Que After Dark | Personal Growth
My Life. My Lessons. My Perspective.
When Being Strong Became My Entire Personality
Let me tell y’all something about being a strong woman. That shit can kill you. And before somebody decides I’m being dramatic, understand that I’m speaking from an experience that forced me to question almost everything I believed about strength, responsibility, sacrifice, and the way I had been living my life.
On September 25, 2020, I experienced a medical emergency that could have ended my life. My hemoglobin had dropped to a FOUR. Not fourteen. Not ten. FOUR. I needed three units of blood, and my doctor warned me that I could drop dead at any moment. Imagine hearing somebody tell you that your life is in immediate danger while realizing that, for months, you had been walking around behaving as though everything was perfectly manageable.
I had spent so much of my life being the woman who could figure things out that I hadn’t recognized how disconnected I had become from my own needs. I knew how to be a mother, a wife, an employee, and the person everybody could depend on when something needed to be handled. What I wasn’t particularly good at was recognizing when I needed somebody, including myself, to show that same level of concern for me.
And the fucked-up part is that I genuinely thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.
Somewhere along the way, I had accepted the idea that being strong meant continuing to function regardless of what I was experiencing. I could be tired, uncomfortable, overwhelmed, or emotionally exhausted, but if something needed to be done, I found a way to do it. I had become so accustomed to carrying responsibilities that I rarely questioned whether I should have been carrying all of them in the first place.
My Body Was Screaming While I Kept Making Excuses
For approximately three to four months, I had been bleeding heavily. I was dealing with fibroids, painful cycles, exhaustion, and shortness of breath. My body had been giving me signals that something was seriously wrong, but I kept finding ways to explain what I was experiencing. Some of my physical limitations, I assumed, were probably related to my weight. I was tired, but hell, when wasn’t I tired? I had responsibilities, children, a household, and a life that wasn’t going to stop because I didn’t feel good.
And that’s how easily we can normalize suffering when we’ve become accustomed to functioning through it.
When you spend years being responsible for everybody and everything, discomfort can begin to feel like another part of your daily routine. You stop asking why you’re exhausted and start figuring out how to accomplish what needs to be done while exhausted. You stop questioning why you’re overwhelmed and begin organizing your responsibilities so that your overwhelm doesn’t interfere with anybody else’s expectations.
Eventually, you become so damn good at pushing through that you don’t recognize when pushing through is no longer appropriate.
What disturbs me most about that period isn’t simply how sick I had become. It’s how normal I believed my circumstances were. I was experiencing symptoms that required medical attention, yet I continued trying to accommodate them around a schedule that already demanded more from me than I was giving myself.
And then came the moment that, even today, makes me shake my head at my own damn self.
After learning how dangerously low my hemoglobin was, I told my husband I wanted some fried chicken before going to the hospital.
Yes. Fried chicken.
A doctor had just told me I could die, and somewhere in my mind, I apparently believed this emergency could wait long enough for me to get something to eat. Now, anybody who knows me knows I love me some chicken, but looking back, I have to wonder what the fuck I was thinking.
Here I was, needing blood and emergency medical care, and my mind was still operating as though I was handling some ordinary inconvenience that could be worked into the rest of my day.
As ridiculous as that moment sounds, it revealed something about me that I hadn’t fully understood. I had become so comfortable minimizing my own discomfort that even a life-threatening medical situation didn’t immediately interrupt the habit of treating my needs as something that could wait.
To be clear, my fibroids and severe anemia were medical conditions. They were not caused by being strong, being a mother, or having responsibilities. What I’m examining is why I had become so willing to dismiss the symptoms I was experiencing and why I struggled to recognize the urgency of caring for myself.
Because my body wasn’t asking me to be stronger. It was telling me that something was wrong.
And I needed to listen.
The Night I Started Questioning My Entire Life
On September 26, 2020, something changed for me. I had received medical treatment, but the experience left me with questions that had very little to do with my blood count and everything to do with the way I had been living.
I remember spending hours in the darkness examining my life, my decisions, my responsibilities, and the expectations I had accepted over the years. I thought about my husband, my children, my family, and all the people and things that had occupied so much of my attention. I thought about how much energy I had invested in making sure everybody else was okay and how rarely I gave that same consideration to myself.
And somewhere in all that thinking, I was forced to confront a question I hadn’t spent enough time asking.
Who the hell was taking care of me?
Not financially. Not simply by being present in my life. I mean who was making sure that the woman responsible for keeping so many things together was actually okay?
And an even more uncomfortable question followed.
Why had I become so comfortable waiting for somebody else to recognize what I wasn’t willing to acknowledge myself?
That realization didn’t mean I suddenly stopped loving my family or regretted the things I had done for the people who mattered to me. It meant I was beginning to understand that loving other people shouldn’t require me to become an afterthought in my own existence.
There was a difference between being needed and being valued. There was a difference between making sacrifices for the people I loved and developing a relationship with sacrifice in which I was always the thing being given up.
And I had to be willing to examine my participation in that arrangement.
When Everybody Needs You, Who Do You Become?
There is a psychological concept called role internalization, which helps explain how the responsibilities and expectations associated with a role can become part of the way we understand ourselves. When you’re consistently recognized as the dependable person, the strong one, the problem solver, or the person who holds everything together, it can become difficult to separate those expectations from your identity.
You stop thinking of strength as something you possess and begin treating it as something you must continuously demonstrate.
And that’s a dangerous little arrangement when you don’t give yourself permission to be anything else.
Because what happens when the strong woman is exhausted? What happens when she doesn’t have the answer? What happens when she needs help, doesn’t feel like talking, or wants somebody else to figure some shit out for a change?
Sometimes she feels guilty.
Not necessarily because anybody has told her she isn’t allowed to rest, but because she’s become accustomed to measuring her value through her usefulness. Being needed makes her feel important. Being dependable reinforces her identity. And eventually, the thought of disappointing somebody can feel more uncomfortable than the exhaustion she’s already experiencing.
Now, I’m not suggesting that every woman who describes herself as strong has developed an unhealthy relationship with responsibility. I am saying that we should examine what strength means when it no longer allows room for vulnerability, rest, or asking for help.
Because if being strong requires you to disregard your own humanity, what the hell are we actually celebrating?
Choosing Myself Didn’t Mean I Stopped Loving Everybody Else
One of the hardest things I had to understand during my awakening was that choosing myself didn’t automatically mean I was choosing against other people.
For years, I had operated from the belief that being a good mother, wife, family member, and dependable person meant doing what needed to be done regardless of how I felt. There was always another obligation, another issue that needed attention, or another person whose circumstances seemed more urgent than mine.
But after nearly losing my life, I began examining the difference between responsibility and self-abandonment.
I wasn’t trying to become selfish. I wasn’t planning to wake up the next morning and tell everybody to get the fuck out of my face and figure out their own lives. Although, depending on the day, I can’t pretend that thought wouldn’t have been appealing.
I simply wanted to understand why I had become so willing to accommodate everybody else’s needs while treating my own as negotiable.
And that required me to establish boundaries.
Not just with other people, but with myself.
I had to question my habit of automatically agreeing to things, my willingness to carry responsibilities that weren’t necessarily mine, and the guilt I sometimes experienced when I considered doing something simply because it would make me happy.
I also had to accept that people can genuinely love you and still become comfortable with what you’re willing to sacrifice. They may appreciate everything you do without recognizing what maintaining that level of availability costs you.
And sometimes, you’ve helped create that expectation by consistently presenting yourself as someone who can handle everything.
That doesn’t make you responsible for everybody else’s behavior. But it does mean you have the ability to reconsider what you continue making available.
The Woman Who Woke Up Wasn’t the Same Woman Who Went to Sleep
In 2021, I underwent a partial hysterectomy. But when I talk about my awakening, I’m not referring to the surgery itself. I’m referring to the shift in perspective that began in that hospital in September 2020.
I didn’t wake up on September 26 with my entire life figured out. I didn’t suddenly know which relationships would change, which decisions I would make, or how I would eventually become the woman I am today.
Hell, I was still trying to understand how I had gotten to that point in the first place.
But I knew something had changed.
I could no longer look at my life in exactly the same way. I had spent so much time being present for everybody else’s experiences that I hadn’t always considered whether I was genuinely participating in my own.
And when you come close to losing your life, the question of how you want to live becomes a whole lot more personal.
I started recognizing that being alive and actually living aren’t always the same experience. You can wake up every morning, fulfill your responsibilities, work, pay bills, care for your family, and repeat the same routine for years without ever stopping to ask whether the life you’re maintaining reflects the person you want to be.
I didn’t want to spend whatever years I had remaining simply proving that I could endure whatever life placed in front of me.
I wanted to experience my life.
I wanted to discover what made me happy outside of the roles I had spent so long performing. I wanted to explore my creativity, question my beliefs, reconsider my expectations, and develop a relationship with myself that wasn’t based entirely on what I could provide for somebody else.
And perhaps most importantly, I wanted to stop behaving as though taking care of myself was something I had to earn after everything else had been handled.
I Refuse to Romanticize Almost Dying
Sometimes people talk about their awakening as though every painful experience was somehow necessary to help them discover their purpose. I understand why people look for meaning in difficult circumstances, and I certainly found lessons in mine.
But I’m not going to sit here and pretend that nearly dying was some beautiful experience I needed in order to become a better woman.
Fuck that.
I would have preferred to learn these lessons without needing three units of blood and a doctor telling me my life was in danger.
What happened to me was serious, frightening, and medically dangerous. I’m grateful I survived, but I’m not grateful that I had to experience a health crisis to begin questioning the way I treated myself.
What I can appreciate is the perspective I developed afterward.
I began to understand that strength doesn’t have to mean constant endurance. That loving people doesn’t require unlimited access to me. That asking for help doesn’t erase my independence. And that my responsibilities, no matter how important, don’t make my personal well-being any less deserving of attention.
September 25, 2020, almost became the end of my story. September 26 became the beginning of a different one.
Not because I suddenly became fearless, perfectly healed, or completely certain about my future.
But because I started recognizing that I deserved to be a person in my own life, not just the woman responsible for keeping everybody else’s life together.
I spent years learning how to be strong for everybody else. That experience challenged me to begin learning how to show up for myself.
And believe me, there’s a difference.
A Little More From Que
One thing my experience taught me is that self-abandonment doesn’t always look like somebody who doesn’t love themselves. Sometimes it looks like a woman who genuinely loves her family, takes pride in being dependable, and has become so accustomed to taking care of other people that she doesn’t recognize how little attention she’s giving herself.
Psychologically, repeated patterns can become so familiar that we stop questioning them. When we consistently push past our limits, ignore discomfort, or associate our value with what we can provide, those behaviors can begin to feel like ordinary parts of our identity rather than choices we’re capable of examining.
In my book, THE F*CK THEM THEORY, I explore the conditioning, attachments, disconnection, awakening, and alignment that have shaped my understanding of personal growth. My health scare was one of the experiences that forced me to begin asking questions I had spent years avoiding.
I’m not suggesting that everybody needs to make some dramatic change tomorrow. I’m asking you to consider how often you dismiss your own needs because something or somebody else seems more important. And if your body is telling you that something is wrong, please take that seriously and get medical attention. Some shit cannot wait.
Because being needed by everybody doesn’t mean you should disappear from your own life.
If my story resonates with you, you can explore more of my experiences and the lessons I’ve learned in THE F*CK THEM THEORY on Amazon.
You can also discover my writing, books, and other creative projects through Que Writes, a department of BlanQ Canvas.
That’s My Perspective. What’s Yours?
Have you ever been so busy being strong for everybody else that you stopped recognizing when you needed help yourself? Was there a particular experience that made you realize you needed to start choosing yourself?
Tell me in the comments. Share whatever you’re comfortable sharing. You never know who might recognize a part of their own story in yours.
Until the next perspective,
Que. 🩷
My Life. My Lessons. My Perspective.
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