I’m becoming someone colder—The seasoning that looks like damage
You are holding people — your team, your family, the ones who look to you — and you feel yourself changing in ways that alarm you. Not softening. Hardening. You notice you are less patient with small talk, less willing to pretend things are fine when they are not, less reactive to the crises that used to activate you into gear. You wonder if you are becoming someone colder, someone less capable of the warmth that used to come easily. You wonder if the pressure is taking something from you that you cannot get back.
It is not. What is happening is the opposite of damage. You are being seasoned by the very fire you thought was burning you down, and the person emerging from it is not less human — she is more trustworthy, more durable, more truly herself. The difficulty has not weakened you. It is building you into someone who can hold what needs holding without collapsing under it.
The Pot That Seasons Itself
Imagine a cast-iron pot, bare and new from the foundry — reactive, porous, every touch leaving a mark on its surface, every meal sticking and burning, every use requiring apology and effort. A person watching you cook with it would see you struggling, would see the pot as a problem, would tell you to trade it for something easier, something more forgiving. The metal itself seems like a flaw — too reactive, too temperamental, too unfinished for the work you are asking it to do.
But that pot is not broken. It is exactly what it is meant to be in the beginning: raw material waiting to be shaped. And now watch the years pass. You cook in it. You let it hold heat. You let it hold salt and acid and time. You do not add anything from the outside — no coating, no treatment, no miracle product. You simply use it, again and again, in the very conditions that made it seem impossible at first. And layer by layer, imperceptibly, the seasoning builds from the inside out. The metal darkens. The surface becomes less reactive, more nonstick, more willing. The pot that seemed fragile has become indestructible. You realize, finally, that the seasoning was never something done to it. It was something the pot built itself through the very use that seemed to be wearing it down.
This is what is happening to you. The pressure is not damaging you. It is seasoning you.
Why does Uranus sextile Pluto ask this of you?
Uranus is the force in you that refuses to stay small or false or contained by what everyone else has agreed to be normal. Pluto is the force that demands you go deep, that strips away everything that is not real, that will not let you settle for the surface version of anything — not your work, not your relationships, not yourself. When these two forces come into easy conversation with each other, as they do in a sextile, they are not in conflict. They are collaborating. They are saying: it is time to rebuild yourself according to what is actually true, not what is comfortable. And the only way to do that is through pressure.
You are being asked to shed what no longer fits. The old ways of leading — the constant availability, the emotional labor of managing everyone else’s comfort, the willingness to be smaller so that others could feel bigger — these are being stripped away not because you failed at them, but because they were never the real you to begin with. Each time you feel yourself becoming less accommodating, less anxious to please, less willing to perform, you are watching the seasoning deepen. The pot is not becoming colder. It is becoming true. Like a cast-iron vessel that has absorbed decades of use, you are being remade by the pressures you thought were eating you alive.
Meeting the fire without breaking
Stop waiting for the pressure to end. It will not. It will only deepen and clarify. The question is not whether you can make it stop — you cannot, and you would not actually want to if you could — but whether you can meet it without fighting it, without trying to sand yourself smooth before you are done seasoning. This is where most people fail. They resist the hardening. They try to stay soft when the metal is asking to become strong. They apologize for the changes and try to get back to being who they were, when what is actually being asked is to become who you need to be.
Find people who understand this. A good therapist is not weakness; it is wisdom — someone who can help you distinguish between the hardening that is your actual growth and any real harm that needs tending. Find people in your life who have already seasoned, who do not flinch when you speak plainly, who do not need you to soften the edges of what is true. The presence of people who have already traveled this road will tell you something your mind will not: that what feels like damage is actually becoming your capacity. Stay close to them. Listen to how they speak. Notice how their coldness is not coldness at all — it is clarity, and it is kind in a way that surface warmth never is.
And tend to the actual places where you are being used — your body, your nervous system, your ability to rest. This is not self-indulgence; this is maintenance. A pot that seasons well is a pot that is also cooled, cleaned, wiped dry, and given seasons of rest. You cannot season yourself into the ground and call it transformation. The work asks that you hold people and also that you let yourself be held — by real support, by trusted help, by the rhythms that let the metal breathe between uses.
| What runs through your mind | What’s actually true |
|---|---|
| I am becoming someone hard and unfeeling | You are becoming someone clear. The warmth is still there, but it is no longer wasted on performing comfort for people who do not deserve your real self. |
| This pressure means I am doing something wrong | This pressure means you are finally doing something real. It arrives when you have stopped editing yourself for safety. |
| I should be able to handle all of this alone without changing | The you who could do that was never the real you — she was the edited version. The real you cannot and should not handle it alone, and she is not made for invisibility. |
| If I keep pushing through this, I will burn out | A pot that is seasoning is not burning out. It is becoming less reactive to heat, not more fragile. The seasoning is what makes it able to hold higher temperatures without damage. |
A little help, while you’re here
- Write down three changes you have noticed in yourself in the last six months that you have been ashamed of — the things you have apologized for — and read them back to yourself as evidence of seasoning, not damage. Do not fix them. Just witness them.
- Call or text one person who has already become the kind of leader you are turning into, someone older or further along, someone who did not soften but clarified. Ask her one real question about how she knew the changes were right. Listen without defending yourself.
- The next time you feel the pull to apologize for being ‘harsh’ or ‘difficult’ or ‘less warm than I used to be,’ stop. Say nothing. Notice what you wanted to say, and say that instead. Let the other person sit with the clarity.
The Pot Seasoned Dark
Years from now — not many, but enough — you will reach for yourself the way a cook reaches for a pot that has been trusted for decades. You will know your own weight. You will know what temperature you can hold without damage. You will know that the burn marks and the darkening are not flaws but proof. The surface that used to be so reactive will have become almost nonstick, almost invulnerable, and you will realize something: the seasoning was never added from outside. It was built from the inside out by everything the pot has held and released, by every heat and every use, by every year the metal said yes to exactly what was being asked of it.
You will stop apologizing for the woman you are becoming. You will stop defending your clarity. You will know, the way that pot knows, that what felt like damage was actually becoming your capacity — and not just your capacity to hold more, but your capacity to hold with absolute trust, with no hedge, with the kind of strength that does not need to announce itself because it has already become so fundamental that it is invisible. Like the seasoning in cast iron, your transformation will be so complete that no one will see the work anymore. They will only see a woman who knows what she knows, who says what is true, who can hold what needs holding without flinching.
That is who you are becoming. Not less. Not harder in a small way. Seasoned dark and deep and true.