This one is for my fellow survivors. It’s for those of you who just got out, those of you still trying to get past the undertow, and for those of you who have been out for years but still catch yourselves wondering if you’re too soft for this world.
You’re not.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how often kindness gets mistaken for weakness. People see someone who is kind, who gives the benefit of the doubt, who doesn’t strike back, and they assume that person is easy to push around. An easy target. For a very long time I believed that about myself too. I spent almost 20 years being belittled relentlessly. My worth was picked apart slowly. Most of the time I didn’t have words for what was happening. I just knew what it felt like to be made small every single day.
In talking with survivors from all different areas, I hear the same thing over and over. So many of us were caretakers long before we were targets. I absolutely was. I never wanted anyone to feel lost or unloved. Someone saw that in me and decided it was something to use, and ultimately, to abuse.
Out of that, a quiet and destructive thing starts to happen. We start to blame the kindness. “If I hadn’t been so understanding, if I hadn’t kept forgiving, if I’d just been harder.…” It took me years to get past that mindset, to realize that kindness was never the problem. The problem was the person who chose to exploit it.
When you get out, there’s a stretch of time, wandering around on the beach, where you have to decide who you’re going to be now. The pain looks for somewhere to go. For me, I know it would have been easy to just be angry and to let it harden me. To decide that the safest thing was to never let anyone close, or to lash out first so that I’d never be a target again.
But I had to come to a different place in my survival. I knew exactly what it does to a person to be on the receiving end of that kind of anger. I knew how long it takes to heal from it, and I refused to become the thing I survived. I refuse to do that to anyone else. That refusal isn’t a weakness. It’s a decision that I have to make over and over, every day.
To add to the long list of things I wish I’d known sooner: being kind does not mean letting people walk all over you. It doesn’t mean explaining yourself over and over to someone who has already decided not to listen. It doesn’t mean staying. I can wish someone well and never let them back into my life. I can treat someone with respect while they disagree with me and still tell them no. Boundaries aren’t the opposite of kindness. They are kindness pointed back at yourself and you deserve that kindness. A wise man once told me, “Saying no to others is often saying yes to yourself.”
If you’re still in it, I want you to know that the softness you’re being told is weakness is worth protecting. It’s still yours and it’s not the reason it’s happening to you.
If you’re newly out and feel angry, guarded, or numb: that’s alright. Your kindness isn’t gone. It will come back when you’re safe enough to let it.
If you’ve been out for years and are still second-guessing your kindness: stop apologizing for it. It’s the part of you that kept your head out of the water.
It might sound simple, but choosing to be decent to people after you’ve been shown the worst of them takes more strength than anything else I’ve ever done. You can still be kind and stand up for yourself. You can be gentle and be unbreakable. Don’t let anyone convince you that those things can’t live in the same person.
Kindness was never the weak part.
If you or someone you love needs help, you are not alone. National Domestic Violence Hotline (24/7): 1-800-799-7233. NH 24-Hour Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-866-644-3574.
