Strong Doesn’t Mean Unshaken

When It Feels Like One Thing After Another

2026 has had one of the roughest starts we’ve had in a long time.

You know the saying — bad news comes in threes?

The older I get, the more I realize sometimes it doesn’t stop at three.

It feels like roadblock after roadblock. Like every time we catch our breath, something else knocks the wind out of us.

First, a breast cancer diagnosis in our family.

That one stopped us in our tracks. The kind of news that makes everything else go quiet. The kind that makes you realize how fragile this whole life thing really is.

Then there’s this season we’re in — fighting battles to preserve and protect our family, to continue our legacy, to keep building something strong for the next generation. And it feels like every step forward gets met with resistance. Paperwork. Stress. Waiting. Uncertainty. Over and over again.

Add in raising a preteen — and if you know, you know. Trying to find the right words. Trying to help her navigate friendships and emotions and a world that can be unbelievably unkind. Not just kids. Adults too. Watching her learn hard lessons about people earlier than I ever wanted her to.

And then the icing on the cake — not one, but two wrecks. Sixteen days apart.

Sixteen.

People mean well (or at least I hope they do ) when they say, “You just have to get over it”… 

Or, “It happens to millions of people.”

Or, “You can’t let it stop your life.”

And they’re right — it can’t stop our life.

But here’s the thing.

We’re not sitting around stewing in it.

We’re living it.

There’s a difference.

It’s not about being dramatic.

It’s not about wanting sympathy.

It’s about real life, real fear, real emotion.

When airbags deploy and your babies are in the car, something shifts inside you. When you realize how close you came to losing not only your children but even the other child involved… that does something to your nervous system. To your heart. To your sense of control.

That’s not weakness.

That’s being human.

What’s been hard for me is realizing that people assume I’ll just bounce back. I’ve always been the tough one. The get-hurt-get-up-keep-going girl. I don’t crumble easily. I don’t stay down long.

But even the toughest people have a breaking point.

And trauma doesn’t care how strong you are.

I’ve been open with my husband. With my daughter. With the people around me. Because I refuse to pretend I’m a robot. Somewhere along the way the world convinced us that being strong means being silent. That being tough means not crying. That being resilient means never admitting you’re scared.

That’s exhausting.

We weren’t wired to suppress everything.

It is okay to feel it.

It is okay to admit something shook you.

It is okay to not want to do something because your body remembers what your mind is trying to move past.

It is okay to need a minute. Or ten.

None of this is stopping our life. We’re still showing up. Still parenting. Still working. Still loving. Still fighting for the good.

But sometimes those “little bumps in the road” don’t feel little.

Sometimes they feel like mountains you’re trying to climb while your chest is tight and your heart is racing.

That doesn’t mean you quit.

It just means you acknowledge the climb.

Through all of this, I am still grateful. Deeply grateful. For the protection we had in those wrecks. For children who walked away. For a God who is patient, protective, and present even when I question everything. For the good that still exists — because it does.

There is so much good.

But there has also been a lot of hard.

And maybe this season isn’t about pretending the hard doesn’t exist.

Maybe it’s about letting it refine us instead of silence us.

Maybe it’s about pausing, pulling back, resetting, and starting again with softer hearts and stronger boundaries.

If you’re in a season like this too — where it feels like it’s just been one thing after another — you are not weak for feeling it.

You are not dramatic for struggling.

You are not failing because you need a restart.

You’re human.

And sometimes the bravest thing a tough person can do…

is admit that it hurt.