Strong like Water: Finding the Freedom, Safety, and Compassion to Move through Hard Things—and Experience True Flourishing

by Aundi Kolber

So now when your heart is tender, you shame yourself or find a way to suck it up again; you’ve decided that vulnerability just isn’t worth

Sometimes it might seem like being unemotive—pretending and suppressing what you truly feel or need—is the only way you’ll actually be loved at all.

What doesn’t kill us can actually make us isolated, traumatized, and deeply harmed if we don’t receive the support we need as we go through it.

Now I know what it’s like to feel safe in my body. Now I know in the deepest parts of myself that I’m beloved by the God of the universe.

Now I can honor the generational stories that helped shape my family. Now I know it’s okay—beautiful, really—to feel my emotions. Now I know how to move through pain, rather than suppress or be toppled by it. Now I know what it’s like to feel a solid sense of myself rather than constantly react to fear or trauma.

have two needs: attachment and authenticity. When authenticity threatens attachment, attachment trumps authenticity.”[2] God designed us to instinctively know in

way they demanded. Tiffany was great at appearing okay, even when she wasn’t; she had to trade her authenticity for belonging.[6]