The illusion of toughness gets in the way of self-care. I often think of how my understanding of my “margin for error” has just been insanely optimistic. At 78 years of age, I have learned that we never know what is spilled milk and what is an irretrievable error.

learning the self

The car passing on ice cutting off a semi flips and only through the skill and intent of the professional driver do we survive spinnimg around, smashing multiple times into the guard rail, and sitting finally still and shocked in the totaled car. How many times previously had the driver next to me made that move with impunity? But this time could have been ‘the exit.’

The last straw, the last exit from disaster, the minor blithe ignorance of the howling voices of the carnivorous wolves in the forest is something we simply don’t understand. We are so disconnected from our mortality that we are like children.

My family narrative was that we were tough. My father and mother could take countless risks with their lives and their children’s lives because we were of sturdy stock. Two times I had pneumonia and because we were inordinately stoic, I was left at home with a tray of soup after getting a penicillin shot.

The message was: “Don’t be a wimp.”

My mother was enfeebled by double pneumonia when I was 14 and refused to be admitted to hospital. I was kept home to keep her alive. Even though she worked in a hospital, or simply because she served as a nurse in the hospital, she distrusted the germ-infested atmosphere.

And so we were praised for not crying; taking our shots without holding a breath; enduring small bone fractures without medical care and our very strength in never asking for help was a badge to be worn proudly.

But it was worn inside the clothing next to the heart. One never bragged about being a stalwart and resolute soul. That would be a sign of weakness.

For most of my life, I have been like a driver who has been given a new car. It is fancy and technologically complex and I have never been sure how to read the gauges.

I soldiered on through pneumonia without an adult in attendance. I healed angrily inflicted bruises quietly under clothing. I went to work every day for five years with bowel cancer that was undetected. I did not know how to advocate for myself and so I assumed the exhaustion was my mistake and I was unable to ask for tests from my doctor.

My learning has been slow and sloppy. My ego was puffed up and gruff when I saw other people whining on about hunger or cold, or disappointments. I was taught our family was superior. We did not need to be babied.

The family egregore was built around me like a walled castle. We were special because we were not special.

I remember as a teenager reading about a man who lost his legs in an explosion and crawled for an hour to help. I thought to myself, “I could do that.” I was 15.

The years have taught me to fall in love with my body as if it was my baby. If the body is hungry, I feed it. If my body is tired, I lay down. If my body is in pain, I cry out and ask for help. It has taken me decades to leave behind the ancestral trauma that made our family members feel ‘special’ because we lacked empathy for ourselves.

tough people

And always, always, always I talk lovingly to my body now. I thank it for warning me when I have drawn the last straw. The body knows far more than my mind can ever understand. It knows far more than my subconscious, my ego can ever know. It knows how to survive and thrive.

I am growing into myself, at last.