Should We Toughen Up?

I disagree with the idea of whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and that we need to toughen up. I believe that there is already enough adversity we all go through in life and we do not need to add more on top of it. Quite the opposite is what I support.

Instead of hardening and closing ourselves off, we would benefit more from opening, softening, and expanding compassion, kindness, gentleness, and understanding. Sure, we grow and become stronger through adversity sometimes, but not always. It’s important to honor our pain, our feelings, and our trauma, to acknowledge it, process it, heal and reintegrate.

It is the silencing, the denying, the telling ourselves and others to just toughen up while bypassing or compartmentalizing that causes lasting harm and is damaging as opposed to strengthening us. When we don’t heal, we perpetuate the harm. By toughening up, we lose touch with our hearts and compassion.

Sometimes what doesn’t kill us leads to intergenerational trauma, passed down until one of us stops the pattern by choosing compassion. It takes strength to be compassionate and choose differently from everyone else. To speak up when no one else does. To be the one to say the emperor’s not wearing any clothes. This is true strength. ♡

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