When Did Soft Become Something You Had to Outgrow?
You probably didn’t wake up one day deciding to resent your softness.
Somewhere early on, softness was paired with words like fragile, dramatic, unserious, unfit for leadership. Maybe no one said it outright. Maybe they did. But your nervous system learned the lesson:
If you stay open, you won’t be safe.
If you stay tender, you won’t be respected.
If you feel deeply, you’ll be dismissed.
You became more measured. More composed. More self-contained. You learned how to regulate in ways that kept you from being labeled “too much.” You learned how to carry strength in a way that wouldn’t threaten anyone.
That adaptation wasn’t weakness. It was protection.
But over time, you may have started to confuse protection with identity.
Here is the truth your body may already know:
Softness is not the absence of strength.
It is often the evidence of it.
It takes grounding to stay warm in environments that reward hardness.
It takes discernment to remain emotionally available without self-abandoning.
It takes power to feel deeply and still stand firmly.
Reclaiming your softness does not mean becoming naïve.
It does not mean tolerating disrespect.
It does not mean removing boundaries.
Softness can hold eye contact and mean it.
The work is not proving your worth despite your softness.
The work is recognizing that your softness was never the liability.
It was simply never protected.
And you are allowed to protect it now — without shutting it down.
