“You’re stronger than you think,” my trainer encouraged me as I lifted the weight above my head for the 33rd time. I remember the exact rep because it marked the first time someone has said this referring to my physical capabilities and not my emotional capacity–and I’ve been stuck in my head about it ever since.
Is it even the right saying? Am I stronger than I think? Or, is it that I’m as strong as I need to be? Have to be?
There are times I wouldn’t mind being able to be less strong. But most days, I’m just grateful that I haven’t reached the limits of it yet.
Because parenting is not for the weak. Despite my conceptual understanding of that fact before…well…conceiving…I had no idea it would be this kind of hard.
I didn’t picture myself with a permanently clenched jaw, shoulders tensed to my ears, and a well-founded fear of a ringing telephone. There was no way to know how much of my time and energy would be spent wondering if my children will grow up to be happy and good humans. If one of them will be a grown up at all. My dreams didn’t include the heavy blanket of weariness that on some mornings, makes it hard to face the day.
It took years of parenthood (and some therapy) to willingly admit that I’m not the kind of woman who felt motherhood as a lifelong calling. I admire those born-to-be moms. Deep in my bones, as much as I love my children and have no regrets about choosing this path, I know I would have also been fulfilled on more independent paths. I’ve let go of the guilt that used to accompany that knowledge.
The beauty of dialectical thinking, is that I can think these things and still feel just as deeply in those very same bones that I was built for the children I have. Neurodiversity, mental health, and personal traumas have had an outsized influence on the shape of my world. My lived experiences make me uniquely qualified to help them navigate their own.
So I’ll keep rising, and advocating, and endlessly stretching the bounds of my resilience and resolve to meet these amazing little people where they are, and help them go as far as they can, as best as they’re able.
