People have said it to me, and I’ve heard them say it about others: she’s so strong or I can’t believe how strong you are.
Sometimes it’s said quietly. Sometimes with admiration. Always with good intent.
Often, what they’re responding to is that I can talk about the deaths and the lives of my children without breaking down. That I can speak their names, tell parts of the story, and remain composed. From the outside, that looks like strength.
And in a way, it is.
But what’s being noticed isn’t strength in the way people usually mean it. It’s stability. Balance. The ability to remain upright while holding something very heavy.
From the inside, it doesn’t feel like strength so much as endurance. It feels like learning how to distribute weight so it doesn’t pull you under. Strength suggests something you choose, or cultivate, or aspire to. This isn’t that. This is something I’m forced to develop in order to survive.
That doesn’t mean I deny the strength I’ve gained. I do take credit for it. But it’s not a strength I asked for, and it’s not the kind of strength anyone would want. It’s a strength shaped by necessity, not preference.
Before it happened to me, I thought the same thing.
When I heard about someone losing a child, I used to say, If I lost a child, someone would have to push me in a wheelchair and feed me through a tube. I truly believed that. I couldn’t imagine continuing in any recognizable way. The love I had for my children felt so immense that the idea of life without them seemed impossible.
That wasn’t exaggeration. It was imagination reaching its limit.
I think that’s where many people are coming from when they say she’s so strong or I can’t believe how strong you are. They’re comparing what they see to what they believe would happen to them. And from that perspective, continuing at all looks extraordinary.
When people say it directly to me, I respond, you don’t know how strong you are until you are forced to be strong.
I don’t say it to correct them. I say it because it’s true.
They aren’t wrong. They just haven’t been tested yet. And I hope they never are.
What no one can understand ahead of time is that going on isn’t a decision made from strength. It’s something that happens because there is no alternative. You don’t wake up one day capable. You become capable because the world keeps moving, and you are still here.
The part that doesn’t quite fit
Even knowing where the phrase comes from, it can still land oddly.
When someone says you’re so strong, what they’re really observing is that I’m functioning. That I’ve learned how to speak about my children, about their lives and their deaths, without losing my footing in the moment. They’re seeing the result, not the effort it takes to stay there.
From the inside, it doesn’t feel like resilience. It feels like constant adjustment. Like checking your balance without thinking about it. Like knowing where the weak spots are and compensating automatically.
This kind of strength isn’t steady. It’s responsive. It changes day to day. It requires attention. It costs something.
Some days, that cost looks like weariness. Some days it means choosing not to talk, or stepping away, or distracting myself instead of sitting with what feels too heavy in the moment.
And even this kind of strength doesn’t exist on its own.
Doubt often travels with it.
Some days, doubt creeps in quietly. Doubt about whether what I’m doing is enough. Doubt about whether this balance will hold. Doubt about whether the strength people see is something I actually possess, or something I’m sustaining moment by moment.
That doubt doesn’t cancel the strength. It accompanies it.
The strength still carries me. The doubt simply reminds me that what I’m carrying is heavy, and that staying upright requires attention.
A different way of understanding it
I don’t reject the word strong. I understand why it’s used.
But what I wish people knew is that this strength wasn’t discovered so much as developed under pressure. It wasn’t chosen. It was required.
What looks like strength is often stability. Balance. The ability to stay present without collapsing, even when the ground underneath has changed.
If there’s anything to recognize, it’s not strength as an achievement. It’s strength as adaptation. The quiet work of learning how to hold yourself up in a world that no longer feels solid.
That kind of strength doesn’t announce itself.
It just keeps going.
