I Wasn't Drowning Because I Was Weak. I Was Drowning Because I Was Rowing Alone.
By Temple Franklin — Mind Body Spirit Hygiene Tools
For years, I fought silently. From the outside, the boat looked fine. A family. A home. A life we had built. But inside it, I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel heard. And I have learned there is a particular kind of loneliness that doesn't come from being alone — it comes from being unseen while sitting right next to someone. There was no way in. And the way out had its own fear, its own pain. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I rowed.
I rowed for all of us.
I rowed when my arms gave out. I rowed and smiled so no one would worry. And the whole time, the water kept rising — past my ankles, my knees, my chest — and I told myself that if I just rowed harder, I could keep everyone afloat. I was the only one rowing the boat. And I was drowning.
What took me years to understand
Here is what took me years to understand, dear one, and I want to hand it to you sooner than I got it: I was not drowning because I was weak. I was drowning because I was carrying a boat built for two and rowing it alone. And there is a name for what I was doing to myself in there. I was abandoning myself — quietly, daily — to keep everyone else above water. I had gotten so good at not needing anything that I forgot I was a person who needed air too. We are taught that staying is strength. That a good woman holds it all together. That love means going down with the ship. But staying somewhere you cannot breathe is not strength. It is self-abandonment with better manners.
Behind our own door, I was not silent at all.
Let me be clear about one thing, because it matters: the silence was the face I showed the world. Behind our own door, I was not silent at all. I was the one who spoke up. Again and again, I asked if we could get help. I named what was breaking. I told him about the boat — that I was rowing it alone, that I was going under — more times than I can count. One day he looked at me and said, "I am so sick and tired of hearing we need help." That was its own kind of answer.
One honest question
Near the end, I asked him one honest question: "Do you feel you have done everything you could to save this marriage?" He said, "No." And still — he chose to do nothing. I told him the truth as I knew it: that I felt I had done everything I could. And in that moment, something in me finally understood — a boat takes two people to row. You can ask, and name it, and reach, and love, and try with everything you have, and still you cannot row for two. That was never my failure. That was simply the weight of one person rowing.
There was no clean, cinematic moment.
I won't pretend I climbed out gracefully. There was no clean, cinematic moment. There was just a quiet, shaking truth I could no longer outrun: I simply could not do it by myself. And one day I stopped pretending I could. That — not a grand exit — was the beginning. I reached for help. I let myself be held by something greater than my own exhausted arms. The hardest, truest thing I had to face was this: leaving was not abandoning my family. Leaving was the first time in years I stopped abandoning myself. Both are true. I grieved that boat. Some days I still do. AND I GET TO be the woman who finally chose to breathe. I don't say that to skip the grief — I say it because I refuse to let drowning be the end of my story.
Reclaimed, not rescued.
No one pulled me out. I learned, at last, to swim toward myself. So if you are rowing a boat alone right now — smiling so no one worries, telling yourself to just row harder — hear this: needing help is not failure. You are allowed to put the oars down. You are allowed to want air. Choosing yourself is not the same as abandoning everyone else. You are allowed to stop drowning, Lovely. Welcome home. With love — Temple.
If these words found you while you're still in the boat, my book was written for you — a real, gentle companion for women in the messy middle who are learning to stop abandoning themselves and come home to who they are. Real tools. Real women. In the messy middle. If you want the rest of how this began — the kitchen trash can, the studs, the method that came out of the rebuild — read my full story on About Temple.
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