There’s something strangely freeing about being able to put into words what you’re feeling.
To articulate it.
To say it quietly and realize the world doesn’t crumble around you when you tell the truth.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how stillness has a way of telling the truth. I didn’t have the language for what I was feeling then– just a sense that something was shifting beneath the surface. This feels like the next layer of that
Lately, I’ve been thinking about strength.
Not strength in the way we usually celebrate it — resilience, independence, capability.
But strength as currency.
The kind you spend to earn admiration.
The kind that makes you feel valuable when you can carry more than everyone else.
For a long time, I believed this was one of my greatest traits.
If something needed to be handled, I handled it.
If things got difficult, I stayed steady.
If there was more to carry, I carried it.
And somewhere along the way, I started measuring my worth by how much I could hold.
When I carry more, I feel valuable.
Even now, if I’m being honest.
Strength gave me a lot.
It made me capable.
It made me reliable.
It made me someone people trust.
But it also quietly cost me things I didn’t recognize at first.
It cost me rest.
It cost me intimacy.
It cost me asking for help.
And when I look back, I can see traces of that pattern in my relationships too.
I knew how to hold things together.
I knew how to adapt.
I knew how to make things work.
What I didn’t know how to do was let myself be supported.
At the time, I thought I was being strong.
Now I believe I was just afraid of what would happen if I wasn’t.
It has cost me letting someone else lead — because if I’m not steering, I don’t feel steady.
It has cost me being cared for — because I’ve built so much of my identity around being the one who carries.
And maybe the hardest thing to admit is that part of me still believes the deal– not only when it comes to relationships, but simply my everyday life.
Carry more. Be worth more.
I’m not writing this because I’ve transcended it.
I’m writing it because I see it.
Because if that role — the strong one, the capable one, the one who can handle it — were taken away tomorrow, I don’t think I’d feel immediate freedom.
I think I’d feel emptiness.
And if I’m being completely honest, probably sadness.
Sad for the version of me who believed she had to be strong to be safe.
Sad for how tightly I’ve held that identity.
Sad for the ways I traded rest and intimacy for admiration.
Maybe that sadness isn’t a sign that something is wrong.
Maybe it’s just what it feels like to loosen your grip on something you’ve carried for a very long time.
I don’t know yet who I am without strength as currency.
But I’m beginning to notice the quieter parts of myself — the ones that didn’t get much airtime when strength was louder.
And the voice I’m starting to hear from those places is simple.
Put down what you are carrying.
I’m not sure I know how to do that yet.
Part of me still resists.
Part of me worries I’ll disappoint the version of myself that prides itself on being strong.
But another part — quieter, softer — wonders what might happen if I put some of it down anyway.
For now, noticing feels like enough.
-A
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