The dictionary defines tolerance as “the ability to accept and endure.”
So why does that word sting so much?
Tolerance has always felt like a judgment wrapped in politeness — a subtle condemnation disguised as virtue. When someone says they “tolerate” me or my behavior, my nervous system reacts before my mind can catch up.
My old conditioning lights up.
My breath goes shallow.
I freeze.
Every childhood story that whispers, “You are too much… you are not enough…” rises like a tide.
Tolerance doesn’t feel like acceptance. It feels like endurance — the kind people do when they are holding their breath and waiting for the discomfort to pass.
And for someone like me — someone who spent decades absorbing the emotions of others, keeping the peace, shrinking to fit the space I was allowed — endurance is not neutral.
It is traumatic.
Tolerance is a pre-sovereignty word. It belongs to the old version of me — the woman who survived by adjusting herself to every room she entered.
But the woman I am becoming — the uppity woman rising — is done being endured.
She is shedding old identities like worn-out cloaks. She is refusing the roles that asked her to “be quiet,” “be pleasing,” “be less,” or “be easy to tolerate.”
She is no longer living from survival. She is rebirthing herself. She is reclaiming Me.
The Energetic Truth: Tolerance Is a Two-Way Street
When I catch myself “tolerating” someone’s behavior, it does something subtle but powerful: it dims my own light. And when someone else is tolerating me, their light dims too.
Tolerance is an energetic loop. It doesn’t matter who started it — the moment tolerance enters the space, the energy tightens.
No one shines. No one breathes. No one is fully themselves.
And tolerance isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s quiet: a sigh, a small withdrawal, a soft “it is what it is” instead of honest communication. These gentle avoidances feel harmless, but they carry the same weight — a shrinking away from truth to protect someone’s feelings.
It isn’t good or bad, right or wrong — it’s just a pattern. A cycle that feeds on itself, the way blame does, repeating until someone becomes conscious enough to pause and say: I don’t want to dim anymore.
Sovereignty Looks Like Staying Present Without Shrinking
I am learning a new way — a middle path between reacting and going silent.
When someone’s energy tightens because of something I did — not wrong, not bad, just human — I used to either defend myself or disappear. Both were forms of abandoning myself. Now I’m practicing something different:
Staying present, staying light, and owning my part without shame.
Not collapsing.
Not reacting.
Just truth.
Something like, Oh yes, that was me, spoken gently, without fear.
When I stay in my own light, the other person doesn’t need to dim theirs. The whole dynamic shifts. The tolerance loop breaks. Allowing replaces endurance. Presence replaces bracing. Unconditional love replaces tolerating.
Reflective Invitation
If the word tolerance stings for you too, you might pause and ask:
- Where in my life am I bracing instead of breathing?
- Where am I tolerating myself or others in ways that dim my light?
- What would allowing — not absorbing, not enduring — look like for me?
- Where am I still tolerating my own truth instead of welcoming it home?
- And if tolerance is an energetic loop, what small moment of presence could break it?
No judgment.
Just awareness.
Just an invitation to return to yourself.
Today, I choose the love that doesn’t endure me — the love that welcomes me home.