"Strong girl" culture burnt me out

On not living our parents' life & learning to lean on The Village instead when hitting rock bottom

I need to make an important decision. I’m 3 days away from a 15-hour flight from Munich to Floria via Boston. My feverish head feels heavy in my hands as I press my elbows onto the kitchen table for support. I hide under a big towel and hold my face over steaming camomile infusion. Our family’s go-to remedy for cough and painful sinus infections ever since I can remember. Was it yours, too?

“Strong girl, you can do it, you’ve been looking forward to this work trip all winter. Get your sh*t together, you can’t be sick now, and you cannot miss out…”. My head shouts at me like an angry HIIT instructor at the gym, the kind of people I typically avoid.

Tears of frustration run down my face, mixing with sweat and camomile steam.

It’s hot under the towel. My nostrils burn, I sniff, and lift a corner of the tower to let some air in for a millisecond. “Keep the heat in, that’s the whole point!” the angry HIIT instructor in my head shouts once more. It’s really hot, I defend myself.

As I breathe, I can feel how my cough slowly calms.

So does my head and heart.

A story from life - a lesson to trust the unknown, join me, friend! There are some juicy bits for us all to remember.

10 minutes to go - I think.

1, 2, 3, 4 inhale, 4, 3, 2, 1 exhale.

I can’t believe I’ve spent all week in bed, needing a nap after eating a meal and cleaning the kitchen, showering. I am exhausted. My legs shake when I walk to the bathroom. I think, annoyed at myself. Hurt heart. Frustrated head.

As I sit here sweating under the towel, I think about what a bad daughter of a crunchy mom I must be.

She taught us kids which herbs to forage when and how to brew elderberry juice from the dark purple berries hanging heavy on their branches at the edges of the forest. I remember drinking this warm sour juice with lemon and honey in bed once when I was sick as a child, dropped the bottle and we had purple splashes on the white wall for weeks. Oops. 😬

Anyway, here I am, not making myself the black-reddish cough syrup either. THE homemade remedy that would sit on the kitchen counter, sweet from the honey, spicy from the radish. I have no elderberry juice and no balm for my chest to calm my cough. Would I already be recovered if I had all this ready? I wonder.

Instead, I went to the pharmacy to get cough medicine, I had no energy and no patience to be crunchy. The only crunchy thing I had at home was bone broth and linden blossom tea. At least something, I think.

I wonder what she would think of the way I am mothering myself while being unwell this week. I can’t ask her. She “stayed strong”, we weren’t allowed to see her fragile self in the hospital before she passed away over half of my life ago. It shaped me and I wouldn’t want it any other way. A strong mama who wanted to raise strong independent kids. Kids that now try to be soft as adults, gentle. Kind to themselves.

The story of my life.

Letting go of the need to be strong and independent.

Double trouble. My dad is the same: “Girl you need to be self-reliant, never dependent on a husband, build your career, always have savings on the side, and prepare for the worst.” To this day, this post-war child of the late 1940s is stuck in survival mode like many of his generation in central Europe. As their children, we have so much sh*t to unlearn, repattern, and relearn. It’s exhausting to not compare ourselves to them, to not have their voices in our heads all day.

We are not our past. We are not living our parents’ life

We shape our reality. We are not a victim of the society our parents grew up in. We will not pass this on to the next generation. We are done with the “strong girl” culture.

Praising softness. Letting stubborn teachings of strength melt away instead.

It’s not another chore, it’s the beauty of life, the journey we are on.

5 more minutes under the towel… - I think to myself.

I can breathe deeper already, and slowly smell the sweet scent of the camomile flower heads swimming in the hot water.

I have never learned to ask for help. Have you?

I have never learned what it means to lean on others, fully. Are You good at it?

When we aren’t asking for help, others may not feel comfortable asking us either. Strength and independence make us lonely.

When we aren’t sharing worries, weaknesses and fears and hold up our guards instead, we are not allowing connection. Instead, we carry a heavy blanket on our shoulders and walk a lonely path.

As I am reflecting on my relationship with receiving help and receiving support, I realise once more it’s all about the exchange. We aren’t meant to live life alone.
We are meant to lean on our village, all of us.

So this week, I had to lean on the village.

My village.

Village happens to be one of my words for 2024. Returning to it. Growing it, nurturing it. Locally and virtually. Reading

Kat River

‘s share on The Village this week was divine timing.

Leaning on my diverse village this week made me realise that my village is actually a village. A village I didn’t really know I had. Why? I had seen the people as individuals only since they are not a homogeneous group where everyone knows everyone and shares the same life. And that’s exactly the beauty. I was just somehow blind in the search to root in a new city where just last year I didn’t know anyone.

During the final two minutes under the towel…

my racing thoughts that jumped through my life from childhood to my teenage years, now return to the trip ahead of me.

I know I can’t go, so why am I resisting this fact so much?

Maybe I could change the departure, fly out a day late. I spin these thoughts for a few more moments just to realise how ridiculous they sound.

You see, I’ve been talking about this trip for months.

It sounds so silly, I’m a bit embarrassed. This is the work trip of the year. My global team is flown to Florida for 3 days of workshops, themed dinners, networking and some fun, no work. In a typical American resort, nothing special for those used to the American way of life. I need to admit that I found the idea exciting, so different from my life in Europe. A typical annual kick-off in the Silicon Valley tech bubble. And also: Terribly exhausting. Ridiculously expensive (for the company) and the impact on the environment? I don’t even dare to think about it.

“It all makes sense now” -

…I think to myself, as I breathe onto the camomile flower heads letting them dance in the pot like little boats during a storm in the wild sea.

I felt so much resistance and was so indecisive about which friend I should see while already on the North American continent, saving the cost of expensive flights. R. in Mexico or L. in New York. Or maybe R. & B. in Denver? I couldn’t get myself to decide. And then it was too late, I couldn’t change the flights anymore.

It would have been the perfect opportunity and I just didn’t make it happen. I didn’t know the Why at the time but I somehow listened to my gut instinct.

I trusted the resistance.

The decision was to choose me all along.

My lesson here was to step up for myself.

For my health.

For the soft girl inside me.

Mother her, hold her, rock her gently as she is recovering in her own time. Giving her the space she needs, not rushing her to the airport and forcing her to do small talk when she is not a fan of it (but pretty damn good at building new connections when she has to). Not forcing her to travel far when she needs to slow down.

So I take my last breath under the towel before being hit by the cold air of the outside world, my kitchen, wiping my wet face dry and knowing what to do.

Cancel the work trip. There’s no holiday attached to it. Rest. Lean on the village and ask for help with groceries, cooking, and tasks.

I trust the timing of it all.

What a freeing realisation.

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Dear reader,
if you find yourself in parts of my story and reflections, join me in further introspection. In chosing yourself. Prioritising rest. Cherishing the soft side.
The “soft girl” inside me had been worried about making others uncomfortable with my thoughts and stayed siled for a long time. And yet, I share what I think is worth sharing, stories and experiences with a message. Here’s a great post about exacty that by

Elin Petronella

: “You’ll be judged no matter what you do; so you might as well be judged for being you”.
I decided to share my reflections today so we can all be reminded of how important it is to drop our masks and be soft in order to connect with other humans. I welcome you to share in the comment whatever resonates and wants to be shared from your heart. Vulnerability is the connective tissue in our shared experience. Being strong all day long is not serving us and my aim with this publication is to remember what it means to feel more rooted, rested, and connected. Human.
With love,
Carmen x