A thought about staying kind, even when it would be easier not to

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Author unknown

## Turns out, soft is not the same as fragile
Let me just say it right away.
Being soft in this world sometimes feels like trying to keep a flower alive during a windstorm.
People will tell you you’re too sensitive, too emotional, too slow, too much, or not enough, usually in the same breath.
They’ll say, kindly or not, that you need thicker skin. As if the problem is your softness, and not the sharpness of everything else around you.

And honestly, for a long time, I believed them.

So I tried to toughen up.
Tried to hold back my tears, speak sharper, walk faster, nod more often and feel less deeply. I thought strength looked like not flinching, not pausing, not letting anything affect me.
But you know what I’ve found?
The harder I tried to be hard, the more I lost the parts of me that actually made me strong.

## Soft doesn’t mean weak, it means you’ve stayed open
There’s a quiet power in staying soft, especially when you’ve had every reason to shut down.
Because softness means you’ve been through some things, and somehow, you’ve kept your heart open anyway.
It means you still see beauty. You still hope. You still care, even when it’s inconvenient or exhausting or doesn’t seem to get you anywhere.

It means you choose to feel, even when the easier option is just to numb out, scroll on, keep going and pretend it’s fine.
And that choice, to stay in it, to stay with yourself and with other people, is not weakness. It’s stubbornness in its most beautiful form.

## The soft ones carry more than they show
We don’t talk enough about the quiet strength of the ones who keep showing up, not loudly, not dramatically, but steadily.
The ones who ask how you’re doing, even when they’re barely holding it together themselves.
The ones who clean up the mess, emotionally or otherwise, without making a scene.
The ones who still make tea and bring snacks and text you to check in, not because they have extra energy, but because they know what it feels like to not be okay.

Being soft means you notice things.
You feel things.
And yes, sometimes it means you carry things no one even knows are heavy.

But it also means you create warmth in cold places.
And that matters.

## A small wondering
So I’m wondering, from this soft, still slightly tired but quietly content part of myself,
Where did you learn to see your softness as something that needed to be fixed?
And what would it feel like to let it be your strength instead?

Because you can be kind and still have boundaries.
You can be gentle and still fierce.
You can be soft and still completely unbreakable.

Warm greetings from a soft, tired, and still standing mom