My back started hurting when I was pregnant. At the time, I was told it was normal. Pregnancy changes your posture. Your joints loosen. Your growing belly pulls your body forward while your back works overtime to keep you upright.
“It should go away after the baby is born,” they said.
That sounded reasonable. More than a year later, the pain still had not gone away.
I learned how to live around the aching. I learned which movements would make it worse and how much I could accomplish before my back demanded that I stop. I learned to look at a day’s chores and quietly decide which ones could wait.
What I never learned was how to be comfortable with it.
It is humbling to know your own strength. I know I am strong enough to weed the entire garden and then mow the yard. I know I have the determination to work outside until every weed is pulled, every row is cleaned and every blade of grass is cut.
I know I am strong enough to haul the mountain of Halloween decorations down from the attic.
My mind knows I can do it. My back has spent more than a year telling me I cannot.
There is a particular kind of frustration in knowing what your body used to be capable of while being unable to make it cooperate.
The strength is still there. The will is still there. The stubbornness is definitely still there. But none of those things can overpower an injury.
You can want to lift something badly enough it makes your teeth hurt, but wanting does not make it safe.
You can stare at an unfinished chore and resent every inch of it, but anger does not heal your body.
Sometimes pushing through the pain is not a sign of strength. Sometimes it is just a good way to make tomorrow hurt worse.
I am now three weeks into physical therapy, and my back already feels so much better.
Three weeks. After more than a year of hurting, adjusting and telling myself I could manage, just three weeks of asking for help has made a major difference.
That may be the most humbling part of all. I wanted to believe I could fix it myself. I wanted rest, time and sheer determination to be enough.
I wanted to wake up one morning and discover that my body had finally remembered how it was supposed to feel.
Instead, I needed help. I needed someone who understood what was wrong, knew which muscles needed strengthening and could teach me how to move without making the problem worse. I needed to admit that this was not something I could outwork or outlast.
Asking for help did not mean I was weak. It meant I had finally stopped treating pain like a personal failure.
We often measure strength by how much a person can carry. We admire the people who keep going, handle everything themselves and never admit when something hurts.
But there is strength in putting something down.
There is strength in saying, “I cannot do this today.”
There is strength in letting someone else mow the yard, pull the weeds, carry the box or take over the chore you desperately wish you could do yourself.
And there is strength in admitting that you need a doctor, a therapist, a friend, a spouse or a family member to help you find your way back.
I am not all the way there yet. My garden still has weeds. The yard will have to wait. I still have to remind myself that feeling better does not mean I should immediately attempt every chore I have missed for the past year.
But for the first time in a long time, I feel like I am getting my strength back.
Not because I pushed harder. Because I finally asked for help. Be kind to your neighbors, Be kind to your pets, Be kind to yourself.