There is something I’ve been thinking about lately.
We know nothing in life is permanent; the seasons change, our bodies change, friendships begin and end, dreams evolve, careers shift, the people we once were slowly become strangers to us.
We accept change as one of life’s only guarantees, so why do we expect our character to remain permanent? Why do we speak about ourselves as though one season defines us forever?
“I’m lazy.”
“I’m anxious.”
“I’m insecure.”
“I’m weak.”
As though a moment somehow became an identity. As though a difficult season became a permanent address.
Maybe we’ve confused where we are with who we are, and nowhere do I see this more than in heartbreak.
When someone goes through a breakup, there seems to be an invisible timeline everyone expects them to follow.
Delete the pictures. Block the number. Never look back. Move on. Smile when someone asks how you’re doing. Pretend you’re okay before you actually are.
We’ve somehow decided that healing should be invisible. That if someone truly loved themselves, they’d never look back. Never miss them. Never answer the phone. Never wonder what could have been. But I don’t think that’s how love works.
I spent ten years loving one person.
Ten years.
Ten years of shared memories, shared routines, shared language, shared versions of ourselves that only existed because the other person was there to witness them.
And then one day it was over.
People have been surprisingly compassionate about the loss itself. But they’ve been far less compassionate about my humanity afterward.
When I’ve admitted that I miss him, when I’ve said I spoke to him again, when I’ve confessed that sometimes my heart reaches for someone my mind knows isn’t good for me, people become disappointed. Frustrated and some become angry.
One of my closest friends at the time once looked at me and said,
“You’re the weakest person I know.”
At the time, it crushed me.
Not because I believed her. But because I feared she might be right.
For a long time, I fought that sentence. I wanted to prove her wrong.
Now, I don’t think I need to.
Because maybe she was describing a moment and not my identity.
Maybe I am weak when it comes to him and maybe I’m weak when it comes to love; and what a privilege that is.
What a privilege it is to have loved another human being so deeply that losing them rearranged the landscape of my heart.
People celebrate vulnerability until they actually witness it.
We post quotes about loving deeply. About keeping our hearts open. About connection.
But when vulnerability arrives looking like unanswered texts, or crying in your car, or reaching out one more time, or admitting you still miss someone, suddenly everyone wants you to be stronger.
But maybe we’ve misunderstood strength; strength isn’t feeling nothing. Strength isn’t pretending someone didn’t matter. Strength isn’t becoming so protected that nothing can touch you. That isn’t strength. That’s armor.
Real strength is allowing yourself to love knowing you could lose. Allowing yourself to grieve knowing it will hurt. Allowing yourself to remain soft in a world that keeps rewarding hardness. Because love was never designed to leave us unchanged. It’s supposed to move us. It’s supposed to expose us. It’s supposed to show us where we still have growing to do.
People often say,
“You deserve better.”
And maybe they’re right.
But deserving better doesn’t magically erase ten years of attachment.
Our nervous systems don’t move at the same speed as our logic.
Our hearts don’t wake up one morning and decide,
“You’re right. I’m over it now.”
Healing doesn’t happen because someone gives you good advice; healing happens because your body slowly learns that it is safe to let go.
That takes time. It takes repetition. It takes choosing yourself over and over again until one day choosing yourself no longer feels unfamiliar.
I’ve realized something else.
When people call someone weak after a breakup, I think they’re often forgetting that strength is built.
No one is born emotionally resilient. No one arrives with perfect boundaries. No one instinctively knows how to walk away from someone they love.
We build those things. Usually after life has shown us why we need them.
We build courage by surviving fear. We build trust after betrayal. We build boundaries after abandoning ourselves. We build self-worth after spending years trying to earn it from people who could never give it to us.
Strength has always been under construction.
And because life never stops changing, we never stop building.
Life knocks us down; we rebuild.
Love breaks us open; we rebuild.
Loss changes us; we rebuild.
Again. And again. And again.
I think one of the greatest acts of self-compassion is remembering that weakness is not an identity.
It’s information; it’s life revealing where your foundation still needs reinforcement.
Some people are strong with money but weak with intimacy.
Some are confident in their careers but terrified of being truly known.
Some can endure physical pain but collapse under emotional rejection.
Mine has been love.
Not because I lack character. But because I cared. Because I attached. Because I hoped. Because I believed. Because somewhere inside me still lives the little girl who learned that love was something to earn, preserve, protect, and fight for.
Of course she struggles to let go.
She isn’t weak; she’s carrying an old story.
But stories can be rewritten. That’s the beautiful part.
I don’t want to become someone who never feels deeply. I don’t want to become someone who can walk away without grieving. I don’t want to become so independent that no one can ever hurt me again. Because if no one can ever hurt me, then maybe no one can truly reach me either.
I don’t want a heart made of stone. I want a heart with stronger roots.
There’s a difference. I think we also need to remember that losing our balance in love is, in many ways, the whole point. Love was never meant to leave us untouched. If it did, it probably wasn’t love.
Real love disrupts us. It asks us to trust. To depend. To imagine a future that includes someone else. Of course it hurts when that future disappears. Of course we wobble. Of course we lose our footing. That doesn’t mean we’ve lost ourselves. It means we’re human. Maybe we’ve become so obsessed with appearing emotionally regulated that we’ve forgotten the beauty of being deeply affected. Imagine loving someone for ten years, and then not grieving. Imagine sharing your life with someone, and then simply moving on as though nothing happened.
Would that really be strength? Or would it mean you were never fully there?
Maybe the depth of our grief says something beautiful about the depth of our capacity to love.
Not something shameful but something sacred.
The goal isn’t to become someone untouched by love. The goal is to become someone who can be transformed by love without disappearing inside it.
Someone who can miss another person, without forgetting themselves. Someone who can cry, without believing they are broken. Someone who can fall, without believing they have become the fall.
Because weakness was never who you are. It’s simply where life has found you.
And if strength can be built once, it can be built again. Brick by brick. Boundary by boundary. Choice by choice. Love by love. Perhaps that’s what healing really is. Not becoming someone who never falls. But becoming someone who knows that every time they do, they are still worthy of getting back up.