When Softness Saves You: What Europe Taught Me About Letting Go

There are moments in life that do not ask for permission.

They simply arrive.

They unfold you from the inside out.

They soften places you forgot were still clenched.

Europe gave me one of those moments.

It happened on an ordinary morning at a Portugal retreat with Chantelle Raven’s Embodied Awakening Academy.

The kind of morning where the sun slides into the room like a shy guest, warm enough to soften your skin but not warm enough to make you suspicious that something big is coming..

.

I did not know I was about to die that day.

Not in the literal sense.

In the sense of losing the version of myself who had worked so hard to survive

For most of my life my identity was built around competence.

Around being useful.

Around being the one who holds everyone else steady.

I knew how to create safety for others.

I knew how to listen.

How to track someone’s emotional landscape.

How to be the rock, the grounding, the anchor.

But I rarely let anyone else hold me.

It was not fear exactly.

It was habit.

A deep, unspoken belief that love had to be earned. That belonging was conditional. That softness was something granted to other people, not me.

That morning in Portugal changed everything.

The group gathered in a wide circle. The air felt thick with possibility. I could sense that something internal was shifting, though I could not name it yet. Then my teacher called me to step into the centre. I walked in a bit surprised and unsure.

But the moment I arrived in the middle… my body leaned into my teacher’s wisdom and I surrender.

My chest softened in first.

Then my breath.

Then the tiny, invisible threads I had used for decades to hold myself upright started to loosen.

I collapsed.

Not to the floor.

Into truth.

A part of me that had been carrying the weight of usefulness… finally broke.

It was not dramatic.

It was not messy.

It was simply honest. The kind of honesty the body has when it is done pretending it is fine.

I could feel everyone around me soften in response.

Their breath slowed.

Their eyes widened.

Their presence deepened.

Nobody rushed to rescue me.

Nobody demanded I pull myself together.

They simply held me.

It was shocking how much my system needed that.

Real support.

Real care.

Real love.

Not because I had earned it.

Not because I had performed well enough.

Not because I was being useful.

It was given freely.

And my body… almost did not know what to do with that.

This is the part that speaks directly to so many men I have worked with in Perth.

Men who have spent years, decades even, holding themselves together.

Men who were taught that strength means silence.

That wanting connection is weakness.

That tenderness is something to hide.

That pleasure must be performed rather than felt.

Men who come to me with shoulders that carry entire histories.

With breath that never drops below the ribs.

With hearts that crave softness but have forgotten how to ask for it.

A man walks in carrying the world.

A man lies down because he does not know how to put that world down.

A man softens because his body remembers it is allowed to rest.

The body always knows what safety feels like.

Even if the mind does not.

Softness is not the opposite of strength.

Softness is the doorway through which real strength enters.

What I experienced in Portugal was the very medicine I guide men through in my work.

The nervous system can only open when it feels safe.

Safety requires presence.

Presence requires breath.

And breath requires the willingness to stop performing.

So many men believe they must earn intimacy.

Earn pleasure.

Earn being held.

Earn softness.

But the truth is simpler than that.

Your body was made for connection.

Your nervous system was built for co regulation.

Your heart was designed to relax in the presence of another.

When I massaged men early in my career I noticed it immediately. The way warm lotion on skin can melt a lifetime of vigilance. The way slow touch can help a man remember parts of himself he thought were long gone. The way sound returns. The way breath opens. The way his eyes change shape when he stops trying to impress anyone and simply receives.

Receiving is its own form of courage.

A form many men were never taught.

Back in Portugal, as the circle held me, I felt something rewire inside me. A subtle click. A quiet recalibration. A spaciousness I had not known before.

This is ego death.

Not punishment.

Not humiliation.

But the dissolving of an outdated survival strategy that no longer serves the truth of who we are becoming.

Every man I work with has something inside him that longs for this moment.

Maybe not collapse.

But release.

Relief.

A dropping into something more honest than performance.

So many men tell me, after their first session, something like:

I did not know my body could feel this safe.

Or

I did not know I could receive without doing anything.

Or

I have not felt this settled in years.

These are not small things.

These are life changing things.

Softness saves us.

Not because it rescues us.

But because it returns us to ourselves.

Portugal reminded me of this.

Tantra massage reminds men of this every single day.

Not through teaching.

Through experience.

Your body knows the moment it is no longer alone.

Something in me shifted that day.

Something in many of the men I touch shifts in the same way.

It is the beginning of a life where you do not need to hold everything together.

Where you get to be met.

Where you get to rest.

Where you get to feel.

Where connection becomes easeful instead of effortful.

Where pleasure becomes something you melt into, not something you must achieve.

If you are reading this I want to ask you the same question I asked myself in Portugal:

Has there ever been a moment in your life when your strength stopped helping

and softness saved you instead?

Your body remembers.

Let it guide you home.

If that pulls at you, even quietly, I would love to work with you.

With love,

Kali 💛