January 27, 2026
Empowered people make informed decisions that lead to living a life without regret. This is Sara Khaki and Shawna Woods from Atlanta Divorce Law Group. And this is the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast.
Sara, Shawna
s
Empowered people make informed decisions that lead to living a life without regret. This is Sara Khaki and Shawna Woods from Atlanta Divorce Law Group. And this is the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast.
Welcome to another episode of the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. Am Sara Khaki with Atlanta Divorce Law Group, and I’m joined by our managing partner, Shawna Woods. Shawna, today we are discussing giving on empty. And the idea of this episode is when you know your tanks are down low, the gauge is low. And I’m not talking about your car, talking about you energetically. And you continue to give and provide to
Your people, your loved ones, the ones that you feel responsible to and you continue to go and go and go. I have a lot of thoughts on this and a lot of personal with this. Where would you want to kick us off on this?
s
Experience.
You know, I also have a lot of thoughts and a lot of personal experience. And I think A lot of people out there, particularly women who we are taught from a very young age, you know, we are the helpers, we are the saviors, we are the ones who at the end of the day, put everyone else first. You know, you, you always hear kind of stories of, my mom would like everybody else to eat before she.
s
Yeah.
s
Perfect.
Yeah. Right. And we all did that.
s
My gosh, I always heard that a parent never eats first. Absolutely.
s
Provide for everyone else and then if not not just do the leftovers but if there are leftovers then that’s when you get you know your share and I think because that is ingrained in us as women we continue to do that well into our adult lives well past you know feeding our own children and giving to the point of having
Absolutely nothing left for ourselves.
s
And completely running on empty. Sean, I’m so excited that you’re discussing this from the woman’s perspective because one of the big things I have here in my notes, and we’ve always said how you and I don’t share notes and talk about this beforehand, but it’s exactly what I have in my notes is that there is a masculine versus feminine component to this. And a lot of what I’m going to share comes from personal experience with this, but also I have to give credit where credit’s due. So a lot of…
Teaching from Alison Armstrong, who I consider the think leader and the thought, the big thinker on partnership and the masculine and the feminine that comes into that. So I think the masculine typically is a lot more clear on what it wants to give, which is usually provide and protect, right? And when it’s at a giving place and when it’s not at a giving place, you know, if you think of a typical man, watch
Him being asked to give something he is not willing or able or in a state of mind to give, it’s very hard to move that man to give that. And he has no qualms about it. Very comfortable, very clear. No. Now watch a typical woman, quote unquote woman, in the feminine and being asked to give something that she is not have the mental state or the capacity or the desire to give.
And it can put her into a complete state of stress. And I think that’s fascinating that how different that is for the masculine versus feminine. But I think the men are typically a lot more clear on how much they want to give, where their limit on giving is, and if they’re in a place of giving or not versus women. We in the feminine, we are not as clear on when we are run out of that tank. However, I do think
The alarms, if we’re paying attention to them, they are going off. They are internally going off on red, you’re in the red, low fuel, know, pull over, but we just, we shut that voice off inside of us. Why do you think that is?
s
That’s a great question. Quite frankly, we go back to nature versus nurture. We go back to societal demands because women are naturally, well, I don’t know if we’re naturally or not, because we’re discussing that. But in society, we are the caretakers. Are the pleasers. We are the keepers of the home, which the home never ceases to need something. Right. Right. And so a lot of that, think, really is societal pressure. I think it’s pressure we put on ourselves.
s
We are the Pleasers!
s
And it does come out in so many different ways. And we show it in so many different ways. You when you hear a woman who you know is just running on nothing. Right. You can hear the resentment in her voice. You can hear the weary in her voice. And it does become almost this in relationships, a nagging voice, a complaining voice.
s
Subplaining.
s
In allowing ourselves to get there, then we become this other person.
s
You know, I think The feminine is just so much flexible and willing to bend and be more fluid to the situation and the people around it. It’s so, the word is adaptable. I the feminine is so adaptable. And so it’s trying to please through its adaptability, trying to serve so many people and many dimensions coming at it. And it will keep going.
Adapting and adapting, adapting until it sort of loses itself somewhere. And it loses, you know, its sense of what is it that I want to provide? What is it that I want to give? So I made some notes to myself on this is an exercise I do with myself a lot for my family, my children, because they are the ones that are at the top of my priority list of providing for energetically from me. What I think we have to be conscious of
In the feminine and as women is what do you want to give? You can’t give everything. I think that’s the first step of not running, giving on running on empty. Cause there are certain things that we are uniquely gifted to just give by just breathing. Right? Right. Like we mentioned another podcast, like you’re a challenger, you’re a disruptor. It doesn’t take a lot of energy from you to provide that, to provide a
Disruption to a dysfunctional state, disruption to dysfunctional thinking, disruption to a status quo that is not serving people. It doesn’t take a lot of Shawna energy to provide that. That is just who you embody and your presence alone provides that. It comes very natural to you. When I’m in my tanks are full, my cup is full, I’ve received everything I need to receive in order to give.
s
It comes right
s
I can be a provider of peace, like a peaceful state, a calming state, a state where, you know, people can go to where they can just for a minute have put away their worries and just be in a state of calm. If my tanks are full, it doesn’t take a lot of energy for me to just provide a peaceful state, a state of calm for people. But I have to be very aware of what am I best at providing? What am I uniquely gifted to provide?
And what do I want to be the provider of? Think too many women, they don’t sit down and think about that. And they choose to just be the giver of it all, the giver of everything. But if we just choose a few things that you want to be the queen of, I want to be the queen of giving this, right? I want to be the queen of providing warmth. I want to be the queen of providing an abundant mindset, right? For my children. Then
How much more ease can you do that? And then when other things come up and you just know that’s, I am not the queen of providing that. Maybe I can find the resource for that.
s
Yeah, thinking about what you’re sharing about, you know, you’re very natural in providing peace, and especially for your family and being there. And I think that one of the things that when we talk about running on empty or giving till we’re empty is if we have an overflow of what we have, then that’s easy for us to give. And I like the idea of making these conscious decisions, whether it’s on a weekly, daily, monthly, however basis and saying,
What is it I’m willing to give? Going from the things I love to give, right? I love to do X. Now what’s the next step? Okay. I may not love to do Y, but I need to do Y. Y is necessary and I’m good at it, right? So what do I need to provide that for this area? And when you were talking, I was thinking,
s
And
Provide them.
s
Very much about very recently I had to hold my own space. I went through, you know, a big loss, couple of losses in the last six months that really did affect me. And doing what we do on a daily basis, we hold a lot of emotions for our clients, right? They come in and they share with us and we hold space for them and we provide them not just legal advice, but
s
A big loss.
s
The ability to unburden themselves. I mean, sometimes I know more than their mamas. I have a lot of information and I hold that in high respect for when I do that. And I have to be in a certain energy to be able to do that for some people. And we had talked about it. I had to take time off because I did not have that energy around me to hold that space for somebody else. I had to hold that space for me.
s
So this is exactly like the perfect way it’s done is when you’re you understand this is what’s needed of me and in order for me to provide this thing that takes a lot of energy out of me currently, what do I need to provide for me? What do I need so I can be in a state of giving? Yes. And being willing to speak up for that, being able to rely on yourself, trust yourself to say, I will speak up for my needs.
That are a great source of providing for others that I love and I care for. You know, my mom didn’t do this. I wish my mom had done this when I was younger. She was the queen of providing on empty. And it comes a lot from my culture. And I’m sure there’s a lot of other cultures that are similar to this. The Middle Eastern culture honors self-sacrifice. It honors how much of yourself can you sacrifice for
Your loved ones, more importantly for your family. And in my mom’s side of the family, that is like a badge of honor. If they could have like four star general purple hearts and they would hand these out for who like, you know, gave up the most for their child, there would be a lot of stars being handed out to my mom’s side of the family. This is really, I think, an unconscious value system in my mom’s side of the family that took a lot of years for me to uncover.
And for me to sort of decide how much of this do I want to take on, how much do I not. But My mom worked all throughout my life, one of the hardest working women I’ve ever met, would come home and, I mean, I’m talking like ironing our clothes, our socks. There was never a day we ate out, we ate homemade food every day. She baked cookies, she was incredibly involved in my school, but she was running on empty and she had, I she was diagnosed with.
Terminal cancer at the age of 42. And, you know, we can talk about this another day, but when you look back to the psyche of what can create cancer, it’s over mothering. And that’s when she snapped out of it. And thankfully she did, but she lived in this, am self-sacrificing, I am running on empty and never coming in and saying, hey, I can’t provide this right now because I need my tank to be filled.
And this is what I need from you guys so I can be back to my zone of excellence for all of you. She never would do that. Instead, we would see the alarms, the agitation, the, and her getting annoyed, her nagging at us, her complaining over little things, nothing being perfect enough, right? Her not being in a playful mindset to play with us, right? Like if everything was about
Producing results. Everything in my home was about producing results from my mom’s side. So, you know, playing with Barbies and just going on to La La Land with them, that would not produce results, you know, but providing organic homemade cookies and bread and chicken definitely was on that list. So what are some things that we can ask for? Some simple things we can ask for from our people to say, hey, my tank’s going on empty.
The alarms are going off. I’m not in the state of providing to like get this. You asked for this. Was it just a matter of asking for time?
s
In that situation it was. It was a matter of asking for time because that’s all I needed. I needed to unplug. I actually sent you that text. I’m unplugging. Right. I’m out. And of course you’re wonderful and recognized that I needed to do that for myself. Do want to hit and I will come back to that but I want to hit on something you said was so important is that you your mom gave and gave and gave.
Past the point of nagging, past the point of parting martyrdom, right? To the fact she was giving her entire life. She was giving her body. And I think we really need to take a pause and listen to it because our bodies will shut us down. Our bodies will let us know that you have given beyond and we have no more body.
s
Yes.
I think a lot of our physical ailments are the body’s alarm system going off, that your tanks are low.
s
I could not agree with you more and to get back to what can I ask for from my partner? What can I ask from for my family my friends what it is? I will first you have to understand and acknowledge what it is you need Right. So taking time every day to think about your own needs and that may sound Excessive near a lot of women. I don’t have time to think about my needs. Yeah Take
15 minutes I will tell you I schedule my time. I love that I schedule it’s a time where and Other people here may know that I do not calendar sometimes on my calendar And I need to take those breaks during the day to think about what it is I need it may very well just need I mean to meditate Yeah for a few minutes. I may need to stretch. I mean to go for a walk I may need to have a laugh with a friend. Yeah
You, what, drink water, sleep, all of these things that we all know we need to do that we don’t do.
s
You know, the walking is huge. Yes. I mean, everything you mentioned really are like nothing extravagant. No. And that’s the part that I think we overdo this in our head of like, what do I need? It’s not it’s never that extravagant. It’s usually just very basic needs. And I think when you’re in that state of you’ve been giving on empty, being time to yourself is very important because you’re probably in a state where all you hear
Is people, even if they’re not communicating this to you, people communicating more things that they want from you. And I’ve been in that state where genuinely nobody around me is asking me for anything, but I’m running on so low that all I can hear is more demands. And like literally Hashem’s like, nobody’s asking anything of you. Like just chill out. Just take a time out to yourself, go do what you need to do, go be on your own, because you’re not even hearing people.
s
Absolutely.
Yeah, you’re such in a mode of solving the issue or what do they need from you right now that you’re hearing things that they’re not being. And I love that you’ve got a partner who’s like, Hey, take some minutes, go be by yourself for a while. And I think that we kind of need to do that for each other in friendships as well.
s
They are not even being communicated.
100 % I think the closest friendships do that for each other. Yeah, and and I think they realize also Hey, I need to give that person some space right now They need some time
s
Absolutely.
The vast majority of my very close friends are very well aware. Shawna just unplugged sometimes. I may disappear for a weekend and I’m not returning texts, I’m not returning calls. I just need to clear my head of any sound in any space in that kind of area.
s
And they give you that space. Going back to the partners, think That’s one of the biggest things that Sham and I had to learn in our marriage is watching for the alarms, only on ourselves, so we could speak up and say, hey, I’m running on low. Can I sleep in this Saturday? You take care of the kids or I’m running on low. Can I go get a walk? Know, and you take care of these things, but also sharing the alarms with each other.
And then being aware of each other’s alarms. Sometimes when you’re in that state, hopefully you’re not too far gone, but you might get to a point where you’re not seeing the alarms and your partner needs to be able to see them and be able to feel comfortable telling you, hey, you need a timeout. I think men do run low as well, but it’s different. It’s not necessarily on a giving place. It might be from a place of they are running low in order to go past just protecting, but being able to
Like they’re more an instinctual place. And in order to provide beyond just the necessities and provide playfulness, provide not just their straight masculine energy, but a little bit more openness of themselves, they need some time too. AnD for Hisham, it’s a ride on his motorcycle. And when I see that he’s in that state where he literally cannot give to the children playfully, he cannot give to me playfully, I’m like,
Think he need to go for a ride. Getting on the highway and or a beautiful mountain road on his motorcycle and just turning off all noise, that does it for him. And there’s times where I’m like begging him, please, please, I’ll take care of everything. You go do that. And he does that for me as well. Not to be a dead horse here with my mom’s situation, but I was thinking of this when I was thinking about my mom.
I had heard Alison Armstrong Say this once, which was, If the people who you love, who you are providing for knew from what a low energy state you’re providing for and the kind of resentment that creates later, because when you’re providing on low, it creates resentment later on. They would ask you to not to stop. They would ask you to stop.
If we had known as children the stuff that my mom was providing for us and the price we would have to pay for that later on, we wouldn’t have wanted any of it. Any of it. We would have never had made that deal. We would have never made that agreement.
s
Two things, I do want to ask you a question about the partnership, because I think that’s wonderful that you and Hisham do that for each other. When you’re talking about your mom and talking about her running on empty, I’m picturing a teapot that’s out of water. And it’s still expected to produce tea. It can’t. The whistle starts going the whistle’s going, it’s burning, and it’s on fire. Yeah. And somehow everybody’s going, where’s my tea? Yeah. And the teapot’s like, it’s coming, I’m trying.
s
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
s
But I have a question about the partnerships, because we do come from different places in our lives. What happens when you’re both running on empty? How do you navigate who gets to take the time out?
s
Man, that’s such a good question, Shawna. We would probably fight over, at that point that would cause a fight where he’s begging me to take a timeout and I’m begging him to take a timeout. And he’s just thinking, if she goes through her happy go lucky state, then I can sort myself out. And I’m just thinking if he could just be like his playful providing you sham, then I can sort myself out. And that’s where.
Dependency of marriage can really go off balance and things can get really tricky because each party is sort of like, I need you to be okay, so I can go work on me being okay. And at some point, one person has to step up and be the leader and give up the whole self-sacrifice thinking and say, okay, fine, I’ll go sort myself out and then I’ll provide the space you need for you to go sort yourself out.
Sometimes it’s just the logistically, which works when you have three children and, you know, professional lives to manage. But you bring up a really good point because when both are running on low and empty, it becomes, that’s where I think a funk can be created in the marriage and things can spiral out of into a, into a fight and not even knowing where did we go wrong. But this is why it’s so important that you guard
Your gauge so hard because you have to do it, even if you have to do it so that you don’t get to a place where it goes empty.
s
You’re both empty. Yeah.
And I love how you put it, the masculine feminine, because I have seen, you know, males take on the role of the caretaker and the caregivers and, run themselves just as empty and they are deep in the feminine at that moment in time. And that’s not to emasculate them. They are just deep in their feminine. And I think giving each other the grace to say, you know what? I can’t handle the kids right now. Can you take them without turning and trying to use that against someone?
s
Yeah.
s
Yeah,
Which we do see in divorce cases. I like that a big shocker for you guys. Everybody gets to the point where they can’t handle their kids sometimes. It’s not surprising we say, hey, I need a timeout. Let me take a break. And that’s perfectly OK.
s
And there’s nothing worse than for children having to deal with parents who don’t want to spend time with them at that moment and are being annoyed by them and are yelling at them. It’s not a good state for the children to be in. You should not be around children when you’re in that state where everything they do leads to an agitation. You’re nagging at them, you’re complaining at them, and you find yourself having a temper tantrum, a toddler’s temper tantrum.
With your children. That’s a big red alarm. Thanks for listening to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. If you’d to learn more, go to atlantadivorcelawgroup.com/resources.
Our experienced Atlanta, Georgia divorce and family lawyers understand that divorce may be a complicated, emotional time for you. Many important decisions need to be made that consider your current situation as well as your future.
An attorney can work to help you emerge from your divorce in a better financial, legal, and personal situation than you may have imagined. Call today to schedule a consultation.
Atlanta Divorce Law Group
12735 Morris Rd Ext,
Building 200 Suite 300
Alpharetta, GA 30004
Atlanta Divorce Law Group
Atlanta Divorce Law Group
Atlanta Divorce Law Group
Atlanta Divorce Law Group
Atlanta Divorce Law Group
5755 North Point Pkwy
Suite 206
Alpharetta, GA 30022