Jenna Y.

Featuring Jenna Young

If you’re reading this and trying to figure out what strength looks like for you, I hope you remember this: you don’t need to look fearless to be brave, and you don't need to feel whole to be worthy.

For the longest time, I thought strength was something people saw when they looked at you. Confidence, certainty, composure, those kinds of things. Having answers ready when someone asked who you were or where you were going. I thought strength was loud and visible, something you could prove through action and words. But some of the strongest moments of my life were invisible. They often happened in silence, in the pauses between questions, and in the quiet effort of learning how to keep showing up.

Living with Alopecia taught me that. It made parts of my life visible before I felt ready. It taught me how quickly the world notices difference and how quietly that difference can settle inside you. I learned how to hold eye contact when I wanted to look away, how to answer questions I didn't know how to respond to, and how to carry the weight of being seen before I understood what that meant. But I slowly learned that this was an opportunity for me.

Over time, my understanding of strength changed. I realized it wasn’t about pretending something didn’t hurt or proving that I was “okay.” Strength was showing up even when I felt exposed and letting myself be seen without a guarantee of being understood. It was learning that vulnerability is not the absence of resilience, but often the clearest expression of it.

Some of my strongest moments in life were the quiet ones: brushing my thinning hair, walking into a room without a hat for the first time, and merely admitting that I was tired of always putting on a brave face. These aren’t moments anyone would notice, but they are the ones that quietly pieced me back together.

If you’re reading this and trying to figure out what strength looks like for you, I hope you remember this: you don’t need to look fearless to be brave, and you don't need to feel whole to be worthy. And you don't need to carry everything alone for it to matter. Sometimes the softest parts of you are already strong enough.

Southern Methodist University, Jenna Young.

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