Katie Thompson

Sometimes strength isn’t about exertion. It’s about rest and retreat.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be strong. We so often associate it with physical or mental muscularity. How much you can endure determines how strong you are. 

To a certain degree I believe that’s an accurate definition. However recent experiences have me re-evaluating my perspective on strength, especially my own.

For the longest time I too thought that strength was expressed in my resilience and my refusal to let my health problems hold me back from accomplishing things. I thought it was pressing on with my day after getting dozens of injections from the base of my skull to my thighs. I thought it was proving everyone wrong and showing that I wasn’t weak.

How wrong I was.

I have pushed on and persevered through many hard things. I have still accomplished all that I set out to and more. But after those goals are met, the lights are down, cameras off and I am laying in my bed, I am tired.

I spoke about this feeling, this tiredness, more like exhaustion with like-minded neuro-injured friends and they helped me understand my own needs better than I could. 

We have to be strong, all the time. All of us really have to be with current world circumstances. In the meningitis and spinal cord injury survivor’s world, fatigue and exhaustion are constant companions. We stay strong because we have to, most of us wouldn’t be able to get out of the bed otherwise. 

Then we get used to it, the constant stress that awaits us before we open our eyes every day. We keep going, we stay strong, still paying that toll, which only increases with guilt if we dare take a break or let our health stand in our way.

I ask myself the same question as my friends did, “Why do I have to be strong all the time?”

The answer is that I don’t.

I have spent my life being strong. Holding up the expectation that I was taught to never walk away. Looking back there are so many situations that I should have let go in the wind instead of torturing myself to endure.

Giving in doesn’t mean giving up.

Sometimes the best thing to do is give in to what we need. We are trained to ignore it so fiercely. If only we fought for ourselves the way we have been taught to fight for things that ultimately really don’t matter.

We’ve been taught to be secondary. Who we are is secondary to a product, a lifestyle, or such similar inanimate construct. These identities we so closely hold on to, this perception of strength, all of it is pretty much just made up. We’ve assigned labels and meanings to things that otherwise are meaningless. Assigning a value to our strength, contributions, or mere existence is truly inconsequential beyond the reality we’ve contrived. 

Just what am I staying strong for? For who? I realize that my strength doesn’t matter and that frees me to be whatever I need to be in that moment.

Strength, real strength, can only be found in the truth. The truth is that some days I am not strong. I cannot push through. I cannot do all that I used to, or even what I could do yesterday some days. It’s terrifying, distracting, unnerving and infuriating.

In embracing this truth I see that strength can also be knowing when to rest, when to adapt, or when to step back. It isn’t failure, but even in failure, success can be found in the lessons learned, paths cleared and missions clarified. Information can be gathered to help in future endeavors. How is that in a whole still not a success?

This transmutation of perception isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t feel very positive in the moment your perceived failure may be occurring. But in the long run these things do matter, they do provide tools that help you at the very least make better and more informed decisions.

It’s not about pretending that failure isn’t real, or that weakness doesn’t have an impact. It’s about acknowledging that to some degree these are just all made up concepts that we can work with in different ways to help us see and experience the world more fully.

So take a break. Embrace a failure. Do what you need to do to find your truth, and what makes you strong. It’s all part of the process.