When I’m Trying to Lead Without Breaking

My Dear Stranger,

Today, I learned something the hard way:

being a boss is not about standing taller,

it is about standing longer,

without slowly disappearing inside the role.

No one tells you how power can be heavy.

How decisions pile up like quiet stones in your chest.

How leadership asks you to choose logic over instinct,

numbers over nuance,

certainty over wonder.

I try.

God knows I try.

But my mind does not move in straight lines.

It wanders.

It listens.

It sees patterns where others see chaos.

It asks why when the world only rewards how much.

Sometimes I wonder if I am made for this world at all.

This world moves fast, sharp, transactional.

While my soul prefers depth, silence, meaning.

While my spirit leans toward creativity, toward prayer,

toward the unseen things that cannot be monetized.

There is a quiet chaos inside me,

a constant wrestling between survival and truth.

Between who I need to be to endure,

and who I truly am when no one is watching.

To lead without losing myself, that is the real work. Unstopable challenge.

Harder than building companies.

Harder than managing people.

Harder than success.

Some days, I fear that becoming strong will cost me my softness.

That becoming strategic will erase my sincerity.

That in trying to survive,

I might betray the very soul that made me alive.

But maybe,

strength does not have to be loud.

Leadership does not have to be cruel.

And survival does not have to mean self-abandonment.

Maybe I am not failing,

maybe I am learning a different way.

My Dear Stranger,

So if I alwyas seem tired and anxious,

it’s because I am carrying two worlds at once:

the world that demands results,

and the world inside me that still believes in light.

If I ever lose my way,

please remind me of this truth,

that I was never meant to conquer the world,

only to walk through it without losing my soul.

With honesty,

with doubt,

with hope still breathing quietly inside,

Your stranger,

Vie