Kate wants to hear from you! The next question of the week, straight from Kate, is: What life experience has strengthened you? To get your voice heard, simply hit the Comment link and tell her what you think! No registration is necessary, and you can post anonymously if you want.
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K8 Asks
February 29, 2012 @ 12:30 am
You know what makes you string, Kate? Love.
The simple experience of loving and being loved, for the soul, is as nourishing and strengthening as healthy food is for the body.
I came from a home where love needed to be earned. The sort of family where you were reminded how much you cost, and how your very life was an insufferable burden on those who “loved” you.
That wasn’t love.
My family believed, implicitly in that cuddly German philosopher Mr. Nietzsche. That which does not killy ou makes you stronger.
Bullshit. That which does not kill you almost kills you. It leaves you weak, demoralised, shattered.
But luckily, my tired, defeated soul found love. In college. With a young woman who now, as a woman of a certain age, I can say that I still love dearly. We were both experimenting with our sexualities—and I, for my part, discovered that heterosexuality wasn’t my cup of tea. But love—the feeling that you could tell your secrets, and no matter what they were, you would be safe—was an utter liberation. Someone like that in my life…what strength I could take from it! And what gratitude I still owe her.
That love, and many loves thereafter, strengthened my spirit beyond measure. Toughness doesn’t build strength. Tenderness does.
February 29, 2012 @ 12:33 am
There have been many experiences in life that have given me strength. Three important ones involve getting kicked out of the Navy for being gay when I was 21, being diagnosed with AIDS at 35, and learning I have cancer just this month. I am blessed with the ability to laugh and to enjoy life. It is through this that I can help others. I became an advocate for equal rights in the late 80’s after my discharge, I became very involved in HIV testing and counseling. Now that, I have a diagnosis of cancer, I will have to rely on my friends, family, and great sense of humor and wit, to become even stronger!!
February 29, 2012 @ 3:56 am
The death of my brother at the age of 49. He was one year and one day younger than I, and also gay. It was as if he was my twin. He lived eight minutes away from me, both of us happily on the outer Cape. We would talk several times a week. He suffered a brain aneurysm and was in a coma for eight days. We always thought he would wake up. I learned that, while miracles do happen, they also don’t happen. The strengthening came from realizing that grief won’t kill you, although, at times, it feels like it may.
February 29, 2012 @ 11:08 am
My two and a half years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa. Living and working with village women who faced nearly insurmountable odds in their daily struggle to put food on the table and to improve their and their family’s lives was an experience that inspired me to go into the health field, as i realized that health and economic well-being were inextricably linked. There, i also met my first partner, who was also a Peace Corps Volunteer.
March 2, 2012 @ 2:29 am
There are too many to single one out. Today, getting through the challenges that have come our way and affected both me and my partner Sarah. After almost 22 years it never ceases to amaze me how we have helped each other through some of the toughest times, including now. . . it has been a wonderful and enlightening ride. I am stronger today because I cannot and choose not to quit in the face of adversity.
March 2, 2012 @ 9:15 am
I wish I could say that forging a great career, making great choices and becoming successful has given me confidence and made me strong, or creating or contributing to a great cause and watching it benefit the world has made me grateful and strong, but since none of that is true (except the grateful part), I’ll just have to say that surviving loss of SO many loved ones – parents, extended family members, friends, my late partner – and continuing to struggle with this grief and all the stigma that comes with it -this has been the thing to make me stronger. It may ALMOST have killed me, but it has made me stronger. Oh, and getting older. And oh yeah, teaching music theory in a max security prison. That DEFINITELY made me stronger.
March 3, 2012 @ 3:34 am
Being a producer. and living through horrible losses.
March 3, 2012 @ 3:35 am
family losses that is…