For years, I called never stopping strength

For a long time, when someone told me I was strong, I considered it one of the finest compliments. Strength had a precise meaning for me: carrying on through difficult days, adapting quickly, finding a solution and taking care of what others expected from me.

It was a real ability. It helped me navigate major changes and build a life in very different settings. Over the years, however, that same ability also became the most effective way to avoid a simple question: how am I doing while I keep doing all this?

As a child, I learned early to observe my surroundings before understanding what space I could occupy. I was nine when I arrived in Switzerland from Brazil. I did not know the language, and many everyday habits were unfamiliar. During one of the first dinners, I watched how others used their cutlery and tried to repeat their gestures without attracting attention. Copying was a way to find my bearings. Before words, I learned by reading people.

That attentiveness helped me. It allowed me to enter a new school and learn the language; before long, I recognised what was expected. Gradually, however, I relied almost exclusively on the part of me that could adapt. Asking for help seemed harder than finding another solution alone. Showing uncertainty exposed something I preferred to keep sheltered.

The strength others see

“You always manage.”

This sentence can feel like a gentle touch, and sometimes it truly is. Repeated long enough, however, it ends up assigning you a role that is hard to leave.

When someone shows they can cope, those around them easily entrust them with one more task. They anticipate problems themselves and hold together what threatens to unravel. Meanwhile, they try not to burden anyone. From outside, they appear reliable. Inside, the boundary between responsibility and sacrifice becomes less visible.

For years, I responded to exhaustion by increasing my efforts. If something did not work, I tried to organise myself better. I filled loneliness with commitments. When a situation caused me pain, I tried to convince myself I could endure a little longer and rarely asked what price I was paying.

Today, in individual coaching sessions, I often meet people who have developed a similar strength. I meet professional women used to making decisions and people on whom whole families have learned to rely. Men and women others turn to in complicated moments. They rarely arrive saying they feel vulnerable. Instead, they speak of tiredness or a postponed choice; sometimes they admit they no longer recognise themselves in the way they are living.

One sentence returns in different words: “I’m tired of being the one who holds everything together.”

At that point, there is no need to add another strategy immediately. It is more useful to understand what this exhaustion is making visible. Perhaps a role has occupied too much space. A relationship may have lost its reciprocity. Sometimes someone continues to honour a promise made years earlier without asking whether it still fits their life today.

Years after arriving in Switzerland, I found myself again building a life somewhere that did not yet feel my own. I had become a wife and mother; I had reduced my work, and many daily decisions depended on family arrangements in which my independence had narrowed. From outside, my life looked stable and well built. Inside, a difficult-to-explain feeling was growing.

I noticed it by listening to how I spoke. For simple matters, I heard myself asking: “May I?” That verb appeared increasingly often, even when no one had openly required me to use it. It had become a measure of the space I allowed myself.

A comment made in front of others showed me clearly how far I had moved from the independent woman I had fought to become. I responded with humour and carried on. The discomfort remained, bringing to light something I had long avoided. It deserved to be heard before deciding what to do.

Vulnerability had something to tell me

Back then, vulnerability seemed like the prelude to collapse. Over time, I learned to read it as information. It appears when the distance between what we live and what we need becomes too wide, or when a strategy that once protected us continues to guide us after the context has changed.

My ability to adapt had been enormously valuable in childhood. As an adult, at certain moments, it led me to accept conditions I should at least have questioned. That ability had taken the place of choice: I used it even when the setting called for something else.

This shift matters in coaching too. A belief such as “I must manage alone” may have arisen when depending on others seemed dangerous or pointless. Later, it becomes a silent rule. Someone applies it at work, in relationships and even in how they care for themselves. Every request for help then seems like proof of inadequacy.

When a phrase like this emerges, I start with what it protected and the price it asks today. Then we check whether a more suitable choice exists. I often ask: which part of you is working tirelessly to keep everything as it is? What does it fear might happen if you slowed down enough to listen to yourself?

Vulnerability opens precisely this space. It allows us, at least briefly, to stop adapting our feelings to the image we want to preserve. We can recognise a situation that hurts us, a pace that has become unsustainable or the weight of expectations to which we never truly consented. A need that has long remained wordless may also emerge.

Looking at these signals takes courage because it can change how we interpret our story. Enduring for a long time does not automatically show that a situation is good for us. Sometimes it shows how skilled we have become at bearing it.

Later, one of my children had to undergo several operations. There was no perfect moment when I felt ready. There were appointments, waiting, phone calls and practical decisions to make while I tried to protect both my children. My usual reflex returned immediately. I organised every detail and reassured everyone; when I needed to cry, I looked for somewhere private.

I did what was necessary. At the same time, I learned that being present could coexist with fear. I lived through difficult days, took care of practical things and admitted that I could not control the outcome. My strength began to change shape. Asking for support became part of it. Recognising fear without allowing it to decide everything also gained a new meaning.

In those years, I first encountered coaching as someone seeking tools for herself. Questions and the chance to observe my automatic responses created a margin between what happened and the response I had always given. In that margin, I began choosing again, also supported by daily practices that helped me remain present.

Perhaps your vulnerability today has a much less obvious form. It might appear as irritation whenever someone asks one more thing of you, or in the silence with which you move through a relationship you no longer know how to inhabit. Part of you may frequently imagine leaving everything, while another keeps repeating that now is not the time.

Before turning these signals into a drastic decision, try listening to what they are measuring.

Take a sheet of paper and write the sentence you use to get back on your feet under pressure. It may be “I have to handle it”, “others count on me”, “I can’t stop now” or “others have it worse”.

This rule helped me when...
Today, the price of this rule is...

Leave the conclusion open for a few minutes. Observe where that old strength still helps you and where it prevents you from seeing a current need. Then choose a small gesture that makes a test possible: honestly telling a reliable person how you are, postponing a non-essential commitment, asking for practical cooperation or protecting an hour you keep giving away.

When it takes the form of a question and meets a real gesture, vulnerability can restore direction.

Putting words where I had put silence

I wrote Il coraggio di essere fragile after telling my story in fragments for years. Some episodes were vivid; others lived mainly in the emotions they had left behind. In the book, I chose a narrative form that protects the people involved and, in some passages, reconstructs events. I wanted to preserve what mattered most to me: the inner experience and the learning that grew from it.

Writing forced me to see a thread running through different ages and settings. Many times, I had called strength the ability to remain and adapt, continuing to function whatever happened. The most important turning points came when I allowed myself a different question: what is this situation asking me to recognise?

Since then, vulnerability has been a signal for me. It indicates where my attention is needed without defining the whole person I am. It may lead to a boundary, a request for help, a change of direction or a more honest way to stay. Its message varies; willingness to listen already changes our relationship with what we are experiencing.

The book also grew from a desire to speak to women who, seen from outside, seem capable of everything while feeling they have disappeared behind their roles. I know that distance. I know how easy it is to keep taking care of life and lose contact with the person living it.

Today, when someone tells me in a session, “I should be stronger”, my first question concerns the armour: what is it protecting, and is it still needed in the same way? From there, a more honest choice can emerge, supported by what the person recognises as their own.

Right now, your strongest part might be the one that finally admits how you are experiencing a situation before forcing yourself to endure another month. This truth can remain private and take shape calmly. It can begin on paper or in a conversation. Sometimes it emerges in a space where you do not have to prove anything.

Il coraggio di essere fragile tells my journey towards that kind of listening. It moves through difficulties and imperfect choices. At several points, I had to revisit my image of myself. It shows what can happen when we stop considering every faltering step a failure and begin asking which part of us is calling for attention.

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