The Day I Stopped Performing Strength
The Liberation That Comes When You Stop Pretending and Start Being Real
I didn’t realize how much of my life was a performance.
Not a fake life.
Not a dishonest one.
Just… a carefully managed version of strength.
I was the one people leaned on.
The one who figured it out.
The one who stayed calm.
The one who didn’t fall apart.
And somewhere along the way, I started believing that if I ever did fall apart, I would disappoint everyone.
So I kept performing.
Performing calm.
Performing resilience.
Performing “I’ve got it.”
Until one day, I didn’t.
I hit a moment where I had nothing left to give—not emotionally, not mentally, not spiritually. And instead of pushing through like I always had, I did something unfamiliar.
I stopped pretending.
I told the truth about how I felt.
I admitted I was overwhelmed.
I allowed myself to say, “This is too much for me.”
And what surprised me most wasn’t how people reacted.
It was how free I felt.
Because the pressure to be “the strong one” had never come from them.
It came from me.
I had created a rule in my own life that said: strong women don’t break. Strong women don’t ask. Strong women handle it.
But I learned something life-changing in that season:
Strength is not about how much you can endure.
Strength is about how honest you’re willing to be.
Honest about your limits.
Honest about your needs.
Honest about what no longer aligns with the vision you have for your life.
I also learned that strength comes when you let go of people and things that no longer align with your vision.
Sometimes we carry relationships out of history.
Sometimes we carry responsibilities out of guilt.
Sometimes we carry expectations that were never ours to hold.
And we call it strength.
But it’s actually weight.
The real strength was in releasing what no longer fit. In allowing space for support. In giving myself permission to not always be the one who has it together.
That was the day I stopped performing strength.
And started living in it.
