Honesty and kindness can ride in the same car. Just let kindness pick the words.

Bluntness often gets defended as honesty when the two are not the same thing. The truth is the content; how it is delivered is a separate choice, and choosing a gentler route does not dilute what you said, it only changes whether the other person can hear it. People who pride themselves on being direct are sometimes avoiding the harder work of being both true and careful.

Before you say the difficult thing, decide the substance first and the phrasing second. Keep the content whole and soften only the delivery. If a sentence would land as a wound rather than information, find another one that carries the same fact.