“If I don’t do it, who will?” I hear this well-seasoned expression in many of my seminars, especially when speaking to women. Now I know some men say it too, but we women are notorious users of the phrase, and we live it.

My mother, the mother of nurturers, epitomized this maxim. She often told me, and still does (she’s 89), that she had to think for herself, my dad, and me for years. Now, were we lazy? Yes. Were we irresponsible? Yes. However, I think my mom brought this on herself when she did for us what we really could have done for ourselves.

This sort of scenario repeated itself many times when I was growing up: My mom, dad, and I worked side by side in our country grocery store serving the farmers as they worked the land. Mom would occasionally holler from the store for me to find a wrench or whatever she might need at the time. I would begrudgingly search for the wrench, but I also knew how to work it so my mom would have to end up getting the wrench herself. I would hunt through the drawer in the kitchen and then yell that I couldn’t find the wrench. She would then shout back that it was in the drawer next to the stove. I would make a lot of noise as I rummaged through the drawer and then go tell her that I couldn’t find the wrench. By then she was frustrated and would throw up her hands, go into the kitchen, promptly march to the drawer, open it, and — voila! — there was the wrench in plain view. Imagine that!

I won the battle. After several sessions, I had trained my mom not to ask me to find her anything. Mom would always give in and do the project herself, and I won the battle. But I lost the war and the character development that would have transpired if she had hung in there and required that I find the wrench.