“Asanda today is softer, not weaker – softer…”
Through much of her life, Asanda Hlamandana knew herself as the person who always showed up, she was the one people could depend on – the one who came with solutions, carried responsibility and kept going, even when she was exhausted.
Today, the educator, writer, sister, friend and leader is learning to view her identity beyond those responsibilities.
“I am also learning to be a person beyond responsibilities,” Hlamandana. “I am learning that I don’t always have to be strongest person in the room. I am allowed to laugh, to rest, to be vulnerable, to dream and to simply exist without having to earn my place through what I do for everybody else.”
It is a realisation that has come through a deeply personal journey, one that forced her to rethink what she had always understood strength to mean.
Hlamandana says responsibility found her before she was ready for it.
Growing up, she learnt from an early age that there were people who depended on her and that she needed to step up. Over time she became resilient, independent and resourceful – the person who would find a solution, show up and keep moving forward.
However, holding on to that identity for years came at a cost.
“When you spend years being the strong one, you can start believing that your value lies in how much you can carry,” she says. “You become uncomfortable with needing people because you have spent so much of our life being needed.”
Her health journey eventually forced her to stop.
For someone conditioned to being the person people called when they needed help, suddenly needing care herself was difficult.
“I was used to being the person people called. I was used to solving problems, helping people and making sure everyone else was okay,” she says. “Suddenly, I was in the position where I couldn’t do some of the things I had always considered basic.”
In being cared for, she discovered something she had previously struggled to accept: vulnerability could exist alongside strength.
The experience also changed the way she viewed the life she had been living before it.
Hlamandana says she once felt she needed to constantly be on the move, with another responsibility, goal or person needing her attention.
Now she says she has learnt to appreciate the ordinary things – waking up, having the conversations, laughing with people, being able to move her body, and simply sitting quietly without feeling responsible for solving everything.
She has also become more mindful of the boundaries she did not always have before. “I gave too much of myself to certain people and situations because I thought that was what love, loyalty and responsibility looked like,” she says.
“Today, I understand that boundaries are not selfish, rest is not laziness, and choosing yourself does not mean you love other people any less.”
It is this shift in perception that eventually found its way on to the pages of Strong is a Lonely Place.
Hlamandana says the book began to take shape when she understood that her experience of carrying responsibility was not unique.
She began to see herself in the many people who had also become “the strong one” – those who continued to show up for others while privately struggling with burdens few people knew they were carrying.
“I realized that if I could put words to some of the experiences, perhaps somebody else would feel less alone,” she says.
Rather than simply documenting everything she has survived, Hlamandana hopes the book creates a space where readers feel seen.
“If somebody closes that book and feels a little less alone, then the story has done what I hope it would do,” she says. However, the book is not the end of the journey. If anything, Hlamandana says it represents a transition into a different chapter of her life – one where strength is no longer measured by how much she can endure.
“Asanda today is softer,” she say. “Not weaker – softer.”
She still has ambitions and dreams, but no longer feels the same need to prove that she can survive everything.
The woman who once believed strength meant enduring now understands that it can also mean choosing herself, asking for help, setting boundaries ad walking away from things that no longer serve her.
“I am still becoming,” she says. That, perhaps is the most important lesson she has taken from the journey: there is no final version of who a person has to become.
As she enters this new chapter, Hlamandana says she hopes the book reaches people who need to hear its message and start conversations around resilience, responsibility, grief, vulnerability, love, loss and the pressure to always appear strong.
She mentions that for herself, she wants something simpler.
“I want peace,” she says. “I want to experience this next chapter without constantly feeling like I have to fight for my right to be happy. I want to create more, love more intentionally, laugh more, rest without guilt and continue becoming the woman I was always meant to be.”
Hlamandana says that the books captures what happened to her. What comes next, she says, is about what she chooses to do with it.
By Sinentlahla Mbokwe
