Monday Memo|Detail No.169| September 01, 2025

September is often seen as a month of beginnings: fresh notebooks, sharpened pencils, children heading back to school, routines finding their shape again. The air shifts almost imperceptibly, mornings carry a cooler edge. It’s a season of transition, and in that shift the word weights feels especially present, especially true. But what if September wasn’t only about taking on more? What if it could also be about lightening what we carry?

We all hold weights. Some are obvious: responsibilities, deadlines, bills, the endless balancing of work and family. Others live quietly inside us: the ache of old memories, the unsaid words, the doubts we silence, the grief we never gave ourselves permission to feel. These hidden burdens often shape us even more than the visible ones, though we’ve become so practiced at concealing them that we forget how heavy they are.

This month seems to ask: What are you carrying that’s too heavy?

The truth is, we aren’t made to hold everything forever. Some weights serve a purpose, like the ones we lift at the gym, challenging us, building resilience, revealing strength we didn’t know we had. But others? They only press us down, slowly, relentlessly, if we never set them down. Think of the last time you felt light again. Maybe it came after a difficult but freeing conversation. Maybe it was when you forgave yourself for a long-carried mistake. Or perhaps it was as simple as saying “no” when your body and heart needed rest. That breath of relief is proof: not every weight belongs to you.

So ask yourself: Which weights are helping me grow, and which are breaking me down? Maybe your weight is worry. Maybe it’s the need to appear strong when you’re exhausted. Maybe it’s the quiet fear that if you let go, everything will fall apart. If that’s you, hear this: you don’t have to hold it all. The world doesn’t end when you rest. Rest is what allows you to begin again. There is strength in endurance, yes, but there is also strength in surrender in admitting, this is too much, and trusting that when you set it down, something greater will help carry it.

Picture yourself standing at the threshold of the month, arms full. Some things you’ll choose to keep: love, commitment, dreams that matter. Others you’ll finally release: guilt that drains you, comparisons that steal your joy, burdens that were never yours in the first place.

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do with our weights… is simply put them down.