People often describe strong women as though strength were simply part of their personality.
Independent. Capable. Responsible. The person who handles things.
It sounds like a compliment.
And often, it is.
But sometimes strength has a history.
When a child learns to read the room
Sometimes it begins with a child who learned very early to watch the room.
Is everyone all right?
Is somebody angry?
Should I say something?
Would it be safer to stay quiet?
Can I fix this?
Children are remarkably good at adapting. They do not sit down and analyse the emotional dynamics of their family. They simply learn what works.
One child becomes loud.
Another disappears into books.
Another becomes funny.
And some become exceptionally good.
Helpful. Responsible. Easy.
They learn that keeping everyone else comfortable makes life more predictable.
The child grows up
The strange thing is that this ability does not disappear when childhood ends.
The child grows up.
Now she is the woman who remembers everything, solves everything and rarely asks anyone for help.
People admire her independence.
She may even admire it herself.
I certainly did.
For years, I thought being able to deal with almost anything was simply one of my better qualities.
And it is a quality.
But eventually I began wondering why relaxing could sometimes feel more difficult than solving a crisis.
Why asking for help felt uncomfortable.
Why I could recognise somebody else’s mood within seconds, yet occasionally needed considerably longer to understand my own.
Strength can come from two very different places
That is when strength becomes interesting.
Because there is an enormous difference between:
“I can take care of myself.”
and
“I must take care of myself because nobody else will.”
From the outside, the two can look identical.
Inside, they feel very different.
One comes from confidence.
The other may have begun as survival.
Not every survival skill needs to stay forever
I don’t believe we need to reject the qualities our childhood gave us. Some of them are extraordinary.
Resourcefulness.
Humour.
Independence.
The ability to survive difficult things without losing curiosity about life.
I would not want to erase those parts of myself.
But there comes a point when we can ask a different question:
Do I still need every survival skill I learned as a child?
Perhaps strength does not always mean carrying more.
Sometimes it means noticing that you are allowed to put something down.
That idea took me a surprisingly long time to learn.
If this feels familiar
This is one of the threads running through my memoir, I Just Wanted to Be Normal — a story about childhood, family, survival, absurdity, and what happens when you eventually begin looking at your own life with different eyes.
If any of this feels familiar, you can read three scenes from the book free:
Breakfast · My Hand in His · The Empty Seat in the Audience
Or find I Just Wanted to Be Normal in Kindle and paperback on Amazon.