What gives you that last ounce of strength? What makes you reach for the impossible and win? What gives us the ability to tap that secret cache of power we all hold. What enables us to survive. To push through when the odds are so stacked against us it feels like hail in our faces. 
My friend, who looks after her aging father, told me yesterday that he fell and she caught him, he is 200 pounds, she is my size, she caught him and held him up for as long as it took for him to get his feet from out under the fall so she could lower him to the ground safely. She said this was about 6 or 7 minutes as he struggled but felt like an age. But she did not drop him. She found an untapped strength that both frightened and amazed her.
This strength is in all of us. Me picking up an 80 pound calf in a fury and carrying her to another pen. Working through the night for night after night pouring drops of fluid down their throats. Falling asleep in the truck parked outside the house but roaring out at the first sign of trouble. Your child climbs a stacked set of chairs in an unfamiliar hall and on pure instinct you spin and you cross an impossible expanse , timing a dive to catch him as she and the chairs inevitably fall. 
Once, a while ago now, I was walking from my neighbours house back to mine after our morning cup of tea. (This was at Massey University in New Zealand.) We both lived at the bottom of an orchard on the university campus. I was walking with a wee baby in my arms, one in my belly and one at my hip. It had rained for weeks and my neighbour and I had constructed a strange path of planks of wood through the mud between our houses. We had been walking this for days. Laughing. But the planks had become slippery from our muddy bare summer feet. And as I hurried past the chook house with this tiny wee baby in my arms and another trotting close behind. I fell. I fell hard. My neighbour saw me fall and as she rushed towards me she watched me woosh up into the air, out of control, screaming, spinning and falling from the crazy wooden bridge through the mud, holding the baby and knocking, then simultaneously scooping up, the toddler behind me. As she watched in horror she saw my body spin, my legs fly up in the air, my arms fly out losing and then catching both babies back out of the air, then landing on my back with a thump, hard, but with both of the babies safe on top of my body. My arms around them. Safe. I lay thereon my back, in pain and and laughing with relief.
She ran to us, her own baby bouncing on her hip, picking us up. We were weeping and laughing with relief, amazed that I had landed with both babies on top of me. That we were safe.
I started to bleed the next day. The baby tucked safe in my belly died a few days after. He was only tiny. It may have been the fall. I think so. Many of us have had miscarriages – some of us have had late ones – very few of us talk of them. Many of us have had more than one. I don’t know why we are not allowed to talk about it. To be allowed to get past the wall of a lost baby. Losing a baby holds a plethora of guilt and shock. I still feel like slapping the cold nurses. Slapping everyone. As I was letting my invisible baby go they were worried about my tears, where did I keep the brushes, your hair is such a mess, do you have someone to come and take you home. No, I said, there is no-one. My husband was working you see. And my hair is always a mess. I will call my neighbour. But we rise from it – this is part of the awful terrifying strength of women – especially wild women. Like us. Like you. And me. Full. Wild. Awful. Full of AWE. AweSome. Fuck off wild.
This is the strength of a woman and don’t you forget it. Don’t you ever forget it.
Inside us all is this superhuman strength. Men seem to be able to tap into this physical strength easily. This incredible timing. This dance. Women need to fight for it now. This free fall that is life. Relying on our bodies. We forget to rely on our bodies. Old or young. We all have the ability to grab the rungs that flash past us as we fall. All of us have the strength in our fingers to hold on and stop the fall. Then drag ourselves back up. Rung by rung.
Really, not only metaphorically.
We all have it. Dig in. Life is ahead. And don’t you ever fucking give up. Ever. Not EVER. 
Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. They are old.
Love your friend on the farm
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
82 responses to “What makes you strong?”
You need all that strength and instinct living on the farm 🙂
We all know your strength is legendary. Thank you for the reminder that we all have it in us, all the time.
Loved your kingfisher post!
Thank you!
Every time you save one of your furry babies, you save your own, again and again and again. I think your instinct to save is stronger than anyone I know. I have never had the privilege to be a mother, the Husband came into my life after cancer had wiped out my last remaining chance, so i cannot begin to comprehend your loss. I acknowledge your tiny lost one. He was real, he existed, and you were entitled to grieve as long as you needed and talk about him if you wanted to. But I know that strength. I remember what it feels like to hang on by my fingernails, to get myself to the bathroom on my hands and knees, to not eat for days because I could not get my poisoned body out of bed and there was no-one to do it for me. But we survive and move on. We don’t become our experiences, we rise above them and let them strengthen us. You have created something wonderful, the Farmy and the Fellowship. You live a continuous act of creation, and this is what you have become. And it’s WONDERFUL.
Hear hear.
I am agreeing with what Kate says.
I have only been reading your blog for a few weeks, but must say that you have an incredible amount of strength. So few understand what it takes to be part of a working farm. Your writing and photographs…off the charts! I love the way you defy the odds and don’t give up, most recently with the calves. Kudos. I have always said that our daughters, having grown up on a small farm, know what it’s like to have chores and responsibilities that have given them more character and the ability to work hard. When push comes to shove, women can do whatever needs to be done…some of them just don’t know it.
Good morning Lori. I so agree about chores. In the cuty, on the beach – anywhere – allowing your children to experience the pride of a job well done and tthe responsility of it is so important to growth.. c
i am sorry for your loss.
i cannot comprehend the loss of a child.
Thank you Ron, of course it was many many years ago and his loss has softened as though he has become an angel.. A comfort. A real angel – not an imaginary one.. c
Yes, been there. Miscarriages, falls, in the last few days of my father’s life he was delirious and tried to stand out of bed and crumpled full weight on me as I rushed to stop him. I levered my body and his against the bed and never understood how I lifted his 6’4″ 260 lb body back on that bed. I don’t think we think…maybe later…but we just do! Big love to you Celi, and to all of us.
Celi, I’m so sorry you experienced such a heartbreaking loss. I can’t imagine losing a child through miscarriage and I agree it needs to be spoken about more often. I see many women in clinic who have gone through such heartache and I agree that more support is needed. Thank you for always being the strong and inspiring person that you are and encouraging your readers to come into their own!
Oh Celi, what a blessing it is to have found you. Tears of gratitude this morning. xo
I too have a lost baby, the doctor said a girl, my little teeny daughter I wept for on the sofa for a week. And the falls, my Mama, a stout lady who had many falls in her later days, the last one fatal. I wasn’t there to break that one. Once she lost her balance & toppled backward knocking me over behind her & down we both went, me on my back & she was flat on her back on top of me.
I started to cry but she was calm & calmed me & I got us both up somehow & she didn’t break anything that time because I was there. All of these things make us physically strong & braver than we (or I anyway) knew. But Celi, you have a fierce courage & a powerful strength & all of us admire you so much for it. I hope nothing else has happened at The Farmy. But I guess we all know that things will happen there & keep reading & loving you & wishing for all your days to be lovely.
Thank you for speaking of this, the lost tiny one and the saved old one. All is well this morning.. nothing bad today.. it looks like being a stunning day too..
Wow! I needed those exact words right this minute. I have been a little battered and overwhelmed of late and that is the exact slap upside my head I needed! Thank you Celi
When my dad fell, the compression fracture to his spine made him nauseous, and he vomited for months. He might have a good day or two, then it would start again. One day when I was visiting, he wanted to sit outside. Old farmer that he was, he needed to be in the green. So I helped him down the couple of steps to his swinging bench. And when he had enough, I stayed behind him as he tried to get up those two steps. Too weak, he went down, but I was there. Like your friend, I caught him and held him until he could get his feet untangled, then eased him to the floor.
It’s painful to see someone who used to have all that strength, who could summon it at will, lose every bit of it. But he passed it on to us. And for that I’m grateful.
Reblogged this on bridgesburning and commented:
Words beyond words, strength beyond strength.
I’m so sorry for the loss of your sweet baby those years ago.
My youngest daughter just experienced her third miscarriage – yesterday. She is crushed, and my heart breaks for her. I, too, wanted to slap the nurse, and then the doctor for their flippant, dismissal attitude. Somehow they managed to make it harder…
Thank you for this post about strength.
Oh your poor daughter – That is so hard.. Again and again we get knocked down and it is so hard to pull yourself back up again each time – she will find the strength though – All our love.. c
Me too. Have lived through that. It the miscarriage, and the falling and catching. You are so good to bring them up, because ever since Menopause hit, I have not been feeling at all strong in that way, and it scares me and just adds to the imbalance of it all and wondering who I am a bit, now, in this new version. I know it’s in me, but I need to coax it back out.
No more coaxing Charlotte darling – bash your strength back onto the court with a tennis racket! c
Getting racket restrung. Will do!
Good girl. wack one out of the court!
Your strengths is there Charlotte and it will come to you when you need it. It is a different strengths combined with wisdom, compassion and understanding.
Thank you, I do feel it morphing into a different kind…
Wonderful post Celi. Thank you! xo