Sharon U.

My strength is in loving myself even when I don’t like myself, in loving others even when I don’t like them.

In a past life, aka 5-10+ years ago, I would have said that my strength is my loyalty. I’d always been loyal to a fault, in love relationships and friendships and jobs. Now, I implement healthy boundaries for myself without apology or guilt, without psychically harming the object of my boundary setting, and with clarity, openness, forgiveness, and love.

If you ask me today what makes me a strong woman, which is precisely what I’ve been asked which is why we’re here, I’d say that my answer is ever-changing, always shifting. There are so many moments when there is no answer. And when there is an answer, it’d probably look something like this:

My strength is in being able to be present in and for the stillness and silence of the pause between the pros and the cons of this human self, and in the pause between each breath.
My strength is in accepting whatever it is I think I am when I don’t feel like a strong woman.
My strength is in using it all as spiritual practice—the dull ache of being unsure of my life path or the sharp pain of heartbreak, and everything in between.
My strength is in loving myself even when I don’t like myself, in loving others even when I don’t like them.
My strength is in finding the cosmic humor of life in all of its histrionics and when things don’t go “my way.” (Spoiler alert: There is no “my” and there is no “way”; there just “is.”)
My strength is in sitting with it and then sitting with not being able to sit with it.
My strength is in stepping back and observing it all, in shifting my focus away from the drama and back to the breath.