soft after survival

there is a version of strength that is really just prolonged self protection.

i know because i lived there for years.

hyper independence disguised as capability.
emotional guardedness disguised as maturity.
exhaustion disguised as resilience.
control disguised as stability.

survival can make a woman incredibly impressive.

it can also make her disappear from herself entirely.

i became the woman who handled things.
fixed things.
anticipated problems before they arrived.
stayed calm in crisis.
carried more than i should have.
needed very little publicly.
kept functioning no matter what was happening internally.

people admire women like that.

until they realize how difficult it is for those women to actually rest.

because survival changes your nervous system.

you stop relaxing fully.
you stop trusting ease.
you stop believing softness is safe.

even love can start to feel suspicious when you are used to earning your worth through usefulness.

especially then.

i think some women become so accustomed to surviving that gentleness itself begins to feel unfamiliar.

a healthy relationship feels boring.
rest feels lazy.
help feels uncomfortable.
being cared for feels exposing.
peace feels temporary.

your body keeps waiting for the next thing to happen.

the next disappointment.
the next betrayal.
the next emergency.
the next phone call that changes your life forever.

and maybe healing is less about becoming a completely new person and more about teaching your body it no longer has to live in constant preparation for devastation.

that has been one of the hardest parts for me.

allowing softness without immediately bracing for punishment afterward.

letting myself be cared for.
letting myself slow down.
letting joy exist without immediately searching for what could ruin it.
letting myself believe i deserve tenderness that is not transactional.

because somewhere along the way many women learned that softness invited harm.

so we sharpened ourselves to survive.

and i am proud of the woman who survived.

truly.

but i am also trying to become a woman who experiences life beyond survival now.

a woman who laughs fully.
rests fully.
loves fully.
exists without constantly preparing for impact.

not because life suddenly became safe.

but because i deserve more than merely enduring it.