92 www. AspireMAG. net | February / March 2026
How to Stop the Cycle
of Over-Providing BY JENNIFER LOUDEN
** This article first appeared in the December 2013 / January 2014 issue of Aspire Magazine.
I define over-providing as giving more than is personally sustainable for you and often giving for the wrong reasons. Accurate but kind of bland. A better definition is from my friend Jeanie,“ Over-providing? That’ s when you’ re pouring everything into growing everybody else while withering yourself.
” Withering yourself. Yes that’ s what you do when, instead of bringing the requested two sides to the family holiday dinner, you show up with five sides, a salad, two pies, gravy and a ham.
Withering yourself is hosting a fund-raiser for your favorite cause, spending weeks hand-crafting the food, the decorations and all the details( even though there are other volunteers), and ending up in bed for two weeks with pneumonia. Withering yourself is inviting your elderly mom to move in with you, even though she has a support system and enough money for good care, and find yourself gaining weight, neglecting your creative passions, and cultivating a big ole’ grudge.
Obviously, over-providing is not in your best interests and yet we all do it, at least some of the time. Why oh why?
92 www. AspireMAG. net | February / March 2026