Somewhere along the way, many of us become the strong one.
The person everyone calls when something goes wrong. The one who stays calm when everyone else is worried. The one who finds a solution, makes the difficult decision, takes care of what needs to be done and says, “We'll figure it out.”
We are strong for our children because we want them to feel safe.
We are strong for our partners because sometimes they need us to carry a little more.
We are strong for our parents when the roles begin to change and they start needing us.
We are strong for our friends, our families, the people who work with us and sometimes even people who barely know what we may be carrying ourselves.
But after being strong for everyone else for long enough, there is a question we don't ask very often:
Who are we strong for?
The answer seems simple.
We are strong for ourselves.
And we are strong for the people we love.
But sometimes there is much more behind that answer.
When I Realized I Wasn't Only Being Strong for Myself
When I was going through cancer, my goal was very clear:
I wanted to be cancer-free.
I needed strength for myself. I needed it to get through treatments, surgeries, difficult days and everything that came with them.
I wanted to heal. I wanted my life back. I wanted to get to the other side of cancer.
But somewhere during that experience, I realized something I hadn't really thought about before.
I wasn't only being strong for me.
Cancer doesn't enter one person's life and stay there. It affects the people who love that person too.
My husband and my family were going through their own version of what was happening to me. They were worried. They were scared. And they were watching someone they loved go through something they couldn't fix for me.
I couldn't take that fear away from them, but I found myself trying not to add more to it.
I wanted them to see me doing okay, even on days when okay required a lot of effort.
That doesn't mean I pretended cancer wasn't difficult. It doesn't mean I wasn't scared, exhausted or struggling.
It meant I had another reason to keep moving forward.
At first, I thought I needed to be strong because I needed to get through cancer.
Then I realized I was also being strong because the people I loved needed to believe that I could get through it.
And something unexpected happened.
Being strong for them helped me become stronger for myself.
Everything I was trying to do was as much for them as it was for me. Knowing that they needed me gave me another reason to get up, keep going and focus on what was ahead.
Sometimes we carry other people.
And sometimes, without realizing it, the people we're trying to be strong for are helping carry us too.
Is the Grass Really Greener?
We have a tendency to look at other people's lives from the outside.
We see the family laughing together at a restaurant. The couple who seems happy. The coworker who comes to work every morning and gets everything done. The friend posting pictures from a vacation. The neighbor with the beautiful house.
And sometimes we think:
They have it so much easier.
We've all heard the expression, “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
But is it really?
What we see is only the part of someone's life they happen to show us.
Behind the door of that beautiful house, someone may be going through cancer.
The person smiling at work may be struggling with depression or another mental-health condition.
A family may be trying desperately to help someone they love through drug or alcohol addiction.
Someone may be living with a debilitating illness that isn't obvious to anyone around them.
A military spouse may be going to bed every night worrying about a husband or wife serving thousands of miles away.
A family that appears financially comfortable may be sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out how they're going to make it to the next paycheck.
We simply don't know.
And when we think about all those struggles, there is another group of people we don't always see.
The people standing beside them.
When Life Makes You the Strong One
Sometimes you aren't the person with cancer.
You aren't the person struggling with depression.
You aren't the person dealing with addiction or facing the diagnosis.
You're the person who loves them.
A mother watching her child go through something she would give anything to take away.
A father trying to find the right words when he doesn't have the answers.
A husband watching his wife become sick.
A wife watching her husband struggle with something she doesn't know how to fix.
None of these people necessarily know what to do.
They may never have dealt with anything like this before. They may be terrified themselves. They may wonder whether they're saying the right things, making the right decisions or doing enough.
And yet, somehow, they become the strong ones.
Not necessarily because they chose to.
Sometimes life simply puts them in that position.
They become strong because someone they love needs them.
Suddenly they're making appointments, asking questions, researching things they never imagined needing to understand, taking care of the house, making phone calls, sitting beside hospital beds, listening, reassuring and trying to keep everyday life moving while something very difficult is happening inside their family.
They may not feel strong at all.
They may feel completely lost.
But they keep going because someone they love is depending on them.
And maybe when they're finally alone, they allow themselves to feel everything they've been holding back.
That's something we don't always recognize when someone is going through a difficult experience.
We naturally ask:
“How is the person going through it?”
And we should.
But maybe sometimes we should look at the person sitting beside them and ask:
“And how are you doing?”
Because the person holding someone's hand may need someone to hold theirs too.
Being Strong Doesn't Mean You Aren't Struggling
Maybe we have created the wrong picture of what a strong person looks like.
A mother can love her child with everything she has and still feel helpless.
A husband can support his wife every day and still be terrified of losing her.
A wife can hold her family together and still have moments when she doesn't know how much more she can carry.
Someone can be the person everybody depends on and still cry when nobody is watching.
That doesn't make them less strong.
Being strong doesn't mean being unaffected by what is happening.
Sometimes strength is simply staying beside someone when you don't know what to do because you know you don't want them to face it alone.
And sometimes two people are quietly trying to be strong for each other at exactly the same time.
One person may be thinking, I have to stay strong for them.
While the person beside them is thinking exactly the same thing.
Maybe strength doesn't always belong to one person.
Maybe sometimes it moves between us.
There are days when I carry you.
There may be days when you carry me.
And sometimes we're both struggling, simply trying to hold each other up the best way we know how.
When Being Strong Starts Hurting Us
But there is another side of being strong for someone that we shouldn't ignore.
Sometimes our love for another person can push us toward self-destruction.
We want so badly to help someone that we begin sacrificing pieces of ourselves trying to save them.
We keep showing up when they push us away.
We try another solution.
We have another conversation.
We forgive one more time.
We lose sleep.
We worry constantly.
We put our own needs aside because whatever the person we love is going through seems more important.
This can become especially difficult when the person we love doesn't want the help we're trying to give them.
A parent may experience this with a child struggling with addiction.
A husband or wife may experience it with a spouse who refuses to seek help.
A family may spend years trying to support someone through a serious struggle while slowly becoming emotionally exhausted themselves.
And still, we keep trying.
Why?
Because we love them.
Walking away emotionally from someone we love when they're struggling can feel impossible. We wonder:
What if something happens?
What if they need me?
What if I could have done one more thing?
But there is a difficult truth hidden inside all of this:
Being strong for someone doesn't mean we can always save them.
We can support someone. We can encourage them. We can listen. We can help them find resources. We can stand beside them.
But there are situations where we cannot make every decision for another person.
We cannot force someone to heal.
We cannot force someone to change.
And destroying ourselves in the process doesn't necessarily save the person we're trying to help.
Sometimes strength means holding someone's hand.
Sometimes it means fighting beside them.
And sometimes strength means recognizing that loving someone and losing ourselves for someone are not the same thing.
So, Who Are We Strong For?
Maybe after everything we've talked about, the answer really is simple.
We are strong for the people we love.
We are strong for our children because imagining them hurting hurts us too.
We are strong for our husbands, wives and partners because their lives have become connected to ours.
We are strong for our parents, our siblings and our friends because when someone matters deeply to us, what happens to them affects us too.
And yes, we are strong for ourselves.
Because loving ourselves also means wanting to survive.
We want to heal.
We want to get better.
We want another day, another year, another experience, another chapter.
But perhaps being strong doesn't mean we have to carry everything ourselves.
Maybe one of the hardest things for the person everyone considers the strong one is allowing someone else to be strong for them.
Maybe strength can sound like:
Today, I can carry you.
Tomorrow, I may need you to carry me.
And neither one makes us weak.
It simply means we're human.
So maybe the next time we look at someone else's life and think their grass looks a little greener, we should remember that we don't know what happens behind their door.
We don't know who is sick.
We don't know who is scared.
We don't know who is struggling.
We don't know who stayed awake last night worrying about someone they love.
And we don't know who woke up this morning, put themselves together and decided once again:
I need to be strong today.
Not because they aren't afraid.
Not because they have all the answers.
Not because life is easy.
But because somewhere in their life, there is someone they love.
And sometimes, love gives us strength we didn't know we had.