Keep F*cking Going: The Price of Being Everyone Else's Version of Strong

Today, I led a training on trauma-informed leadership, a topic that asks us to be mindful of the invisible wounds others carry into the room. I spent most of the morning trying to hold myself together in a way that looked polished enough to pass.

Heading into the session, to say I was anxious would be the understatement of the century. Some of the attendees were people I used to work alongside, complicated relationships wrapped in history, kindness, and betrayal, and the old hurt of being warned about “mean girls” (that I did not heed because I wanted to believe the best...) and then learning the hard way that the warning was right. I am a true believer in the sisterhood, which is probably why it still catches me off guard when women use and discard each other in the name of getting ahead, as though we don’t endure enough of that from men.

Last night, my nerves were humming so loudly that everything felt frayed around the edges, like the whole day and everything in my life was being held together by one overstretched thread. In my house, that didn’t come out as tears or a dramatic monologue; it came out as me going quiet, folding in on myself, trying to make my body smaller so my feelings wouldn’t spill everywhere. Cash watched that and took it personally, saw distance, saw coldness, saw a version of me that felt like it was turning away from him, when the truth was that I was just trying not to completely come apart.

There is a particular kind of ache in realizing that even in your own bed, with the person who is supposed to love and understand you most, you are still managing the room. Still scanning, still translating, still worrying that your silence will be taken as punishment instead of the only language your nervous system can manage. It is not just difficult; it is exhausting in a bone-deep way to be falling apart on the inside and still feel responsible for the potential impact of your unraveling on the people who should “get it,” and so you come to the realization that you need to do a better job of keeping your unraveling to yourself.

This morning, in the middle of all of this, the messages I got about myself were mixed. Before the training, my boss gently reminded me to be mindful of my “RBF,” as my neutrality and matter-of-factness can come across as “unapproachable,” while also conceding that the way I was treated was grossly unfair. The “resting bitch face” phenomenon, is really just a newer label for an old story: women are expected to keep their faces soft and pleasant, to smile so we aren’t read as angry, cold, or unlikable. It is something that men never, ever have to worry about.

After the training, Cash sent me a text telling me how proud he was of how brave and bold I am, and lately he has also praised me for being resilient. None of it was meant to be unkind; all of it was offered with the sweetest of intentions.

The thing is, this is not the first time someone has called me resilient. I have heard that word over and over across the most broken seasons of my life, through years of infertility, the loss of my triplet girls, a divorce, abandonment, abuse, infidelity. It is a word people reach for when they don’t know what else to say, when your story makes their eyes widen and they need you to reassure them that you are “okay.”

Over the years, the word resilient has started to feel less like a compliment and more like a quiet admission that people expect me to take the hit and keep standing. It is the emotional version of being told, “You take a punch really well,” when what I actually want is for the punching to stop. I do not want my legacy to be that I survived everything; I want it to be about joy and family. I want it to be about grace and love. I want it to be all of these things I have fought so hard for, and even still, it often feels like the hits just keep coming.​

The more often people call me strong, the more I notice the fine print: you are strong, so we will hand you more to carry. You are resilient, so we will assume you will bounce back. You are dependable, so we will lean in without asking whether you are already bent. I am tired of being the safe place for everyone else while quietly wondering when or if I will every truly find a consistent, steady, soft place to land when I find myself at my most vulnerable.

So I have been asking myself some hard questions. Why am I always responsible for everyone else’s emotions? Why does my exhaustion become something other people take personally instead of something they help hold? Why can’t I simply be tired or quiet without it turning into a story about how I am failing someone?

What it looks like, if we are being honest, is not some cinematic moment of vulnerability and repair. It does not look like sitting across from someone at the end of the day and beautifully unpacking the deepest parts of myself with a person who receives it perfectly. For me, right now, it looks like not having the energy to do that at all, and if I do, I can only manage it in the moments when I feel the safest.

The truth is, I do not know if I will ever fully trust another human being with the darkest corners of my story, especially when my quieter, more fragile moments are not met with empathy and grace. There is a particular kind of loneliness in realizing that the very ways you cope, whether it be going still, going inward, or going quiet, are read as rejection by the people who should know you enough to see those moments for what they are and offer support instead of criticism.

So on days like today, it is not about having a soft place to land; it is about not collapsing. It is about putting one foot in front of the other, answering the emails, leading the training, getting the kids where they need to be, and doing the next right thing even when everything inside you feels completely and utterly raw. It is about survival in its purest form.

I wear a bracelet with a small silver tag that says “keep fucking going.” It is not inspirational so much as it is descriptive. On the hardest days, it is not a mantra about growth or grit or becoming a better version of myself. It is a reminder that, for now, the only thing I know how to do, the only thing I can do, is exactly that: keep fucking going.