Strong? Strength?

A sculpture by Nirad in her De Witte Wolk Garden. Classic photo by Jeroen Rutten.

 Contemplation on the 2 words 'Strength' and 'Strong'

(What I reflect, contemplate and share here is from my own personal journey and reflection, from my own perspective. I have learnt to own and claim my own experiences. There is no right or wrong. It is my individual process. Thus, 'I' is used as from the practise I finally embodied through Authentic Movement. It happened in one of the sessions where I observed the shift of owning my experiences and looking at a distance while speaking.  My writing emerges as I ponder and contemplate for quite a long time over the years on a theme, word, image, question...  That is me, my gift, the innate contemplative nature is in me all along.)

I discovered I found myself reacting uncomfortably when I see the word 'Be Strong' or someone echoed a 'good intended' well-wishes, I felt uncomfortable reading this word. What does it hold? What does it imply? I asked myself.

What is wrong with being vulnerable?
Do I have to be strong all the time?

I come to see vulnerability is part of being fully human.
And I don't have to be strong all the time.
To be strong is telling myself - to be hard on myself. I sense so much of the masculine in it. I lean too much to the masculine in the past. As I embrace more of the feminine in myself - being vulnerable, kind, compassionate, gentle, tenderness, I soften, soften, yield to the softness and ease within.

​What about the word 'Strength'?

​I see a difference in the word 'Strength'.  Strength, for me, is gifts in each one of us.  I read a transcript of an interview of Mark Matousek on 'How to Heal & Awaken through Writing' in 'The Shift Network' recently. I believe in Synchronicity. There is no coincidence. As a seeker for years, I see how synchronicity moves.  I chanced upon his interview not a coincidence.  Mark shared a point which so resonated with me.  When we are on our healing journey, we tend to look at the negative sides all the time, and yet forgotten to also look at the positive side of us - our gifts.  Jeroen also once shared this wisdom. We focus so much on our weaknesses, we fail to see our strengths. 

​Shifting from a culture I used to come from where negativity was very much presence.  I ended up beating myself up, with my strong inner critic voice eating me up.  I took years of going through my own healing journey and process to finally come home to my own birth right, to wholeness in me.  I find myself in my professional work and in any kind of my work I did and do, I focus on strengths yet also looking at our tendency or unhealthy habits emerge (substitute of weakness. I don't see it as a weakness anymore. It is sometimes not necessary a weakness however a gift like hypersensitive. I embrace and loving every part of me.)  I own the gifts I have in me to see beyond, the beauty in a human, in a soul.  Grateful to Celine, my Authentic Movement Teacher, in one of the sessions, said, 'You can see it. Not everyone can see it.'  Then it dawned on me, 'Yes, it's so true that not everyone sees it.'

​The strength I also see and draw from is from my Beloved (God/Divine) within me.  Strength to me is courage to be myself, to be vulnerable, to embrace I am also a human, to show up, to speak my truth, my story, to be my true self.
​It also means to have courage to choose the life and path that resonates within that is loving to myself or to walk away and let go that is not serving me anymore.  

Yes, strength is also the courage to write, to show up, to share my soul's story here. (I love how Sera Beak said it.)