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?”
I have no words, you’ve said it all. Thank you miss c for saying the right words at just the right time. Sending you a little extra strength in case it ever comes in handy.
Thank you Tanya, I shall put it in my pocket.. love love.. c
I have no words either C. This was such a powerful post, I could never articulate my thoughts of it, except to just say thank-you, thank-you. xoxo~C.
You my dear are a bright star .. Much wisdom, with a shining light that touches all. Thank you
Simply gorgeous. You *are* incredibly strong. But even the strongest face trials that aren’t easily surmounted.
I am so sorry for the loss of your tiny son. Some of my girlfriends who’ve had miscarriages have said exactly the same, if less poetically. Losing a child, a womb-companion, the life one has nurtured *inside* one’s own body, loved with heart and soul—that is a tremendous loss. And it’s not something you “just get over.” Ever.
So I admire the additional strength you show when you so honestly and generously share your life with us in these ways. It gives us strength, in turn, as I’m sure you know. God knows I hope you’re gifted with people share this kind of grace with you in abundance; the lioness must be nourished and cherished as well, to keep up *her* strength.
Admiringly, and with love as always.
Kath
Your comment has brought me pause. Because there is no-one here like that. Maybe that is why I have found the fellowship. You and the fellowship are my nourishment.
You’ve spoken very wise today, Celi. – And so deep. First I have to admit that I never ever experienced that what you did: Miscarriages. I have no children at all. But my mother did experience miscarriages, my sister too. –
I mean there’s no need for guilt in loosing a child. It is painful, very painful, it hurts so much. But there’s no guilt, nobody can be blamed for it. It’s life and it happens. No one knows why, no one knows the sense of it, but it happens. – There is and must be of course time for grief, tears, pain, rage, all that, but no guilt. Please. – What I feel awful and what hurts deeply and what still does exist today are that cold, uncomprehending and ruthless sisters and medics. In that way life has not changed much.
But maybe it has changed in another way I think: It is mostly allowed today to grieve or to mourn and get comfort from what side ever, relatives or friends (except hospital staff). Lately I read the bio of Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter Vicky, who has lived abroad because she’s been married to German prince Frederick. They had an agreement that she should write a daily letter to her mother (about 4,000 of them are kept). Young Victoria gave birth to eight children, and lost two of them at a very young age. The first one she lost at an age of 21 month due to meningitis. The parents were both in deepest mourning about that loss but did not get any comfort from their parents of both sides. Through the letters it is handed down, that Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter back and admonished her, that there was no reason for grieving so much, and that the loss of a child is nothing compared to the loss of one’s husband. Whom she herself had lost five years earlier. Hard for the poor daughter, very hard. And her mother-in-law pushed her just as heartless to get back to her public duties very soon. I felt so sorry for that young mother, but she was such a strong woman. A second son of her died of diphtheria at the age of eleven, what left both parents in a long lasting state of shock and depression. It is not said however whether they felt guilty too.
I’ve read all comments. Thank you all. I am not that strong. No way. Maybe for others yes, but not for myself. Thank you Celi for telling us your remarkable story and thoughts today. You are so great. Rise like a phoenix…..
I’m sorry you lost that wee babe, and to the others of you here that have also lost a little one….blessings. My first experience of the cruelty of doctors around miscarriage was as a hospital social worker, and a doctor telling me I wasn’t to go near his patient and make a big deal about her loss, as ” it was no different to having a piece of rotten fruit, and it needed to be got rid of”. He copped the full force of my fury, and was made to understand in no uncertain term that hewouldn’t be telling me how to do my job….he ended up being my biggest supporter with other doctors, encouraging them to let me wok with their patients. I was so appalled and saddened by the attempts to make baby losses a non-event, I encouraged …harangued,pestered, shouted at…..the hospital board to set aside some land and make a memorial garden, and although some of those babies were too tiny to have a funeral, I arranged that the local ministers/priest each took a turn to hold a memorial service once a for all the lost babies. Families could have a plaque made if they wished, or plant a shrub or tree, and they always had somewhere to go back to, to grieve and remember if they needed to. I did the same in the next two hospitals I worked in, and facilitated Aboriginal women getting their babies home to their lands to be “taken care of” in the traditional way, often illegally, as there are clear regulations and laws about what should happen to term still-born babies in particular. …and carrying in a shoe-box on the front seat of the hospital car to a remote destination would’ve been frowned on. I felt so privileged to work with all these women, and give them an opportunity to celebrate their babies and grieve openly as well. I haven’t lost a baby to miscarriage, but I know the pain of loss through adoption…it’s all the same, our babies and our hopes and dreams for them are gone from us.
Dear Nanette, I just came across your beautiful letter here and had to send you a massive cyber-hug, one Fellowship member to another. You are an angel to all of the parents whom you’ve helped through their times of deep grief, and to the hospital carers and staff and ministers who have needed to be shown the way to respect and honor the living and the dead as they deserve. I thank you on their behalf—on behalf of *all* of us, as we each benefit from a more humane and compassionate world as you help to make it.
Kathryn
You never cease to amaze me Celi, your powerful message will resonate with so many of us.
Powerful, poignant and inspiring… When you write about it, when we think about it, we live through, survive, endure, overcome, accomplish many things, we need to speak them all, sometimes mourn them, sometimes celebrate them and who we are individually and collectively. That strength you speak of is wild woman super hero power and we, all of us are amazing.
Thank you, Celi, for this post. I have been reminded recently of the strength it takes some days to get one foot in front of the other and manage to find the strength to carry on and to help others in our lives to carry on. I think that we women frequently have more practice in being strong than men do, emotionally, as I have seen it in my own life many times. Men call on physical strength very easily and women can call on that as well, but i think that we mostly call on our emotional strength first.
I, too, have lost babies, and almost lost my younger son twice. And we fight for our farm families as hard as we fight for our human children and loved ones! Thank you for sharing this part of your life with us!
Reblogged this on Dana Ellington Myles, MAPW and commented:
For all women and the men who need to understand…
One of the most touching posts from a blogger I admire.
You are such a force; my sorrow for your loss. Your message arrived as I opened my computer for the first time today, but in the afternoon. I have had zilch energy the past few days and getting close to 77. My wonderful housemate is away taking care of business,and I am trying to lighten her load. Am honoring my condition, but I hear you. We all so want to be of purpose, to contribute, it’s hard some days. What a wonderful group this is. Love to all, esther
I lost a baby and while the hurt is long gone I can still recall that day. Sometimes I do wonder what s/he would’ve been like. Women are tough and you definitely are!
‘Opportunity cost of time’ has dictated my absence from many favourite posts lately. I don’t miss yours . . . Perchance the reason can be summed up by the words and paragraphs in your writing today! We don’t ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ on this blog: we say what we feel we have to and need to and know that at least a few have been thru’ the same, oft silently, and know just what we are talking about . . . . for that ‘thank you’ . . .
Thank you Eha Mama – I hope you are well today. c
Reblogged this on Aquila's Place and commented:
This is a magnificent piece. I make sure to stay up to date reading this blog, Celi is a wonderful writer and human being.
There is that powerful strength in each of us, but she said it better than I could. Read it, follow her blog. Read the comments. The Fellowship is just as incredible.
Love love.. c
Thanks for this one, Celi. It was something I needed to see today.