To be soft and strong

The necessity of holding softness and strength, all at once

Human Stuff is a free weekly newsletter. If you’d like to create reciprocity for my work and also access my monthly audio recording, q&a, & journaling guide, I invite you to become a paid subscriber. Your support means so much. 

Please feel free to share parts of this newsletter that connect with you on social media or send to someone you love. You sharing my work helps my words reach more people!

---

A song you might like to listen to while you read:

Polaroid taken in 2006.

To be human is to honor our softness and our strength as coexisting, rather than as opposing forces or barriers to one another. I’ve been circling around this the last few days.

I have never felt more soft and strong at the same time. Soft not in a breakable, weak sense, but in an opening sense — in being moldable by life’s offerings — in being rightly affected — in choosing to let life find its way within my being instead of constantly trying to find safety through hiding from it all (and really, I’ve never ended up truly finding safety in hiding). I feel soft in ways I’ve needed to feel soft in — tenderized by watching my daughter grow: by watching a tiny human become herself, find her legs, learn how to swallow without choking. Tenderized by imagining families in Ukraine wondering when they’ll see each other again. Tenderized by the unknown, by all we’ve missed the last two years, by time passing slowly and immediately all at once, by life performing in the painful and beautiful ways in which it always seems to. All of it reminds me of the inherent softness we carry within us, in the inherent softness of what it means to be a living being on this earth. It reminds me that everything passes and I can’t think of many things more soft or fragile or tender than that fact.

And yet, alongside this softness, I also feel strong in ways I’ve needed to — strong in all I can do on such little sleep, in how I’ve learned to hold what’s fragile rather than locking it in a drawer, in being willing to look at what hurts before reacting from the pain, in no longer trying to fix my softness or mistake soft as incapable or immature, in choosing to center beauty when it might be easier to ignore it, in noticing where things don’t sting as much, in noticing (and allowing) where there is total ease, in cultivating balance where it’s reachable, in recognizing all the ways I’m able to show up for myself and my life now that I couldn’t before. I’ve discovered strength within and alongside the soft — not without it.

For so long, I saw softness and strength as opposites — one being less than and one being superior. I saw softness as something to control or mold and strength as something to harness and show. I saw softness as a sign of something being “off” and strength as a sign of having it figured out — softness as flat and strength as bold. I remember being teased for my sensitivity as a child. Those who didn’t know how to be with my tender heart saw it as something to be hardened. It became easy to associate strength with the “cool kids” and softness with the ones who were teased — the ones who weren’t truly seen. Luckily, decades of life experience have taught me why being with softness is so hard for many of us… and it has nothing to do with softness being bad, wrong, or weak. The more I feel both of these within myself, in my life, the more I know how intertwined and needed both are as we make our way into the depths of life — of what it means to let ourselves be human — of the depth of softness and the lightness of strength.

I’m no longer interested in “unbreakable strength” — in strength that asks us to be or have or feel it 100% of the time — in strength that requires us to deny our soft, poke-able spots — in strength that tells us to grin and bear it — in strength that denies softness as also necessary in moving through life fully human. I’m not interested in strength that encourages us to “power through” or “get over it” or “just be positive.” I’m not interested in strength that sees softness as something to fix or overcome instead of something to embrace and learn from. I’m not interested in strength that assumes better is the only thing to move toward. I’m not interested in strength that assumes superiority or higher ground. I’m not interested in strength as being unaffected by what’s hard or what’s magnificent — as playing it cool. I’m not interested in strength that makes us feel less than for feeling, or for needing breaks from feeling it all. I’m not interested in strength that causes us to forget more isn’t always something to strive for. I’m not interested in strength that keeps us hooked in cycles so many of us have been programmed to stay hooked in — cycles of perfectionism, of patriarchal standards, of performance, of power-over instead of power-with, of positioning ourselves as above or below others, of becoming more and more robotic — cycles that distance us from our humanity, from our essence, from the core of who we are.

I want strength that is strong enough to hold weariness and awe. Strength that is durable enough to withstand the power of being vulnerable in a harsh world. Strength that makes room for support, for not knowing, for needing, for sitting in discomfort without jumping ship. Strength that doesn't ask us to “get over it” (whatever it is) but also allows us to move forward with it. Strength with holding power, including space to NOT hold it all. Strength that knows when to allow for wobbling, for help, for space to stop keeping it all together 100% of the time.

True strength, to me, happens right alongside our soft parts. It might even happen because of the tenderness we carry. Strength allows us to hold ourselves in the midst of pain and lift ourselves out when we’re ready to be lifted — not before out of discomfort and not after out of fear. Strength invites us to imagine what is possible instead of staying stuck in places that aren’t serving us. Strength ignites our compassion from a place of truly seeing people — not from a place of needing to fix or save in order to feel competent and needed. Strength makes way for failure as a lesson instead of something to punish ourselves (or others) for. Strength creates movement. It creates levity amid the deep end. It supports us in remembering what counts, what matters, what’s meaningful. It allows us to define what strength is to us instead of carrying inherited meaning we never asked for. Strength is embedded in each of us — even the softest amongst or within us.

If you see yourself as someone who is too soft, too malleable, too tender… I invite you to explore how you’ve been conditioned to see those parts of you as in need of changing or toughening up, and I invite you to explore what you may need in order to tap into the parts of you that feel more anchored, more sturdy, more grounded.

If you see yourself as someone who is constantly leaning on your toughness or strength as a way to try and eliminate your softness… I invite you to notice how your strength bolsters you in moving through life, and I invite you to explore how you may be able to reconnect with your softness as something that might actually enhance the kind of strength you wish to embody.

Also… you didn’t ask for my advice, so feel free to ignore either of these invitations and find something else that may feel supportive as you reflect on softness and strength. :)

What supports you in becoming tenderized in the places you’ve long been hardened?Where do you find solace amid the noise, presence amid the chaos, comfort amid the discomfort — in essence, where do you most readily have capacity to hold both?
When can you give yourself a break from trying to tough it out, from thinking toughness requires lack of tenderness, from assuming keeping what hurts at bay will make it go away, from not letting yourself practice being with all that is?
On the contrary, where can you let yourself take a break from feeling it all, from processing it all, from witnessing it all, from analyzing it all, from trying to understand it all?
How does your strength support your softening? How does softening support your strength?
What softens you — melts your shoulds — harnesses your power — nurtures the whole of you — reminds you of the necessity of noticing your softness and strength as needed and human?

Perhaps this balance — this teeter-totter between softness and strength — is one we must choose to practice. It’s one we must allow, be willing to participate in, and stop berating or judging ourselves for. It’s one we must invite in as a reflection of our humanness instead of something we can’t seem to figure out or pin down. As I explore the strong parts of my softness and the softness in my strength, I invite you to do the same — to come to know these parts of you as integral and beautiful and never not enough or too much, but simply parts of you waiting to be expressed and noticed and utilized in the ways you’re meant to. In a world that so often throws us off kilter, it makes so much sense for it to be challenging to understand how to relate to these parts of us… yet choosing to do the work of seeking that understanding, hopefully from a place of compassion and kindness, is a gift — to you, to me, to us, to the world at large.

My softness sees yours.
My strength sees yours.
May we see it in ourselves and light up at its presence.
May we use it for good, within and around us.
May we adjust what needs adjusting out of desires to tap into our wholeness — not out of shame, guilt, or feeling less-than.
May we find silliness amid it all. Goodness, I am working on this one.
And may we keep going, pause when we need to, and start again. Over and over.

◌ "When Pop Music Lets Women of Color Express Their Rage"

◌ On writing about other people

◌ The comments on this post are hope-full.

◌ Tara Brach, always — the talk below feels like warmth in the cold.

◌ Mary Oliver’s poetry, always

◌ Ghosts of Ukraine — took my breath away.

◌ The work of Georgia O’Keeffe continuously comforts and inspires.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills, 1930.

◌ Which Onion When? SO HELPFUL!

◌ “Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.” ―Lao Tzu

◌ These sculptures out of vintage books made me smile.

◌ A few new or upcoming books I’m so eager to jump into/am loving: Body Work, The Way of Integrity, Heartbroke, Time Is A Mother, The Lonely Stories (really moving away from reading “self-help” these days, with a few exceptions)

◌ this adrienne maree brown essay moved me big time.

◌ I especially loved this episode of Quitted — a new podcast with Emily McDowell & Holly Whitaker

◌ Dial 707-998-8410. Trust me. (more on this here)

Thanks so much for being here. I hope you find some way of nurturing and nourishing yourself today — some way of reminding yourself how okay it is to just be a person, as ordinary and uneventful and basic and quiet and small as being a person can be sometimes — An Alan Watts quote I return to often when I need to remember this: “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

I hope you can remember just being a person is enough.

Take good care,
Lisa

PS. Paid Subscribers: I will be recording my audio recording and Q&A soon! Click THIS LINK to submit an anonymous question you’re curious about and I will pick a few <3