A Different Kind of Unstoppable
- Jun 7
- 3 min read
By Debra Hillard
There is a version of “unstoppable” that most of us have learned to admire.
It’s the woman who keeps going no matter what, who pushes through exhaustion and continues moving forward even when something inside her is asking her to stop. She’s capable, resilient, admired for how much she can carry.
I’ve been that woman.
And from the outside, it can look like strength.
But what I’ve come to understand is that this kind of strength is often built on disconnection. It requires a steady turning away from the body—from what we feel, what we know, from the signals that something inside us is no longer aligned. We learn to override ourselves in the name of progress, to silence what doesn’t fit the direction we think we should be going.
For a long time, I believed that was power.
But living that way has a cost.
When you are constantly pushing past yourself, you begin to live at a distance from your own life. You can accomplish a great deal while remaining disconnected from something essential within you. Eventually, the life you are building outwardly no longer matches the truth of what you are living inwardly.
What I’ve come to see is that there is another kind of unstoppable.
It doesn’t come from force or proving anything. It comes from a woman who no longer leaves herself behind in order to keep moving.
This kind of strength listens. It allows what is real to shape its direction instead of forcing life into a form that no longer fits. Its movement is different. Steadier. Not because nothing challenges her, but because she isn’t fracturing herself in the process.
For much of my life, I experienced my body as something to manage, fix, or escape. What I didn’t understand then is that my body wasn’t an obstacle to my life. It was the place my life was actually happening.
Every realization I’ve come to has happened through this body. Not outside of it. Through it.
My work emerged from learning to stay present inside that experience rather than move past it. In Remembering Myself - A Journey Through the Threads of Time and the work that continues from it, what unfolds is not a polished narrative, but the lived process of finding my way back to myself through embodiment, truth, and presence.
When you begin to live from inside your body, something changes. You stop forcing your life into shape. You stop proving. You begin to respond instead of override.
And from that place, a different kind of power emerges.
Not one that burns you out, but one that sustains you. Not one built on endurance alone, but on no longer abandoning yourself.
This is the woman who becomes unstoppable.
Not because she cannot be stopped, but because she is finally fully here. Present in her own life. Willing to listen to what her body, spirit, and inner knowing have been asking of her all along.
Much of my work explores what happens when a woman stops abandoning herself in order to survive her own life.
Through writing, visual art, textiles, and reflection, I follow the living thread beneath performance, endurance, and self-erasure — the part of us that still knows who we are beneath everything we’ve been taught to become.
If something in you recognized itself while reading this, there is more waiting for you at www.dkhillard.com — not simply a website, but a deeper conversation about embodiment, remembering, and the quiet truths many women spend their lives trying not to hear.
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