For a long time, I believed that being hard on myself was a virtue.
I grew up in a military family. As a single mother, a lawyer, and a first-time law firm owner, I thought relentless self-criticism was simply part of discipline. I told myself that pushing harder meant I was strong, responsible, and resilient. After all, I had survived circumstances that many people never encounter in a lifetime: fleeing my home country, living in a women’s shelter, navigating the immigration system, raising children alone, and rebuilding a professional identity from nothing. Surely, if I could survive all of that, I could survive being unkind to myself.
What I did not realize was that this unkindness was slowly eroding me from the inside.