When My Name Was Strong

A personal response to a writer’s blog post inviting readers to pause and reflect

Photo by Anna Saveleva on Unsplash

I recently read a blog post about grief, space, and letting go of who we think we should be.

The author invited readers to gently turn toward their own experience — not to analyze, but to make a little more room for whatever was already there. They offered four questions as small doorways into the parts of ourselves we often avoid.

As I read, I wondered, Does anyone actually do these prompts?

It felt like a lot to ask of a reader. A massive amount of internal journeying to casually hand someone over a morning cup of coffee. But I was also curious. Why not try it? Part of me suspected I already knew what I would find and a part of me hoped I was wrong.

So, I decided to see what might be living there.

This is what I discovered.

Reflection Prompt #1

Where in your life have you been holding yourself to a version of strength that leaves little room for what you are actually feeling, and what might begin to shift if you allowed even a small amount of space for that experience to be present?

Space has never felt like something I could afford.

Strength was survival in a childhood home that expected me to be the stable one. That training carried into my education and career, teaching me to dissociate. I witnessed unprofessional behaviour and visceral trauma without shifting my posture or publicly shedding a tear.

Eventually, that composure seeped into my personal life, too. Because of the roles I held and the people I was connected to, there was no room for real emotion. I had to be strong enough to remain untouched by what breaks others, yet soft enough to hold their pain with compassion.

The unspoken rule was always the same. Toughen up, stay tough, and never let anything show. Our doorstep was a one-way street. People came to us for support, never the other way around.

In every arena, it meant donning an invisible suit of armour — admired, impenetrable, and isolating. I treated strength as an intellectual exercise. Outsmart grief and regulate every impulse. Never admit anything touched me deeply.

Strength became a name I earned — a reputation I had to uphold. I believed admitting pain would make me look weak or incompetent. I became my own harshest critic.

Strength never actually felt strong. It felt like numbness, coldness, distance, and performance. Much of what I survived was not a choice, yet the instinct to endure was mistaken for resilience and heroism. Who wouldn’t want those badges?

But, if I had known that becoming an expert at holding pain and grief would make it look so effortless that no one would think to help, I might not have done it.

I might not have smiled while my heart fractured. I might not have let the exhaustion fill my lungs. If I had known I was allowed to pause, I might have tried. Instead, I said I was fine.

Maintaining that fortress meant pushing aside sorrow, anger, and loneliness. I exiled joy.

I convinced myself I didn’t deserve happiness until I earned it through arbitrary milestones. I kept only what felt useful for survival: anticipation of harm, fear, guilt, and vigilance.

Strength became a paradox. The very shield that protected me also limited my capacity to fully live.

When I think about actually allowing that space now, the first feeling is terror.

Because if I let even a trickle of truth surface, I think the walls I’ve lived inside would start to shake, crack, and crumble. Not from weakness, but from honesty. Beneath the rubble, a trembling soul would emerge — one with the choice to finally feel the grief of loss as it rises in waves.

But when I look closer, I see that the collapse of that identity is not the end. If the armour fell away, I wouldn’t be falling into nothingness; I would be falling back into the world.

The earth would still hold me. The lake would still lap against the shore, and the sun would still warm my skin. The crow would still caw, the peepers peep, and the wind whistle its way into my lungs. The scent of balsam would still pull me back toward life.

In that collapse, I would see my life differently. I would see that true strength was never about outsmarting grief. It is about surviving the collapse so I can finally witness what rises afterward.

Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash

Reflective Prompt #2

How might you respond to this current pain with self-kindness rather than judgment?

To even consider self‑kindness, I first have to admit the pain exists.

That alone feels radical. It means dismantling my old definition of strength and accepting a gentler one. If I were being kind to myself, I would meet my pain with compassion instead of judgment. I would say, “It’s okay to feel hurt. It’s okay to feel wronged. It’s okay to feel anger and to let it move through me, so long as it causes no harm.”

Practicing self-kindness means acknowledging that harm has happened — intentionally and unintentionally. Pain isn’t a small inconvenience. It’s visceral, physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, and existential. Self-kindness reminds me that its presence doesn’t make me lesser. It makes me human. And that, in some ways, brings me comfort.

When I forget this, or when I begin to minimize my experience or dismiss moments of relief, I can return to the lens grief has given me.

Yes, it has narrowed my vision in some ways. But it has also sharpened it. It lets me see honestly that I’m carrying a lot, even when I do not want to admit it. I know intimately that denial doesn’t lighten the load. It only blinds me to its weight.

There is also something strangely liberating in remembering that this messy process is part of being human though. It gives me permission to chart a course without a map. To embrace the truth that there is no right way to grieve. No cosmic court deciding how long I am allowed to mourn or who or what I am allowed to miss.

I feel the most liberating part of all of this is realizing I can stop judging my grief — and how I grieve. I know I will survive the ache of release. I will survive the collapse. I always do.

The real danger isn’t the breaking open; it is the containment. I might not survive the crushing weight of holding it all in. Self-kindness allows me to release that burden and accept my experience exactly as it is.

Photo by Anna Saveleva on Unsplash

Reflective Prompt #3

What or who are you grieving, and what does that tell you about what is meaningful to you?

I don’t think I have ever considered before what my grief was telling me. That makes sense, though. I never listened to it.

But reflecting now, I see it has been trying to get my attention for some time — that my life has been shaped by loss without my realizing it. I lived inside loss the way someone slips into familiar shoes or sinks into a daily bath. It became a way of living — expected.

Only when I began to drain the water did I notice how much of my life had been shaped by endings — transitions I accepted as inevitable, goodbyes I never named.

I’m not grieving one thing or one person. No. It feels like so many parts of my life have been touched by grief. So many parts of me.

I grieve that which I have loved and that has died. I grieve relationships, experiences that have ended, identities I’ve shed, and dreams that never materialized. But I also grieve the intangibles: safety, freedom, and the futures I imagined — the versions of myself I thought I would become.

And in that grief, I am able to actually see what is truly meaningful to me. I see authenticity, connection, growth, learning, compassion, courage, beauty, joy, kindness, shared expression, and love. These have always mattered.

I find these things in the quiet marvel of geese flying in unison, a baby’s cooing, a couple holding hands, and friends gathering. I also find them in the sounds of the forest, the stillness of the water, and the sunset. They appear in the aha of a person grasping a difficult concept, in the words that leap from a page, in the staccato of the symphony, and in the simple act of walking a dog.

I find them in every mindful step. Every smile. Every tear. Every moment I witness someone else’s pain. I find my grief woven through it all — proof that life and everything in it, profoundly matters.

In noticing these moments, I am reminded I am not doing grief wrong. It is showing me that my heart is still capable and soft enough to feel, to notice beauty, and to love — in spite of everything. I realize now that this is exactly the self-kindness the previous prompt was steering me toward.

Photo by Sam Badmaeva on Unsplash

Reflective Prompt #4

What happens if you imagine that this grief is not yours alone, but part of a larger, shared human experience?

The grief I carry shaped by fear, silence, and survival, has lived in the dark for so long that it feels impossible to imagine it belonging to, or shared by, anyone outside of me.

At its core was fear. The fear of hiding everything I felt — what hurt, what broke me. I learned early that my pain, born from so much loss, had no place in the world, so I buried it inside myself until even I could barely find it.

I still hide. Even in spaces where grief is welcomed.

It feels dangerous to imagine handing any of this truth over — to let someone else see the rawness I’ve kept locked away for so long.

But when I look closer, I can see that this grief is not mine alone. There are other grief-travellers carrying the same things I do. Other people who swallowed their grief because the world around them could not hold it.

Something shifts in me when I say that out loud.

I know that each person’s grief is unique, that grieving is deeply personal. But knowing that this experience is a universal human capacity somehow gives my grief a safe place to land.

As I think more about this, I realize the shared bond is not simply loss. It is the human experience of loving something, losing or changing in relation to it, and then finding a way to continue living authentically afterward.

To imagine my grief as part of something larger is both terrifying and relieving. Terrifying because it means others are feeling what I feel. Relieving because it means I am not as alone as I thought.

Photo by Karina Syrotiuk on Unsplash

My Own Reflective Prompt

I was left with a question after all of that.

If my name was Strong — if my identity was Strong — where did that leave me? What is my name now? Because this isn’t just about a name. It’s about who I was required to be versus who I actually am.

Strong was never my name. Strong was my armour. And armour is not identity. So what is my name?

It might be Grief-traveller, because I am finally willing to walk with grief instead of burying it. It might be Witness, because I am ready to sit in the room with my grief. It might be Compassion, because I’m learning there is a kind of strength that arrives with kindness instead of obligation. Or it might be someone who is simply asking to be known without armour.

My name might still be Strong, but not for the reasons it once was. If it is, it’s because I am finally allowing myself to feel pain, sorrow, anger, tenderness — grief. I’m making a bit more space for what is actually there. I’m learning that strength is not the absence of feeling; it’s the willingness to make room for it.

Turning toward my own experience in response to the questions posed in the blog has not been easy. However, in doing so, I’ve created a little more space — for truth, grief, possibility, and the parts of me that have waited a long time to be seen.

Thank you to the author for your questions, and for the invitation to let go of who I thought I had to be.

The point was never to learn how to carry grief better or become stronger, was it?

It was to create enough space to accept the version of me that exists and know that it is allowed to feel. To rest. To realize that the old definition of strength was who I had to be, but it isn’t who I have to continue being.

Now I can meet grief without the armour. And in that space, grief makes room for me as I learn to make room for myself.

Author’s Note

This piece was written in response to the journal prompts from the blog Grief — Space — And Letting Go of Who We Think We Should Be, by Angela Larmer, Registered Psychotherapist.