{"id":4493,"date":"2011-03-04T03:49:04","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T10:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=4493"},"modified":"2011-03-04T03:49:04","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T10:49:04","slug":"being-strong-and-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/04\/being-strong-and-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Being strong and free"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the (awesome) comments that followed “What ifs and might-have-beens”<\/a> a question came up: Do troubled individuals gravitate toward strong partners, or do those partners become strong in the fire of hard relationships? <\/p>\n

Well, a bit of both, I’m sure. But the question got me thinking about strength and what it means — way beyond the boundaries of relationships. I think strength is something like courage: you don’t know you have it until it’s called upon. And when you’re exercising it, you don’t necessarily feel like a tower of strength. On the contrary, you may feel terrified, filled with self-doubt, and as if you’re being a complete jerk.<\/p>\n

But we have to find our strength and act on it because although you can be strong and not free, you can’t be free and not strong.<\/p>\n

In “What ifs” I mentioned two people I knew who had died young, a friend who died in her 20s and an old love who only made it into middle age. When I first knew them both, I saw them as strong — much stronger than I. But ultimately that girlfriend never had the strength to pull herself out of her sorrows and go on to the great life her intelligence and talent might have earned her. (Not entirely her fault; she had some hard strikes against her.) And him? Well, he was strong in his determination to go on drinking.<\/p>\n

I think I was about 40 before it finally dawned on me that I’m a strong person. And then I knew I’d had the potential all along. And in many ways had been acting on my strengths without consciously knowing I had them. <\/p>\n

I want to go back to that thought above: You can be strong and not free, but you can’t be free without being strong. Being free means, first of all, knowing who you are, what you want, and what you will — and emphatically won’t — put up with. Being free means saying “yes” to forging your own path, even when family and friends cal you a fool or a failure or tell you you’re disloyal. And OMG, you know all too well it means saying “no” and “no” and “no” to a thousand demands, a thousand violations. If you don’t have a strong inner core, you’ll never do what’s needed and you’ll never be free in this unfree world.<\/p>\n

Being strong also means having the strength of mind and character to know when to bend like the proverbial willow and when to stand like the proverbial oak. In either case, it means being “rooted” in your own kind of strength — whatever that is. It’s the strength of your individuality.<\/p>\n

Just like the hero who is scared out of his wits the whole time he’s earning the Medal of Honor or saving the baby from the fire, strong people don’t always feel strong. Or look strong to others. They just DO strong.<\/p>\n

Funny how so often we see strength where there really is none. The globe-topping ruler? He doesn’t feel safe until he imagines he’s controlling the actions of everybody else. That’s one funny kind of “strength.” The strongest guy in the world is probably writing poetry or building a log cabin somewhere, unheard-of and unheralded because he doesn’t need anybody feeding his ego.<\/p>\n

The rest of us, somewhere in between, might like to believe that “being strong” would make us feel as muscular and amazing as Superman or Superwoman. Instead, as often as not, being strong feels unpleasant because we have to assert ourselves when we might rather hang back. It feels awkward because we have to say no to people who might be perfectly well-intentioned. It’s painful because we have to make painful sacrifices (even as we know they’re not sacrifices at all if they take us closer to our goals or make us better people). Being strong might feel harrowingly wrenching when it means we must, though our own will, pull ourselves out of bad (but needed) jobs, toxic (but habit-forming) relationships, and ultimately pull ourselves out of our nice, cozy safety zones so we can experience life large and true and get to the end of life knowing we’ve done our damnedest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the (awesome) comments that followed “What ifs and might-have-beens” a question came up: Do troubled individuals gravitate toward strong partners, or do those partners become strong in the fire of hard relationships? Well, a bit of both, I’m sure. But the question got me thinking about strength and what it means — way beyond the boundaries of relationships. I think strength is something like courage: you don’t know you have it until it’s called upon. And when you’re exercising it, you don’t necessarily feel like a tower of strength. On the contrary, you may feel terrified, filled with self-doubt,…<\/p>\n

Continue readingBeing strong and free<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-and-spirit","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}