This is what happens when pain dresses up and pretends to function. Strong Doesn’t Mean Unbroken
People think grief looks like crying.
Like smudged eyeliner, unwashed hair, or isolation.
Mine wore eyeliner.
It wore heels.
It smiled at client meetings.
It answered emails on time.It showed up. Every. Single. Day.
It posted carefully curated photos.
Because I had no other choice.
While I was being hit behind closed doors,
While I was bleeding through my sixth miscarriage,
While I was surviving verbal slurs, sexual coercion, and total emotional neglect —
I rebuilt my body.
I changed my wardrobe.
I presented well.
Not to impress.
Not to hide.
But to survive.
And yet — the most common thing people said to me when I started speaking up?
“You don’t look like someone who went through all that.”
“Nobody will believe you.”
“You don’t seem like a victim.”
Because in their minds, a victim must be visibly broken.
A woman who has been abused must have signs — tears, drama, devastation.
They don’t know what it’s like to be in hell and still send birthday invites.
To take pitch meetings with makeup over a bruise.
To smile, because if you don’t, you might start screaming and never stop.
People don’t realise —
sometimes the best-dressed woman in the room is the one holding the deepest silence.
Sometimes the woman posting the aesthetic photo has just survived another night of being dehumanised in her own home.
They don’t see that my glow-up wasn’t for show.
It was my grit.
It was my resistance.
It was the only thing I could still control when everything else — my marriage, my body, my home — had become a battleground.
And the cruelest part?
The better I looked,
the less they believed me.
Because in this world, if you are not weeping, if you are not falling apart in public,
your pain is questioned.
Your story is doubted.
Your survival is mistaken for strength — and your strength is used against you.
So no — I don’t “look like a victim.”
That’s the point.
Because pain doesn’t always show up the way you expect it to.
Sometimes it wears lipstick.
Sometimes it walks into a room and commands it.
Sometimes it looks like power — because that’s the only way it knows how to keep breathing.
Don’t confuse her composure for comfort. Don’t confuse her survival for consent.
Some women shine not because they’ve healed — but because they had to find light inside their own private hell.
