[Content warning: talk of body image toward the end.]
I’m still thinking about Strength.
I know there’s so much more for me to unravel, so much more for me to excavate around this concept. I have always been so drawn to the Strength card in tarot with its tender, patient portrayal of strength as awareness and kindness. But I’m realizing that the sort of strength pictured on that card has always felt very idealized and slightly unrealistic for my own life. I’ve always thought of that strength as something far off in the future, something I’m always moving toward but never truly given permission to experience. I’ve never been that woman lovingly clasping the lion’s jaws. She’s always who I aspire to be but never truly am.
Last week, I had a moment of realization while reading Returning Home to Our Bodies by Abigail Rose Clarke. The book focuses on the practice of somatic embodiment and what that can mean for social change, physical change, and finding safety and peace in our bodies and our environment. I’m really enjoying the book, partly because Abigail Rose Clarke talks a lot about words and etymology and you all know I’m a sucker for that.
In her book, Clarke writes, “we don’t have to choose between soft and strong.”
Oh, what words! Such simple words and yet, have I ever truly let myself hear these words? We do not have to choose between soft and strong.
Clarke goes on, referencing “soft alertness.” She explains that, “the goal, if we are to name one, is to have a body and mind that can respond to the world as necessary, but not stay stuck in any one response. The practice, as I hold it, is to imbue any response with as much softness as I can muster, even when ferocity is required.”
Since reading this, I’ve been thinking about Clarke’s words a great deal. I’ve realized that there is a great chasm between the words soft and strong in my mind. And I wonder, I do, whether you’ve experienced this chasm as well?
As I said above, no matter how much I may feel drawn to the Strength card in tarot I’ve never felt that I could actually inhabit that sort of strength. I’ve never been able to see myself in the card, although I’ve wanted, desperately, to do so. And I think this might be because I have been conditioned by the world to believe that to be soft and to be strong is impossible.
I am 37 years old and for most of my life, I have thought that soft and strong were opposites.
As someone who loves words and investigates them for work and for pleasure, it feels strange to admit this. Sure, antonyms are interesting, but I’ve spent very little time exploring them. I’m more fascinated by synonyms. And yet, I’ve somehow believed this whole time that soft and strong were antonyms! That it was impossible to experience one while experiencing the other!
Because, don’t get me wrong—I can be soft. I spend a lot of time being soft. And, also—I can be strong (I hope I spend a lot of time being strong as well, but I feel less confidence in claiming this). But this whole time I very firmly believed that I could not be soft and be strong at the same time.
I know that the human brain likes categories. It tends to want to operate in binaries. For thousands of years this has kept humans safe and helped them survive because it allows us to differentiate danger from safety, friend from foe. But it can be difficult to recognize that the human brain is not everything. Just because we tend toward binaries doesn’t mean that those binaries, those categories, truly exist in modern reality. I’ve been trying to explore this instinct toward binary thinking within myself and attempt to challenge it when I can. But again, this practice requires softness, flexibility, and resilience.
And here’s the aha moment. The chef’s kiss of realizations. Folks, I created a whole deck on the concept of resilience. I researched the etymology of the word (briefly, very much simplified, from the Latin resilire which means “to jump back or return”). I designed 83 cards that interweave in an admittedly complicated resilience system. And till now it has never struck me how the concept of resilience is a perfect example of this idea of soft and strong.
Whenever I give book talks, workshops, or readings with the deck I typically begin by defining resilience. The example I most often use for this is TREES. A tree has the ability to bend in the wind but not break. This, I say, is a perfect example of resilience.
But in order for that tree to be able to bend in the wind it has to be soft. It has to be soft.
So where am I going with this? Why does this feel so important, so vital to me right now?
Perhaps because I feel a lot of shame with the idea of softness. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching recently and I’ve realized that I’ve internalized the idea—taught by our society, I know—to think that strong is better than soft. That anything soft is somehow inferior to that which is strong.
And this is especially relevant to my relationship with my body.
For so long, perhaps my whole life, I’ve hated the soft parts of my body. Actively hated them. I’ve struggled to believe that even though I have soft parts I am still worthy. Of what, you might ask? Ah, the ridiculous concept of “worthiness”. The answer is never clear.
So the idea that I can teach myself that strong is soft, feels revolutionary. It feels like grace. It feels like home. And of course I know there is so much more to explore and so much more to learn. And change doesn’t happen overnight. But perhaps this is a start toward loving myself. I never have loved myself, you see. Never.
And if I must deal in opposites, must deal in antonyms, perhaps the real antonym to both soft and strong is rigid.
As I write this, I’m just now pausing to check my email. There’s a “Sunday meditation” email I never subscribed to that inexplicably appears in my inbox every Sunday morning. I think the mysterious sender might be from Buffalo because often the accompanying photos feature Buffalo landscapes.
Today’s post includes a quote by Surya Das:
You don’t need to see different things,
but rather to see things differently.
Anyway, thanks for being here. Forgive me if this post isn’t as polished as it could be. I feel very deeply about this and this makes my earnestness clumsy.
I love you.