Warrior

"A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle, to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements." Orison Swett Marden

Perhaps the measure of greatness is the odds one has to beat to achieve it. Maybe that's the way we should look at it. Not what has been accomplished, but what obstacles were overcome. It is heartening to know when we are in the midst of a struggle, when we feel careworn and exhausted from doing battle every day, when the odds seem against us, that one day we will prevail. Sometimes it's the only thing that keeps us going; that idea that the price we are paying will one day be so worth it.

I have a sweet young friend who is a therapist and a talented writer. She started out being a friend of my daughter-in-law, and then my son, but now she is my friend, too. A couple of years ago, she had a back injury, and I spent a day with her, helping to clean up her house. I did those little things that we take for granted, but are very difficult to do with a hurt back. I gave her little dog a bath, and then drove on a shopping outing. But mostly she just needed some company, and I enjoyed spending time with her.

She reads my blog and knows my stories, as I know some of  hers. That day she told me that I am a warrior. The way she said it caused me to think of it as capitalized. "You are a Warrior," she said. She went on to tell me that I am not a warrior because I do battle and fight. She said I do battle and fight because I am a Warrior. A seemingly small, but significant difference.

We were talking about the loving adults in my life when I was a child. I told her that I was thankful for them; my older brother and my sister-in-law, my older sister, a maternal aunt and my maternal grandmother, my fourth grade teacher, my father. These were people who made me feel loved, in spite of who my mother was. I said that I felt very indebted to them. She acknowledged that as being true and helpful, for it is a fact that even one loving adult in the life of an abused child can make a difference. She said that they helped, but that I should never forget that I am the one who got through my childhood. "You,' she said forcefully. "That was you. You did that." No one had ever said that to me before, in quite that way.

However, today I am thinking about how life is not, nor should it be, a constant struggle. And while maybe she's right, that I am a Warrior, I would rather think that I can be a warrior (notice the lower case, please) when I need to be, but that is not an ongoing part of the journey of my life.

It is a great achievement for me to be here today, fifty-four years old. Happy, healthy, whole, able to give and receive love, ready for each new adventure. I won't diminish that. But life, I believe, if I will let it, can flow. I don't have to fight all the time. Sometimes things go my way, and beautifully and effortlessly. Sometimes I just flow. When I let go.

Maybe the warrior is just one facet of me. And perhaps I can make her largely a part of my past, of someone who I used to be when I had to be. For right now, I am enjoying learning how to go with the flow of life. I am not a martyr, eager to prove how much I can struggle. There is no virtue in suffering for suffering's sake, and I enjoy pleasure way too much for that.

I need to do more than survive. I want to thrive. I don't want to always be some scrappy little flower that pushed her way up out of the dirt to find the sun. I want to blossom. I think it's way past time for that.

There's a time to wage war, and a time to enjoy the spoils of it. Now is that time.

Susan