How I knew I got stronger

This past week tested something in me I didn’t even realize had changed.

Two friends, both good people, lost someone they loved. Different situations, same weight. The kind of weight that usually pulls you in, whether you’re ready for it or not. And if you’re an empath like me, you know exactly what I mean. Some of us don’t just feel what others feel… we absorb it.

We carry it home.

We think about it at night.

We replay their pain like it belongs to us.

For most of my life, that was me. Loss, grief, sadness, if it hit someone I cared about, it hit me, too. Hard.But something different happened this week.

I was able to be present.

I was able to stand for them.

I listened., I showed up, I held space when they needed it. And I didn’t collapse under the weight the way I used to.

Not because I’m cold.

Not because I’m numb.

Not because I’m “detached.”

But because somewhere along the way… I forged stronger walls inside myself. Not the kind that shut people out, the kind that keeps me standing when life tries to knock me over. Strength, I’m realizing, isn’t about not feeling.

It’s about not drowning. It’s about knowing where your emotions end and someone else’s begin. It’s about being steady enough to lean on without losing your own footing. It’s about compassion that doesn’t cost you your center. And that’s new for me. It’s a different kind of strength.

A quieter one.

A forged one.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t take their grief and turn it inward. I didn’t let it spiral into sadness or heaviness I couldn’t shake. I didn’t absorb it and confuse it for my own. I felt with them, but I stayed rooted in myself. And that’s how I knew I’ve gotten stronger.

Not louder.

Not tougher.

Not “more hardened.”

Just grounded.

And maybe that’s the real point of all the work we’ve been doing here at Forge & Freedom, the hikes, the cold mornings, the hard conversations, the movement, the discipline, the fire, the brotherhood. Strength isn’t built for the days you feel good. It’s built for weeks like this one. When the world hands you someone else’s pain, and you can hold it without losing yourself.

If you’re reading this and you’ve felt that same shift. that quiet internal sturdiness.

Know this, You didn’t get lucky. You got stronger. And if you haven’t felt it yet, keep forging. It comes.

From The Forge,

Zachary