Strong women are proud, and resourceful, they’re independent and smart, and their emotions don’t falter their wit, they don’t falter their independence or pride, when emotion overcomes them it only makes them stronger. Because what makes a strong woman is not simply her ability to stand on her own, or speak up when others try to talk her down, it’s her ability to acknowledge her feelings, the ones full of happiness and love, the ones full of sadness and loss, the feelings that other people are too afraid to face, a strong woman faces them head-on. A strong woman’s pride doesn’t make her allergic to emotions. It makes her capable of feeling them.
She accepts them and she deals with it. She cries, she gets angry and frustrated, she throws her phone against the wall and buries her face inside her pillow to scream, she takes an 8 mile run to stomp on each problem with every stride, she retreats to be alone and disconnects for 48 hours, she does what she needs to do to stay herself.
Because through all of her hardships, what makes a strong woman strong isn’t simply that she overcomes the obstacle, it’s that she feels the pain, the frustration, and the exhaustion that comes with every little shitty thing that happens to her, and she not once ignores it. She doesn’t pretend like it’s not there, she doesn’t pretend that her feelings are insignificant. Because a strong woman knows how important her feelings are.
A strong woman knows that her feelings are a large part of who she is, and she’ll stand by them, she’ll protect them, and when she acts on them she doesn’t see it as weakness. She doesn’t act on them for others, she does it for herself. Her emotions are not a cry for help or an attempt to be the center of attention, they’re her grip on reality. They’re her reminder that life is messy, that there’s no such thing as ‘normal,’ and that even if there was, it would be terrifyingly boring. Because if normality meant pretending that her feelings don’t exist, if normality meant burying her emotions within herself rather than releasing them through tears or screams in pillows or thrown phones against the wall, she wouldn’t care. A Strong woman doesn’t care about ‘normal.’
She doesn’t care what you think. Go ahead and tell her that her emotions are dramatic and irrational, tell her that her feelings are exaggerated, that they’re too much. She won’t mind. Because whatever criticism you have of a strong woman’s emotions, she knows they’re hers to feel, not yours.
She won’t try to convince you that her emotions are legitimate or that she deserves to feel them. She just does. She feels without approval, without validity, or permission from others. She doesn’t need them. She has all of those things within herself. She knows her feelings are valid, she knows she has the right to feel them. She does what’s right for her. She let’s life happen and she reacts to it with the bravery of acceptance, the bravery of acknowledgement. A strong woman doesn’t concede to her emotions, she allows them to guide her. 
