By Kim Brassor

One Voice Evolving

We’ve all been told that resilience is the prize.

That if we just keep standing after everything life throws at us, we’re strong. Admirable. Worthy of respect.

Especially for women over 40, resilience has become our calling card. We endured heartbreak. We carried loss. We bent under racism, sexism, family silence, and betrayal — and still we got up the next morning. We kept moving.

But here’s the truth: resilience alone won’t save us.

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 When Resilience Becomes a Cage

The world praises us for surviving. But what it really means is: thank you for keeping it together so we don’t have to change anything.

 And we know this truth in our bones:

• For women of the global majority, resilience is expected — demanded, even. Your survival is celebrated, but your exhaustion is ignored.

• For white women, resilience has too often meant surviving patriarchy by enduring in silence — a silence that kept us complicit with systems harming others.

Resilience kept us alive. But it also kept us alone.

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The Story We Carry in Our Bones

Reading Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know reminded me that this isn’t just my story — it’s ours. Foo’s body carried what silence tried to erase. And I realized how often we, too, have been told to keep our wounds invisible. To treat trauma as weakness. To endure without complaint.

But our bones remember. And so do we.

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Beyond Survival: What Healing Demands 

Survival is not the same as freedom. Healing asks something more of us: to tell the truth, to rest, to weep, to hold each other’s stories out loud instead of in isolation. 

Healing asks us to stop carrying the unbearable weight alone.

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Reclaiming Resilience Together

Resilience isn’t the enemy — it got us here. But it cannot be the end of the story. When we reclaim resilience as a tool of healing rather than a badge of endurance, something shifts.

The question is not how much more can we bear?

The question is how deeply can we heal together?

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One Voice Evolving

This is why One Voice Evolving exists. Because resilience alone won’t save us. But when we share our stories, when we stop hiding our pain, when we remember together — that’s when resilience becomes something else. 

That’s when it becomes freedom.

 👉🏽 Join us as a paid subscriber on Substack HERE. Share your story. Share your scars. Share your healing.

And if you're so inclined, subscribe to our podcast "One Voice Evolving: Resilience Reimagined" on YouTube HERE. New episodes drop at 3:00 P.M. on Fridays. This Friday's episode is with Lady Borton as she tackles the subjects of resilience, resistance and reflection.

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Reflective Questions

1. Boundaries vs. Control

• When I set boundaries, am I doing so to protect my well-being, or to control another person’s freedom?

2. Accountability vs. Deflection

• When I hurt someone, do I listen and reflect? Or do I immediately deflect, blame, or silence them?

3. Survival vs. Domination

• Are the behaviors others call “selfish” actually survival strategies I developed under patriarchy, capitalism, or trauma? Or am I using power to dominate, diminish, or extract from others?

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✍🏽 Author’s Note

Deconstructing my whiteness is ongoing work that requires truth, discomfort, and community. One Voice Evolving is where I practice that accountability out loud, and I invite you to step into it with me by becoming a paid subscriber HERE.