The long and short of strong women✍🏽

I oftentimes admire my own strength. I ask myself just how on this earth I hold myself together, because it has no doubt been a bumpy ride. The craziest, yet frequent highlight of my growth is how confidently and easily people tell me, ‘We know you are strong and will get through this,’ whenever I tell them I’m going through a low. You would think it is automatic, that Mantate will pull through it, because well, she always has. Sometimes I get frustrated, and would prefer to hear someone tell me that I am not the first nor the last to hit a low, and that this is how I can retaliate. I could do with a bit of specifics in the advice department, because I am this little girl trying to get a hang of things too. I almost always laugh when someone asks me how I do it, probably because I also wish to understand just how I have to this day managed to stay afloat- not that I have an alternative choice.

You see, there are pros and cons to being my kind of young women- the supposedly strong, assertive, self-sufficient, independent and driven females who refuse to let anything block them. We unconsciously build ourselves into an epitome of balance, poise, calm and control

Slowly but surely, society begins to expect that we have it all figured out. Probably that explains why everyone does not feel shaken when we are at a low, because they know us to figure our way out of things.

How I wish I could get them to understand that we are as human as they are- feeling! We experience brokenness, betrayal, fear, unease, frustration and a whole lot of other things that potentially drive humans to depression. I wish for them to understand just how fragile we ‘the strong’ are! I want for them to know that sometimes it gets so bad we cry our nights away and wake up to face a world that assumes we are in remarkable shape. 

I really wonder how the world misses the worry clouding our counternences or do we wear the mask of strength so well it slips past their goggle-eyes.

Everyday I see a strong girl/ woman attacked and I get heavily broken. Somehow because they are supposed to be strong, then they must grow a skin thick enough to repel the hate. Their sin being their choice to lead, to rise above mediocrity and to be women with goals.Oh, society is not kind towards those! I look at these women and ask myself how on this earth do I keep aspiring to be like them. Why am I choosing to be unkind to myself and walk in a path that places me at the mercy of uncaring, vicious societal expectations that achieve nothing except to break the ‘strong’?

Do I enjoy being attacked so much because I’m doing it for that little girl whose got big dreams too? Have I conformed to the cliche ‘do it for those that look up you?’ Or have I simply grown a thick skin and became unfeeling?None of the above explains the source of my strength and resilience!!!

That something else that shapes my strength and resilience will be detailed in my next blog post.

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