Many of us consider ourselves weak. We believe that we lack the necessary courage and force to do and be who we want to be. We hide behind phrases like ‘I’m only human’ and we continue to believe the story that we lack strength.
I’m going to use my bullshit card on this one. I am laying on the table in a deliberate attempt to win this hand, because we are far stronger than we care to admit or give ourselves credit for, and this measures double for women.
For some reason a lot of the women I know and have had the privilege of knowing believe themselves to be weak. They shoulder the majority of the responsibilities in their families and their workplace, and then falsely believe that they are somehow inadequate. It’s madness. Madness to have so much strength and so much tenacity and yet not to believe in their power and ability.
Strength is misunderstood.
I think we mistake strength for some kind of mystical force that is able to move through anything with ease. We see a martial arts expert breaking planks in front of our eyes and we admire their strength. We watch scripted movies when the hero triumphs at the end, and think to ourselves that we could never do that. We misunderstand what strength is and how strong we truly are.
Strength is not an event or a fist crashing in on someones face. Strength is a state of mind. A wondrous attitude of getting through and it is the getting through that shapes us to be better people. It’s the overcoming of our failures that gives us an indication where we should go. It’s the fixing of our mistakes that tells us how to do things better. Strength is something you don’t really know you have because you’re too busy living and doing what you should have been doing in the first place.
You show up. You don’t make excuses. You don’t want to but you do. You want to give up but you don’t. You see others doing it better but you do it anyway. You have every conceivable reason to stop and give up, but you don’t, because you’re strong.
That’s what strength is. Strength is the pushing back of life, when life makes her mark upon you. Yes, it doesn’t feel good, neither does a piece of an irritant that drives the oyster crazy, until one day, after much effort and pain, it turns that irritant to a pearl. A pearl weak men and women seek the sea to find, but very few seek to create themselves.
Women need to take their rightful place in the world. This divine god-king structure of ours is old and showing serious signs of decay. All of us need to stop feeling bad about ourselves, or our lives, for the prospect of the future. We don’t need strength. We already have it. We wake up begrudgingly sometimes, but we wake up. We wake up because we are human. Not only human, but human. We stare down our life and live accordingly.
Don’t ever see yourself as weak. You may be in a storm. You may be battered and bruised but you’re sure as shit ain’t weak.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Alora Griffiths via unsplash.com
