The Weight We Carry

There is a weight we carry that doesn’t show up in mirrors…
but it shows up everywhere else.

It shows up in our silence.
In our tired smiles…In the emptiness of our eyes.
In the way our shoulders stay tense even when we’re trying to rest.
In the way we swallow what we should’ve screamed.
In the way we keep showing up when nobody has shown up for us.

Some of us learned young that life wasn’t waiting for our tears.
So we stitched ourselves together with strength we didn’t choose…
and kept moving like survival was our birthright.

But here’s the truth I had to face…
carrying everything is not strength.
Sometimes it’s punishment.
Sometimes it’s habit.
Sometimes it’s the only language we were taught.

But it breaks you just the same.

Silent women don’t stay silent forever.
We reach a moment where the weight we’ve carried for years presses against the truth we’ve been avoiding…
and something inside us snaps awake.

Not broken… awake.

It’s the moment you can’t keep pretending.
The moment your heart says… “I’m done holding this alone.”
The moment the version of you who survived everything finally asks… “But who’s holding me?”

People think it’s anger.
People think it’s mood.
People think it’s distance.

No.
It’s the weight finally speaking.

It’s years of grief…
years of disappointment…
years of being the strong one…
years of being needed but never nourished…
years of loving from empty hands…
years of being the mother, the daughter, the healer, the hero…
with no place to lay your own tired soul…

all rising at once.

And when that moment comes, something shifts.
Something powerful.
Something holy.

Release.

God meets you right at the edge of what you can’t carry anymore…
and says, “Put it down. All of it. Let me hold you.”

Healing didn’t come to me through perfection.
It came through honesty.
It came through breaking the silence that was choking me.
It came through admitting that the weight was never meant to be mine alone.

It came from finally telling myself the truth…
I deserve to stop suffering quietly.
I deserve softness.
I deserve help.
I deserve peace.
I deserve to be held.
I deserve to let God carry what was never my assignment in the first place.

Because the woman I am becoming…
she cannot rise under the weight the old version of me normalized.
She cannot build from a place of exhaustion.
She cannot love from a place of emptiness.
She cannot keep shrinking under responsibilities that were born from silence instead of choice.

So I am putting things down.
One truth at a time.
One hurt at a time.
One expectation at a time.

Not because I’m weak.
But because I’m finally strong enough to stop pretending the weight didn’t crush me.

This is the freedom…
the healing…
the reclamation…

of a woman who refuses to carry what was meant to be released.

And if you’re reading this…
you deserve to put something down too.
You don’t have to release it all at once.
One thing at a time…the thing that has been breaking you in slow motion.

Breathe.
Release.
Rise.

You don’t have to carry it all anymore.