A strength I didn’t question
I used to be proud of how adaptable I am.
It felt like something that carried me through life in a quiet but reliable way. When I had to stop doing sports because of my hip, I adjusted without much resistance and shifted my focus into other areas where I could still grow and succeed. When I moved to Italy, I learned the language quickly, built a new life, and integrated into a completely different culture faster than I expected from myself. When situations changed or plans didn’t unfold the way I thought they would, I tended to find another direction without staying too long in what was not working.
It often felt like a strength I could trust. Something that allowed me to move through change without being held back by it.
And in many ways, it was exactly that. It helped me navigate uncertainty, it helped me rebuild in new environments, and it gave me a sense that I could find stability even when things around me were not stable.
Learning to adapt early
Looking back, I can see how early this started.
As a child, I went through multiple surgeries because of hip issues, like 10. That was simply my reality. I did not question it. I adjusted to it.
There were things I couldn’t do physically, especially sports I wanted to try, and later I reached a point where I couldn’t do sports at all. Instead of staying with what I couldn’t have, I naturally shifted into what was still possible. I focused on what I could do well and invested myself fully into that space.
It was never a dramatic decision. It was more like a quiet internal movement. This is how it is, so I will do this instead.
Without knowing it, I was learning to move around limitations instead of sitting with them.
When adaptation became identity
Over time, adaptation became something I didn’t just do — it became something I was. A way of moving through life that felt efficient, stable, reliable. If something changed, I adjusted. If something broke, I rebuilt. If something didn’t work, I moved on.
It gave me a sense of control in uncertainty. But I didn’t yet see what it was also doing underneath.
The moment everything changed
Then my father passed away. This is still not an easy part to write about, even now.
At that time, there was a strong expectation around me to be strong, especially for my mother. To hold things together, to stay steady, to not fall apart. So I did what I had always done in difficult situations. I adapted.
At the funeral, I cried, but even that felt contained. I remember it as something I allowed myself in a controlled way, as if there was a limit to how much grief could be expressed before I needed to return to a composed version of myself. After that, I shifted back into functioning. I spoke to people, I stayed present, I focused on what needed to be done.
In the days and weeks that followed, I returned quite quickly to daily life. I stayed close to my mom, I showed up where I was needed, I kept moving. From the outside, it probably looked like I was coping well.
And in a way, I believed that myself.
When strength became survival
But what I didn’t realise at the time was that I wasn’t really staying with the loss. I was moving around it.I had placed it somewhere inside me where I could continue to function without fully entering it. It was not absence of grief, but distance from it.
The song I didn’t plan to write
The song came many years later.
Almost fourteen years after my father’s death, in a very ordinary moment that didn’t look significant at all. My daughter was two years old at the time, and she had just fallen asleep again in the middle of the night after waking up. The house was finally quiet again, the kind of quiet that only comes after interruption and exhaustion.
I was sitting there in that stillness when something in me started to rise that I hadn’t been consciously holding.
It didn’t feel like I decided to write. It felt like something needed to come out.
“I left sadness at home so it wouldn’t catch me while I laugh and live.
I left it because I don’t want it, because I decided to move forward and not look back.
I left it and stepped into the rhythm of everyday life that slowly covers everything, until it feels almost forgotten.
But it finds me anyway.
In the night, when everything becomes louder inside than outside.
In silence. In crowds. In solitude.
It finds me without warning and does not leave.
It overwhelms me and stays with me.
I can no longer avoid it, so I let it be there, in the quiet of the night.
I let it make up for what was missed.
And it finds me everywhere.
It is my shadow that sleeps,
and wakes up again.
When I gather the courage.
And then it stays.
And grows stronger.
As if it will never leave.
I no longer run from it.
I let it be.
To be with me and to settle in my body.
Its new home.”
Recently, I spoke to a friend about this. I told her that I still struggle to share my emotions openly without feeling overwhelmed, and that I’m not even sure if I will ever be able to do it fully. When our conversation ended, I was still carrying my sorrow. But a day later, something in me felt lighter. I had named what I was feeling, and somehow it became less heavy to hold. And now I am letting it out.
What I understand now
And I’ve learned this:
What we don’t feel fully, we don’t leave behind. We carry it differently.
The other side of adaptation
Adaptation helped me survive, it helped me function, it helped me rebuild. But it also taught me how easily I can move away from myself while doing all of that.
Especially after my father’s death, I can see it clearly now. How quickly I moved into strength. How quickly I returned to functioning. How long it took for grief to come back and ask to be felt, not managed.
And still, this is something I continue to understand, not something I have finished with.