Pavithra Venkatesan
What I Thought Was Strength
Before I became a writer and coach, I worked in tech. My days were full of deadlines, meetings, and responsibilities. At the same time, I was raising my child, learning what it means to be there for someone every single day, no matter how you feel. Most days were ordinary. Wake up. Get things done. Take care of what needs attention. Move on to the next thing.
Somewhere along the way, I started believing this was strength. That being strong meant pushing through. Continuing even when I was tired. Showing up even when something inside me needed a break. I thought strength meant handling everything. And on the outside, it looked like I was doing just that
I thought this was just life.
What I Began to Notice
When I stepped away from my career in tech and began life coaching, I expected the emotional weight of the stories to be heavy. But listening to women again and again didn’t drain me. It energized me.
And slowly, I understood why.
It wasn’t the stories themselves. It was the patterns beneath them. I began to see that most of us move through life trying to hold on to three things:
Feeling safe.
Feeling like we belong.
Feeling free to be ourselves.
When these are in place, life feels steady. But when one of them is missing, we adjust. We try harder. We stay longer. We change how we respond. Without realizing it, we begin to repeat certain ways of being, not because something is wrong with us, but because we are trying to make things work. What I thought was strength… was often just me getting better at carrying the same pattern.
That realization changed how I saw everything.
What Changed for Me
This is where my book began, not as an idea, but as a way to understand what I was seeing. Archetypal Remembering came from this simple shift:
Instead of asking, “Why is this happening to me?
I began asking, “What is this showing me?”
That one change made a difference.
Because it moved me from trying to fix myself to trying to understand myself. One message I received after sharing this work stayed with me. Someone said, “I feel like I can finally see myself clearly.
That’s what this book is about. Not changing who you are. Not becoming someone else. But seeing your patterns clearly enough that they no longer control you in the same way.
It’s not something you rush through. It’s something you come back to. Because once you begin to see the pattern, you don’t look at your life the same way again.
Learn more about author Pavithra Venkatesan