stitched into the lining. Worn almost invisible now, it’s been there so long – but it’s there, and I can still read it.
“You’re not worth the words.”
Not my words. Not a verdict I consciously arrived at. Something stitched in slowly, over years, through accumulation rather than intention.
Because here’s what I want you to understand about this hat, and about hats like it: nobody sat down and decided to make it for me. There was no deliberate act of harm. The people whose actions created it – the gentle redirections, the busy mornings, the not nows and the come back laters – they weren’t unkind. They were just… living their lives. Not leaving quite enough room for mine.
We say it to our children too. Tell Mummy later. Dad’s busy. Not now.
And “come back later”, said often enough, quietly becomes: don’t bother.
The stitches form without anyone meaning to make them.
| Hats like these aren’t given deliberately. They’re formed in the gaps – in the come back laters, in the not nows, in the moments when what you felt simply didn’t get quite enough room. |
I should say – I never lost my voice entirely. I’ve always been able to use it for others. To stand up for what feels unfair. To advocate, to defend, to champion the people around me without a second thought.
Just not for myself.
When I wanted to speak about me – what I thought, how I felt, how I saw my world – that’s when the hat went on. That’s when the stitching held. What I needed, what I experienced, what I had to say about my own life: those words never felt quite worth saying out loud.
I got very efficient at swallowing them, actually.
Fast forward several decades. I’m building my coaching website. A task that should take a few months takes the better part of a year.
And one day, staring at a blank page where my content should be, I finally understood why.
Every time I tried to write about me, about what I do – about why I do it, what I believe, what I want to say to the world – something stopped me. Not writer’s block, exactly. More like a hand on my shoulder. A familiar whisper.
You’re not worth the words.
There it was. The hat I’d been wearing so long I’d forgotten it was there.
| The hats we wear aren’t always dramatic. Sometimes they’re just quiet, constant, ordinary. And that’s exactly what makes them so hard to see. |
When I finally saw it clearly – really looked at it – it reminded me of one of those gifts you receive as a child. The jumper from a relative with very particular taste. You have to put it on when they visit. You have to smile for the photo. And it keeps appearing, this jumper, finding its way to the top of the pile, and somehow there are always more occasions that seem to require it.
Until one day you’re just… wearing it. All the time. Without question.
That’s what this hat had done.
And the more I sat with it, the more I thought about ivy. Beautiful, isn’t it — ivy on an old wall, ivy climbing a tree. There’s something romantic about it. But ivy is slow and persistent, and if you leave it long enough it constricts. It suffocates. It causes parts of the thing it’s clinging to to quietly die.
That’s what the wrong hat does, worn long enough.
Here’s what I want to tell you though. Because this isn’t a sad story.
I didn’t throw the hat away.
It’s still on my hat stand. At the back, where I don’t have to look at it every day — but I haven’t got rid of it. Because now it serves a different purpose. Now it’s a reminder. A reminder that what was stitched into that lining — however it arrived, however unconsciously it was put there — was a lie.
And I find that I need the reminder sometimes. On the days when I sit down to write and the old whisper starts up again. On the days when I think about putting myself forward for something and feel the familiar shrinking begin.
I look at the hat. And I remember: that one was never mine.
| It’s not gone. It’s just a choice now. And that’s the whole difference. |
I think a lot of us are walking around in hats we didn’t choose. Hats that were formed by accumulation — by families doing their best, by experiences that left their mark, by a world that sometimes needed us to be smaller, quieter, less. Hats that fit someone else’s story about who we are and what we’re capable of.
And because we didn’t put them on consciously, we can’t just think our way out of them. That’s the thing about these hats. They don’t respond to logic or willpower.
They respond to being seen.
The moment you notice the hat – really notice it, hold it up to the light and look at it clearly – something shifts. It stops being invisible. It stops being you. It becomes something you’re wearing. And something you’re wearing, you can choose to take off.
That is the work. Not dramatic, not instant, not always linear. But real.
And the relief of it. The space and freedom created.
Space to breathe. Space to be, well – you.
There’s nothing quite like it.
The hat that says you’re not worth the words?
I’m choosing, today, not to hear it.
And if you have one like it – old, grey, threadbare, formed without anyone meaning to form it – I’d gently ask:
When did those stitches form for you? And is it time to take it off?
With warmth 🎩
Karina
If this resonated…
The work of noticing your hats – really seeing them for what they are – is exactly what coaching creates space for. If you’d like to explore what’s on your hat stand, I’d love to have a conversation.
“Who are you when the hats come off?”