Remember the Strong in Your Life: They Need a Shoulder, Too
Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Those we lean on often have nowhere to lean. Be the one they can turn to
Yesterday I tried to get a new phone to replace the one that I dropped from the back of my horse, then a car ran over it.
While my Moto valiantly tried its best to turn on, all I got was a few lines of color.
It is an unmitigated disaster to lose your phone here in Ecuador. All of life tends to be run on phones, and if you have none, you can’t do much. Much of the day was spent hurtling around buying a new one, installing stuff, much of which promptly failed to work.
This is life on the road. Cuenca is better than most as there are plenty of gringos here who need top IT talent. Two very good Ecudadorian people are at the top of that list.
Getting that talent to where you are is a battle because they are constantly booked.
I tried to fix a few things, like reinstalling my Kindle. I hit roadblocks right and left.
It’s life.
Frustrating, because everything here is phone-based.
I have a rock that I lean into, so when I saw on my computer that Amazon had sent me an email informing me that some SOB was trying to pickpocket my Amazon phone number, presumably to get access to my loaded credit cards, I fired the email off to him.
He took time out of his extremely busy day to check the domain name.
It looked right, but I’ve made that mistake before. It could be ghastly to click if it’s a scam. It wasn’t. So I blocked the bastard. My buddy JC said we needed to establish better security since I’ll be on the road more. Dead right.
(It turned out later that I was the one that was trying to change my phone number by mistake, so I was the one trying to pickpocket my own account, and YES, I need to set up security against my own damn self, just saying)
Let’s talk about my rock.
JC’s in the middle of a shitton of work, he bears the brunt of a large family’s emotional needs. His partner has been working her ass off to get trained and then certified and hired as a pharmacy technician.
In the meantime, his woefully inadequate salary has had to support multiple adults and three very young kids in a townhouse in the Portland area.
He got a raise after a year of excellent work, but the pressures are still considerable. A great many people can relate right now.
Physically he’s a huge man and he has very broad shoulders. Those shoulders bear the brunt of friends’ emotional needs, too, including me every once in a while. He’s thirty years younger with the wit and brains and empathy of a very, very old soul.
I am exceedingly fortunate to call him my best friend. He is family.
Right now, as JC works with elderly communities, he sees the potential impact of staffing losses and financial disaster on those who have paid to be a part of the many senior living communities he helps to market.
He cares about them too, and his staff, who also lean on him.
I’m beyond fortunate to have him.
I can hear the exhaustion in his voice. Sometimes in my enthusiasm and my pressing need I forget to ask how he’s doing before I launch into my own shit.
Some others in my life have lost their jobs. Some, worse. I suspect it will be my turn at some point as well to lose my financial support.
There are people who lean on me. There are people who read my stuff and want me to keep the hope door open, and to keep focusing on what’s possible. I love that challenge.
And. Like everyone else I am in deep grief for a country I have lost faith in, for so many people for whom I’d have given my life who hate me because of the color of my yard signs.
At least I am not hated just because of the color of my skin, which kindly, is part of what privilege is all about.
I get tired, too. I need someone to lean into. Like many my age, I live alone. Those I can count on are far away, close by voice, but not in person.
In order to keep focusing on what’s possible at a time of real darkness, I need a place to lean into. Yet at the same time, the two people I count on most are also in trouble but in different ways.
When it’s your turn to need someone to be strong, please keep in mind that they need an outlet too.
Let’s talk about strong people, please.
As we wind down Black History Month, let’s please remember that strong Black women are at the vanguard of defense against the worst of what this administration is doing to everyday people. You know who they are. They need a break too.
They get death threats and personal attacks and a level of livid hate that no White person ever anywhere will ever understand. None of us. Black writers on Substack are subject to abuse we can’t even imagine.
The Strong Black Woman trope threatens to suck the life out of the remarkable women around us who have stood their ground, fought the good fight and continue to do what many will not: push back hard.
Those women, as do we all, need someone to lean on and rest, too. They need safe spaces to recuperate, cry, grieve and recharge their batteries.
The strongest people in your life also need to grieve. They need permission to rest, to bleed off the anxiety, to express defeat, to admit failure, to sleep.
To take the damned superhero cape off and put it in the closet for a while already.
Then they will get up and hold everyone else up all over again.
Like JC, like my friend Melissa, they are often even more exhausted because of the additional burdens they carry on their strong shoulders.
The human heart can only hold so much. It hurts my heart when I hear the exhaustion in my friend’s voices.
No living thing can carry you at full speed forever. The strongest people in your life deserve to be carried once in a while.
Let them lean on you.
Let it be their turn. Be brave enough to let the strongest people in your life be vulnerable.
Be the shoulder for them, so that we can all move forward.
Let’s play.
This story is dedicated to every strong Black woman who raised me, help bring me up, is my friend, was a mother figure in some way to me. There were and still are many of them. All the strong Black women and strong friends who stand up for those they love, their families and the weak, their communities and the poor, and all the good men who support them, support each other and make this world a place worth living in.
No matter who you voted for, times are very hard for many people. There are always people out there carrying more than their fair share.
This is for the rocks so many of us can count on. You deserve a break.
I see you. I ache for you. And I am by god here for you.
Please consider supporting my work if this article was worth reading. Thank you with all my heart.
Thank you for such a beautiful writing
Nobody is so strong they don't need support -- especially now. You speak truth, Julia.