I’m Not Strong, I’m Surviving: Why I’m Reclaiming My Energy

🖤 “Helping everyone but yourself is not a calling. It’s a trauma response.”

We don’t always say it, but many of us are doing what we can, for our families, our jobs, our people, with no room to fall apart. There’s no time to say no. No space to feel soft. No opportunity to rest. So we keep surviving, calling it strength because that’s what we’ve been taught to do.

But let’s be honest: what we often call “strong” is actually silent suffering.

It’s showing up when your spirit is tired. It’s being everyone’s safe space while no one checks on you. It’s feeling like if you don’t hold it together, everything and everyone around you might fall apart.

That’s not power. That’s survival.

And for many Black women, this way of being is generational. We watched mothers and grandmothers push through with no backup plan, no emotional support, no space to collapse. They didn’t always say “being strong is the only option” — they lived it. It became the blueprint, whether we realized it or not.

But strength has a cost.

It looks like believing you don’t have time to cry.

It sounds like saying “yes” when everything in you is whispering “please rest.”

It feels like performing stability while quietly breaking down inside.

Eventually, the body calls it out. The emotions scream louder. Stress settles into your bones. And if we’re honest, that quiet breaking point — when you feel alone, weak, overstretched, or invisible — that’s your call to return to yourself.

Because survival isn’t the same as living. And silence isn’t the same as peace.

So what does reclaiming energy look like?

It looks like saying no.

It looks like rest, unapologetically.

It looks like being intentional with your time and not carrying emotional loads that aren’t yours.

It looks like giving back to yourself more than you give away.

It’s a shift from emptying your cup to making sure people only get what spills over.

This isn’t selfishness, it’s sustainability.

So to every Black woman reading this, and to anyone who loves one:

You have permission to say no.

You have permission to be soft.

You have permission to stop performing survival and start pursuing wholeness.

We don’t need to earn rest.

We don’t need to prove our worth through exhaustion.

We are enough, even when we’re not holding it all together.

🖤