You’ve Already Given Enough

International Women’s Day 2026 | Rewriting Leadership Norms

A different reading of ‘Give To Gain’ for women who are already giving everything

I want to start by saying I love the intention behind this year’s International Women’s Day theme.

“Give To Gain” — generosity, collaboration, shared progress. These are values I believe in deeply and have built my career around.

But I’ve spent fifteen years mentoring high-achieving women. And when I saw this year’s theme, my first thought wasn’t celebration, it was concern.

I know what happens when you tell a woman who already gives everything — to her team, her organisation, her family, her community — that the path forward is to give more.

She doesn’t push back. She doesn’t say “actually, I think I’m already at capacity.”

She makes a list.

She quietly audits herself, wonders if she’s doing enough, and concludes — as high-achieving women almost always do — that she could probably do a little more.

So before you open a new document and start that list, I want to offer a different reading of this theme.

What if “Give To Gain” started with you?

We Are Not Here to Be the Tree

Do you remember ‘The Giving Tree’ by Shel Silverstein?

The tree gives the boy everything. Her apples, her branches, her trunk. Each time he returns, she gives more — and each time, the book tells us, she was happy.

But she ends as a stump.

I read that book very differently now than I did as a child. Because I’ve sat across from women who are stumps. Brilliant, accomplished, generous women who gave and gave — to their teams, their organisations, their families, their mentees — and one day looked up and realised there was almost nothing left.

They were happy to give. Right up until they weren’t.

We are not here to be the tree.

The Difference You Can't See From the Outside

Think about the women you admire most. The ones who seem to give effortlessly — who mentor generously, advocate loudly for others, show up fully without seeming depleted. And who, crucially, know how to set boundaries and maintain them. Who can say no without a lengthy explanation, step back without guilt, and protect their energy without apologising for it.

Now think about the women who also give enormously — but who carry it differently. Who say yes to everything, who over-prepare for every room, who offer their expertise freely but can’t quite bring themselves to claim their own achievements out loud.

From the outside, they look the same. Both giving, both generous, both showing up.

The difference isn’t visible, it’s internal.

One is giving from a place of strength — from a secure sense of who they are and what they bring. The other is giving from a place of scarcity — using generosity as currency. Almost as proof or the ongoing price of admission to rooms they’ve already more than earned the right to be in.

Many of us need to hear this: the women giving from scarcity are often the most talented, most capable, most experienced people in the room. They’re not giving more because they have more to prove. They’re giving more because somewhere along the way they absorbed a belief that their presence alone wasn’t enough.

That their value had to be continuously demonstrated. Continuously renewed. That if they stopped performing generosity, someone might finally notice they didn’t quite belong. This IS NOT true.

This is what I call the generosity trap. It’s not that you’re giving too much. It’s that you’ve been giving for the wrong reasons — and it has cost you in ways you may not have fully named yet.

It costs you energy. It forces you to give up on your boundaries. It costs you the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you’re in a room because you belong there — not because you’ve worked hard enough to justify your presence again this week.

A Personal Note on Energy

I’m an introvert. For me, giving — real giving, the kind that requires presence and attention and emotional investment — costs energy. Too much peopling, and that includes giving, depletes me cognitively and emotionally in ways that take real time to recover from.

For a long time, I treated that as a flaw. Something to manage quietly so no one noticed. I was stuck in the generaosity trap.

What I’ve learned is that when I am depleted, that is actually useful information. It tells me when I’m giving from a full cup and when I’m running on empty. It tells me when my generosity is genuine and when it’s performance — when I’m truly present for someone and when I’m just going through the motions because I haven’t protected enough space to show up properly.

Knowing that about myself didn’t make me less generous. It made me more intentional. And ultimately, more useful to the people I care about giving to.

That’s what giving from strength looks like for me.

What Giving From Strength Actually Looks Like

It looks like mentoring because you genuinely love it — not because you’re afraid of being seen as someone who doesn’t give back.

It looks like advocating for others and advocating for yourself — without the internal hierarchy that says everyone else’s needs come first.

It looks like offering your honest opinion in a room, even when it’s uncomfortable because you trust that your perspective has value. Not because you’ve earned the right to speak — but because you already had it.

And perhaps most importantly — it looks like extending to yourself the same generosity you’ve spent years extending to everyone else.

The grace you give your mentees when they doubt themselves? Give that to yourself.

The benefit of the doubt you offer others without question? You are allowed to offer it to yourself too.

You Are Part of the Equation

This International Women’s Day, I’m not asking you to give more.

I’m asking you to look at why you give — and whether the woman doing all that giving is also on the receiving end of her own generosity.

Because “Give To Gain” only works if you’re included in the equation.

You were never behind. You were never not enough.

And you were always allowed to give from a place that knew that.

— Cindy Schwartz

Founder, Executive Excellence Group | Rewriting Leadership Norms