The Weight Of Softness

I think avoiding first person actually makes the description feel more universal and inviting. Here's a version that keeps the same themes but speaks to the listener instead of summarizing the episode from your perspective.

What does it mean to stay soft in a world that keeps asking us to harden?

This week's episode of Even If You're Scared explores the quiet strength found in vulnerability, the courage it takes to receive love, and the difference between surviving life and truly living it.

Through conversations about grief, relationships, masculinity, identity, plants, and the people who teach us it's safe to be seen, this episode asks whether softness is really something to outgrow—or something worth protecting.

Because maybe resilience isn't about becoming unbreakable.

Maybe it's about remaining open, even after everything.

If you've ever mistaken independence for healing, struggled to let people love you, or wondered how to stay tender without losing your strength, this conversation is for you.

If this episode felt familiar in any way—like your mind, your room, your routines, or your quiet—you’re not alone in it.

You can reach out anytime at 7amkingsil@gmail.com or on Instagram @abstract_catalyst. Messages don’t need to be perfect. They don’t need to be important. They just need to be yours.

Everything sent gets read. Even if it takes time to sit with it.

And wherever you are right now—whether you’re moving fast, standing still, or somewhere in between—you don’t have to force clarity out of it today.

Just keep going gently.

Even if it’s messy.

Even if it’s uncertain.

Even if you’re scared.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

You know, I've been doing a lot of thinking. That's what I do a lot. A lot of thinking. And I've been thinking about myself a lot lately. Uh and honestly, I've been noticing things. Just things about who I am. The way I move through the world, the way I experience things, the way that I love. And I've been thinking about how soft I actually am. And I don't mean soft like fragile. I don't mean soft like I can't handle anything. I don't mean soft like I don't know how to stand up for myself. Because you know, I I have survived some things. The ancestors even know that I've survived some things. I've had to rebuild myself. I've had to learn myself. I've had to fight for myself and become someone who knows how to walk into a room and hold my own. I'm black, I'm queer, I'm trans, I'm mask. I'm from Philly. And have lived enough life to know that the world does not always make space for the people like me. I've had to learn how to protect myself, how to read people, and how to survive. See. I told you I was rambling. Hi. Hi, and welcome back to Even If You're Scared, the podcast where we talk about life, love, identity, community, and all the weird, beautiful, complicated things that make us who we are. I'm Syl. Thank you for coming back. If this is your first time here, welcome. I'm really glad you found your way here. Go ahead and get comfortable because this this is one of those episodes where I don't entirely know where we're going. I just know where we started. So trust me when I say we've come a long way. I feel like a lot of these episodes I start by sharing something I've noticed about myself recently or I realized maybe that's the same thing. Anyway, I'm soft. Not soft like fragile or soft like a pushover, not soft because I don't know how to survive. Yo. I've survived some shit. I've started over more times I can count. I've had to reinvent myself, fight for myself, learn myself, lose myself, find myself again. So when I say I'm soft, that's not in spite of any of that. It's because of it. Somewhere along the way I realized that every painful thing I've lived through gave me another opportunity to stop feeling, to become cynical, to stop trusting, to stop loving, to stop believing people could be good. And every single time I've made the conscious decision not to. Not because it was easy, but because it wasn't. Not because I haven't wanted to shut the whole world out sometimes, but because if I let the world take my softness, then it gets to take one more thing from me. And I just don't have that many pieces of myself left that I'm willing to give away. So I've decided that's what this episode is really about. Not softness, protection. What parts of ourselves are worth protecting even when the world keeps asking us to harden. But what I've been realizing lately is survival and softness are not opposites. And I think that's what I've been sitting with. Because I think a lot of these episodes I start by sharing something I've noticed about myself recently, and this is one of those things. I am soft. I don't think that's something I want to change anymore. But here's the thing. For real, I wore that shit like a badge of honor. I don't need anybody. I got it, I'm good, I'll figure it out, I'll carry it, I'll be okay. And I believed it. I really did. I convinced myself that if I just kept pouring into everyone else's cup, mine would somehow fill itself. Wild, right? Because when I say it out loud, like now, I'm like, still, what what were you doing? Like what the fuck? Like everyone needs something. But yo, I really believe that. I thought strength meant not needing anything. It meant always having it together. Or it meant if everyone else was falling apart, I was the one who stayed standing. And I'm proud of that person. I am. Because that person got me here, that person protected me, and I survived things. I never thought I would have to survive. But survival can't be the only version of myself that I know because there's a difference between being able to carry yourself and believing you have to carry everything alone. I became really good at being needed, and I don't think that's uncommon, especially for the people who had to grow up quickly, people who had to be responsible and become the strong one, become the person everybody calls, or who remembers everything, who shows up, who says, I got it, and maybe I did have it, but I also deserve to have somebody else say, I got you. And I think the realization has changed the way I experience love. Not just romantic love, love for my family, love for my friends, love from the people who have chosen me. Because I've spent so much time proving I could give love and never stop to ask myself if I knew how to receive it. Looking back, I don't even know where I learned that. Maybe being one of the oldest, maybe survival, grief, maybe all of it. I don't know, but somewhere I got it in my head that needing people was the same thing as burdening them. So I became really, really good at being needed. Now don't get me wrong, I still love showing up for people. I think that's one of the best parts of who I am. I love feeding people, I love making people laugh, I love making somebody a drink that completely changes their day. I love checking in, I love remembering little things about people. I love loving people. I love saving them, and I don't ever want to lose that. But I forgot that people who love me actually want the opportunity to love me back. That's the part I missed. I thought love was something I gave. I never really considered that maybe love was also something I was supposed to receive. Receiving love is completely different than giving it. And nobody tells you that. Nobody teaches you how to sit still while somebody else pours into you, how to accept a compliment without immediately deflecting it, how to let somebody do something nice for you without trying to pay them back, how to let somebody worry about you, take care of you, hold you. That has probably been harder for me than loving other people ever was, because loving people fuck, I could do that in my sleep. I love loudly. I love intentionally, I remember your favorite snack, your favorite book, I remember your favorite song. I'll send you a song that made me think of you. I'll make sure you get home safely, I'll check in, I'll celebrate your wins like they're my own. That shit is easy. The hard part has always been believing that I deserve the same kind of love in return. Not because anybody made me feel unworthy. I just somewhere along the line, I just got used to being the one holding everybody else. And then life has a funny way of putting people in front of you who don't let you get away with that anymore. People who look at you and say, No, come here, let me carry some of this. My baby is one of those people. And I don't think she'd ever describe it in that way. She'd probably laugh if she heard me saying all this, but she has this way of loving me that never asked me to be less of myself. She doesn't make me feel small because I'm emotional. She doesn't make me feel like my tenderness is something to apologize for. She doesn't treat my vulnerability like it's something she has to fix. She just holds it like it's safe, like it's welcome. And I don't know if I've ever really experienced that before. Not like this. There's something incredibly healing about being looked at by someone with all of your rough edges, all of your scars, all of your grief and your softness and still feeling like they see a king. Not because you're pretending to be unbreakable, but because you had the courage to show up exactly as you are. That kind of love doesn't make me feel weaker. It makes me feel more myself. And I wouldn't trade that for anything. Softness isn't just about romantic love. It's not just about having somebody who sees you and holds you. It's everywhere. It's in the way I love my family, and the way I think about my mom, and the way I take care of my plants, the way I create, the way I notice things. I think I've always been somebody who looks for connection, even before I had the language for it. I don't just see things for what they are. I think about what they represent, what they carry, what they mean. That's why grief changed me so much, because once you've loved somebody deeply, you start seeing the world differently. You notice things, you notice how temporary everything is, you notice the little moments and how much people need each other. Maybe that's why my plants became such a huge part of my life. And I know I talk about my plants a lot. I do. People are like, okay, so we get it, you have plants. I understand. Honestly, I I do. I don't think it's really about the plants though. Not completely. I think it's about what they represent. Because plants don't ask you to be perfect, they don't care what kind of day you've had or what mistakes you've made or what version of yourself sh you show up as. They just need care and attention, consistency, and they need you to notice them. That's a lot like us. My plants are around my altars, they're in the same space where I hold my memories, they're in a safe space where I talk to my mom, where I remember people I've lost, and life is still growing here. Something is still reaching toward the light. That's one of the whole things. Like maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe that's what I've been trying to say this entire episode. That softness isn't just feeling, it's action. It's choosing to nurture something, it's choosing to care, it's choosing to believe something can grow. Because I think about my plants and how something can be rooted and still grow, how something can be delicate and still survive, how something can need care and still be strong, and that's us too. Maybe we're not meant to be invincible. Maybe we're meant to be alive, to feel, love, grieve, laugh, change, become. Maybe that's also why the world feels so loud sometimes, because I pay attention, I notice things, I think about things, I sit with things, and sometimes I wish I didn't, not because I don't want to care. I think that's actually the problem. I care a lot. I look around and I wonder, are we okay? Because there's so much happening, so much anger, so much division, so much fear. And sometimes I feel like we're living in a world that is constantly trying to convince us to stop caring, to stop feeling, to stop paying attention, to become these robots and just to follow a very specific order. Because if you care too much, you hurt. If you love too much, you risk losing. And I understand why people choose to close themselves off. Because sometimes it feels easier, it feels safer, it feels like maybe if nothing gets in, nothing can hurt you. But I don't think that's the life I want because the same thing that makes me hurt is the same thing that makes me love, makes me angry, makes me care, makes me affected by the world. The same thing that makes me affected by the world is the same thing that makes me want to leave it better than I found it. That's something I've had to learn. Softness does not mean you are unaware, it doesn't mean you're passive, it does not mean you let people walk all over you. Softness can have boundaries and it can have a backbone. Softness can say no. Softness can say that hurt me, that wasn't okay, I deserved better. And some people confuse being hardened with being strong, and I understand why. Because being hardened can look like protection, it can look like confidence, it can look like independence, but there is a difference between being protected and being closed. And I don't want to be closed. I want to keep learning, keep loving, keep being surprised by people, keep finding beauty in things. Even though I lost people and been hurt and have experienced things that could have made me bitter, I still want to believe in connection. That's the part people don't always understand. Softness does not mean I'm not resilient. Actually, I think my softness is proof of my resilience because after everything I'm still here. After grief, loss, heartbreak, disappointment moments where I've questioned everything. I'm still someone who loves deeply, who gets excited, who creates, who looks for magic in ordinary things. And that is not weakness. That is evidence. Evidence that life did not take everything from me. Resilience isn't becoming unbreakable. Resilience is knowing exactly what could break you and still choosing to stay open. Strength isn't never needing anyone. Maybe strength is knowing you need people and still trusting them enough to let them in. Maybe strength is saying I've survived, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life only surviving because I don't just want to be somebody who made it through. I want to be somebody who lived. And I think that's where I am right now. The ancestors know I'm still learning, but I think I'm proud of myself because there was a time where I thought the only way to protect myself was to stop needing anything, stop asking, stop feeling, stop letting people get close enough to hurt me. And now I actually think the opposite. I think the parts of me that feel deeply, those aren't the things I need to get rid of. Those are the things I need to protect because those things are the things that make me me. And maybe that's what growing is. Not becoming someone completely different. Maybe it's learning how to take care of the person you always been. The person who survived, who loves, who gets angry because they care, who cries, who laughs too loud, who feels everything. That person is worth protecting. So thank you. Really, thank you for sitting with me today. Thank you for listening to me ramble. Thank you for giving me the space to think out loud. I don't always know exactly where these conversations are going when I hit record. Sometimes I have an outline, I have some pages of notes, and sometimes I just have a feeling that's been following me around for a few days. This one was that feeling. And some pages and it's a rambling mess. Maybe softness isn't something we grow out of. Maybe it's something we spend our lives trying to find our way back to. And if that's true, I hope I never lose it. I hope I never lose my curiosity. I never lose my ability to be moved by people, never lose my empathy. I hope I never lose my wonder because the world will give us enough reasons to become cynical, enough reasons to stop trusting and stop believing in people. I don't want to help build that world. I want to help build one where people feel safe enough to be fully themselves, where kindness isn't seen as weakness, where tenderness isn't something we have to apologize for. And maybe that's a little idealistic, but I I don't know. I think I'd rather be accused of believing in people too much than not believing in them at all. If today's conversation meant something to you, I'd love to hear from you. You can always email me at the number 7am KingSill or find me on Instagram at abstract underscore catalyst. Tell me what you think, tell me what made you laugh, what made you uncomfortable, tell me what in this world keeps you soft. I really do read your messages, and I really do appreciate every single one of them. If you've enjoyed this episode, share it with someone you love, leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. It helps this little podcast find people it's meant to find. This is even if you're scared, I'm Syl, and I'm really glad you're here. Take care of yourself, take care of the people you love, and whatever you do, protect your softness. Because those parts might just be the most beautiful thing about you. I'll see you next week.