Truth be told, we have all had our fair share of adversity. Your definition of adversity may be entirely different than mine but as my mother has always reminded me, an incredibly steep mountain may seem like an easy valley to another individual. We should never for a second trivialize the tribulations of another person, regardless of how we may small or grand we view the situation.
One of my greatest trials, thus far in my life, came in the form of cancer. Details aside, my dad fought a two year battle with colon cancer and moved on the first semester of my junior year. Everyone around me, from my mom who was so torn apart, from my sister who was studying at Carnegie Mellon and unable to be physically present at his last breath, from my community at the church I grew up in, but primarily from myself, I engrained these two words in my heart, “be strong”.
As my father was the breadwinner, my family was left with a significant amount of worry but my mother promised me that everything would be fine. So I embodied strength as it was the only option I had. For the next two years of my life, I focused my sole attention on getting to the places I wanted to be or rather needed to be. I no longer had the cushioned support to fall back upon if I were to not get to the places I wanted to in life. All these years, I have garnered my faith in myself to get to every single place that I want to be, whether that be by getting into UC Berkeley or grasping any opportunity I have for any potential of growth.
Typical story, right? Or so I was told constantly reminded, “Fight to get through adversity to become a stronger person”. That was the mantra I ran my life with. Do not lose the light that burns so brightly within you. And I didn’t. More often than not, I was bombarded with success stories and how statistics claim that a high proportion of people who are extremely successful have lost their parents early. 1/3rd of our presidents lost their fathers at a young age- Thomas Jefferson, Bill Clinton, and even Barack Obama. I am forever grateful to the people who have served as the encouragement to develop the grit and self-reliance that I needed to get through the hardest years of my life. That being said, my desire with writing this post is to delve deeper into my experience with loss.
Just this past semester, I have come to the realization that I have been so self-reliant that I genuinely don’t know how to seek help. I went to office hours for the first time in my two year college career and could barely ask a question without breaking down. Undoubtedly, I was entirely used to being capable of solving my own issues and standing like a pillar in the storm on my own. Subconsciously, I had taken all those messages of strength and turned it into the belief that asking another person for any amount of help, was a tremendous act of weakness. Mind you, this is entirely different from a matter of pride. It was the accumulation of everyone reminding me that dependence on my own strength is the primary way to pummel through the difficulties in life.
In my recent Instagram post, I wrote out my discovery in the last few months that has shaken up my world:
“Am I broken if the strength I embody has crushed all that is fragile inside me? How is it remotely possible that maybe I wreck myself by standing so independently, a single ship midst the waves that surround me? I have always considered myself as someone who has endured enough to be considered steel but recently I have come to terms with the fact that at the edges, I am frayed. Are we all not? For the longest time, I held the impression that strength meant standing alone, solving anything on my own, with my own abilities. That is strength by society’s standards. I am finally learning to reach out to people who cherish me when I need it the most. Slowly, very very slowly. The little glimpses of my vulnerability that I have given to the people I need most seem to bring me only the brightest lighthouses in this wreckage of a storm. And if you’ve been conditioned to see vulnerability as weakness just as I have, I implore you to be vulnerable before you try to tell me differently. Vulnerability is the most beautiful form of strength that has ever graced this Earth.”
I am entirely convinced that success is never possible with one’s own independence which America so highly values. If you have been so tough all these years, just as I gave all my efforts in becoming strong, you are not weak for reaching out. I implore you to not forget, vulnerability holds just as much importance as strength does.