By: Dr. Phyllis Bivins-Hudson
There are things we live through long before we understand them. At the time, we call it survival, duty, love, or responsibility. 
Only later do we realize we were becoming someone—sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity. This is one of those reflections.
For a long time, I believed strength meant endurance. It meant staying, holding, absorbing, and figuring things out quietly.
It meant being capable, dependable, and emotionally available even when I was tired. Especially when I was tired.
I learned early how to read a room, anticipate needs, and adjust myself accordingly. These skills were praised. They opened doors. They helped me succeed. They kept me safe. But… They also shaped me.
The version of myself I became in order to survive was observant and resilient. I was perceptive, responsible, and deeply committed to doing what needed to be done.
I understood systems—familial, educational, relational—and learned how to move within them without causing disruption. I carried myself with a quiet dignity, even when circumstances offered very little of it in return.
That version of me deserves acknowledgment. I was necessary. I protected me. I made a life possible because I had others depending on me to show up so that they, too, could be the healthiest version of themselves.
But survival, I’ve since learned, is not the same as living.
Over time, I began to notice the cost of always being the steady one. The one who could handle it. The one others leaned on. The one who didn’t require too much care.
I noticed how easily competence can be mistaken for capacity, and how often strength becomes an expectation rather than a choice.
Those truths did not change until I made myself the choice.
I began to ask quieter, more uncomfortable questions. Who am I when I am not needed? Who am I when I stop proving? Who am I when I allow myself to rest—not as a reward, but as a right?
Now, becoming looks different.
It looks like choosing discernment over endurance. It looks like honoring my energy instead of overriding it. It looks like letting go of roles I mastered but no longer wish to perform.
It looks like understanding that my worth has never been tied to how much I can carry for others.
It looks like I can now say loudly and boldly that for once in my life, I love me and I will unapologetically let the world know how I feel about who I am becoming.
This version of me is still strong—but my strength is no longer performative. It is intentional. It is rooted. It is self-respecting. It is me!
I understand that survival shaped me, but it does not get to define me forever. Defining me is my choice.
Each month through December, I intend to sit with one truth I’ve lived long enough to understand. Not to instruct, persuade, advise, or resolve—but to name what has been quietly forming beneath the surface.
If any of this resonates, I hope it offers you a mirror rather than a mandate.
We are all, in our own ways, becoming.
And our becoming deserves our attention. This is also how I found myself—how I recognized and accepted the real me when I set out, Finding December—my memoir, a follow-up to Flying on Broken Wings, coming this spring. So stay tuned.