Gravity

Feminine energy isn’t exhausting because it’s weak. It’s exhausting because it doesn’t get to rest. It’s the presence that notices, the proximity that intervenes, the quiet gravity that keeps things from falling apart when no one else is around to name the damage.

It was never assigned. No one made a list and put my name at the top. I was just close to the broken thing when it broke.

When the stray kitten drowned in the pool one summer, no one told me to get it out. But my mother couldn’t bear to. She was already holding too much. So I did it. I was ten. No gloves. No plan. Just instinct. When the baby calf was torn apart by dogs in the middle of the night, someone had to move its small, stiff body before the younger cousins saw it in the morning. I didn’t think. I acted. Because my grandfather was busy. Because my uncles were gone. Because my mother had PTO and 4-H and the full weight of a town that needed her. Someone had to do it. Not because something was wrong, but because everything was already being held together by threads. And threads snap.

That’s how it starts. Not with identity, but with gravity. You act because you’re near. Response hardens into role. The one who always holds it becomes the one everyone sees as whole. Needed. Reliable. Unbreakable. Until softness, the original instinct, becomes a liability.

And yet, this isn’t uncommon. Communities run on these people. Not appointed. Not chosen. Just there. The ones who step in. Not because they’re strong, but because there wasn’t time to wait for a volunteer.

Masculine energy, in contrast, is allowed to be architectural. It offers walls. Instructions. Closure. A door you can shut and lock behind you. And so the strong ones, especially the ones who were strong too young, start to crave structure. They find safety in edge and order. They learn to translate fear into clarity. Control becomes the closest thing to peace. If you can’t be protected, at least you can be predictable.

But softness? Softness is a house with no locks. And some people still return to it. Not because it’s safe, but because it’s necessary. Because somewhere inside, there must be a tenderness that doesn’t ask us to disappear in order to be loved.

There has to be a way to be both. The one who buries the calf, then cries in the dark. The one who carries it all, and finally, is allowed to set it down.

A way to reach into the wound without folding into it. A way to stand in the middle of the burning field and name the fire without becoming the fire. To be the hands that hold without becoming the vessel.

But here’s the quiet reality. When strength arrives too early, it can keep us from ever truly arriving anywhere or as ourselves. We live in transit. We become fluent in translation, turning pain into usefulness, exhaustion into grace. We start to believe that gratitude is care, and praise is rest. And eventually we forget how to name our own need. We become afraid of wanting. We start to believe that being thanked is the same as being cared for. That praise is a substitute for rest. That admiration is a form of intimacy.

Entire generations were shaped this way, spines straightened too early, emotions buried under responsibilities no one remembers assigning. These people were met with silence. With reverence instead of relief. With gratitude instead of help. And it worked. That’s the worst part. It worked so well that most of them never stopped.

But it cost something. It cost the version of the self who could be soft without consequence. Who could ask for help without apology. Who could want without guilt. Who laughed without checking the room first. Who reached out without bargaining. Who believed, just for a moment, that love might not require proof.

That version still exists. She’s not gone. Not in hiding, not in waiting. She’s just buried under muscle memory and practiced calm. She hums in the background during quiet moments, just beneath the urge to manage. She whispers in the softness of early morning, when no one is watching. She doesn’t need permission. She needs space.

The future depends on her return. In everyone who carried too much, too early, for too long. Not by rejecting strength. Not by embracing some soft caricature of femininity. But by refusing to mistake endurance for identity. By calling survival what it is instead of what we’re proud of.

And by building a world where rest isn’t a breakdown. Where softness isn’t the cost of usefulness, but the reason we are worth returning to.