The Hustle of Holding it Together

by Jaz James

Hey Love,

There’s a kind of woman everyone leans on and no one checks on.

You probably know her. You might be her. The one who shows up. The one who handles it. The one who can be screamed at by a customer at 1 a.m. and back on the floor with a smile by 1:05. The one whose phone is full of “hey are you up, can I tell you something,” and never the other way around. The one whose mom calls when the bills are short. The one whose sister calls when her boyfriend is back on something. The one who can’t think of the last time someone asked how she’s doing without needing something thirty seconds later.

That’s a job.

It’s not your shift. It’s the second shift you’ve been working since you were twelve, and you didn’t apply for it.

The Fallacy of the Costume

People look at you and decide you’re fine. Because you’re put together. Because your eyeliner is sharp. Because you can pay your own rent. Because the last time you cried in front of someone they got weird and you swore never again. So now you handle it. You push through. You keep the room calm. You smile when you’re hurting and they think the smile is the truth.

But that’s not strength. That’s a costume.

Real strength has a heartbeat. Real strength gets tired. Real strength sleeps. Real strength sits on the bathroom floor sometimes and stares at the tile and doesn’t get up for a minute, and that minute does not disqualify you from anything.

The thing about this job is it teaches you to be your own bodyguard. You walk in with the armor on. You read the room before you set your bag down. You scan for the guy who’s going to be a problem. You know which manager will have your back and which one will fold. You handle personalities, drama, expectations, pressure, customers, money goals, boundaries, competition, the girl in the dressing room who is mad at you for no reason, and the regular who thinks paying for a dance means he also gets to touch. That is a skill set most people will never develop. It takes strength to do it once. It takes something else to do it seven nights a week.

But the armor was not supposed to be skin.

You were supposed to be able to take it off.

The Weight of the Armor

Somewhere along the way you stopped. Maybe because no one felt safe enough to take it off in front of. Maybe because every time you did, someone used what was underneath. Maybe because your mother used you as her therapist when you were nine and you learned early that being the strong one buys you a place at the table. Maybe because the only attention you ever got that wasn’t about your body was attention for how much you could carry. So you carried.

And then you carried more.

Now you are exhausted in a way sleep doesn’t fix.

But you don’t have to survive everything alone. You don’t have to be the rescuer, the fixer, the listener, the emotional punching bag, or the one who holds it all together for the people in your life who never offered to hold a thing for you. Your feelings are not an interruption. Your exhaustion is not a personality flaw. Your mental health is not a luxury other women get and you somehow don’t qualify for.

You qualify.

Asking for help is not weakness. It is information. It is the way a body tells you something is too heavy and you need another set of hands. Animals know this. Toddlers know this. Adult women have to be talked out of pretending they don’t.

If you take nothing else from this, take this: you are allowed to to need care, too.

Not as a treat. Not as a reward for being strong long enough. Just because you’re a person, and people need care.

The God Part

About the God part, just because this blog leans that way. People will tell you God wants you to be strong. Some of them mean it the way it was supposed to land. That you don’t have to white-knuckle this alone. That there is something bigger than you that wants to help you carry what you can’t. But others mean it the other way. That the gold star goes to whoever cried the least, complained the least, and pushed through the hardest. Both versions are out there, sometimes from the same mouth on different days. If you grew up on the second one, that one is not what the Bible actually says.

Did you know that Jesus was often tired, there were times He was hungry, frustrated, sometimes felt alone, and He wept at a grave of his good friend? The guy who came to save the world knew all about, and valued, self-care. He knew to spend time alone away from people and even took naps in boats during storms. He doesn’t grade you on how much you can hold. He is the one who offers to help you hold it. You can take that or leave it. But if you ever picked up the idea that needing rest meant you aren’t strong, or you are living your faith wrong, that idea did not come from Him.

You are allowed to fall apart.

Not in a “rock bottom” way. In a regular way. In a Wednesday afternoon way. In a “I’m going to cancel one thing this week and not explain why” way.

You are allowed to ask for help and not pre-write the apology for asking.

You are allowed to have a person, or a few, whose job is not to take from you. A friend who calls just to call. A mentor who has nothing to sell you. A therapist who is paid to hold what you have been holding for free. Faith if you want it. Community if you can find one that doesn’t make you audition for it. If your current circle only shows up when they need something, that circle is not a support system. That is a customer base.

You can be strong and soft. Powerful and tired. The one who shows up and also the one who taps out when she needs to.

The strongest women I know are not the ones who never cracked. They are the ones who finally stopped pretending they couldn’t. They got quieter, slept more, said no to two things, kept the one person who actually showed up, and let the rest fall off the calendar. They did not become weak. They became honest.

So if you woke up tired today, woke up tired yesterday, woke up tired most of last month, that is your body sending you a message your mind has been overriding for a long time. You don’t have to override it forever.

You Can Put It Down

What would happen if you took off the armor? If you stop always being the strong one? The world will keep turning. Your people will figure out their own coffee. The customer will tip to touch the next girl. The shift will end. Some of the things you thought you were holding up were standing on their own the whole time.

You are not the rescuer.

You are one who deserves to be rescued sometimes too.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9

*****

Jaz James is the director of Strip Church and founder of Lace Warriors, a strip club ministry that serves entertainers in West Texas and Northern Mexico.