Feeling Weak How to Be Strong Again
"To share your weakness is to brand yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength." ~Criss Jami
"Y'all have to exist potent."
Those were five words I heard without end afterwards my father was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer on Black Friday 2012—a 24-hour interval that couldn't have been more aptly named.
In the months following, I marched, ran, skipped, crept, stumbled, crawled, and dragged myself through the darkest valley of my life. This was uncharted territory. This was an unprecedented season for usa.
My dad was a fitness junkie, after all; running and biking every morning, daily performing aerobics similar a champ, and going for the occasional swim when the mood struck. The possibility of cancer had never arrested our attending—why would it?
Like and then many others, I believed I'd have my dad for decades to come up, that I would see his salt-and-pepper hair gradually transform to pulverisation white as the crinkles stretching from the corner of his eyes grew in number.
The usual questions that plague souls affected by cancer surfaced, as if some clarion call had gone out to the nether world. Questions like:
Will the surgery exist successful? (It was). Will the oncologist society chemtherapy? (He did).
When will this stop? When will my dad know peace and strength again? When will our lives get dorsum to normal?
The answers to those questions were a long time coming, until my dad was moved to ICU and put on life support in early September 2013, his organs failing.
"Be strong," came that ceaseless whisper. "Be stiff," well-wishers said. "Exist potent. Be stiff. Exist strong."
And in the nine months leading upwardly to that ICU transfer, I had been strong. I had remained unmoved and unaffected by whatsoever bad news, choosing to believe in a different issue—as well, one must even so hope.
I was like the unshakeable lighthouse tower you often see in paintings, continuing tall in the midst of a tumultuous storm, gray skies, roaring waves, and angry sea breeze everywhere.
Then one twenty-four hour period, the feat of being that strong belfry was simply likewise much to bear. I'd congenital a dam to keep back the emotions that threatened to overwhelm me only that dam couldn't peradventure stand up the weight of those emotions forever. Information technology gave mode.
I sobbed like I'd never sobbed before in my mother's arms. And and so long as we're existence honest, I'd say I sobbed every solar day thereafter.
This expression I'd so feared, this display of vulnerability I had for so long resisted and avoided had at long terminal caught upwards with me. Nevertheless I felt no shame or embarrassment. I felt no acrimony with myself or disappointment in my supposed weakness.
Instead, I felt other things.
Release.
Freedom.
Peace.
Love.
It was then that I realized that in my efforts to be strong, I had been denying myself the very feelings I'd wanted to experience all forth.
Too often, nosotros build walls around ourselves in the midst of grief, pain, or challenges, inflating ourselves up to exist proud people who don't need anyone's help, people who are getting past but fine, people who are strong plenty to weather the storm on their own.
Nosotros close ourselves off to feeling annihilation in the proper name of self-preservation. We altitude ourselves from emotions that by all means scare us considering of how weak, vulnerable, incapable, or unable they may make the states seem to our loved ones.
However, it's only through allowing ourselves to embrace that weakness and it'due south only through assuasive ourselves to feel those daunting emotions that we invite love in to strengthen us.
It'due south actually a beautiful affair for someone to be weak for that reason, considering in that weakness, we rely and depend on others to build u.s.a. up again, to make us strong, to condolement and encourage united states.
An incredible bond is established betwixt you and another person when you lot embrace your weakness. In that moment, transparency, honesty, and open advice win.
Non only have you both reached a new level of personal growth and grown likewise in your intimacy, but you've too given that private an incredible souvenir: the opportunity to demonstrate their friendship, loyalty, and dearest for y'all by beingness in that location, by beingness a friend, by being nowadays, and by enacting honey.
When we bottle our emotions in and suppress them, nonetheless, never letting anyone see into our soul, then nosotros are denying others an amazing opportunity to show up for us.
We are denying our relationships the opportunity to expand, evolve, and grow to a new level. And nosotros are essentially stopping the flow of love between us and others—life-saving love that has the potential to requite us more than strength than we always thought possible.
So I fabricated the conclusion to embrace my emotions and whatever weaknesses happened to visit me, to welcome the vulnerable position that would put me in.
If someone wanted to hold me while I cried, I let them.
If someone wanted to be a listening ear, I spoke from the depths of my center.
If someone wanted to take me away from the infirmary scene for a adept meal, I didn't decline the invitation.
If someone asked me how I was doing, I answered with honesty, even if it meant albeit that I was hurting and devastated.
Once more and again, I felt the menstruum of dear betwixt myself and those around me. It was uplifting and intoxicating; empowering and encouraging. It was love similar I'd never seen it in activeness before—the type of love that can only be perfected in our very weaknesses.
I had a part model throughout it all: my dad.
I don't fifty-fifty wish I could tell you lot he faced cancer stone-faced and unmoved by the unending dirges of prognoses.
Instead, when the hurting was too much to behave, when the figurative nights were blackest, when there seemed to exist no light penetrating the all-encompassing darkness of cancer, my dad would cry, he would pray for ane normal mean solar day, and nigh especially: he would openly talk with me about the weakness he felt.
But it wasn't weakness I saw. In those moments, when he opened himself so entirely and became vulnerable before me, I saw only strength. I saw only backbone. And on the morning my dad's heart beat for the terminal fourth dimension, the lord's day laying bricks of gold beyond his hospital room while I held his hand in mine, I saw only inspiring beauty.
Even now, as I write this, information technology's with tears painting trails down my confront. I embrace what we might call weakness because I know now that it's in my weakness that I find strength. It's in my struggle that I find conclusion; it'due south in my challenges that I find perseverance; and it's in my vulnerability that I find honey, peace, and the volition to continue.
Have you lot been spending besides much time hiding backside walls in an effort to be strong? Accept yous been distancing yourself from others, fearing they will think y'all weak? Accept you lot kept your emotions at arm's length because they intimidate y'all, scare you, or fill up you with uncertainties?
It's fourth dimension to give yourself permission to feel. It'south time to embrace the very vulnerability you shun and in doing and then, discover the honey, joy, and peace that waits for yous on the other side.
In the stop, it'southward actually through our weaknesses that we get potent again.
In loving retention of my dad, 'Bear.' 04-01-1952 – 09-15-2013
About Lily Velez
Lily Velez is a Certified Life Strategies Autobus, award-winning speaker, spiritual mentor, and the author of an upcoming novel about forgiveness. To find out what expressionless weights may be holding you dorsum from the fulfilling life y'all want, Lily invites you lot to admission the costless quiz at her website (www.lilyvelez.com).
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Source: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/weak-actually-key-becoming-strong/
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