Being Strong Is Overrated: How Releasing the Need to Hold It Together Sets You Free

Girls Who Recover with Dana Hunter Fradella

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Episode 23

If you've ever been affirmed for being “so strong” when you were silently falling apart, this episode is for you.

This one’s raw and real—an unfiltered look at grief, emotional honesty, and why it’s time to finally tell the old story of needing to be strong in spite of our feelings to gtfo. I’m sharing what happened this weekend as I said goodbye to my 22-year-old cat, Nina—and how I found unexpected healing the moment I dropped the mask of strength, invited my heart to open and gave myself full permission to feel it all.

In this episode, I’m arguing that being strong is overrated—and how emotional suppression, often rooted in patriarchal conditioning, leads us to feel disconnected, to manifest dis-ease, and to numb out what’s desperate to be felt. I talk about the danger of “holding it all together,” what it cost me after my dad died, and why it’s one of the myths we must break to fully heal and recover

You’ll also hear:

• The connection between suppressed emotions and dis-ease (with insights from Dr. Gabor Maté & The Body Keeps the Score)
• Why I cry in front of my kids—and how it’s changed how I parent
• What Inside Out teaches us about the power of feelings
• The difference between wallowing and allowing
• Ways you can actually be strong without suffocating your emotions

This episode is for you if you’ve been carrying it all and trying to just “be strong.” And it’s an invitation and an insistence that you don’t have to be strong anymore. You get to feel, to express your emotions, and to be held by those closest to you. That is the biggest form of strength.

Let this conversation free something inside you.

Resources:

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
  When the Body Says No by Dr. Gabor Maté
• Inside Out
• You Can Heal Your Body by Louise Hay
• Breathwork practitioners I love
  • Siri Baruc Thornton, Jack Fontana, and Kate Becker

If this resonated, share it with a woman you love who needs the reminder: you don’t have to be strong. You just have to be with what is.

💫 And if you’re ready to let go of ideas that are keeping you stuck and do the thing you’ve always wanted to do, I’d love to support you. Book your free 1:1 Breakthrough Call, where I’ll help you get clear on what you’d love to do (or have, or be), identify what’s really holding you back, and take the first best steps to take the leap.

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Hey gorgeous.

I love you.

I'm so proud of you.

And I believe in your ability to create a life you absolutely love.