Our March Book Club pick

Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose by Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Hi friends! Happy March. I’m so excited to share… that our March book club pick is Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose by Jennifer Breheny Wallace (Amazon | Bookshop.org). I picked it because it found me at exactly the right time.

TL;DR for the busy ones: This book is for any woman who knows she’s enough but can’t stop performing like she isn’t. Wallace makes the case that we’ve replaced real connection and purpose with productivity and output — and it’s quietly costing us. It’s research-backed, beautifully written, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

I genuinely haven’t stopped since Christmas. Not saying that to complain. I know a lot of you haven’t either. But I’ve been running at absolute max capacity for months: deadlines, launches, travel, birthdays, kids, the hundred things that don’t make it onto any official list. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I picked this up on a recommendation from someone I trust. (It was Oprah. Hahaha.)

I’ll be honest… the title almost lost me. “Mattering” felt like one of those big, vague self-help words that sounds profound but doesn’t mean much when you actually try to grab onto it. I know I matter. (Please imagine me making air quotes there). I didn’t think this was my book.

Get your copy: Amazon | Bookshop.org

But I kept reading. And within the first few chapters, I understood what Wallace was actually talking about, and it had very little to do with the word itself and everything to do with the question underneath it: if you know you’re enough, why can’t you stop performing like you aren’t?

That one landed. Like… hard.

Because it named something I’ve been circling for years but could never quite pin down. Not burnout. I know what burnout feels like. Something quieter than that. More stubborn. The feeling that no matter how much I do, I immediately need to do more. That the finish line keeps moving. That rest feels like a threat instead of a reward.

I know I’m enough. I’ve built a career on saying so. And I still can’t stop running.

Here’s what makes that a liiiiiittle uncomfortable to admit: I’ve written about this. At length. Grace Not Perfection was essentially a love letter to releasing the pressure to prove yourself. When Less Becomes More went even deeper. And yet I still feel a quiet relief when a launch goes well that has nothing to do with the revenue and everything to do with some invisible scorecard I can’t stop keeping. I still work at a pace that suggests I have something to prove, even though I couldn’t tell you who I’m proving it to.

She argues that we’ve swapped real connection and contribution for counterfeit versions: chasing output instead of presence, productivity instead of purpose, the scoreboard instead of the actual relationships right in front of us. And the more we outsource our sense of being enough to numbers (tasks, followers, books sold) the emptier we feel. Even when the numbers are good. Maybe especially then, because then we have to ask ourselves why we still feel this way.

Wallace is a journalist and NYT bestselling author (her previous book, Never Enough, about toxic achievement culture, is worth reading too). She has spent years researching why so many people - high-achieving, connected people who “should” feel fine - are depleted. And what she found is that it isn’t about doing less. It’s about what we’re actually feeding ourselves while we work.

What I love about this book is that it doesn’t just name the problem. It gives you a framework you can use.

She identifies the core of feeling truly seen: being recognized for who you are, not just what you produce; being relied on in meaningful ways; feeling prioritized; and being known by the people in your life. When those things are in place, something in us settles. We show up differently. We stop white-knuckling our way through the week.

When they’re not? We spin out. We produce more trying to fill a gap we can’t quite name. We confuse busy with purposeful and wonder why we feel empty at the end of a very full day.

Wallace also writes about the life transitions that make all of this worse… the moments when our previous sense of identity and purpose gets rattled or disappears overnight. A divorce. A job loss. An empty nest. Retirement. A move to a new city. Grief. Even a child leaving elementary school can quietly pull the rug out in ways we don’t expect. These threshold moments (which feel very familiar around here) are exactly when we’re most vulnerable to losing our footing. When we’re most likely to either overwork to compensate, or drift into a fog we can’t quite explain. Wallace names why, and that alone felt like a gift.

But here’s the part that hit me hardest: the exhaustion so many of us feel as mothers, as the ones who hold everything together, often comes not because we’re doing too much, but because we’re constantly pouring out without being replenished. We’re relied on. We’re functional. We’re necessary. But are we truly seen, prioritized, known?

That’s a different question. And most of us are afraid to ask it out loud.

(It’s also, not coincidentally, a question I’ve been sitting with for the better part of a year as I work on my next book — which explores the weight of expectations and production that lands specifically on the shoulders of mothers. Wallace’s research has been fuel for that fire.)

One of my favorite takeaways from the book so far is that when we help someone else feel seen and valued, it reminds us that we are too. The path out isn’t to retreat further… it’s to reach out. Name someone’s impact. Show up with warmth for the friend, the colleague, the stranger who looks like they’re running on fumes.

I know a lot of you feel that way. And I’m specifically hopeful for our chats over in The Reading Room (our subscriber chat)… I think we can do this for each other over there.

I’m so excited for you guys to pick up this book. Tell me in the comments: do you know you’re enough but still can’t stop the proving? I have a feeling I’m not the only one.

xo,

Emily