In the Shadow of Strength & Resilience

I’ve talked openly about some of my shadows, specifically my ADHD and dyslexia. I’ve written about it with humour, sometimes even pride.

All this self-acceptance aside, I’ve realised I’ve neatly drawn some lines for myself  deciding which parts of me are “broken but okay” and which need to stay in the box.

What I haven’t talked about is being chronically ill - about Ehlers-Danlos, Hashimoto’s, and the still-maybe POTS diagnosis I’ve been avoiding having confirmed. Because that version of me doesn’t fit the uber-energetic, positive, spicy-brained, get-stuff-done self I like to lean on. My ego doesn’t like the idea of me being chronically ill.

The reality is that most days I’m in pain, almost always walking around with at least one subluxed joint, riddled with arthritis and with skin flares from nothing. This is a part of myself I can’t fix or work with to harness strength, because the truth is, there isn’t a fix and sometimes I just need to ride it out. And I’m starting to realise that’s harder to make peace with.

For so long, my sense of worth has been tied to my capacity to push through to perform, deliver, and hold everything together no matter what. Chronic illness calls that identity into question. It asks: who am I if I can’t push? Who am I if my value isn’t measured by output, by strength, by resilience?

The Origins of My Resilience

If I’m honest, my relationship with illness has been complicated for as long as I can remember.

As a child, being unwell wasn’t really allowed. If I was too ill to go to school, I was too ill to watch TV or eat - as if to prove how serious I was. The message was clear: illness was weakness, a nuisance, something to overcome or hide.

I was bullied at school and sometimes pretended to be ill to avoid going and sitting in my room hungry and board still felt safer than being called names. So when I was actually ill, I was often doubted. That question, am I really ill or am I avoiding something? has followed me ever since.

Looking back, I can see how those early lessons bled into my working life, when someone called in sick, a part of me didn’t quite believe them. I can see now how that scepticism born from my own early shame must have landed with my teams. It can’t have felt safe.  When people around me took time off or set boundaries for their health, I didn’t respect it. I thought they were being weak, self-indulgent, not committed enough.

I’m so ashamed of how I was. I see now it was never about anyone else. I couldn’t look my own ill, exhausted body in the eye, so being around other people’s illness made me deeply uncomfortable.

At the same time, I grew up with a mother who had cancer. When that’s the backdrop, no one else is ever “ill enough.” Her suffering set the scale, and I internalised that without even realising. My own pain became something to minimise, dismiss, or ignore.

When I was a baby, I had pneumonia. Not believing I was really ill, my parents went out for dinner. My 19 year old nanny saved my life by calling an ambulance, I spent two weeks in hospital. A few years later, I had appendicitis, the same condition that had killed my mum’s brother. She couldn’t face it, and my dad wasn’t there, so I woke from my first anaesthetic alone. I learned, very early, that I had to be tough and look after myself.

I also fractured and dislocated both my kneecaps in primary school. It wasn’t until my teacher insisted I be taken to hospital, two days later, that the extent of the injury was discovered. Even as a child, I could mask pain.

Those beliefs and experiences forged my resilience and in a small way, I’m grateful for that. They made me successful, but they also slowly disconnected me from my body and affected my ability to build trusting relationships at work and at home.

Growing up, we didn’t really talk about issues unless it was to find a solution. My mum was a psychotherapist and she would often use analysis to name and diagnose emotions. Feelings were something to understand or fix. I think that’s where my habit of “sorting” and “managing” began.

That same impulse followed me into leadership and, later, would try and get in the way of coaching - a belief that care equals solving. In my family, resilience was currency. But now I see that what looked like strength was probably my biggest weakness.

When Does Resilience Become Cruelty?

If I’m honest, some of those patterns are still alive - they just are slightly updated. I no longer measure my worth in quarterly targets or 5 a.m. flights, but the urge to overdeliver, to not ask for help or support, still hums quietly in the background.

Lately I’ve been noticing my quiet harshness towards myself getting louder. It’s the same voice I’ve long labelled as resilience, but I’m starting to wonder: when does resilience become cruelty?

I have my stuff more in check now, but have I really learnt from my experiences? Am I still pushing through just at a different level? And what does that mean for me in this newer version of leadership?

If you let it, Pain humbles you. It strips away the illusion that effort alone can bend life into shape. When I’m really honest with myself, how can I preach kindness to others if I can’t extend it to the part of me that hurts?

Learning to Sit With What Can’t Be Fixed

I sometimes catch echoes of those early lessons: the belief that resting is indulgent, that slowing down means I’m avoiding something. Those old scripts don’t vanish; they just soften. Coaching has taught me to notice them without obeying them.

I know now that my old drive to fix things can get in the way. Clients bring me problems that can’t be solved, and sometimes the work is simply sitting with discomfort, knowing there’s nothing to be done. This too will pass.

It’s an odd paradox - the more we try to rescue people from discomfort, the more we risk denying them the growth that happens inside it. And perhaps the same goes for me.

I’ve spent years mastering the art of reframing, rebuild, and move forward. But chronic illness doesn’t always offer that kind of resolution. There’s no clever reframe that makes pain noble. It’s just there. Some days it whispers, some days it shouts. Either way, if I give space to the whisper, I might not have to face the roar.

That awareness is slowly changing how I coach. I’m more willing to stay in silence, to resist the urge to tidy things up too soon. When I notice a client’s frustration, I recognise my own — the part that still wants to do something. But I remind myself: the most powerful thing I can offer is presence.

Ego and the Art of Doing Less

Since my twenties, I’ve been into weightlifting. I used to be a competitive powerlifter and CrossFitter. I loved the competitiveness, the numbers, the feeling of being strong.

As my EDS progressed, I gradually had to give up the hobbies and competitive pursuits I once loved. More recently, after herniating my L4 and L5 for the third time, that meant stepping away from CrossFit.

Even though my coach was brilliant at adapting sessions to keep me safe, my ego wasn’t. It couldn’t stand being in the room and not being the fastest or strongest. For years, I saw scaling back as weak, pathetic, whingy.

But something’s shifted. My focus now - in my coach Krish’s words - is on “living to train another day.” That’s become my quiet mantra. Showing up with intention, not recklessness. Paying attention to the long game, not the leaderboard.

And that, I think, is growth. The ego still crops up, but these days I can mostly smile at it, thank it for its enthusiasm, and pick up a lighter barbell.

Depth, Not Perfection

I’m still unlearning those childhood lessons - that toughness equals worth, that illness equals failure. Every time I pause instead of push, I rewrite that story a little more.

Pain — physical or emotional — can shrink your world if you let it. But if you stay with it long enough, it deepens your field of vision. I spent years running from it, but if I want to live in my body, I have to stop running and notice more: subtler cues, quieter needs, smaller joys.

Chronic illness is hard, it’s lonely, it’s often invisible. But I am starting to accept it's a part of me and if I can meet it with kindness I might just heal something. It shows me the limits of my control, teaches patience, and - if I let it helps me be more empathic with those who are brave enough to show vulnerability. It reminds me that leadership isn’t about holding it all together; it’s about leading from the middle of the mess, with the cards you are delt.

The longer I coach, the more I’m convinced that growth isn’t about adding more. It’s about softening around what’s already there, while still developing what’s new. It’s about sitting with pain, ego, or limitation and learning to meet it with patience and maybe, just maybe, trying to see what it’s telling us.

That’s the work I’m still practising, and the work I hold space for in others: not to perfect, but to accept the imperfection.

Because in the end, wholeness doesn’t mean being fully functional. It means letting every part of you, even the aching, limping, exhausted one have a seat at the table.

And maybe that’s the most honest kind of leadership there is.

The more I coach, the more I see that resilience without compassion burns out the very people it’s meant to protect. Real strength is quieter it’s the moment you stop fixing and start listening.

How might you meet your own strength with a little more softness this week?