You Don't Have to Be Okay: Redefining What Real Resilience Actually Is

The Lie We've All Been Told About Resilience

You know what they tell you when grief hits. Bounce back. Get back to normal. Move on. Be strong. Especially if you're a woman. Strength looks like functioning. Like showing up. Like saying "I'm fine" when someone asks how you're doing, even though underneath you're completely falling apart.

I got this message loud and clear after I lost my daughter.

I was 40 weeks; I had carried her to full-term. And then she was stillborn. A few months after that, my dad died. While I was still processing both of those losses, I had major surgery.

Three massive griefs. All at once.

Here's what our cultural systems did and didn’t do for me: they gave me leave because I "birthed a child." Short-term disability. I had birthed a baby. But I had no baby. My leave wasn't given to me because I lost a child. It was given to me because I birthed one, and once that was over, it was Come on back to work even though I’d had surgery and lost my dad during those short 6 weeks of “leave”.

So I went back.

What else was I supposed to do? I needed my job. I needed to pay my bills. I needed to keep functioning. So I put on the mask. Showed up at the office. Sat through meetings. Told everyone I was fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine.

Meanwhile, I was sleepwalking through my own life.

What Performing Strength Actually Costs You

That's what our culture calls resilience. But it's not resilience at all. It's suppression with a better name.

Here's what nobody tells us about grief: emotions are energy. Anger. Sadness. Fear. Despiration. The impossible ache of wanting it all to be different. That's all energy. And energy has to go somewhere. If you don't process it, if you don't feel it, if you just keep pushing through and saying you're fine, that energy doesn't disappear.

It lives in your body.

It shows up as tension. Exhaustion. Numbness. Disconnection from yourself and the people you love. You perform the version of yourself that the world expects. And the real you, the one who's hurting, the one who needs space to grieve, gets smaller and smaller.

Every time you push through without acknowledging that it's okay to not be okay, you abandon yourself a little bit.

I had been abandoning myself for decades. I didn't even realize I was doing it until grief forced me to feel something so big, so undeniable, that I couldn't push through anymore.

What Real Resilience Actually Looks Like

Real resilience isn't bouncing back. It's not recovering quickly or getting back into shape. It's not performing strength while you're falling apart.

Real resilience comes from discovering who you are when you stop running from how you feel.

About a year after I lost my daughter, I was sitting in a coffee shop writing. Two women were next to me, laughing, smiling, joking. I looked at them and thought: will I ever feel happiness again? Will I ever feel joy?

That's an honest question after you lose someone you love. You genuinely wonder if it's possible.

But then the next question came up in me. Have I ever really felt true joy? Do I actually know what that feels like for me?

That question made me pause and ponder.

Because my grief wasn't just taking something from me. It was revealing something to me. It was showing me that I'd spent my whole life not knowing what actually brought me joy. I didn't know what I loved. I didn't know what lit me up or made me feel alive. I'd been so busy performing the life I was supposed to want that I never stopped to ask what I actually wanted.

That's the information your grief has. That's what your emotions are trying to tell you.

The Three-Step Framework

If you're ready to stop performing and start discovering who you actually are, here's what real resilience looks like.

Feel Your Feelings

This is the hardest part because we've never been taught how. We've been taught to manage how we look on the outside. Hold it together. Be strong. But feeling your feelings means actually letting yourself cry. Letting yourself be angry. Letting yourself fall apart if that's what needs to happen.

It means being in a work meeting and your voice breaks when you think about what you lost, and you let it break instead of pushing through. It means sitting with the heaviness instead of distracting yourself from it.

Understand What Your Emotions Are Revealing

Once you've let yourself feel, get curious. What is this emotion telling you about who you are? What is it revealing about what actually matters to you? What truth is underneath this grief?

This is where honest information lives. Not in the sadness itself. In what the sadness is pointing toward. For me, one thing it was pointing me towards was the fact that I didn't know how to feel joy. That I'd abandoned myself in pursuit of a life that looked good on the outside but didn't feel good on the inside.

Take Small, Intentional Actions

Once you understand what your grief is revealing, you start moving toward it. Not away from it. Toward it. For me, that started small. Four months after losing my daughter, I created a vision board. Just something visual. A tangible acknowledgment that something had to change.

That one small action led to hiring a life coach. Which led to starting a blog about grief. Which led to building my business. Which led to this podcast and the work I do with clients every day. It didn’t happen overnight. It was a decade-long journey to get where I am today. But it all starts with one small intentional action aligned to your truth.

None of this happened because I bounced back or pushed through.

It happened because I let myself feel, got curious about what my grief was telling me, and then took tiny intentional steps toward what it revealed.

You Don't Have to Be Okay

Before I leave you, I want you to know one thing. You don't have to be okay.

After a loss, after grief, after anything that breaks you. There's this cultural expectation that you're supposed to be okay. That you're supposed to recover. Get back to normal. Move on.

That expectation is toxic. It's the lie that keeps you performing instead of healing.

Real resilience means radical self-honesty. It means talking about it in a place where you feel safe. It’s not a failure. It's not weakness. It's actually the bravest thing you can do.

Because the moment you stop performing, the moment you let yourself feel, the moment you get curious about what your grief is revealing. That's where life changes. That's when you start discovering who you actually are now that everything has changed. You begin to slowly discover what you actually want based on your new reality and how you actually want to show up in the world.

That's when your true self begins to emerge.

Let's Go Deeper Together

If this resonates with you, I want to invite you to explore this more. This is the work I do with my clients. In one-on-one sessions and in my group program called Centered and Alive. We create a safe space for women who've experienced loss to feel their feelings, understand what their grief is revealing, and build a life around that truth.

If you're ready to stop performing and start discovering who you actually are, I'd love for you to schedule a free discovery call with me.

→ Schedule Your Free Discovery Call

Or grab my free Awaken Your Inner Joy guided journal. It's designed to help you get curious about what actually brings you joy, and it’s a great place to start.

→ Download the Free Journal

Now I’d love to hear from you. What have you been taught about what resilience looks like? Does any of this shift how you think about it? Share in the comments below. Your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear to give themselves permission to not be okay.