Built for Survival, Not Subservience

I don’t have one defining memory from my childhood that explains why I became the way I am. It’s more like a thousand small ones, blurred around the edges. My dad’s slurred evening meltdowns. My mom’s angry tears over the sink. The sound of my brother shuffling deeper into his tiny room to be invisible while I tried to keep the peace, make the peace, fix the things. There wasn’t room to be a kid when everyone around me felt so fragile.

So I became steady. Reliable. Strong. Stoic. The one who knew how to smooth things over, how to read a room before I even entered it. I learned to carry emotional weight that should’ve never been mine. When I finally found myself as a wife in the evangelical church, they told me this strength was a problem. They called it control, pride, resistance. They said a godly woman releases her grip, follows her husband’s lead, trusts authority.

But I had learned early that trust could be dangerous, that authority could be unstable, that letting go meant everything might fall apart.