Someone who loves you asks: what do you need? And you have nothing. Not because you are fine. Not because nothing is needed. But because you have been in management mode for so long that you have genuinely lost track of where your own needs even are.

I want to talk about that. Because it happened to me recently, and I suspect it might be happening to you too.

In the months leading up to our move to Thailand, this is what my life contained. I was working full time at a company I genuinely loved, with people I adored, doing work that lit me up. An opportunity too good to pass up. But full time, on top of everything else.

Hubby was in and out of hospital with an infection that was putting his new heart valve at risk. Anyone who has sat in a hospital corridor waiting for news about someone they love knows what that kind of background anxiety does to you. It is not loud. It just never turns off.

The girls were preparing to leave Auckland. Saying goodbye to friends, to the school they loved, to the life they had built. Teenagers processing the end of something do not always do it quietly. They needed me to hold space for feelings I could not fix, because they were the right feelings to have.

I was running my business, showing up for my clients, coordinating the logistics of an international move. And then, just after we arrived in Bangkok, Mum was diagnosed with cancer. In the days before I flew to South Australia to be with her, Hubby said something that has stayed with me.

He said "but you're fine. You've done this so many times." He was not wrong to think it. He was reading the evidence I had given him across years of moving countries, landing in new places, figuring it out. From the outside, this looked like another one. What I could not tell him, because I did not have the words yet, was that I did not feel fine. And that I had absolutely no idea what I would have asked for, even if I had known how.

I want to name something here, because I think it matters. The people closest to capable women are not neglecting them. They are trusting what they have been shown. We teach the people around us, through years of evidence, that we handle things. We handle the move. We handle the logistics. The practical and the emotional and the invisible, all at once, without asking, because we can, and because it needs doing, and because that is just who we are. And so the people who love us stop asking. Not because they do not care. Because we have given them no reason to think they need to.

The question 'what do you need?' only gets asked regularly when someone has learned that the answer will be honest. Most capable women have never given that answer. We say 'I'm fine' or 'just give me a minute' or 'I'll sort it out.' And so the question stops coming as often. The loneliest part of this is not that we are unsupported. It is that we have trained away the very offer of support we most need. He was not wrong. I had taught him I was fine. I just had not realised I had been teaching him that.

I have thought about this a lot since those days before I flew to South Australia. What would I have asked for, if I had known? I still do not have a clear answer. And I have made peace with that.

Here is what I think happens. When you have been in management mode for long enough, carrying enough, at pace, your own needs become like furniture in a room you stopped sitting in. You know they are there, somewhere. But you have not looked at them in so long that you could not describe them if someone asked. This is not weakness. It is what sustained high functioning costs when it goes on long enough without pause.

Years ago, when we moved to Taipei, I made a deliberate decision for the first time in my adult life. I was not going to volunteer immediately. I was not going to say yes to anything. After years of building communities, filling gaps, being useful wherever we landed, I wanted to take time to figure out what I actually wanted for myself. I had no idea what that was. And naming that as an honest statement, rather than a failure, was one of the more useful things I had ever done. The same honesty applies now. I do not always know what I need. Sitting with that, rather than pretending I have an answer, is its own kind of integrity.

What I found, in the middle of all of that, was not a clear answer to the question of what I needed. What I found was something quieter. When I arrived in South Australia to be with Mum, I had ten days. Ten days of walking along the River Murray with Minty, our dog, who Mum has taken on and decided to keep. They are both living their best life, and that is its own kind of gift. For six years in Auckland, walking Minty was my meditation. My thinking time. The thing that held me when nothing else did. When we moved to Bangkok I had not been able to replace it. I had not found my version of it yet. But those ten days on the River Murray. Walking, watching Minty, breathing air that did not feel like the inside of a transition. That was support. Not because anyone designed it that way. But because being in the right place, with the right dog, beside someone I love, gave me something back.

There have been other moments like that. People in my life who know me well enough to show up in ways I did not ask for, because they did not need me to ask. A message at the right time. A phone call that felt like a hand on the shoulder. Someone simply being present without needing me to perform being fine. These are the forms of support that actually sustain capable women. Not because we have asked correctly. But because the people offering them know us well enough to not wait for the question.

There is something that sits alongside the receiving, to make room for support, I have had to put some things down. There are people I no longer allow in my life. Not dramatically. Not with a scene. Quietly, deliberately, because the relationship was taking more than it was giving, and I did not have anything left to give into a deficit. Shedding what drains you is not selfish. It is what makes everything else sustainable.

This part does not get talked about enough. We focus on learning to ask, learning to receive, learning to be more open about what we need. All of that matters. But none of it works if you are still pouring what little you have into relationships and obligations that give nothing back. Sometimes the most important act of self support is the quiet decision to stop.

I still do not always know what I would ask for, if someone asked me directly. But I know this. The capable women I work with are not unsupported because nobody cares. They are unsupported because they have spent years making support feel unnecessary. And the way through is not to suddenly become someone who asks clearly and receives gracefully. It is smaller than that.

It is a cup of tea on the balcony before the day begins. A walk that was also a grief and also a gift. A quiet decision to put down something that was costing too much. If you do not know what you need right now, that is allowed. But notice who shows up without being asked. Notice the small things that restore rather than drain you. And notice what is costing you more than you have to give.

You do not have to have the answer. You just have to stay honest about the question. That counts. The small things count.