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?”
Powerful message Celi, I know I will be reading it more than once. I have also forwarded it to my nieces, three strong young women…they need to hear this message too. Thank you!
And thank you for helping to empower your girls.. c
I had to take a moment before I could comment on this. First, I had to dry my tears. I “almost” lost my son when he was born and was treated very badly by the medical staff. They didn’t understand the depth of mother’s love. They threatened to tie me to my bed. I called in Angels and they came. “Literally”. The level of grief you suffer is inconsolable. I feel it in my heart. Your strength is vaster than the Universe. I know that strength as well. My children have seen it in action. We may be small women but our resolve is gargantuan. I’m not sure what moved you to write this one today but I’m glad I was here to read it. Thank you for opening your heart to us
Uffdah! I am late this morning having just gotten out of bed, It has been a very stressful and scary week at work , not sure how things will play out in the future. Thank you form reminding me of my strength, in the past, in the present, in the future.
My body never allowed me to have my own children, so I adopted an older boy and loved the children in my class as if they were my own. To this day, long beyond my childbearing days , it is the greatest loss I have experienced . I have helped my friends through abortions and miscarriages and I have felt their loss and pain in my own heart.
Celi, your angel is watching over you.
Very beautiful. And I agree, women are not ‘allowed’ to talk about their loss of a baby. Society cringes from it. We are also not allowed to talk about my issue in that I could never have a baby, period. I don’t know the feeling of loosing something like a child, because I only feel the loss of never knowing what it was to hold that child in my womb. Nor to ever be a mother. It is a devastating feeling of loss and emptiness I keep tucked into one of those corners of my mind and heart.
Hugs to all of you who have miscarried and the same to those who couldn’t conceive…….
Miss C, you are a wonder and a marvel. I can’t tell you this often enough. Thank you for this today. We are strong. We help each other be stronger still.
Thank you, Celi. I asked for an answer to a question today — minutes ago, actually — and this is the answer. Keep going! Stay strong! And so I shall.
You are such an amazing woman- and this is an amazing post- I am sharing this with my friends and family.
Celie you have a genius for giving everyone what they most need, when they need it. I have been giving in to self pity and depression lately, and your post is the necessary kick in the pants to me to get off my backside and live. Thank you a millionfold.
love,
ViV
I miscarried very early, alone, in a beach hut. I told no one. The strength comes, for me, from what those we love deserve. And, I do believe, from our supporting angels, those that say ‘reach!’ as you see a toddler start to cartwheel down a long flight of steps to the concrete below, catching her little arm just in time, and pulling her laughing little body back.
I’m like Viv,gives depressed. I too wonder what was it that prompted you to write such an inspired post? Of courage. I find myself paralyzed with dread of the future. My husband and I are now a two-legged table. No kids.. And when I read the Fellowship comments of their courage I feel so guilty. These women are quite extraordinary, giving of themselves–quite literally physically supporting their parents.
You are extraordinary too..
Celi, this post was meant for me today (as it was for so many of your readers). Many years ago, I lost a child at about 5 1/2 months along. I always believed it was a girl, but the doctor wouldn’t tell me. I had two sons already and went on to have two more healthy boys. I “bucked up” and didn’t grieve for that lost baby for a very long time. Now I’m facing a challenge that has taken me down, but reading this reminds me that this isn’t the first hurdle I’ve faced, and it won’t be the last. Thank you, thank you for the reminder that strength, both inner and physical, comes when we most need it.
There are no words Miss C.
My former husband and I adopted. While this child did not come from within me, she was mine, nonetheless. When I would feed her in the middle of the night, it was hard to believe there were two people in the room, I felt that close. I found a lovely framed saying, bought it and hung it on the wall:
Not flesh of my flesh nor bone of my bone
But nevertheless, still my own.
Never forget for a single minute:
You weren’t born under my heart but in it.
Fleur Conkling Heylinger
Much love,
Gayle
So beautiful.
Thank you, Celi! Thank you very much. I love that last photo…it so fits.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com