Soft Armor: A Reflection on Quiet Strength

I never used to think of myself as a strong person, and with good reason. 

As a little girl, I was quiet and shy, the sort of kid who stayed glued to her parents whenever she went out with her family. I didn't want to be anything in particular when I grew up either. In fact, the idea of having a job one day filled me with terror and the closest thing to existential dread a little kid can feel. 

The world just seemed like such a scary place, a place I didn't think I'd ever be strong enough to survive in. But as it turned out, I also didn't understand strength yet. Because not all strength announces itself with a roar. In fact, some of the most powerful types don't make noise at all. 

They don’t show up with medals or applause. They aren’t polished, flashy, or performative. They’re the strengths that live underground and spend their energy producing roots instead of flowers. They're hidden until you look closely, quiet until you really take the time to stop and listen.

Mine is this kind. The kind that waits. 

It waits in the calm pacing of a rational thought when my chest is full of storms. It waits in the decision to keep going, not because the path is easy, but because I refuse to give up on the idea that there's a point and a purpose to my being here in the first place. 

My hidden strength isn't obvious fortitude or impenetrable toughness. It's resilience. 

Resilience is quiet, but it’s also defiant. It’s choosing not to become bitter, even after years of being underestimated, picked apart, or flat-out ignored. It’s telling others that they don’t get to tell me who I am, even when I’ve forgotten how to remind myself. 

It’s lighting a tea light on my altar when I feel powerless. Anointing my wrists with oil meant to invite success, even on days when failure feels more honest. 

It's waking up with my anxiety telling me the world is about to end, but getting out of bed anyway. It's going out into the garden to get some sun when I'd much rather hide inside in a dark room all day (or all year, even). It's reminding myself to drink plenty of water. Answering emails. Whispering hope under my breath when the world’s noise tells me not to bother.

It's choosing to write, create, love, learn, even when the evidence around me says it would be so much easier not to.

This is what most people never notice about resilient people. They don’t see what it costs to keep joy alive in places that feel designed to snuff it out — aging, crumbling, and full of ghosts. They don’t see the negotiations I make with my own sadness, not to banish it, but to ask it to move over so joy can sit beside it. They don’t see how many times I’ve had to build a sense of home out of nothing but music, memory, or a cup of triple Earl Grey tea in the right light.

Joy isn’t something that happens to me. It’s something I conjure, sometimes out of sticks and stones. I don’t lie to myself about how hard life can be. But I also don’t lie to myself about how beautiful it still is, regardless. I'm very familiar with both, because my center is in the space between them, and there it will continue to be. Forever and ever, amen.

* This reflection is part of the Feast of the Wandering Pen, a month-long exploration of writing, thought, and imagination in all its many forms.

What I Found at the Edge of the Map

One of the biggest myths we're sold when we're all still young and stupid is that life is a straight-shot journey from Point A to Point B. All you have to do is follow the totally real life map we're presented with, and everything will turn out just peachy.

Do this, then that. Be this, then become that. Follow the signs. Never stray. And if you do everything exactly right, you’ll reach your destination right on time. Oh, and there will be a trophy and a pizza party waiting for you when you arrive, of course.

But what no one tells you is this. The destination point keeps moving, which hardly matters, because no one ever clarifies where you're supposed to be going in the first place. The map spontaneously redraws itself the moment you think you understand it. 

And the edges? You eventually find out that they don’t mark the end of anything. They mark another big, fat, blank beginning you didn’t know to expect, and it's even more ambiguous and vague than the last.

I spent an embarrassingly large chunk of my one life chasing the idea of “arriving.” At what, I don't exactly know, although I assume it had something to do with success, love, healing, wholeness –– the four horsemen of the well-adjusted. I thought that if I just kept going, I’d eventually reach a place where things made sense. But that never happened. 

What did happen were curveballs. Detours. Periods of standing still so long that I forgot I was even on a journey in the first place. Eventually, I thought I'd reached the end of the map. But it didn't look or feel anything like fulfillment, and there sure as shit wasn't a pizza party waiting for me. It looked like a blank, white page with nothing else on it. 

I sat with that blankness for a very long time, because I didn't know what else to do. And I think that's when I realized the map wasn't ever meant to be the whole plan. It was a set of training wheels made of inherited ideas, social constructs that really never fit me, and a hefty pinch of generational trauma thrown in for good measure. If you're dealing with something similar right now, this is what I want you to know.

1. The end is rarely the literal end

Certain life events –– divorces, job losses, etc. –– can feel like the end of the world, because they're just that devastating. But they're also the endings of chapters in your life story, not the whole damn book, regardless of how they may feel at the time. In some cases, they might also mark the end of how you pictured your life playing out. 

Realizing that absolutely sucks, so it's understandable if you need to mourn for a while. Let yourself be angry or sad. But know that life also has a way of sneaking in new possibilities when we’re not looking. Releasing the idea of what should have happened (but couldn't for whatever reason) makes space for what can happen now.

The Sacred Work of Slow Days

For someone who craves a life that includes as much peace, quiet, and flexible downtime as possible, I'm horrible about handling slower days with grace when they do actually come around. 

I worry about money and the future a lot, so I'm used to keeping myself in a perpetual state of overwork, especially during the week. Not having spare productive time to think straight, let alone work on ideas of my own, becomes my default state. So, when things are slow at work for more than a day or two, I don't really know what to do with myself. 

It's easy to show up when things are happening, money is flowing, and there's tons to do. Much harder when things are just shuffling along. 

But I've also learned that the shuffly times are the best times to tackle key foundational work, as well as show up for myself in ways I often don't. But knowing that is one thing. Remembering it is another.

Some days, victory is lighting a candle instead of giving up

Regardless of what you do or don't have going on professionally at the moment, it's hard to exist in the world right now. Every morning, there's another headline to get upset about. Everyone's uncertain about the future. We're all afraid for friends and loved ones, as well as for ourselves. All of that makes even normal dips and rises in workflow harder to handle. 

It's easy to feel stuck or like your effort isn't landing. It's even easier to feel like nothing you're doing matters. But it does matter. It all matters. And wins don't have to be big or lucrative to qualify. Sometimes winning is as simple as blessing your day in small ways.

Choosing to get up and tend my garden on an off day instead of sitting around moping is a win. Lighting a candle and engaging in a few minutes of meditation, prayer, or quiet focus is a win. So is sitting down and choosing to spend a free afternoon writing something for myself instead of deciding that my writing only matters when a client is primed and ready to pay me directly for it the minute I'm finished.