WarPaintJournal: “One day my mother casually said, ‘we never worried about you, you always knew how to take care of yourself.’ And it broke something quietly inside me. Because what sounds like pride also feels like loneliness. It means no one ever really looked too closely, no one wondered if the strong one was tired. It means I learned to carry the weight so well that no one thought to help me set it down. And maybe that’s the silent cost of being ‘capable’, you stop being seen as someone who also needs softness. You become the safe place for everyone but never quite have one of your own. And in that moment, I realized strength had been my survival, but it had also been my isolation.”