Should we depend on strong people holding things together?
Angela just stepped away from 35 years of high-level leadership in the US federal government.
Her perspective and experience as a Black leader is painful and revealing:
— “They called me strong. But what that really meant was ‘You can take more.’ …
— ‘Strong’ wasn’t support. It was silence wrapped in praise.”
Martha, “hero” mom to a disabled child with cerebral palsy, created a space and services for other families like hers in Kumasi, Ghana.
— She’s getting an award for being “strong, compassionate, and inspirational.”
— “A testament to what’s possible when empathy meets action.”
What do these two women have in common?
They both HAD to be strong, to work exponentially harder than the norm BECAUSE society didn’t support them.
In Martha’s case, she broke out of isolation as a single mom raising her child in a society that offered her no support.
Angela was simply a Black woman in the USA doing her job.
What many of us don’t see behind the veil of strength is sheer necessity.
- Because for those who hold the purse strings, it’s convenient and easy to overlook basic needs of entire groups of people.
In the USA, unlike Ghana, there are laws, regulations, and services supporting disabled people.
Nevertheless, many are still forced to battle, on a daily basis, just to get their needs met.
Adding to that struggle, the divorce rate for families with a child with special needs is about 87%.
- When you think you’re praising someone for their strength, if you dig a few layers deeper you might find out how much they wish they could be like anyone else, with just regular demands and responsibilities.
Here’s more about Martha:
Here’s Angela’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-
And here’s more to chew on:
When my patternmaking teacher was still living in India she had tea once a month with Mother Teresa, to give her her donation.
My bespoke jacket making teacher in Colombia thought Mother Teresa did a disservice.
He said she enabled society so it could ignore its responsibilities.
He believed in social contracts to ensure basic needs are met.
But let’s circle back to the individual.
Strong people need support, not praise.
How often do you check in on your strong friends?
What kind of support can you give them?
P.S. I was a “just” a single mom.
With a master’s degree I had to work two jobs in my field to stay afloat.
I most certainly DIDN’T want to be as strong as I had to be.
#SpecialNeedsFamilies
#HighPerformance
#Burnout
