Inevitably if you breath air and live life, you have at one point  been told “you are so much stronger than me” or my favorite “I don’t know how you do it”.  There is nothing wrong with praising someone for what you see as their strengths, but have you ever considered that to them their strength may be weakness? Maybe they don’t want to be strong or told how well they are handling a situation.  Maybe they just need to feel “normal”. To feel like anyone placed in their same position would bear the same strength and would be able to handle what life has thrown at them.

     I have had my fair share of life throwing “strength builders” my way and most of the time I can handle the presumed encouraging “you’re stronger than me” statements.  Then there are days like today where I just want to scream and shout and swear to the next person who wants to tell me how “strong” I am.  I don’t want to be strong, I want to curl up and cry until I am dehydrated. I want to wail from the depths of my soul how unjust life can be.  

     How do we (the supposed strong) do it? How do we get up each day, put a smile on our faces and walk with our heads held high?  How do you keep people from seeing that you lost your mother, that your husband is cheating, that your child you’re carrying won’t live for more than five minutes after his birth,  that you have no trust of men because you were abused as a child?  These are real life scenarios, they are burdens that people carry and encounter daily.  I don’t think any of the people in my scenarios feel encouraged by your word of ” I couldn’t do it” or “you’re so much stronger than I am”  I bet they don’t feel strong, I bet the feel like they are fighting to get through each day. That the smile on their faces aren’t masks they are hiding behind, but instead a way of learning to live for today.

      You can only spend so much time screaming, weeping, and wailing.  Feeling sorry for yourself is not going to change the realities of your situation.  You’ve got two choices you can become the ugly, sub human, hurt, dark individual who only sees the negative or you can find your “strength” and become the individual who has hope, love, belief, and faith that today will be a good day and bring you one day further from the hurts of yesterday.  So now I want you to ask yourself, am I still stronger than you are?