Today my son – my littlest baby, who is about to be eleven – got home from a school camp trip. It was a huge thing for him, because I think this type of thing always is, and because he has some mild special needs so this was a big dose of independence for him. It challenged him in a lot of ways – being away from home, climbing higher than ever before on the ropes course, having to manage his time and emotions largely on his own (within a wonderfully supportive environment, of course). He had a blast. But he came home with some concerns, too, and so we had a talk about bravery and how people think that being brave means that you don’t feel afraid, but in reality you cannot be brave if there isn’t anything to fear. I think that bravery and strength are very closely related. And you cannot have strength without having first felt weakness.
This week, I learned so much from the women who participated in the photo challenge so I’ll let them speak for themselves below. I hope you join us next week! It’s super easy to join in. Read more here.
“Being a parent tests your strength in so many literal and figurative ways. But to have a body capable of creating a human, feeding him, and caring for him… that’s amazing to me every day.” – @sumrtime328
“Over the past few years since I have started martial arts training I have learned that there is physical strength and mental strength. Physical strength is fine. We can easily observe it. Mental strength is so much more and often so much harder to see. Mental strength is the ability to endure, to pick yourself up when you fall, to make good judgements under pressure, to make the choices that are not easy but right.” – @this_girl_kicks
“In those four years I can’t pinpoint a specific moment that I started feeling small, weak, controlled, and eventually, entirely hopeless. It was a gradual erosion of all my best qualities, until I was a shadow of who I had been. The day that I ran, I was terrified. But I found out quickly that I had more strength inside of me than I had ever known.” – @irishgirl1379
“Some days strength looks a whole like like vulnerability and exhaustion.” – @laurenlolo7