Rev. Dr. A'Shellarien AddisonFounder & CEO, Bethel Bethesda Global · Board-certified Army Chaplain | Spiritual Clinical Trauma-Informed Theologian | Empowering Women to Accentuate Their Greatness in Spirit, Finances, Relationships & Business

The Strong Woman Tax: Paying for What You Never Chose

2 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:21

In this short multi‑speaker segment, three participants discuss two books that explore the concept of the “strong woman tax”—the invisible, inherited burden many women carry from family scripts and societal expectations. Speaker A describes how the books name the weight of inherited alarm systems and the exhaustion of fighting battles not of one’s choosing. Speaker B highlights practical interventions such as pausing, breathing, and prayer to interrupt automatic reactivity and reconnect with divine wisdom. Speaker C emphasizes the shift from self‑blame to self‑compassion, sharing a key quote—“Healing needs compassion, not blame”—and describing how a simple pause (three breaths) creates space for intentional response. Together, they present the paired books as a therapeutic toolkit for strong, dependable women who have been carrying invisible weight, offering a cultivated, grounded state of peace rather than denial or spiritual bypassing.

I thought this was another self-help gimmick, but it named the weight I've been carrying and showed me how to stop paying for what I never chose. Reading the section on inherited alarm systems felt like seeing my family's scripted responses spelled out, and it hit me really hard.
Pause helps us interrupt automatic reactions. Pray reconnects us to God's wisdom, peace, and presence. Dang. This work names the strong woman tax. And shows that so many strong women have been praised for surviving, adapting.
One quote stopped me: "Healing needs compassion, not blame." And that idea shifted how I talk to myself. Pause became my first tool, taking 3 breaths before answering, which broke automatic reactivity and gave me space so I could choose my response, not just survive.
Have you ever felt exhausted by battles you never started? Have you ever found yourself carrying stress, fear, hypervigilance, and being unbothered is not denial or pretending pain never happened. It is not spiritual bypassing. It is a cultivated, intentional, grounded state of peace.
Together, these two books expose the wound and offered a way forward. Pairing them felt like therapy and a toolkit. They are an invit— If you have ever been the strong one, the dependable one, the one who kept going while carrying invisible weight, these books were written with you in mind.