Are yyou weak? Are you strong? A photo of superwoman mid-leap.

Why I Stopped Pretending to Be “Strong”

Today I’m thinking about weakness and strength.

“I envy you that you can afford to be weak,” a friend told me years ago. It made me think. Probably mostly because of the paradox. If being weak is something enviable, why do people attach a negative meaning to it?

I don’t consider myself weak. I used not to mind people attributing this quality to me because I don’t see myself that way. I’m not weak. I’m open about my feelings. And that’s not very common in today’s society, so much so that people can even find it unpleasant.

I think that calling people “strong” or”weak” is nonsense. I don’t think there’s such a thing as “weak” – it’s the same as trying to define the concept of “normal”. People are more complex than the artificial labels of “strength” and “weakness”.

The times I didn't die: A woman's face part visible through a curtain of leaves

The Times I Didn’t Die

I didn’t die. Maybe I should have.

The doctors said I had stopped growing when my mother was pregnant. They said I would be mentally retarded. My parents were proud, so proud, that I turned out to be gifted instead.

Their first child.

My mum was under great stress when she was expecting me. She and my dad lived with my great-great grandma, and she was bossy. When the mother has anxiety during pregnancy, there is a strong probability that the child will inherit that anxiety as well.

What I remember from regression therapy:
I don’t want to be here. Can I go back?
I want to shrink, to disappear.
I don’t want to have this body.
Oh God, do I have to do this? Let me out, let me out, please.
I don’t want to be here.

My white mousie, Daisy, "reading" a tiny book

Love Has the Shape of a Mouse

I found her outside on a walk. She was sitting in the grass on the roadside. Her fur was a perfect, startling white. She was happily nibbling on something she held in her tiny paws. I stared at her in awe and then suddenly realized she couldn’t possibly survive outside. I scooped her up before I could think it through, and just like that, I suddenly had a mouse. I didn’t know at the time that she would become my best friend. I didn’t know she would save my life as I saved hers. I didn’t know how much I would love her.