Tiny thought: Strength

Recently someone asked me how it is to spend time with my kids — like how it makes me feel, and I answered that its pretty grating at first, like when I’ve been out for a while, there is always a period of whiplash before I can adequately tune in again as they say but that the more time I spend with them, the stronger I ultimately feel.

What I mean when I say this is that the more time I spend with them, the more strength I am able to access from within myself.

This answer kind of surprised me because of how I am when I’m with them: docile and restrained, like I’m holding back. Kind of like a doormat. I don’t speak with force or assert my opinions. I’m not really steering, I barely direct. Mostly, I sit back and observe and respond. It feels very comfortable but intellectually, I writhe as I descend from the self-perceived mount of leader and settle into the role of a follower.

And then I realize that what I mean when I say follower is really that I descend into the role of a student — that this is the process of rebuilding. Rebuilding a definition of strength.

It’s not that I’m docile but I am very soft. The restraint, or “holding back” is a new kind of control. And to the extent that a doormat is actually a pathway, newly paved and just dry, yes, for sure I am laid out horizontally, wielding myself mostly as a cushion to fall on when the blueprints of their own very primitive self-definitions erect, then collapse, then erect, then collapse then erect and collapse and on.

It’s not always like this, sometimes I do lose my shit — and I go back and forth between rigid and soft, strong as I’ve known it and strong as I’m learning it and it gets easier as I become more familiar with both and when they are called for which they both are. But when it is like this, I have so much clarity about what it means to possess feminine strength and then I think to myself, I am sick of denying myself this gift that has been here all along.