I'm Not Nice, I'm Kind
Someone was asking my friend about me the other day. They wanted her to describe me, “tell me about her, what’s she like,” and she was saying all these beautiful things. And then she said:
“But don’t get her to THAT point.”
I sat with that for a minute. And the very first thing my mind did was reach for a defense. They’re going to think I’ve got a temper. They’re going to think I snap. They’re going to think, watch out.
Then I caught myself. Because nobody had actually said that. Not her. Not the person asking. Not anyone in the room. I said it. To myself. Before anyone could. I put the unkind interpretation in someone else’s mouth and then braced against it, like I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember.
That’s the story I’ve been telling myself. For years. Quietly, underneath everything. That if I’m too much, if I’m too strong, if I hold the line…people will file it away as anger, as temper, as something to be managed around. So I’ve spent most of my life pre-emptively softening. Smoothing. Staying nice. Not because the world was demanding it in that moment, but because a part of me had already decided the world would.
What my friend was actually naming wasn’t a warning. It was a description of something I’m only now learning to name for myself. I have a high tolerance. A long fuse. I will hold space for a lot. I will give you grace upon grace upon grace. And then, at some point, I won’t anymore. People see that final moment…the one where I finally say the thing…and depending on the story they carry, they might call it a snap, or a temper, or something to watch out for.
But that’s their story. It doesn’t have to be mine. Not anymore.
The story I’m telling now is different. Everything that came before that final moment…the grace, the tolerance, the long patient holding, that is the story. The saying at the end is just the part the untrained eye can see.
For a long time, I treated people the way I wanted to be treated. Not the way they deserved. The way I would want to be treated, if I were them.
That sounds generous. And it is. But underneath the generosity was something else — a quiet knowing of what it feels like to need someone to hold a door open for you. To need someone to give you a chance you hadn’t earned yet. To need grace in a moment you couldn’t extend it to yourself.
So I held the door. Over and over. For people who weren’t always going to walk through it the way I hoped they would. Because, just because that person wasn’t the one to receive it didn’t mean there weren’t people who deserved that chance. And I didn’t want my own pain to make me stingy with the principle of grace itself.
That wasn’t weakness. That wasn’t naivete. That was a kind of devotion.
I want to be really clear about something, because without it this whole thing can be misread.
This was never about tolerating disrespect. It was never about letting people walk over me and calling it spiritual. The long fuse wasn’t me pretending I didn’t see what was happening. I always saw it. I always felt it. I always knew.
What it was, actually, was a refusal to let someone else’s pain become mine.
Because the only way someone can cause pain to another is if pain is already living inside them.
Think about that.
When someone hurts you, they’re not actually powerful in that moment. They’re leaking. Something unhealed inside them is spilling out sideways and landing on you. And you get to decide what you do with what’s leaking. You can pick it up and carry it. You can hand it back in the same shape. Or you can let it pass through you and offer something different in return.
That’s what I was doing. Not because the other person had earned it. Because I had decided who I was going to be. I didn’t want to become a mirror for someone else’s wound. I didn’t want the thing they were handing me to live inside me too.
It costs nothing to be kind. And you never know when your kindness might be the medicine someone else has never been given.
That’s not tolerating mistreatment. That’s sovereignty. It’s choosing not to let what’s in them write the script for what comes out of you.
But here is where I have to be honest, because this is the part that took me the longest to see.
I was being nice to them. I wasn’t being kind to myself.
There’s a difference, and I didn’t know it for years. I thought extending grace to people who couldn’t extend it back was the spiritual work. Part of it was. And part of it was the old pattern wearing new language. Because grace that requires me to slowly disappear isn’t grace anymore. It’s self-abandonment dressed up as generosity.
I’ve watched myself do this most painfully with the people I’ve loved most. I’ve extended kindness to people who couldn’t meet me in it. I’ve over-poured into relationships where the cup coming back toward me was half-empty or tipped the wrong way. And I told myself I was being kind. But I wasn’t, not really. I was being nice. Kind would have included me in it.
And I want to say this carefully, because there are situations where this doesn’t apply…situations of real harm, real abuse, where the responsibility does not sit with the person being harmed. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the ordinary, quieter pattern. The one where we allow ourselves to be over-extended because we haven’t yet learned how to interrupt the pattern at the place of ourselves. We wait for the other person to give us a reason to leave. The reason was already inside us the whole time…the slow, quiet disappearing of ourselves in the exchange.
That’s what nice does. Nice excludes you from the equation. Nice is what happens when you lose contact with yourself so completely that you don’t notice what the performance is costing you until you’ve already paid.
Kind is different. Kind stays in contact with the self. Kind says I can extend this to you, and I can also stay whole while I do it. Kind is what naturally flows out of you when you’re rooted in who you actually are. Nice is what happens when you’re not.
People misread this all the time. They see kindness and call it weakness. They see the long fuse and call it passivity. They see grace and mistake it for permission.
It’s backwards.
Weakness is being so afraid of conflict that you perform niceness to manage other people’s comfort. Weakness is contorting yourself into whatever shape keeps the peace. Strength is staying kind when the world would reward you for going cold. Strength is refusing to let what hurt you turn you into something you’re not.
I’m not nice. I’m kind. There’s a difference, and it’s the difference between performing and being.
And once you know that…once you actually feel it, not just know it…something else starts to shift. Because when your worth stops being up for negotiation, your voice stops being optional.
You start to speak. Not louder. Not meaner. Just finally.
That is the point my friend was describing. Not a temper. Not a snap. A threshold. The moment I stop abandoning myself to keep someone else comfortable. It’s not something to watch out for. It’s something to respect. It’s part of who I am.
People always ask me, when I finally do say the thing…but why? They don’t deserve to hear it. It won’t change anything. Why bother?
They’re asking the wrong question.
The question was never “do they deserve to hear it?” The question is “do I deserve to say it?”
Because when I speak the thing, I’m not speaking it to be heard by them. I’m speaking it to be heard by me. By the little girl who stayed back and kept quiet. The one who decided, somewhere along the way, that her voice wasn’t worth the risk. That staying silent kept her safe, kept her loved, kept her in the room.
And this isn’t just her story. There’s a little boy who learned the same thing..that his voice was welcome when it was useful, or loud, or certain, but not when it was tender, or unsure, or asking to be held. He learned to swallow too. He learned to perform a version of strength that left no room for the softer things he was actually feeling. He stayed back in his own way.
So whether it’s her or him…when I say the thing now, I’m going back to get them. I’m telling them your voice was always worth it. I just couldn’t give it to you yet. But I can now. And I will. Every single time.
This is devotion to the younger self. That’s what this whole thing has been. Every time I choose kind over nice, every time I speak instead of swallow, every time I close a door I held open too long…I’m being devoted to the version of me who didn’t know she was allowed.
I want to tell you something honestly.
I can’t fully see her yet. Not from the inside. When I try to picture her at three, four, five…the age she was when she first learned that staying quiet was safer…I mostly see photographs. I know what she looked like from the outside. What she was feeling is stored somewhere deeper than memory.
But my body knows her. My body has been carrying her this whole time. And today, writing this, something broke open in me. I saw…really saw…how every time I chose to over-give, every time I stayed in something that was costing me myself, I was abandoning her. Again. The way the world had already abandoned her once.
And the first words that came out of me, without me reaching for them, were I’m sorry.
I don’t think she needed me to have all the answers. I don’t think she needed me to remember every scene where she learned to disappear. I think she just needed me to stop. To stop leaving her. To stop being nice to everyone else at her expense.
Every time I choose kind over nice now, I’m choosing her. Every time I speak instead of swallow, I’m letting her know she was heard. Every time I close a door I held open too long, I’m telling her the old pattern ends with me.
I’m on my way to her.
So this is where I am now.
I don’t tolerate the way I used to, because I no longer need to negotiate for less than I deserve. I still extend grace, but I extend it from a full cup, not an empty one. I still believe that kindness can be medicine someone else has never been given…and I also know that being the medicine is not the same as being the sacrifice. I can be kind without being nice. I can speak without needing the other person to hear it the way I want them to. I can close a door I held open for too long without making it a story about them.
And if any of those people ever come back around, it won’t be to the version of me that disappeared in the exchange. It will only be to an evolved version of them…the one who has done their own work, the one who can finally meet me without needing me to shrink. The door isn’t closed forever. It’s just no longer open to who they were when they couldn’t meet me.
Because none of this was ever really about them.
It was always about her. The younger version of me who stayed quiet. The one I’m finally speaking for.
And that’s the part I want you to hear, if you’re somewhere in the long fuse, somewhere in the over-tolerating, somewhere in the writing-it-but-not-saying-it. Your voice was always worth it. You just might not be able to feel it yet.
But you will.
And when you do, you won’t have to think about it.
You’ll just speak.
And somewhere inside you, the one who’s been waiting will finally hear you coming.