Enduring Strength

When Pushing Through Isn't Cutting It

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When I was a young girl, I was a fast runner, able to outpace all the boys. I was a string bean of a girl. My grandpa would tease me and always say I was too skinny. But when I turned fourteen, puberty hit and I felt like my body was betraying me. I got hips and breasts. My legs became thicker and more muscular. I didn’t know how to exist in this new body that took up more space. I tried everything I could to cover up what I was becoming with baggy t-shirts and loose Levis.

In 8th grade some friends of mine decided to join the track team so I joined too. But at track practice I missed my old body. I had lost my speed and agility. I wasn’t able to keep up with my friends which was the main reason for joining. Then one day all of the girls were led to the weight room. I had never seen an actual weight room before. Back then you never heard about girls lifting weights. I can still remember the smell of sweat mixed with metal mixed with the rubber of the floor mats. 

None of the other girls liked the days we had to weight train. But I on the other hand felt like the contents of that room held everything that had been missing in my life. I loved how lifting weights made me feel like I was once again in my body and in control. I found power not through being skinny and fast but through being strong. I know everyone says girls / women can’t bulk but I did. I embraced the ten pounds of muscle I put on over the next three years and jumping became my new superpower.

For the dark times ahead we are going to need to call upon our strength. The strength to sustain us on the long trek ahead. Yes the blow has taken the breath out of us but there is no time for spiraling. We all knew this might be coming. On some level we have always known. Enduring strength is what we will need to keep walking, to keep fighting but also to protect each other and to help each other get back up when the other shoe drops and keeps on dropping. 

Strength for me has always come from the literal act of physically building muscle in my body. Yes I like seeing my muscles get bigger in the mirror. I also like seeing the amount of weight I can lift increase, showing me that I am indeed getting stronger. But lifting weights is about more than ego and health for me. It has been a lifeline, a place to put my anger, a place I can show up as my messy sweaty self. Henry Rollins and I have this in common, it is my meditation. Weight training is proof that I can do hard work. The physical reminder that I am not weak. Not on the inside or on the outside. And I have called upon this strength many times to get through the bleakest parts of my life. (Which you can read about here.)

There is a part of all this weightlifting that gets me in trouble. It's an old part of me that is still very much attached to the construct that keeps me down. The part that believes I am not enough, that I don’t have value, that I am inherently weak and always will be. It's the nagging voice in my head that doesn't like rest days and rarely takes them. That thinks more is always more. That pushes through pain when it's not the kind of pain one should push through. Which brings me to where I am right now. Injured. 

Don't get me wrong, I like this part of me. I call her my badass. She pushes me to question my limits and doesn't back away from doing very hard things. But she also doesn't know when to stop. This part of me doesn't yet get that strength also comes from recovery. She doesn’t understand that rest doesn’t equate to weakness. That there has to be gas in the tank. Otherwise all the hard work I have put in will recede as it takes me months to nurse an injury putting me right back at the beginning. 

Strength to live in marathon dark times, I now know first hand, has two equally important parts. Pushing and listening. If I had listened to the quieter yet wiser voice underneath my loud mouthy badass I would have heard a wise woman telling me to take a day off. And then take another day off. I would have heard her say that maybe it was time to switch up my training as I <gasp> age. That intensity has all different flavors, not just the one my badass has gotten really good at.

We (women especially) have to learn how to stop just pushing through so that we can get even stronger and keep on trucking. To fight? Maybe. To support each other? Definitely. It is more important than ever that all of our hard work is sustainable so that we are still standing on the other side. Because there will be another side and we can't all just be puddles when we get there. Otherwise what was all of this pushing for?

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I am making another pitch to get you to pick up those dumbbells. And you can be guaranteed there will be more pitches coming. But I am also asking you to listen to your wise self underneath your badass. I am assuming you are a badass because you showed up here to read this. I am also assuming you have pushed through so many walls in your life to become the badass that you are. 

Being a badass doesn't have to mean that you have survived copious amounts of emotional trauma. Or that you powerlift at the gym. Maybe you are a workaholic and spend long hours grinding away at the office. Maybe you are a martyr mom who cuts her children’s sandwiches into Pinterest pandas to put into their bento box school lunches. In whatever way you have been pushing, I’m here to tell you, it’s just another way we keep ourselves down. And weak. And controlled by the patriarchy. 

I used to take a spin class when I lived in Philadelphia. There was a drill sergeant of an instructor who was infamous for playing death metal, who doled out a special flare of torture in his classes. If you didn't obey him and turn up the resistance on your spin bike to the level he shouted out, he would get off his bike, walk over to you and do it himself. He would then add even more resistance while he screamed in your face. The class was abusive. Yet every single week his class was full. Of women. It didn't hurt that he would remove his shirt halfway through to reveal his chiseled chest, washboard abs, and rectangular triceps. But this is the level of intensity we all think we need.The level of abuse we all continue to sign up for or deserve.

We need to throw out this idea that pushing harder is always what is required of us. Is it going to be quick? No. Is it going to be easy? No. This will be the hardest fucking thing we quit doing because if we really look at ourselves, we do what we do because we are getting some feeling of value from it. Some satisfaction that killing ourselves doing X makes us enough. It buys us the space we take up in the world.

But it's important for our survival, it's important for our strength, that we stop the abuse. Like this song says, we can't just push at our max while we scream at ourselves to do more. The patriarchy is built on the assumption that we will continue to hate ourselves, hate on each other, and remain weak. Which leaves us to only push harder when we fall short. Alone. That's when implosion occurs. Which looks like injury, illness, depression, you name it. Which the patriarchy is planning on. 

We need these bodies. To love, to help, to fight. Our bodies are our ticket to staying in the game as long as we can. And the longer we stay, the longer we get to play and be of service. I want to make it clear this is not about aesthetics. The media and marketing dollars keep us all tied up in the aesthetic loop, distracted. The message we ingest is that we will be enough when we look like enough. This can be achieved by staying young. Staying skinny or getting whatever body obsession is on trend currently, like having a big dumpy. Or maybe we just need to buy more shit to make us feel better about not being enough or doing enough to earn the space we take up. 

This is a fucked system. I propose that we lift weights as a way of fighting back. That we take up more space. What I am talking about here is taking care of bodies without putting limits on ourselves because of our gender or age. We need to stop listening to the outside voices and tune into what it is going to take to keep going. Let’s smash some stereotypes while we are at it. Women can’t be strong? Check out this boxing match from Friday night, I think these women prove otherwise.  

I don’t lift weights because I want to look a certain way. I lift weights so I can live a certain way. I had my last child at 42 years old. If you do the math, but please don’t, I am going to be a much older grandparent than most. I want to be able to sit on the floor and play with my grandchildren. I want to be able to catch myself when I fall. I also want to compete in some powerlifting competitions in the 70+ bracket. 

We are about to step into a long dark cold tunnel and more is required of us than just being badasses. It is time to also be wise. Next time you hear your badass screaming in your ear, turning up the resistance, dangling the carrot of the shirt coming off, listen even harder. Do you hear another voice? Tell your badass that you appreciate her service, that she will be called upon for more badass things in the future, but for just one moment she needs to be quiet. Then you will hear her. The wise woman who asks you what you need to keep going. 

Call on your badass to keep walking. To pick up the dumbbells for the first time even though you are afraid. But call on your wiser one to calm your nerves. She will keep you from panic, injury, and burn out. We must sustain. We must listen. We must get stronger and not reinforce the myth that we are inherently weak, designed for implosion. Because I am here to tell you there is no limit to our strength. And it doesn’t come from just pushing through to exhaustion. It also comes from being wise. 

Stay strong and lift dumbbells.