Strength to Protect What’s Tender
After beginning my journey with trauma-informed weightlifting, something in me knew I wanted to go deeper. So I applied for a scholarship to begin the trauma-informed weightlifting certification program — and I was so incredibly grateful (and honestly, a little emotional) when I received the approval letter.
Through my own healing work, I experienced an epiphany that quietly but powerfully shifted something in me. It sparked the idea to create a strength training and health coaching program specifically for women who struggle with fawning — women who have learned to stay small, over-give, or hold it all together in order to stay connected and safe.
The more I reflected on it, the more I realized this isn’t just personal work. The patterns we carry shape how we relate, how we parent, how we partner — and ultimately, the kind of world we help create. I wanted to share a little about that vision here.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, fawning is a stress response alongside fight, flight, and freeze. It’s characterized by a tendency to yield to the will of others and to minimize oneself in order to avoid aggression or loss of connection. This can look like difficulty holding boundaries, struggling to say no, people-pleasing, and appeasement.
In a culture where dominance and aggression are often praised, a lot of shame can come with owning this soft yet intelligent, self-protective strategy — but it doesn’t have to. Through this program, I’m hoping to help us give ourselves grace and, in doing so, reclaim our backbone while bringing our attention back to what is truly valuable.
When we begin healing patterns of over-giving and self-minimizing, we don’t just change our inner world. We begin to shift what we reinforce in our families, our communities, and the broader culture.
This work includes recognizing that many of these patterns don’t begin with us. I come from a Southeast Asian family, and when I reflect on what previous generations endured, it makes sense that certain nervous system adaptations were passed down in the name of survival. It also includes recognizing the influence of cultural and societal expectations, acknowledging the impact of conditioning, and coming to honor your body for its protective intent.
Whether we were genetically predisposed, conditioned, or subconsciously carrying societal expectations, the truth is that we developed a self-protective strategy of yielding — one that, in the moment it was first called for, was drawn from a wise instinct.
The soft, nurturing nature of our femininity can easily become tangled with this protective strategy. Learning to separate these energies can be incredibly freeing. As we begin to experience the felt sense of differentiating between a learned response and what is truly ours, we become empowered to act from a place of authentic alignment with our true Selves.
In the fitness setting, this looks like engaging the muscles of our core to protect our spine during heavy lifts. In everyday life, it looks like strengthening our boundaries to protect our sacred life energy. We are building strength. We are fortifying boundaries to protect what’s tender.
What we practice in the gym translates into our daily lives. The strength we build to guard our compassion allows us to carry that compassion into our communities with greater capacity — not from depletion, but from integrity.
As we redirect our attention from survival strategies toward rebuilding relationship with Self, we begin acting from alignment rather than fear. And when enough of us begin to live that way, the impact reaches far beyond our individual stories.