Please don't tell me to stay strong

A month or so into the Covid 19 thing, these signs started going up all over town that say, “Stay Strong, Altoona.” They’re a well-meaning effort to encourage our unity and resolve at a time when everyone needs to work together and stay as positive as possible.

But these signs are irritating me.

When I lifted the lid on why this roadside directive is bothering me, it didn’t take me long to figure it out.

I’m tired of being told to stay strong.

We’re told to stay strong when we’re sick, when we’re faced with a death in the family, work problems, any problem. “Stay strong” has become a hackneyed hashtag that gets tossed from one person to another in social media and plastered on billboards in cities that have undergone tragedy.

For me, “staying strong” probably began with being told “don’t cry” when I was a kid and evolved into “never show your emotions” at work as an adult. Growing up in my family, we had staying strong honed to an art form. We were self-reliant people who stood up to adversity and muscled through difficulty. There wasn’t much room for emotion—especially the big ones—so you learned to keep them inside, within bonds that were pretty darned strong.

In fairness, people tell you to stay strong when they don’t know what else to say. Emotions like fear and sadness are big, messy things that make the people in our lives uncomfortable. They don’t want to see us suffering, so they try to help us by wishing us the strength to overcome the struggle.

The problem is “Stay strong” isn’t helpful to me when I’m in pain. It’s just a signal that my distress is making people uncomfortable, so I need to stuff it down some more.

As someone who did a lot of that “stuffing” for decades, I can tell you this. Emotions have to leave the body at some point. Whether that’s immediately or after 20 years of being locked inside. At some point you have to release anxiety, fear, insecurity, anger, resentment and sadness to the air, to God, to the universe, to the treadmill or to a friend or loved one who is willing to sit in the uncomfortable space with you.

Let me tell you what real strength looks like. A few days ago I had a panic attack two hours into a class I had signed up for. I tried what I’ve been taught to keep the panic from becoming unmanageable, and it wasn’t working. So I pulled one of the instructors aside at break, explained what was happening and excused myself. I got to my Jeep and was letting the emotions come out when a woman tapped on my window. I rolled down the window, and she said, “Hey, I wanted to check on you. I’ve been having these since 9th grade. Tell me what’s happening.” She held out her hand and said, “Here, hold my hand.” I began to feel the grounding that had been eluding me in the classroom.

Here was a complete stranger offering her hand and her heart to me when I was hurting and in a messy spiral. She let me tell my story of oversized, irrational fear. She didn’t judge me. She didn’t talk over me. She didn’t tell me not to cry. She didn’t talk about herself or try to fix me. She didn’t tell me to stay strong. She let me get the fear and embarrassment out of me. She simply heard me with genuine empathy. She didn’t know me. But she sat with me in my pain. That’s strength.

The idea of being with someone in their moment of extreme discomfort is scary for of us. What should we do? What should we say? The truth is, you don’t have to say much, if anything. Just being there is enough. The kind stranger and I will both came out alive. And I was able to drive home, feeling a little more calm, a little more healed. She gave me a gift that has no price.

J, if you are reading this, thank you for sitting in the discomfort with me. Thank you for lending me your strength. I hope someday I have the honor of returning the kindness and the strength to you.