Discovering the Meaning of Strength
The act of writing a memoir serves as a personal looking glass into the depth of your own soul. The choice to share one’s soul is an act of vulnerability. As a writer working through the lived experiences of my own memoir, I am treading water in a sea of vulnerability each day, and I ask your permission to share a piece of my story that is still as raw and exposed as the wound it is.
First, I have a confession. I cry – often. It wasn’t always that way, but as I gathered more life experiences, my threshold for triggering tears seemed to decrease below society’s norms. Tears became how I absorbed experiences that both delighted me and cut me to the bone. I cry when I hear a song that plucks at my heartstrings. I cry during America’s Got Talent and sappy movies. I cry while reading the countless memoirs I have consumed over the years, and I choke up when the Blue Angels fly overhead or when a line of soldiers salute, or I see one of those ASPCA infomercials. I cry when I look at photos of beloved pets I’d lost – I even cried during my wedding vows.
I used to wish I could be “stronger” in moments that made me cry. However, it wasn’t until I faced the most devastating trial of my life that I started to understand that crying is not at all correlated with weakness. In fact, it might be the greatest strength we have.
Asking for Strength from Others
A few years ago, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. Yes, I cried at the news; however, initially, the road was new and challenging but positive. She lost her hair and a little weight, but she sailed through the treatments, and her body responded well to the chemotherapy. I was with her, and I cried from time to time, but she was strong, so I was strong.
Then the cancer spread to her brain. Again, she went through treatment and besides a few minor side effects, she remained her active, ever-moving self. She was still strong, so I was still strong.
Then the game changed. She had a few seizures, started losing sight in one of her eyes, and her short-term memory faded. She fell and cracked her pelvis and wrist and slowly started getting physically weaker. But any decline in her health was still slow, and time seemed to be on my side. My belief that she was strong and invincible was my companion and comfort, and I remained upbeat and positive. Very few tears fell from my eyes during this time. I thought my stoic nature was my badge of strength.
Then it all got very real. She was hospitalized, and medical jargon and words I didn’t understand were hurled at my brain like rapid-fire fastballs. Doctors surmised and guessed what might be wrong with my mom. Something about blood flow being decreased to her spleen. Or was it her gut? Was that the cause of her immense, radiating pain? Without a firm diagnosis, she went home. We all wanted her to get better, gain weight, take her pile of pills, and fight to recuperate. We thought our strength would somehow infuse itself into her if we just pushed hard enough.
She just wanted to sleep.
Her actions felt confusing and conflicting with our wishes for her. I wanted her to be strong so that I could be strong. I needed her to be strong so that I could be strong.
I left my parents’ home and boarded a flight back to my home in LA. As the plane ascended in the air, I panicked. I could no longer hold back the tears. They flowed in heaping globs from my eyes. I pretended to stare out the window, wiping them away as fast as I could, until the paper napkin in my hand was a wad of disintegrating pulp. I didn’t make eye contact with my seatmate, but I am guessing they were worried, unsure what was wrong or what I might do.
I did not feel strong. I felt small and weak and judged. I was crying, after all. Weakness was seeping out of me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I just wanted to land, get right back on the plane, and fly back to my mom. Absorb her strength so I could remain strong too.
Finding Strength from Within
The next day, I got back on a plane and ran back to her. But she was tired and didn’t have a lot of strength to give me. She needed every ounce of it for herself, so I started to dig into my reserves. Sometimes you don’t even know you have reserves until you begin to dig deeper and deeper. And there is it, like gold, nestled deep within you.
She would be re-admitted to the hospital days later for emergency surgery to resect part of her bowel; it was a big surgery, mostly because they didn’t know the extent of the hole in her gut. I was at the airport when I got the call from my dad. He started the conversation as he always did, “Hi sweetie. Mom’s ok. Everything is ok. But I want to let you know…” and he proceeded to tell me she was admitted to the hospital at 3 a.m. and she was going into surgery. As I listened, my stomach lurched, and I started to feel flush in the face. I was in line at a coffee shop getting an americano and blueberry muffin. I abandoned my order and quickly walked to the nearest nook where I could cry unnoticed. I felt broken and helpless and weak and scared. And despite his pleas not to worry, I couldn’t control that. I wasn’t ready to lose my mom, and worse, I was headed in the wrong direction on my upcoming flight.
After the surgery, she had tubes coming up through her nose and out of her abdomen, sucking oozy liquid from her gut and her abdominal wound. At least, that is what I was told. I wasn’t there. I was in the wrong city at the wrong time. Still, the manta continued every time I spoke to or exchanged texts with my dad. “don’t worry. mom’s doing ok. Everything is ok.” I assumed the role assigned to me: I was the gooey-hearted daughter. I needed to be protected from the truth because I wasn’t strong enough to hear it.
My dad recounted a story to me one evening as I asked more probing questions about my mom. He told me that when I was young, I saw a sign that the whales were dying, and I insisted on emptying my piggy bank into the donation bin to save them. (side note: it turns out that “save the whales” is an incredibly effective slogan for young, gooey-hearted children). “You have always wanted to save everyone and every creature,” he said to me.
It’s true. I did, I do and I always will. And yes, I cry, probably more than most people. I think my dad, like many people in my life, sees my tears as a weakness; like I am breakable and can’t handle the hard edges of life.
But weak, I am not (I say in my best Yoda voice). I am loving, compassionate, kind, empathetic, gooey AND strong. Turns out, I have a gooey, loving lion heart. I am all of it rolled into one. And, I know there are many people like me who have felt little and weak because they have emotions clearly displayed on their shirtsleeve – along with some smeared mascara.
I am realizing that I can’t always find the words to verbalize my strength and defend my courage in the moment, and therefore, it isn’t always shown or known in an overt sense. But, I hope in these hard months ahead, as my mom navigates her end of life, that my actions will show my loved ones what fierce, unyielding, ooey-gooey, lion-hearted love looks like – and that I am stronger than they gave me credit for.
Yours till butter flies,
Jo
