“I’m Still Learning How to Be Soft After the Storm”

I used to think strength meant silence.

That if I held my pain tightly enough, it couldn’t spill out and make a mess of things.

So I learned how to smile when I was breaking, how to nod when I didn’t understand, how to keep walking even when every step felt like dragging a ghost behind me.

The storm came slowly.

Not as thunder or lightning, but as the small daily hurts that pile up— unanswered messages, people who promised forever but packed their warmth and left it in another season.

At first, I thought it was my fault.

Maybe I was too much.

Maybe I was not enough.

Maybe the weather inside me was too unpredictable for anyone to stay.

So I built walls. Not the pretty kind, either—no ivy, no sunlight. Just bricks stacked high with fear and survival, with the quiet certainty that if I didn’t let anyone close, they couldn’t leave.

And for a while, that worked. I felt safe, but I didn’t feel alive.

Because safety without softness isn’t peace. It’s numbness disguised as strength.

The first time I realized I missed being soft was at a grocery store.

A little boy was crying because he dropped his ice cream, and instead of walking past, I stopped.

I didn’t know him, but I crouched down, helped him pick up the cone, and smiled.

He smiled back through tears. It was such a small thing—but it cracked something open in me.

That night, I cried. Not because of the boy, but because I’d forgotten how it felt to care.

You don’t notice how long you’ve been living in survival mode until you do something kind for someone and it feels foreign.

I’m still learning how to be soft after the storm.

How to let the light back in without flinching.

How to trust laughter again without waiting for the silence that usually follows it.

It’s not easy. Healing never is.

Some mornings I wake up and the sky feels heavy, like it remembers everything I’m trying to forget.

Some nights I scroll through old messages, wondering if the people who broke me ever realized they did.

But I’m learning that forgiveness isn’t for them.

It’s the key I need to open my own cage.

Being soft again doesn’t mean being naïve.

It means smiling even when you’ve been hurt, but not pretending the hurt never happened.

It means setting boundaries with love instead of bitterness.

It means saying, “I still believe in good things,” even when life has given you every reason not to.

I’ve stopped calling myself broken.

I’m not a ruin—I’m a rebuilding.

There’s a difference.

The cracks aren’t something to hide; they’re proof that I’ve survived the weather and still chose to bloom.

And if that’s not strength, I don’t know what is.

Now, when it rains, I don’t run for cover.

I stand by the window and watch.

I let the thunder remind me that even storms have rhythm. I let the lightning remind me that beauty and chaos often arrive together.

There’s softness in that surrender—in letting life happen without trying to hold it all together.

Maybe that’s what it means to heal:

Not to erase the storm, but to learn how to dance when it rains again.

If you’ve ever lost yourself and found a new version of you in the ruins—I hope you know that softness will return. Slowly, quietly, like morning light after a long night.

You are not weak for still feeling everything.

You are human.

And that’s enough.

So yes—I’m still learning how to be soft after the storm.

But maybe softness isn’t what comes after.

Maybe it’s what carries us through.

Have you ever had to rebuild your softness after a storm? Tell me how you did it in the comments. 💬