52: Tired of Being Strong? This Is for You

In this fiercely tender episode, Quinn explores sisu—a powerful Finnish word that describes the inner grit that rises when there’s nothing left to give but you keep showing up anyway. Drawing from their own ancestral roots, Quinn reclaims the kind of strength that isn’t about pushing harder, but about remembering who you are when the world goes quiet.

This is not about hustle. This is about sacred perseverance.
 This is not girlboss strength. This is sisu.

Through stories, reflection, and a closing guided meditation, Quinn offers practical and soulful ways to reconnect with your own unshakable strength after divorce—especially when you're tired of being the strong one.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why “I’m tired of being strong” is not a weakness—it’s a threshold
• The history and soul of sisu, a Finnish concept of embodied resilience
• How to make meaning from pain (Viktor Frankl-style)
• The power of ancestry and generational strength
• Main character energy vs. passive survival
• A somatic practice to locate your sisu in your body
• How rest can be revolutionary—and part of your strength
• A beautiful grounding meditation to close

Quotable Moments:

“Sisu is the decision to keep showing the fuck up—even when no one’s clapping.”
 “You don’t have to earn rest. You are already enough.”
 “Sisu begins where perseverance ends.”

 👉 Share this episode with a sister who’s tired—but not done.

PostDivorceGlowUp.com

Email: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

Transcript

0:49

hey girlfriend. Welcome back to the podcast. My fears beautiful, unstoppable, and perhaps exhausted, but very brave friends. I wanna start by sharing an experience that I had a few weeks ago. A woman reached out to me and. She shared with me a little bit about her life and what she lived through in her marriage in order to come out on the other side in her divorce. I thanked her for trusting me with her story. I promised to help in any way that I could, and I said something like, I'm so proud of you. You are so brave. What she said next stopped me in my tracks. She wrote back and said, I'm actually sick of being strong and brave as I've had to do this for so many years. Boy, could I relate as I think probably many of you can relate. I felt those words in my bones and I see it in women's faces. That's what I wanna talk about today. How do we go forward in our lives when we feel just this bone deep exhaustion? Because we have been so strong and put off what we wanted for so long. Or for those of you who were the ones that were left in the divorce, feeling like. I signed up for something different, and here I am in a reality I don't even recognize. I had to give away so many of my dreams, and here I am, and I am just so tired of being strong and brave. I. I wanna share with you a little bit about my ancestry, just briefly Being an ex-Mormon, I don't know if you know this about Mormons or not, but their ancestry is very, very important to them. And so I probably know more than the average person about my ancestry, My father's side came from Finland, mostly Finnish and English, and my mother's side is English, and I want to talk to you about that Finnish side. I. It was my great-grandfather that decided to leave his small town in Finland and come to America to mine coal. He came with his brother. His brother decided to go back home to Finland, and my great-grandfather decided to stay. He ended up in Montana, which is where my father is from. All of that to say, I'm going to share with you a concept from Finland that is very much a part of my heritage, though some of you may have seen this word. I've seen memes about it. I just find it. A very helpful concept and something that I feel strongly about, perhaps because of my Finnish heritage, and this is a concept called sisu. It has no direct translation in English, but it describes a deep, almost primal kind of grit. It's the kind of courage that shows up when you have exhausted every other option, like plans went south. you've cried all of your tears and there is still more that needs to be done. It is a type of perseverance that is fueled by your soul. Just this deeply determined, rooted, unshakeable strength. Sisu is not flashy. It does not demand the stage demand applause. For many of the Finnish people. Sisu is as much a national ethos as it is a personal compass. It has carried them through brutal winters, wars, heartbreak. It can carry you when you keep going, when everything is screaming at you to stop, to give up. Sisu, when I see it on Instagram as part of a quote and part of the Girl Boss ethos and the, you've got this kind of mug, it sisu is not that. It's something so deeply inside that it's the kind of strength that shows up when the world has stopped clapping. No one is looking when the divorce papers are signed, when the friends who said that they would always be there are not available or they are quiet when you are brushing your teeth before falling Exhausted into bed, wondering how the hell you're going to do another day. Sisu is the decision to keep showing the fuck up. It comes from a finished word that. Means guts like the inside, like something so deep. And that is what a post-divorce life to me is. It's a returning to yourself what you know deep down your raw, real gritty essence of the life that you are here to experience. I tried to do some research about where this word came from and It appeared in finished literature as early as the 15 hundreds, but where it gained real momentum was during the Winter War, which was 19 39, 19 40, when finished. Forces were incredibly vastly outnumbered by the Soviet Union, but they held their ground with sheer willpower and relentless. Endurance. And that war became the metaphor for sisu, not brute force, not, we're so much better prepared. So we can obviously do this, but just this fucking dogged refusal to give in. They refused to let the Soviet Union have their lives and have their land. And there's a finished proverb that roughly translated is something like this. Sisu begins where perseverance ends. These Finnish fighters, men and women, stood their ground in bitter cold and they had skis, Molotov cocktails, and a whole bunch of sisu, and they did not win by force. They endured from their souls. And this is the message I wanna bring to you in this moment of your life. This doesn't mean you have to push harder and do more, but this is a season of remembering why you are doing what you are doing, why you're choosing to live this life. And sisu doesn't mean you never rest. It means after you rest, you get the fuck up, you rise again and again and again, and each time you rise, you're rising a little bit differently, maybe softer, maybe wiser, maybe less apologetic, maybe more alive, maybe with more determination to claim the life that is yours. But sisu is not about pushing through at the expense of your soul. It's not pushing for the sake of pushing. It's about showing up fully, even when life is messy, even when you're scared and you still say yes to your future. It's not the brittle strength that breaks under a glance from someone who disapproves. It's that rooted strength that can bend and not break. It's Maya Angelou's, and again, I rise. You can rest and still have sisu as you remember who you are. And if you're feeling tired of being strong and being brave, it doesn't mean that you're doing this wrong. It means you're on the threshold of this deeper kind of strength, the kind that no one can give you, and no one can take it away. So let's dig in specifically what it means to live from sisu. Not just survive, but to choose your joy. Again, choose trusting life again, choosing to wake up and do another day again. The first thing I recommend that you do is to give your life meaning what makes something have meaning? There's a quote and I'm not sure who said it might have been Viktor Frankl. I think I've heard it attributed to Nietzsche as well, but those who have a big enough why can bear almost any how for many of us with children. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to live a certain kind of life because we want our children to have a better life, and that's great and you, you deserve. Life where your life independent of everyone else has meaning, and the quality of the meaning in our life is the quality of our presence, our ability to be right here. How do you have a meaningful conversation with someone? It has to do with the quality of your ability to be present for that conversation. How do you have a meaningful meal with your child? It's by having that sense of presence and we develop our presence by continually. Pulling ourselves back into this moment, this moment of listening to a podcast, feeling the pressure of your child's hand in yours, feeling what it's like to lay down in bed. All of these moments that bring us back to the present can give our lives meaning. Whatever you've been through, whatever you went through in your marriage, in your divorce, what you're going through now, you can choose your story and give it meaning. Give it purpose. Not to justify what happened or to excuse anyone, but to transform your experience of it. Ask yourself. What did I learn by going through this? What if I get nothing else out of life? What can I harvest from this moment and the experiences that I have had? What strength has been forged in me that I may not have found any other way? You're not just going through this life, you're growing through this life is my hope, and that meaning making, that is fuel for sisu. That's what gets you up. That's what keeps you going, is when you give it meaning. I'm finding this with my schooling so much as I am frustrated with statistics, problems or microbiology tests or labs. I have to remember why I am doing this or when I'm creating something for a client, believing in her future more than she believes in it herself, seeing what is available if I can connect her to this sisu at the end of her perseverance. Number two, I wanna suggest that you turn to your own ancestry. Your life is a result of millions, maybe billions of choices that other people made that got you here right now. Your ancestors made it through war and famine and betrayal. They laughed. They loved, they had their lives and whether you know their names or not, they are in your bones for good or for ill. A lot of times we hear about generational trauma and how if great grandma didn't take care of her trauma, it passed down through the genes to grandma and to mom, and now to you. But guess what? There is also such a thing as generational strength and the strength that allowed them to survive and them to thrive and to live, laugh and love that is in you too. When you feel like you can't go on, remember that you are carrying the torch that they passed to you. Even if you have a situation of no contact with your family or you were adopted and you don't know your lineage, choose one. Choose the best fucking lineage that you can read. Stories of women who stood back up. It doesn't even have to be biographical. If you're into fiction, you get to create the stories that give your life meaning I. If you've never read the book, women Who Run With the Wolves, that's a fantastic compilation of stories of women that have been passed down through generation after generation to give women strength to let us know where we came from and who we can become. So in that same vein, the third thing I would recommend is that you become the main character in your story. And in this way it, it kind of contradicts the becoming present because I'm asking you to take one step back to become the observer of your life and to see all of the ways that. This is an adventure that you're not someone else's sidekick. You are the protagonist, you are the heroine in your story. My coach at one time had asked me what would move the plot forward, and it's, it's written on my mirror. So when I get up in the morning, I asked myself that question, what would move the plot forward? Should I reach out? To this new friend, should I plan on this new experience? What would move the plot forward in my relationships, in my adventures, in my career, in my schooling? Start moving your life forward in interesting ways. I remember when I was in my twenties, I went on a camping trip with my sister who had just canceled her wedding a week before the marriage, and I was so proud of her and one day we decided to drive down to Arches National Park We drove up to the campgrounds and there was a sign saying that there were no empty spots. And I turned to my sister because I had just been to a Tony Robbins, weekend, and I said, I think that's a message for people without personal power. And we drove in and we found an empty campsite. So we set up our tent. It wasn't until hours later. That a German couple drove up in their RV and let us know we were in their campsite. They welcomed us. We exchanged information. We stayed up late into the night. I think I still have their address in one of my journals. It was so much fun, but I mean, I could have turned around and even if they had told us, no, we, we want you to pack up and get out of here, it makes such a great story. Right. What makes a better story? Sitting on your couch doing the Netflix and Chill bit, or going to a local pickup volleyball game, or going and getting a drink with your girl a or listening to some live music Become that main character in your story. You get to be the author. You don't get to control all of the plot twists, but be curious, even playful, maybe what you think is the end of the road is just a turning point. And you get to say, OMG, I never saw that coming. Look what's happening, but main character energy is not about being perfect, but it is about showing up, showing up messy and real, and knowing that you are worthy of love and worthy of this life, And this brings me to my fourth suggestion of tapping into the wellspring of your body. Sisu lives in your body. It's not in your brain. You cannot think your way into sisu. It's in your chest, it's in your belly, it's in your guts, it's in your thighs. Just try this. Try this with me. Just sit down, or if you're exercising or whatever you're doing, just bring your presence right here. And if you can, put your hand on your heart. Put a hand on your belly and ask yourself, where does my sisu live today? You might feel a flicker, maybe a hum, maybe a pulse, maybe a throbbing. That's your sisu, and let it rise. It might just be a little spark, just a tiny hum. But just sit with it, cultivate it. Let that spark light the tinder in your life, and let it remind you that you have survived 100%. Of your hardest days so far, your body has so much intelligence. Just a week ago I was coaching one of my clients who had received two different competitive offers for. Her next job. I could tell as she described these two opportunities that she really wanted one of them, but in her mind, the other job was safer. And so in some ways. Better. I asked her to check in, not just with her brain, but with her body because we wanted her to walk into this new opportunity. Fully congruent. Now, when you can get your body and your mind on the same page, it's like magic. That's how I've been able to go to school full time. This year, not because I thought it was a good idea, but that I have this full bodied, yes, I could make sense of it in my brain, but I knew that unless I got my body on board with this deep sense of meaning, and we are not going to quit. No matter what, no matter what. I am going to keep going. Until I could get there, school was just not gonna happen. It would be so incongruent that I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my balance. And so as I asked this client to check in with her body, it became so clear. So clear, immediately clear. My head wants this other job, but my head and my body, brain, and body are aligned in this other opportunity that felt so good to her. The people, the opportunity, the moving the plot forward. All of those things aligned, and when you find that congruence, the sisu becomes so much more attainable. my final suggestion is to play with the idea that Rest is not weakness. Rest is remembering that you are worthy of care. You don't have to earn your rest. You have done enough. Honestly, if you're not congruent and you don't have meaning in your life, there's not enough rest. But when you have tapped in to sisu, when you have meaning, when you. Are the main character. When you're tapping into your ancestral wealth of your story and where you came from, rest can be such a strengthening component. I don't want you to just go as hard as you can and tell you're exhausted. I want you to. Every day, take some steps forward and then rest and recover, rejuvenate, and then take more steps and then rest, recover, rejuvenate. And a lot of women don't know how to do that. We do things where we're immobilized, as in we'll sit and watch TV or something that we're spending time not working per se, but we're not fully resting because we don't know what actually rejuvenates us. So pay attention to those things in your life, the people, the places, the activities that really fill you up that are going to be. More kindling on that fire of sisu within you. And with that shout out to rest and rejuvenation. I also wanna remind you it's okay to say no. It's okay to have boundaries and those get to protect your peace. I. With many of my clients, I find that they need to create a grounding practice, and a lot of people don't know what that is, and so it's just a matter of welcoming you back to your body and finding that place of presence in the now. So I wanna just take these last couple of minutes and walk you through just a short practice. So if you're able to just find a comfortable seat, you can lay down, you can sit up whatever you want, and let your hands rest on your body wherever you need reassurance. You can stretch, you can hold yourself, you can hold your own hand, you can put your hands on your face. Whatever feels good to you. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Notice the temperature of the air as it goes in versus when it comes out. And ask yourself, where does my sisu live today? And you don't have to force an answer, just notice. See if you can feel your heartbeat again. Notice the warmth of your breath. Notice that quiet insistence of life moving through you, you are still here. You are not done. And let that be enough for today, and you get to come back to this place, just a momentary stillness, a breathing, a being with yourself. You get to come back to this place of knowing as often as you need it because sisu is not somewhere out there. It's in you and baby. It's fierce. Oh my God. I love you guys so much. I am cheering for us. Those of us who are on the other side of these marriages that were not for us building a life in a whole new way. Ugh. I am here for it, and I am here for you. I'll talk to you next week.