Strength is one of those things you're supposed to have. You

The words of Joan Didion echo like a quiet truth whispered across the ages: “Strength is one of those things you’re supposed to have. You don’t feel that you have it at the time you’re going through it.” In this saying lies a mystery, for it speaks not of the strength we see in triumph, but of the hidden strength that reveals itself only after the trial has passed. When the storm is raging, when the heart is breaking, when the soul feels stripped bare—then we think we have no strength at all. Yet it is precisely in enduring those moments that we discover we had strength all along, hidden beneath the weight of suffering.

This truth was born from Didion’s own life. Known for her sharp words and penetrating insights, she faced grief of unimaginable depth when her husband died suddenly and her daughter soon after. In the hollow silence of loss, she did not feel strong. She walked through sorrow, not with certainty, but with trembling steps. Yet by enduring, by recording her grief in The Year of Magical Thinking, she revealed a profound resilience—the very strength she thought she did not possess at the time. In this we see that strength is not always a roar; sometimes it is the faint whisper that says, “continue.”

The ancients spoke of this same paradox. Consider Job, whose body was broken, whose family was taken, whose life was brought low to dust. In his cries, he declared his weakness, yet in his refusal to curse God and abandon hope, a greater strength was revealed. He did not feel it in the moment—he felt only despair and anguish—but through endurance, that strength was made visible, both to him and to those who heard his tale.

Or remember Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for twenty-seven years in the harshness of Robben Island. At the time, he could not have believed he bore the strength to endure decades of confinement. Yet by surviving, by refusing to let his spirit be crushed, he discovered and revealed the iron within him. What he felt was pain, loss, and longing; what history saw was his unyielding strength—a power that would later unite a nation.

Didion’s words remind us that strength is not always felt in the present, but revealed in hindsight. In the midst of suffering, our minds cry out, “I cannot bear this.” Yet the truth is that we do bear it. We endure. We take one step, then another, and though each feels like breaking, the journey itself proves our resilience. Strength is often invisible in the moment; it shows itself only when we look back and realize we did not fall.

The lesson, then, is this: do not mistake the absence of feeling strong for the absence of strength itself. You may tremble, you may weep, you may even feel undone—but the act of continuing is strength in its purest form. When the trial is over, you will see that you carried within you a reservoir deeper than you imagined. The oak tree does not know its root’s depth until the storm has passed; so too, the soul does not know its power until the trial is endured.

Practical action lies in this: when you are walking through darkness, do not despair that you feel weak. Tell yourself, “This too is strength—the act of continuing, the act of breathing, the act of enduring.” Write your story, speak your truth, reflect afterward on the path you have survived. In doing so, you will discover that you are stronger than you ever believed. And when the next storm comes, you will remember that strength is not always felt, but always present.

So let Didion’s words be carried like a lantern: you may not feel strong, but you are. Strength is not only for heroes on mountaintops; it is also for mothers in grief, for prisoners in silence, for the weary who yet rise each morning. It is the invisible thread that binds us through hardship, revealed only after the storm, when we turn and see that we did not fall, and that within us dwells a power far greater than we knew.