When I got home, I looked up the word "strain".
As the word had been used as a noun, this is where I started the research of this word. ........"a severe or excessive demand on strength, resources or abilities". One thinks of a force.....pulling, stretching......making something very taut. But he had said, "Even strain". The addition of the word "even" describes a different energy.....one that is much more balanced and level; like the lean of a man in a tug of war who is simply leaning back and holding his own. Still a serious use of all the abilities and resources available to the man, but a much more skillful use of one's strength and energy. In this stance there is no resistance to the pull, no extra vigilance; just an upright stance balanced steady on the earth.
The "even strain" requires a faith and trust in the universe; an understanding that we are not in charge of holding it all. It expresses a place where standing upright and finding our feet is enough. Just feeling the tug and holding steady. If we do more than stand level and balanced; if we feel that we have no assistance from the universe, if we feel that we need to fight the energy of the pull......we then become the verb rather than the noun. The verb demands "a force to make unusually great effort". Clearly this implies resistance and extra vigilance to keep the rope taut.
My friend was sitting still with his grief. He was not resisting; he was not holding tight; he was just letting it be so. Just exactly what it was ... a loss....he was not adding any more weight to this story.He had achieved an exceptionally balanced approach to grief.
Recently, a friend of mine sent me a very moving poem. This poem was written by an American novelist named Marge Piercy. She also used the word "strain" in her vivid expression except she was using the verb....."straining". It is a poem about living your life as a woman.....a "strong" woman and the habits that are conditioned into young girls that manifest into this performance of "strength".
A strong woman by Marge Piercy
A strong woman is a woman who is straining.
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tip toes and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the tear ducts of her eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why
aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
As strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. As strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to to say, and now
every battle, a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. As strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.
There is not a doubt in my mind that I have spent many, many years of my life being a "strong" woman. As I read this poem, my body felt the shoveling, the weight of the manhole, the deep sigh of resignation as the baby would not sleep and my legs could barely move. The enacting of the fearless strength..straining, always straining to meet the demands of the people I loved and who I dearly wanted to love me.....my gentle heart asking my lungs to blow harder into the sail. The many nights of pacing to and fro haunted by fear and worry. And the voices both outside and inside.....saying that I couldn't do it, that it was too hard for me, that I was failing others, that I would never be loved.....and then there in the background a voice that was telling me to "hurry up"....that I do not stand a chance of love if I cannot meet the demand in time. Straining to be strong. Hoping that the others see more than just the strength.....but never truly believing that the weakness will be honored.
A few years ago, I stopped pushing on the "lead coffin lid". I dropped the bar bells. I stopped blowing in the sails. I just laid down in the water with my open tear ducts and strong stomach muscles and surrendered. I became the water. It was no longer weeping. It was just water. I gave up on the love that required me to "hurry".
I have a new practice. I live now with a more or less "even strain" on the rope. I live with the tug to "try harder" to love and be loved. I do not act on it. When I find myself in the "habit" of shoveling. I put down the shovel and the voices say....."that is enough, dear, you have done enough. You will be loved because you are so lovable. There is nothing that you have to do to be loved."
I don't always remember to stand balanced and level holding with just "even strain" on the rope. But I usually find my way home and sit for awhile.
Norma
