You do not raise your voice and you rarely announce what you are carrying. People assume things are fine with you because you have never given them a reason to think otherwise, which is its own kind of load.
What you have is not hardness. It is patience with things that would make other people flinch — a difficult person, a slow recovery, a situation that will only improve by being endured well. You are steady in exactly the places that matter.
Strength shows a woman with her hand on a lion, calm. The point is that force was never the method. Neither is silence, though. Being known is not the same as being weak.