Tired of being strong

Dear Che,

I’m tired of being the strong woman, but I can’t afford to be weak.

Dear One,

This is such a vulnerable space, you are not alone in feeling this immense pressure to carry everyone in your life on your shoulders.

The women in our community live under a stereotype of strength. Our shared histories of enslavement and indentured servitude required men and women to be strong physically, yes, but also to not feel the indignities or torments of life, meaning no emotion, and for so many women, the strong woman became a trope, a stereotype that is continually reinforced in our cultures. Showing feelings can be interpreted as weakness rather than as human.

We can’t only point to the recent history and impacts of colonization. Western culture is conditioned into the concept of the stiff upper lip, of keeping your poise no matter what. That idea deeply shaped Caribbean culture and its evolution, and some version of it exists in every culture. What it produces is an inability to see people in all of their complexity.

I also want to ask a harder question. It’s not only about what society and its institutions are doing. What are we doing within our own culture when we keep telling women to be strong? It is not possible to always be strong. No human being is built that way.

Here is what I believe. Sharing your emotions is a form of strength. Being able to express what you feel is a form of strength. Being able to hold space for other people’s emotions is also a strength.

I’m going to disagree with a very popular idea. We are now telling women of colour that being angry is a form of strength, and that anger is how they express their anxiety. I don’t accept that. Anger is one emotion among many, and when it becomes the only acceptable one, we have simply traded one narrow role for another.

We have so many emotions. There is an entire lexicon of feeling that most people never learn. What most of us are taught is sad, angry, and happy, as though we are that flat in our dimensions. There are words for the tender feelings, the fragile ones, the hopeful ones, the unsettled ones. There are even words for what your body is telling you: heavy, hollow, tight, warm, settled. Learning those words is precision. It is knowing yourself.

So, dear one, I am not suggesting that being strong is wrong or that you should give it up but perhaps give it up sometimes and allow yourself to feel what lies beneath being strong.  What do you have to give up in yourself in order to have the capacity to be strong?  The invitation is to stop being anything for anyone else, and to learn to express what you feel in the moment, or in the places where you feel safe to do so. Your emotions are part of your healing system; not expressing them creates the foundation for burnout.

Here are a few tools for your consideration:

• Find a list of feelings and keep it near you. When someone asks how you are, look for a truer word than “fine”. Write down these words.
• Speak to yourself in front of a mirror, telling your story in different words out loud. So that you can hear yourself.
• Once a day, name what you feel and where you feel it in your body. Tired lives somewhere. Describe tiredness instead of denying your experience.
• Choose one safe person or one safe place where you practice saying the real thing. Even go for a walk and sit beside a tree. Decide that your words and your story are sacred.
• When you hear yourself say “I’m strong,” pause and ask what else are you besides strong? Are you sad? Are you hurt?
• Be intentional about doing something that allows you to feel joy or a sense of empowerment. Maybe that something will be new, and in a place where no one has an expectation of you.
• I encourage you to read books about emotions and biographies of women, so you can see that you are not alone, and explore different ways of being.
• Start writing or creating voice notes of love and appreciation for yourself, not from a place of ego but a place of acknowledgement and gratitude.

Try this affirmation “Dearest Self.  I see you. I hear you and I acknowledge that you have carried so much for so long. At this moment, I ask you to imagine your worries are in a heavy bag and today is the day to lay them down. Thank you for all that you have carried, but today is your day to rest.”

You are a human being with a force of life running through your veins; you are not required to be a statue or a robot. You are allowed to be a person, and the truest strength you will ever have is the ability to feel your own life while you are living it.

Love yourself, Che Marville