I’m a single mom and I hate it when people call me superwoman because I don’t feel strong—I just don’t have any other choice

There’s a woman in my life who calls me superwoman every time she sees me. She means it as a compliment. She says it with genuine admiration—the kind that comes with a head shake and a smile, like she can’t quite believe what I manage to pull off.

Every time she says it, something in me goes very quiet.

Not because I don’t appreciate her. I do. But because what she’s really saying, underneath the compliment, is: I don’t know how you do it. And what I want to say back, every single time, is: I don’t have a choice.

There’s no superpower. There’s no secret system. There’s just a life that requires a certain amount of doing, and nobody else to do it, and so I do it. That’s the whole thing. That’s the whole story. And somehow, when you survive that long enough without visibly falling apart, people start calling it strength.

It isn’t strength. It’s the absence of an alternative.

Here’s what that actually looks.

I’m not strong, I’m just out of options

Strong implies a choice. It implies I looked at the situation and decided to rise to it. That I dug deep and found something extra and brought it to bear on the challenge.

That’s not what happened. What happened is that the situation existed, and someone had to handle it and I was the someone. There was no digging deep. There was just the next thing, and the thing after that, and the thing after that, and the understanding—absorbed so early I can’t remember learning it—that if I didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.

People who have backup don’t look like this. People who have someone to split the load with, someone to call when they’re overwhelmed, someone who will step in without being asked—they don’t have to perform strength. They can just be people having a hard time. I don’t have that option. So I handle it. And handling it, apparently, looks like strength from a distance.

Nobody asks how I am because knowing would make them responsible

I’ve noticed this. The careful not-asking. The way a conversation will skirt the edge of how things actually are and then veer away before it gets there. The way people will say you seem tired and then wait just long enough for me to say I’m fine before accepting it and moving on.

They don’t want to know because knowing changes things. If they know I’m drowning, they might have to help. Or feel guilty for not helping. Or have a conversation about help that nobody is sure how to have. Not-knowing keeps everything comfortable. Keeps the status quo intact. Keeps me the one who handles things and them the ones who don’t have to.

And the thing is, I’ve made it easy for them. I’ve gotten so good at performing fine that there’s very little visible evidence that anything is wrong. I answer the how are you with good, thanks before they’ve finished asking it. I show up to things put-together and capable and on top of it. I don’t let the real version of how things are surface in public because surfacing it would require explaining it, and explaining it would require energy I don’t have and would probably make everyone uncomfortable anyway.

So the not-asking continues. And I keep performing. And everyone gets to feel okay about not knowing. Including, sometimes, me.

The more they praise me, the more alone I feel

The superwoman comments. The I don’t know how you do its. The you’re so amazings that come at the end of a recitation of everything I’m managing.

Each one is a small closing of a door.

Because what the praise does, functionally, is mark me as someone who has it handled. Someone who doesn’t need anything. Someone whose situation is impressive rather than concerning. The praise transforms the thing that’s breaking me into evidence of my exceptional capacity. And exceptional capacity doesn’t require support. Exceptional capacity just keeps going.

So I keep going. And they keep praising. And the gap between what they think is happening and what’s actually happening gets wider, and the praise gets louder, and I get more alone inside it.

I don’t remember what not tired feels like

I’m trying to think back to a time when I woke up and felt rested. Actually rested, in the way I understand rested to mean—where the day ahead feels like something you have capacity for rather than something you’re already behind on.

I can’t find it. Not recently. Not in the last several years.

The tiredness has been there long enough that it’s stopped feeling like a temporary state. It just feels like me now. Like a characteristic. Like the particular texture of how I move through the world. I’m the tired one. That’s just who I am.

I know intellectually that this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. That tired isn’t a personality. That this level of exhaustion is information about something that needs to change rather than just a fact about me that I’ve accepted. But accepting it is easier than the alternative. The alternative requires things I don’t currently have access to.

So I carry the tired the way I carry everything else. Quietly. Without making it anyone’s problem.

The version of me that needed help learned to stop asking for it

She’s still in there somewhere. The one who used to reach out when things were hard. Who believed that asking was possible, that the asking might work, that there were people who would show up if she said she needed them to.

She got hurt enough times that she stopped. Not all at once. Gradually. Each time she asked and the response was insufficient or the help didn’t come or the burden of explaining what she needed was almost as heavy as just handling it herself—each time, she adjusted her expectations slightly downward.

Until one day, she stopped adjusting and just stopped asking. And the version of me that exists now doesn’t reach for help because reaching feels like a setup for a disappointment I don’t have the bandwidth to absorb. It’s easier to just know I’m on my own and plan accordingly than to hope for something and have it not show up.

That’s not a strength either. That’s an adaptation. A very efficient, very lonely adaptation.

I keep showing up because the alternative is everything falling apart

This is the thing nobody wants to say out loud but is absolutely true. I’m not showing up out of passion or purpose or some deep well of intrinsic motivation. I’m showing up because if I don’t, things collapse. Real things. Things that other people depend on. Things that I have built and am responsible for, and cannot in good conscience let fall apart just because I’m tired.

So I get up. I make the lunches, answer the emails, manage the logistics, handle the thing that came up, do the follow-up on the thing from last week, and make sure nobody falls through a crack. Not because I’m super. Because I’m the only one watching for the cracks.

And there’s a particular weight to being the only one watching. It means you can’t fully relax. Ever. Even on the good days, even in the quiet moments, there’s a part of you that’s still scanning. Still tracking. Still aware that the whole structure depends on you staying upright and paying attention. Other people get to be off duty sometimes. I’m not sure I know what off-duty feels like anymore. The responsibility doesn’t clock out when I do. It just comes home with me and sits in the corner and waits.

I’ll keep showing up tomorrow and the day after that. Not because it’s sustainable—I’m genuinely not sure it is—but because sustainability is a luxury that requires options I don’t currently have.

I love my life, and I resent it every single day

This is the part that’s hardest to hold. I love my kids in a way that makes the hard parts make sense. I love the life I’ve built, even though building it has cost me things I’m still calculating. There are moments where I look at what exists and feel something that is unambiguously gratitude.

And I resent it. The relentlessness of it. The way there’s no off switch, no understudy, and no version of taking a break that doesn’t just mean the work piles up waiting for me to come back. The way my name is on everything and the responsibility is mine, and the thing that would make all of it easier—another person, real help, someone who shows up without being asked—is the thing I don’t have.

I love it, and I resent it, and I carry both of those feelings around at the same time, every day, without a clean place to put either one.

That’s the thing about being called superwoman. It assumes there’s only one feeling. There isn’t. There are about fourteen, and most of them have nothing to do with strength.

Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our “As Told to Bolde” series where we share personal stories from individuals we have interviewed or surveyed. For more information on how we create content, please review our Editorial Policy.