“I want all women to put down the badge of strength and recognize the value in vulnerability. Your strength is there.”
-Stephanie D. Pearson-Davis
I wanted to write this thoughtful piece about how I used to be like Beth. Beth: funny, intelligent, delightful, resilient, clever, a mother, dependable, intercessor, empathetic, resourceful, resentful, scared, sad, angry, emotionally stunted, self-sacrificing, a wife, loyal, courageous, goal oriented, and a dream deferrer… that’s Beth.
Look at all those wonderful qualities interspersed with those spirit suppressing attributes. I wanted to tell you that I used to be like that. I would love to proclaim that I am delivered from putting myself at the back of every line I get in. If I could say those things, I wouldn’t have to own all the negative shit in the middle of all those nice qualities, but that would be a lie. I am Beth… and too much of this… is us.
This is us…
When the water is at our nostrils, we kick our legs to keep the ones we are holding from getting wet. We’ve even learned how to take in a little water if necessary. We’re so good at it too. The people we’re holding don’t even know we’re drowning beneath their weight. Most of them don’t even realize we’re holding them up. It’s not all on them either because we.. us… the strong ones; we don’t want our people to feel like a burden.
I don’t keep score. I am not running a tab. I don’t feel used. I am a lover and a giver. My gifts are both tangible and intangible. We’re just doing the job we’ve given ourselves. They need us and well— This is us.
It’s what the strong ones do.
In all of my transparency here, there is still so much of me that is private. It’s hard for me to write about Beth and sometimes it’s hard to watch her on tv. When I see Beth repeatedly betray her best interests; I see my old and evolved self. Her boss told her, in the course of terminating her employment, she’s the least valuable person on the team. The boss talking about her value? I felt that so hard. The truth is, Beth makes everything better; except herself. But how can anyone else recognize your value when you don’t? Why are you an afterthought?
As I watched the show Tuesday I urgently whispered, “Say something, Beth… Tell Randall you need him, Beth. Admit that your heart is broken, Beth.” I want her to know it is ok to need. I want all women to put down the badge of strength and recognize the value in vulnerability. Your strength is there.
I have wasted too much of my life in silent despair. Insisting that painful things didn’t hurt me. Not wanting to see my pain transferred to people who loved me. I just swallowed it… over and over again. Battered pieces of me gathered in the recesses of my mind and heart like brooms and mops in a closet. I am fighting everyday to be more than a dust pan collecting the broken pieces of other people. Because unlearning a validated lifetime of self sacrificing behavior is WORK.
We need to re-contextualize strength. Like, what does it even mean to be “the strong one”?
Because it is NOT the absence of fear or pain or desire or disappointment. I believe that we have, in error, taken a patriarchal view of strength and applied it to our emotional sensibilities in an effort to make us appear less weak. They told us that strength and weakness cannot dwell in the same space. Men, for too long, set the expectation for tolerable behavior for women. Women are killing themselves to meet it. And women are cosigning this behavior. It must stop.
I am trying to negotiate an understanding of literal strength, figurative strength and the reality of my actual strength. What does it look like? What does it feel like? How have I previously misunderstood and in turn misrepresented strength. I am currently being forced to confront these feelings of wanting to be strong, solvent and also having to embrace that pieces of me breaking.
This is new territory for me. I am your big sister’s favorite big sister. Haha… I take care of people. I am the one they call. I am their person. When life gets gets difficult or really great… When the rent is due or the new job comes through or the kids are misbehaving or the husband is acting a fool or when the job doesn’t value you or when America the beautiful is acting unpretty— I am here.
When I hear weariness in a voice… A social media post feels off or too many calls go unanswered. I am here. I’m not telling you this because I want a pat on the back. Though I am an awesome person to have on your team. I give and I receive. I’m writing these words because too often I had my pulse on the heart of everyone, except myself.
I want you to check yourself.
I’ve grown so much, but when I see Beth on televison; I also see myself. Maybe that’s why she is my favorite character. I mean we all love Randall. Sterling K. Brown makes that man so fine and smart and empathetic. Buuuut if you’re paying attention you know the only reason Randall can be Randall is because Beth is Beth.
Beth is in the middle of the ocean, treading water and Randall is standing on her shoulders.
She has suppressed herself to the degree that maybe Beth isn’t really Beth… not anymore. Maybe the “real" Beth has taken a recess. That woman who was Beth before she was called wife or mother… She’s taking a break. She’s compartmentalized the ambitious, curious, deservedly wanting part of herself. It's locked away. I just believe if we really understood how difficult and painful it is to finally see yourself in that box; we would never create it and we would certainly never get in it.
We often put ourselves away when we become wives and mothers. I mean there’s so much commentary on how to do those things. So much emphasis on being a woman… the right kind of woman; right? But no one is telling women how to be a woman just so you can be whole. They’re telling you how to be a woman so you can be someone’s better half. ‘Scuse me ma’am and sir— I was a whole me when I met him.
Let me quit.
Everybody and their momma has a how to catch a husband ideology. Once you get him, the world wants to tell you how quickly a baby should come. And after ALL that; when the baby comes here comes the peanut gallery telling you how not to fuck up your child. My word!!! But who WHO is telling you, encouraging you to be you. Who’s saying no matter what— Never let YOU go! Aren’t you worth it? Aren’t you enough?
This is why we have to intentionally raise our daughters, nieces, cousins and mentees to be chasing after themselves and not another single soul. Buy them journals. Teach them about reflection. Encourage them to laugh and to cry. We have a responsibility to those who come after us. We know better. Now we have to do better.
We have to identify ourselves as the source and reclaim our power. We cannot continue to hold other people together while we fall apart. I am a helper, a doer, a problem solver. These things about me will never change. Still, there are so many other parts of me that deserve my kindling. I don’t want to be strong anymore; I wanna be whole. When shit hurts me I’m gonna say, OUCH! I am my primary responsibility. Being there for everybody else cannot come at the expense of me. We cannot be so busy reflecting the light of the folks we love that we forget the spark in us.
There’s a wild fire in me. I’m gonna let it burn. What about you?
I’m not here because I’m an expert. I’m here because I have experiences.” -Stephanie