The Orange Daisy

A friend of mine, in an attempt to provide some constructive criticism, which I asked for, recently told me I have a tendency to be spineless.  This surprised me, as for most of my life people have told me how strong and resilient I am.  But spineless, never.  I have thought about that a lot.  It has really resonated with me. 

I also recently had some down time, I do not usually have and I allowed myself some of that time to revisit a grieving process I’m not sure I really went through.  Life continued on and back then, I made the choice to continue on with it, to run from the pain of the grief, to sweat instead of cry because I believed it made me stronger to get back up and never actually fall all the way down.  The other day, when I allowed the time for the grief, I realized it took me more strength to cry then it did to sweat it out.

Maybe strength is found more in the gentleness of life than the harshness.  I think back to an orange daisy, a single orange daisy in a small vase with “hope” written on it given to me in the middle of cold snowy winter.  The flower had simply refused to die and a friend clipped it from her garden and gave it as a gift to me.  A gentle and delicate flower at first glance, simple, kind and happy in appearance, yet the strength to forge through the harsh cold and snow.  I often think back to that daisy and the quiet, graceful strength it taught me.  Aidan’s favorite color was orange and my favorite flowers are daisies.

I believe it takes more strength to remain steady, kind, and giving and sometimes even silent.  I find strength in hoping, believing, loving.  Strength to cry.  Being angry is easy, being peaceful and truly forgiving, well, I am still even working on that.  I discovered these past couple days it takes a lot of strength to be alone and fall apart, to cry, and then to climb out of that darkness, alone, quietly. More so than running many miles and getting physically stronger.

This is probably exactly why I like running long distances, the first mile is always the toughest, finding a steadiness, to endure all the miles and not just muscling through.  Muscle is only going to take you so far, eventually the real strength comes from the heart and mind because the physical muscles will fatigue and fail, so the strength must be a combination of all three, body, mind, heart.

There is a time to stand up and fight but we cannot fight all our lives. We get one trip here and I choose to enjoy as much of it as possible.  I will fight and stand up when I need to.  But I will also remain selective and thoughtful in what I will fight for. While I appreciate and am grateful for the constructive criticism that I may need to speak up for myself a little more than I usually do, because there is truth to that,   I choose to remain strong like that daisy, happy, kind, resilient, peaceful, and hopeful.