My heart first belonged to the woods of the Pacific Northwest. I saw myself as nothing more than a vessel meant to plunge into the creek alongside newts and duckweed or climb into the high branches of trees. I spent much of my childhood documenting these adventures on a camcorder.

When I converted my childhood VHS tapes to digital format a few years ago, I hadn’t thought about the difficult parts of childhood in a long time. Everything changed when I turned ten—the year kids began making fun of my dirty tennis shoes, tangled hair, and sweatpants torn from getting snagged in blackberry bushes. I brought this new self-doubt home with me, frustrating my father when I hesitated over math flashcards, disappearing into daydreams. He called me lazy and ungrateful for his help. Eventually, he would be right. This isolating shame persisted throughout elementary school—there was no safe place, neither at school nor at home—so I became obsessed with winning over anyone who bullied me. I replayed every cruel interaction and devised a plan to reconstruct myself into someone they liked. But people aren’t as formulaic as my young mind desperately needed them to be.

After college, my first full-time job was working with toddlers at a child development center. It was only meant to be a summer job—we were there to eat, sleep, poop, and go home—which suited my sense of uselessness just fine. Let me tell you, it’s a joy and a privilege to be a novice without expectations. We gained security first, then trust. By the end of summer, a spark ignited and called me to study social-emotional curricula, creativity assessment, and out-of-the-box thinking. At the end of summer, I chose to stay.

Our center had a contract with the Department of Human Services that offered free childcare to parents in recovery. When a toddler named Jordan joined my classroom as a DHS kid, he sat by the window for eight hours every day, waiting for his dad to pick him up. He crossed his fingers like a nervous tic and stuck them in his mouth. He never stopped crying, never ate or slept, hated being messy, hated being touched, and hated having his clothes off. I decided to stop following the center’s rules and, instead, leave Jordan in his safe space. He clung to the window to watch the cars drive by, so I brought books and toys to him. If he wanted to eat by the window, I brought a small table and chair to him. If he wanted to sleep by the window, I set up pillows and blankets for him. Whatever made Jordan feel better, I allowed him to have it. I stayed with him, rather than force him into a different space.

This two-year-old slowly opened up. After four weeks, he left the window and sat at the table with his classmates to eat lunch. He went from falling asleep from crying from exhaustion to peacefully falling asleep on a cot. He let us take off his shoes and jacket and put them in his cubby. After two months, Jordan became so happy and comfortable that, on a bright, sunny afternoon, he took off all his clothes, ran around the classroom in only a diaper, laughing, tumbling, and doing headstands. Later, while on a walk through the halls, his classmates ran ahead. Jordan heard me say, “Please come back, buddies.” He ran ahead, stretched out his arms, and said, “Stop, buddies!” He became their friend and protector.

When our contract with DHS was placed on hold, all DHS-contracted kids were withdrawn from our center. I held Jordan as often as he would let me on our last day together. I told him that I loved him and said goodbye. Later, I met my supervisor from when I worked at a college-level writing center. Victoria had directed an arts program for terminally ill children and knew what it felt like to lose a child. She told me to let Jordan go, but I couldn’t do that. She said, “Jennifer, that little boy may not remember what he achieved in your care, and he may still face serious issues, but he witnessed his feelings being validated.” She added, “Trust him.”

At twenty-five years old, I was still driven by conformity and the fear of failure. I craved control over the unknown. Yet, I ultimately allowed Jordan to own his successes without me as a witness. I also realized that when Victoria asked me to trust Jordan, she was asking me to trust what I had learned too. I couldn’t manipulate these children into liking me; they would never thank me because they wouldn’t remember me. As a result, I never took this little boy’s behavior personally—I wasn’t a good or bad teacher based on my ability to convince Jordan to obey me. Instead, I truly wanted to help him because he was upset. His growing self-confidence felt like an unearned gift to me. “Trust that,” I felt Victoria say.

After Jordan left and I watched my childhood videos, I finally understood why I struggle with being strong. I had invested so much energy into measuring strength by ticks and checks, with each tick or check moving me closer to—or further from—someone else’s acceptance—and by extension, my own. We often admire someone’s armor without understanding the welds that hold it together. Strength is a shiny spearhead, and while it’s admirable, being complimented solely on the summit of a larger journey feels dismissive of the hardship most of us would rather avoid. Jordan didn’t become strong from a higher power forcing his conformity. My childhood self didn’t become strong from sharp sneers that convinced her to dissect people like equations—only to fail over and over.

I think about being a strong woman or a weak woman, and I don’t care anymore which one I am—or if I’m both, or neither. She was a child who wasn’t taught how to love and defend herself. She was just like Jordan, shaking like a leaf on a branch high up in a tree where threats couldn’t find her. Baring witness to Jordan and my childhood self unlocked a level of compassion in me that I didn’t have before. Compassion for myself. A desire to fight for that little girl, for myself. A desire to teach her how to love and defend herself, myself.

In my work—whether it’s creative nonfiction, fiction, or digital stories—I’ve developed a deep appreciation for the tension between our self-protecting armor and our deeper, more vulnerable truths. This includes exploring brain chemistry, evidence-based therapy, and self-awareness, as these tools helped me stop trying to control other people’s minds and, instead, allowed me to genuinely explore my own. I want to bear witness to my work, let it go—saying, “Farewell, you no longer belong to me”—and allow it to stand on its own and without the need to hold on tightly anymore.