What I Once Thought Was My Weakness Turned Out to Be My Strength

Sharisse Stephenson
7 days ago
2 min read

I’ve never been good at pretending.

I’ve never been good at smiling in people’s faces when I knew they were doing something wrong. I don’t know how to “just go along with it” for the sake of peace.

If something isn’t right, I say so.

If someone helps me, I show gratitude.

If someone hurts me, I tell the truth about it.

I don’t dress it up in flowers or corporate-speak.

For a long time, people told me that was a weakness. Even my own mom would say, “You need to learn to be more discreet. You need to keep your business to yourself.” I tried. I tried to rein in my feelings, tried to wear a mask the way other people seemed to do so easily.

But I couldn’t.

And eventually, I stopped trying.

An Open Book in a Closed System

I am an open book.

You never have to wonder what I’m thinking or how I feel.

If I’m broke, I’ll say it.

If I’m not doing well, I’ll say it.

If I got fired, I’ll say it.

That’s just who I am.

And it turns out, in this battle, that’s not a weakness.

It’s a strength.

Why Transparency Scares Them

When the ombudsman tried to discourage me, warning me that “they can depose you, they can ask for your pay stubs, they can look into your records,” I realized she thought that would scare me.

I laughed.

“So?” I said. “They already know everything. And if they want to dig, I want to dig too.”

Because here’s the truth: they have far more to hide than I do.

When my attorneys cautioned me that Sun Life might demand records, I shrugged.

“They don’t want my medical records. If they had them, the truth of how badly I was harmed would be undeniable.”

That’s the thing about openness.

You can’t be threatened with exposure when you’re already standing in the light.

Why My Words Land

That’s why my writing lands the way it does.

My Medium posts.

My blogs.

My cartoons.

I don’t spin.

I don’t sanitize.

I don’t say “an unfortunate incident.”

I say, “That shit hurt.”

That’s why my last post was titled:

Bon Secours, Why Do You Want to Hurt Me So Badly?

I could have softened it.

I could have rounded the edges.

I could

have made it more palatable.

But that’s not how it felt.

And that wouldn’t have been the truth.

Strength in the Raw Truth

What I once believed was a flaw — being transparent, emotional, sometimes too raw — has turned out to be my greatest strength.

Because in a world where corporations hide behind polished codes of conduct, carefully lawyered language, and endless PR spin, raw truth stands out.

And raw truth has receipts.