Hardship can make you dangerous without making you cruel.

Coming through something difficult can leave you noticeably harder to move, harder to intimidate, and harder to fool. That is a real change in your position in the world and it is worth having. It does not have to come with cruelty, though it often gets confused with it, especially by people who mistake harshness for strength. Capability and cruelty are separate things.

Ask whether your new firmness is being used to protect what matters or has started leaking into how you treat people who did nothing to you. Where it has leaked, pull it back. Strength that stays deliberate is worth much more than strength that has become a default.