Every circle has one.
The one who remembers everyone’s hard dates. Who sends the check-in text first. Who shows up with food when nobody asked and somehow always knows what kind. Who hosts, who listens, who holds — and who, if you asked her right now how she’s doing, would give you a summary of everyone else in the group before she mentioned herself.
She’s your strong friend. She might be you.
Here’s the thing about women’s community that nobody says at the kickoff meeting: it only works as community — as the real, weight-bearing, life-giving thing it’s supposed to be — when the strong one gets to be held too.
The community we accidentally build
Most women’s circles default to a hierarchy nobody voted on. The need-ers and the holders. The ones who bring their real stuff and the ones who hold the space for it. And the holders — the ones who are capable and calm and usually the first ones there and the last ones to leave — they tell themselves they don’t need the circle the way others do. That this is just how they’re wired. That being the one others lean on is enough.
It’s not enough. It never was. It just felt safer than the alternative.
Because here’s the truth underneath the holding: the strong one usually learned young that being needed was the closest thing to belonging she could guarantee. People leave. People get tired of the weak ones. But the useful one? She always has a seat at the table.
So she makes herself useful. And the circle works — technically. But it’s not community. It’s an arrangement.
What real community requires
Galatians 6:2 says carry each other’s burdens. Not some of you carry and some of you are carried. Each other’s. Both directions. Simultaneously.
Real community requires the strong one to crack the door. Not perform vulnerability — crack it. One true sentence to one safe person. “I’m not actually fine this week.” “I needed this tonight.” “Can I tell you something I haven’t told anyone?” The circle can’t hold what it can’t see. And you’ve been keeping yourself invisible to the people who would hold you, if you’d let them try.
This is the brave thing. Not leading the group, not organizing the retreat, not showing up for everyone else. Letting someone show up for you. Staying when you want to deflect. Asking instead of offering for once.
What the circle becomes
When the strong one finally lets herself be held — not as a moment of weakness, but as an act of trust in the people she’s poured into — the whole circle changes. Because now it’s real. Now everyone knows that nobody here is pretending. Now the community becomes the thing it was always supposed to be: a place where real weight is carried by real people who actually know each other.
Your circle needs your strength. It always has.
But it also needs you. The version of you that shows up without the performance. The one who’s tired sometimes. The one who has a hard date too, that nobody’s remembered, because you trained everyone not to ask.
Let them ask. Better: answer honestly when they do.
That’s the beginning of the real thing.
Made in the Image Projects exists for the strong one in every circle — stories, devotionals, and real community built around the belief that being needed and being known are not the same thing. The Strong Friends Letter goes out every Tuesday. Join us