Stronger: Changing Everything I Knew About Women’s Strength

by Poorna Bell

So if this is you, too; if somewhere along the way you lost the part of yourself that felt you could do anything, be anything; if there is a part of you that doesn’t feel strong or doesn’t know how to begin, that doesn’t feel you look the way you ‘should’ or feels ashamed in your own body, I am here to tell you whatever you have believed in the past does not have to determine your story.

Being your strongest self has got nothing to do with how far you can run or how much weight you can lift. It’s about freeing yourself from any and every limitation you have silently ingested like poison over the years. Do you want to know how to be that fierce warrior that walks the earth with your head held high, and every atom in your body humming with power and strength and wisdom?

Strength-orientated goals give me focus and transferable skills such as confidence in myself. People have very weird, fixed ideas about strength and what women’s bodies should look like. Fuck them.

Strong female role models – and by that I don’t mean just women who are emotionally strong, but women who physically look strong – are important if we are to change the notion that physical strength belongs exclusively to one gender.

While a man beginning a strength journey may feel it’s his divine right to do so, be cheered on, handed a protein powder tub and a slap on the back, a woman beginning a strength journey will have to overcome her own internal doubts about getting bigger but also contend with various comments and unsolicited advice from her social circle or online.

Only one person has full access to your thoughts, your capabilities, your hopes, your dreams, what you want to achieve – and that is you. Why then do we allow the looks and comments of others to shape or form the journey we want for ourselves? What right do they have, when they do not, and will never know, the full size, shape and potential of our bodies and minds?

The one thing true of all grief is that it teaches you the hardest lesson of all: the things that are actually within the scope of your control are tiny in comparison to the number of things that are not.