🌹 Redefining Strength 🌹

🌹I had a conversation with my 25yr old daughter recently about what it truly means to be a strong woman.
For years, people told me I was strong, strong for staying, strong for enduring, strong for surviving everything life threw at me.
But I told her the truth, THEY WERE WRONG!!!

I wasn’t strong, I was broken!
I was a woman who mistook endurance for strength and silence for peace.

A strong woman doesn’t allow herself to be destroyed by the people she loves.
A strong woman doesn’t accept abuse, not from a husband, not from her children, not from anyone.
But I did!

I allowed their anger, their words, and their actions to strip away everything that made me who I was, my worth, my dignity, my sense of self. I became just a shadow of the woman I once knew, lying in the ruins of the love I kept trying to protect.

For years, I told myself I was strong because I stayed.
But now I understand, true strength isn’t found in staying silent through pain.
It’s found in standing up, speaking out, and refusing to be broken again.

I wasn’t a strong woman then…
But I’m becoming one now. 💫

Coralmist · 41-45, F

And even another way to view it, I just learned today. It was by a author named Gabor Mate who writes about trauma and abuse. He said, "You're not broken. You're wounded." That really hit me, because I've gone also through excessive awful psychological abuse, and I have identified fully with being broken. I can't even date Bec I feel I'm too tainted. But it's actually, we are Wounded. And Mate added, wounds , can heal. 🌷