When Being Strong Becomes the Expectation

I have a love-hate relationship with the word strong. I have heard it countless times over the past 12 years. “You are so strong.” “I don’t know how you did it.” “I could never have handled what you handled.”

I understand why people say it. And there is a part of me that is proud of how strong I was and how strong I have become. But there is another part of that word that has always been complicated for me. I never wanted to have to be strong.

When Steve died, I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I was going to become this incredibly resilient woman who could handle anything life threw at her. I was forced into it. I had three daughters who needed me. I had a business that needed leadership. There were finances to figure out, decisions to make, a household to run and a life that somehow had to keep moving forward. There wasn’t really an option to say, “I don’t think I can do this.” I had to do it. And the amount of work, heartache and emotional strain that went into being “strong” was more than most people could ever see.

When people told me I was strong, I often just smiled and nodded. It was easier. What I didn’t always say was that I felt like I was breaking inside. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was scared. I was exhausted. I questioned myself constantly. Most days, I was simply putting one foot in front of the other.

But from the outside, that can look a lot like strength.

I went to work. I raised my daughters. I made decisions. I figured out the finances. I showed up at school events. I traveled. I eventually sold the business. I built a new career and a new life. The more I did, the more capable I became. And the more capable I became, the more people saw me as someone who could handle things. They weren’t wrong. But being capable and being okay are not always the same thing.

That is something I think we sometimes miss when we look at someone who has experienced a significant loss. We see that they are functioning and assume they are fine. We see them laughing at dinner, succeeding at work or taking a trip and think they have moved through their grief. Sometimes what we are actually seeing is someone who has become very good at carrying it.

For me, being strong became a kind of armor. In the beginning, I needed it. It protected me. It kept me focused. It helped me get out of bed and do what needed to be done. There were so many things I could not control, but I could control what I did next. So I kept doing it.

There is something empowering about discovering that you can do things you never thought you could do. I learned that I could make the decisions. I could take care of my family. I could travel alone. I could walk into a room by myself. I could build a career and a life that looked completely different from the one I had planned. I am incredibly proud of that woman.

But armor is heavy. And when you wear it long enough, sometimes you forget that you are allowed to take it off.

There is another side to becoming capable. Eventually, people expect it from you. You become the person who has it handled. And sometimes you start expecting it from yourself too. You don’t ask for help because you know you can figure it out. You don’t share that something is hard because you have handled harder things. You tell yourself, “I’ve got it,” because for years, you had no other choice.

That independence served me incredibly well. It still does. But after 12 years, I am realizing that being strong doesn’t always have to mean doing everything myself. That is a newer lesson for me.

I am very good at being independent. I know how to take care of myself. I know how to solve problems and make decisions. I know I will be okay if something doesn’t work out because I have already survived something I once couldn’t imagine surviving. There is tremendous comfort in knowing that about yourself. But there can also be comfort in letting someone else show up for you. And I am still figuring out what that looks like.

For a long time, strength meant getting through the day. It meant doing the next thing. It meant holding my family together when our world had fallen apart. Today, maybe strength looks a little different. Maybe it is saying, “I could use some help.” Maybe it is admitting that something is hard instead of automatically saying, “I’m fine.” Maybe it is allowing someone else to carry something, even when I know perfectly well that I could carry it myself. Maybe it is letting people see what is underneath the armor.

I don’t regret becoming strong. In many ways, I love the woman that strength helped me become. I trust myself in a way I never did before Steve died. I know I can figure things out. I know I can do hard things. I know I can build a life after the one I planned disappeared. But I am also learning that I don’t have to prove that strength every day.

If you have become the “strong one” after loss, perhaps you know exactly what I mean. You can be proud of everything you have carried and still be tired of carrying it. You can be independent and still want someone beside you. You can be capable and still need support.

Maybe the next version of strength isn’t about proving how much you can handle. Maybe it is finally trusting that you don’t always have to handle it alone.