Spring & Strength // Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

⇻⇻ “Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.” ⇺⇺

Back in the cold dark of winter, I chose my word for the year — strength. (You can read about that here.) In the winter, strength is an easy concept. Here in the Northeast, winter is hard. If you’re not strong, you don’t survive; it’s that simple.

Now, however, it is spring. The air is sweet and warm. Everything is blooming. The earth is tender. It’s easy to forget about strength now. It’s easy to be soft and yielding.

But, as for me, I need to be strong now, more than ever. One of my truths, in becoming a mother, is that I deliberately took on the awesome responsibility of being an example to my children.

Although they are small, I know that they see and hear everything. Each word that is spoken in their presence is absorbed and, eventually, becomes a part of who they are. As their mother, I cannot protect them from how the world will treat them once they leave my arms. However, I can show them how I allow the world to treat me. I can show them what is acceptable, and what is not; what is healthy and what is not. I can be strong and I can show them how to be strong, too.

The world is full of strong people. Strength runs in their veins, it comes naturally. I am not one of those people. I was born soft. My natural inclination is to bend, to give, to suffer–rather than to ever inflict pain on another person. Call it what you will, a gift, a curse–it serves me well at times and it costs me dearly at others. But here’s what I know now, even those of us who are not “born strong” have the full potential to become strong.

⇻⇻ Strength can be learned. ⇺⇺

In a couple of weeks, I will be thirty three. It reminds me to think of my Taurus heart. Indeed, I am loyal to a fault, and stubborn as they come — but within me, too, there is the strength of a bull. I spent thirty three years becoming strong. Now I am going to own it. For my children and for myself, too.