It Looks Like Strength

The problem with armor is you forget you're wearing it.

You’re the one people call.

The text at midnight. The friend who needs to talk. The colleague who’s stuck. You always know what to say.

I was that person too. And I thought that was a good thing.

It was. Until it wasn’t.

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It doesn’t look like armor.

It looks like being good at your job. Being reliable. Being the person with the answer. That’s the problem, because it looks like strength.

“Knowing” became my identity. I learned early what works. Be safe, be stable, be practical, be nice. That was the message at home and at work. And that wildly served me. And I’m not going to pretend it didn’t.

But at some point, “knowing what works” stopped being a skill and became the only way I show up. Steady became safe. Safe became the go-to. And being wrong became the one thing I couldn’t afford. My whole sense of self was built on getting it right.

I stayed in the safe middle. It was the only shape I knew.

I’ve always been the tree.
The sturdy one.
The one people rest under when things get heavy.
People walked away feeling clearer.
It’s been working.
I took pride in that.

It was my armor.

The armor was heavy. But I wore it proudly.

I never stopped to ask what it cost me.

Not failure, for the armor worked. I was effective, trusted, and respected. People came to me and left feeling clearer. Nothing was broken.

But something was not right.

Here’s something I don’t love admitting. I could be that friend. The one who always had the answer. I gave advice freely, confidently, and often. And a lot of it was good — I know, because “I told you so” rushed out my lips more times than I’d like to admit.

Even when I said “up to you” and meant it, I was keeping score. And that bothered me more than I let on. If the advice was sound, why didn’t it stick? Why did people keep circling back to the same patterns?

When I trained as a coach, I found the answer.

What I’d been doing was mentoring all along. Giving people the benefit of my experience. “Here’s what I’ve seen work. Here are your options. Up to you.” Safe. Grounded. Useful. And definitely not what they needed.

Coaching asked me to do something terrifying: to stop knowing.

To sit in the question with someone instead of steering them to the answer. To stand beside them in the whirlpool instead of pulling them to the shore.

I wasn’t wrong about wanting to help. I was wrong about what helping looked like. I’d been offering solutions when people needed space. Answers when they needed questions.

And being wrong about that? That’s what scared me most.

But when I finally let myself do it — really do it, not just intellectually, but in how I showed up — the tree started growing again. Roots it had never used. Branches it had never stretched. A whole way of growing I couldn’t access from inside the armor, because the armor only allowed one shape: steady and unyielding.

The armor didn’t break anything.
It molded me into a shape I’d outgrown.
I didn’t notice.
From the traveler’s point-of-view, the tree still looked fine.

I’m not saying throw away the steady hand.

I’m not telling you to stop being reliable, to stop being thoughtful, to stop being the person people trust. That part is real. That part is you.

I’m saying it’s not the only part of you.

The armor served you. It kept you safe in spaces that weren’t safe. It gave you an identity when you needed one. It earned you trust, respect, credibility; and you earned it honestly.

But you don’t have to keep wearing it just because it worked.

A tree that stops growing isn’t dead. It just looks the same year after year.
Still providing shade. Still standing.
But somewhere underneath, the roots have stopped reaching.
The branches have stopped stretching.
And the tree doesn’t even notice, because everyone still comes to rest under it.

It’s not about cutting the tree down. It’s letting it grow in directions it hasn’t tried. It will look messy. The new branches might not make sense yet. You might be wrong about where they lead.

And that’s the point.

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