How do we learn to soften and give up the person we were shaped to be?

How do we soften, when we were taught to be strong before we ever got to be soft? How do we let love in when we never learned what safe love feels like?

I’ve spent years becoming a woman I thought I had to be.

Strong. Independent. Unbothered. Carrying everything.

Needing nothing. Always showing up — never showing too much.

And I see now: that woman wasn’t born from my truth. She was shaped

by survival. By a childhood where my father wasn’t present and my mother

didn’t have the strength to hold my emotions.

Where I heard: “I don’t have time for this. Just be a good child. Don’t cry. Don’t need.”

So I didn’t. I held it all in. I became the quiet, helpful one. I made myself easy

to love — by making myself smaller.

Later, I became the strong one in relationships, too. Doing everything on my own. Not asking for help. Thinking, “That’s how a man will admire me. That’s how I’ll be worthy — by not needing.”But I didn't know that I was slowly hardening.And I didn’t know that while I longed to be seen and held… I didn’t actually allow it.

It took me years — and relationship after relationship — to realize: I was replaying a pattern I never chose. Attracting unavailable men. Emotionally distant men. Men who wouldn’t lead. And yet — I didn’t let them lead either.How could I? No one ever showed me how to feel safe in surrender.

Subconsciously, I kept proving the story I was raised in:

“You can’t rely on anyone. You must carry yourself. Love will disappoint you.”

And the truth is: I’m not angry at my mother.Or the women before her. They did what they knew.

They carried what was passed down — generations of women shaped by duty, silence, strength, and survival. They didn’t get the luxury of softness. They didn’t get to rest.

But I want something else. Not a love that I have to perform for. Not a life where I keep earning my worth. Not strength that comes from being disconnected.

I want to soften —without losing myself.I want to speak my needs —without guilt.I want to allow love in — without shame or fear.

Not because I’m weak. But because I’m finally safe enough to be whole.

This isn’t co-dependence. This is the Divine Feminine waking up inside me. She doesn’t chase.She doesn’t beg. She doesn’t carry everything to be loved. She invites, receives, feels, and trusts.

The truth is: I thought I had to become this strong, self-sufficient woman to be desirable. But the more I hardened, the more love slipped through my fingers.

I didn’t let the man lead.I didn’t let myself need. And after a while, I had the very proof I feared:

“I can’t rely on anyone. I have to be strong.”

And yet — even the men I chose weren’t rooted in their healthy masculine either. They were unsure, disconnected, sometimes passive. Wounded in their own way. Because we’re all living in a world where the feminine was suppressed…and the masculine distorted.

So I see it clearly now:I was attracting what I knew, not what I needed.

But I also see this:

I am not broken. I am awakening.I am not too much. I’m just no longer shrinking.I don’t want a man to fix me. I want one who can hold me.I don’t want to dominate love. I want to dance with it.

And now — as I write this while bleeding, in the most feminine, intuitive phase of my cycle —I feel it deeply: My body is softening. My heart is opening. The woman I shaped myself to be is melting away…and the woman I truly am is being reborn.

This is not about abandoning strength — it’s about redefining it. It’s not about becoming dependent — it’s about becoming real.

I no longer want to carry the old story. I no longer want to be in control of everything. I want to be held — emotionally, spiritually, fully.I want to trust the masculine again — and invite in the one who is ready to meet me.

And that begins with me.

With the way I show up in friendships. With the way I speak in love. With how I ask for help.With how I let myself receive. With how I pause, breathe, soften, and feel.

Because now I know:

I don’t have to be hard to be worthy.I don’t have to carry it all to be lovable.I don’t have to do it alone to be strong. I just have to be… me.

The woman who is finally ready to be seen to be heard to be held —and to hold herself in her softness, too.