Balance Strength With Softness

For most of my life, I didn't know softness was even an option.

I was exploring my moon sign with Moon Omens this morning when one sentence stopped me.

Balance strength with softness.

I read it twice. Then I put my phone down and just sat with it, because it landed somewhere I wasn’t expecting.

Here’s the thing about a sentence like that. You can only really hear it when you’re ready to hear it. A year ago I would have read those same words and rolled my eyes. Like yeah, right. This morning they cracked something open.

For most of my life, I would have told you strength was my best quality. It might have been my only strategy.

I figured things out. I carried people. I survived things I don’t always talk about. I built businesses. I kept moving when moving felt like the only option I had.

Somewhere along the way, out of wounds I am just starting to understand, I became hyper independent. Not on purpose. It was just what kept me safe. If I don’t need anyone, no one can leave. If I carry it all myself, no one gets the chance to drop me. If I stay strong, I stay safe.

So I never asked for help, even when I was drowning. I did everything myself, quietly, so that no one could let me down. And there was a resentment tangled up in it too. Like fuck you, I’ll do it myself. I don’t need anyone anyway. Receiving anything, help, love, support, felt almost impossible. Like my hands didn’t know how to open in that direction.

That version of me got me here, and I’m grateful for her. She kept me alive. She kept the whole thing standing when it easily could have come down.

But she also never rested.

When I lost my son in 2020, I heard “you are so strong” a few too many times.

And then I couldn’t hold it together anymore. Grief does that to you. It doesn’t care how strong you are. That was the first time I knew in my soul there had to be another way to do life.

This wasn’t some gentle awakening. I didn’t go looking for it. Grief thrust it on me. Losing my son forced me to evolve, whether I was ready or not. The Neuro Identity Evolution certification I’m in now is me finally putting language to what already broke open.

You don’t know until you know. And I didn’t know.

I didn’t know any other way to exist except hustle and grind. That was the whole operating system. Go. Do. Handle it. Next.

It’s not that I looked at strength and softness and chose strength. It’s that I never knew both were on the table. Softness wasn’t a door I was refusing to walk through. It was a door I didn’t know existed. Existing in both was never a choice I was avoiding. I just couldn’t see it from where I was standing.

You think you’re making choices. You’re not. You’re on autopilot. Go go go, survival mode, running the only program you were ever handed.

Strength alone isn’t my only option anymore. Softness has entered the room and she wants to play.

And she didn’t just show up today. She’s been here the whole time. Quiet. Patient. Waiting for me to have enough room to finally hear her.

The softer part.

Not weak. Not fragile. I want to be really clear about that, because I think we get those words confused.

Just softer.

She’s the woman who doesn’t have to force every outcome. The one whose nervous system can finally exhale after being braced for so long. The one who can receive instead of always being the one who carries. The one who can trust instead of gripping tighter every time things get uncertain.

But just because I know better now doesn’t make it feel safe to live there yet.

I keep waiting to feel like I’m losing something by softening. Like I’m giving up the edge that kept me safe.

But that’s not what’s happening.

I don’t feel like I’m losing my strength. I feel like I’m expanding it.

Here’s the thing I can’t stop noticing though.

We’re obsessed with strength. We hand out medals for it. We build entire brands around grit and hustle and pushing through. “She’s so strong” is one of the highest compliments we give a woman, and I’ve worn it proudly for years. I still catch myself reaching for it.

But nobody claps for softness.

Nobody says wow, look how well she lets herself rest. Nobody celebrates the woman who finally set the weight down. We’ve quietly decided softness is what you settle for when you run out of strength. Like it’s the backup plan. When really, I’m starting to think it might be the other half of the whole thing.

Because strength without softness is just armor. It protects you, sure. But it also keeps you braced for a fight that ended a long time ago. You end up guarding a life that’s actually safe now.

The healthiest version of me isn’t the strong one or the soft one. It’s both. It’s knowing when to hold the line and when to let my shoulders drop. When to act and when to receive. When to lead and when to let myself be held for a minute, without treating it like a failure.

And for the first time, I think I’m ready to set the old way down. Not throw it away. Just loosen my grip. Stop white knuckling a life that doesn’t require white knuckling anymore.

I spent so long in survival mode that softness wasn’t even in my vocabulary. It wasn’t part of anything I knew, or anything I ever said out loud. I didn’t reject it. I just never met it. And I’m wondering now how much I missed, not because I chose wrong, but because I didn’t know there was a choice to make.

So I’ll leave you with the question I’m sitting with today.

Where in your life have you been living in only one world, not realizing you were always allowed to live in both?

I don’t have a clean answer. I’m just noticing out loud. And maybe, for now, that’s enough.