The Definition of Strength I Had to Bury

A reflection on how motherhood and illness dismantled everything I thought I knew about strength—and taught me what it really means to be strong.

Trigger warning: This post explores religion & faith, illness, medical experiences, and the emotions that can come with both. This may not be suitable for all readers.

I remember the stucco tiles on the hospital ceiling the day the oldest version of me died.

The version of me who didn’t have a concept of time, forgave easy, laughed often and didn’t know what it meant to truly have to be strong. 

I stared up at those tiles in a delirious state, noticing the paintings some had. The only thoughts I can clearly recall are the words I prayed.

I asked God, Please let me be his mom.

Just weeks before, I had been holding my lethargic infant on our front porch, waiting for the paramedics to arrive after trying a cow protein based formula for the first time had gone terribly wrong. I had prayed to God then, too.

Please let him stay.

Pacing between the bathroom and his bedside. I didn’t yet know I had ulcerative colitis.

The stress from that night sent my condition into overdrive. 

A week or so after my son’s incident, I was asking for God’s help again.

The days that followed became a blur. I was weak most of the time, barely able to work myself out of bed.

I remember the triage nurse that first night of me going to emerg telling me he thought I would need a blood transfusion just from the way I was talking.

For me, illness changed everything—my perspective, my capacity, and the way I view time.

The hospital was hard, but I got through it. For nine days, I did what they told me. They ran medications through me, did emergency tests and carefully put me back together.

I was blessed to have family visit and stayed motivated by the visits from my son. 

Once I was released, I felt like I coped relatively well, all things considered.

Was I happy about being diagnosed with an incurable, lifelong disease? No.

Was I grateful that God had answered my prayers—that I was still here to be my son’s mom, and that my son had been kept safe just weeks before?

Of course I was.

At first, I thought about my grandma.

She was pronounced clinically dead during the birth of her fourth child. She once told me that God spoke to her and said, “You still have work to do.”

Then she woke up.

She went on to raise those four children, all still alive and well today, while she herself is now in her eighties.

There was something deeply comforting about knowing she had danced with death and still gone on to live an ordinary, full life afterward.

Except my hospitalization was only the beginning of the death of the old version of me.

I had thought the worst was behind me. I was focused on trying to rebuild our new normal. 

And then, another piece of me died when my son was hospitalized a few months after I was released. I remember trying so hard to hold myself together for him—for the third time since he had been born.

First, there was the mucus aspiration at birth. Then the formula reaction. Now this.

I had always tried to be strong. I had always tried to find the positive side of things. But at this point, I couldn't find the positive anywhere.

And that hit me hard.

I wasn’t used to feeling defeated. I had always had a tenacious spirit—the kind that didn’t take no for an answer, that kept going until I got the result I wanted.

But health doesn't work that way.

There is no guarantee that the harder you fight, the better the outcome will be.

Watching my five-month-old deteriorate, watching someone who had only been in this world for a few months already have to fight so hard, felt profoundly unfair.

I wished I could take it all away from him.

I was angry, too.

Angry at the woman who brushed him off when I first brought him in for an assessment a few days earlier. Angry at the ignorance that contributed to the situation he now found himself in. Angry at a healthcare system stretched to the point that we sat on a hallway floor for 18 hours waiting our turn with a critically ill baby.

I watched every breath, making sure the next one still came.

I remember the phone call I made once he was finally settled into his hospital room. I reamed that healthcare provider out to her boss.

It wasn't like me.

I was a soft person. I found grace in other people's mistakes. I didn't call people's bosses to complain.

But after watching them try to place a feeding tube in my son, make attempt after attempt at an IV, and investigate two serious conditions they feared might be causing his symptoms, I needed her to know that this had not been just a “harmless post-viral rash.”

I wanted her to think about my son the next time a scared, young, first-time mother sat in her office and told her something wasn't right.

On day three of the seven days we spent in the hospital, I sat alone in the chair beside my son. My husband had gone out to get food.

And I broke.

I sat there and sobbed.

For the first time in my life, as someone who had always prided herself on being a problem solver, I felt completely and utterly helpless.

This was a situation I couldn't control but so desperately wanted to. I wanted to fix it all. I wanted to make it go away.

And I couldn't.

Instead, at five months postpartum, I was getting a crash course in one of the hardest lessons of parenting:

You cannot protect your child from every pain.

I wasn't ready for that lesson.

A doctor opened the door and saw me crying uncontrollably. I expected to hear the door close again. I assumed she would leave and come back later, once I had pulled myself together.

But when I looked up, she was calmly sitting in a chair across from me.

She said, “I know there’s a lot bothering you right now. What’s bothering you the most? We’ll start with that.”

She went on to answer every question I had. She reassured me that she would tell me if my son's condition was worsening or if they felt they no longer had stable control of the situation.

I was still afraid.

But I felt better.

That moment became a lesson in humanity for me.

To have someone witness the human spirit breaking and choose to sit beside it was humbling. She didn't try to fix my fear. She didn't ask me to stop crying. She was simply able to sit with my discomfort at a time when I couldn't sit with it myself.

There was something incredible about experiencing that kind of compassion from one human being to another.

By the grace of God, my son made it through that incident, too. But I was different. More wary but also more hardened.

Unfortunately, it wasn't his last incident either. 

For such a small person, he's had more than his fair share of hospital stays. He's a fierce little human. A very strong little man.

And I've had to develop a finely tuned balance between resilience and emotion.

I've had to learn that strength isn't refusing to feel what's happening. Sometimes strength is letting myself feel all of it while also knowing when to reach for the people who can help hold me up.

That has also meant getting very clear about what strengthens me in those moments—and what takes that strength away.

There have been so many hiccups with my own health, too. Scary moments when the future has felt unclear. Turbulent stretches when I've been afraid of leaving my son behind.

I have a book of letters I've written to him as a way of coping with how fragile life has sometimes felt.

I've always been afraid that if something happened to me, he might someday think I left him without knowing how hard I fought to stay.

But somewhere along the way, I've learned there are other ways we live on for our children.

It's in the photographs we take.

The stories other people tell them.

The traditions they remember.

And, in my case, the letters I've written.

At first, I felt sorry for myself for carrying such a morbid perspective.

Now, I think there is a gift hidden inside it.

Because not a day goes by that I take for granted.

Not a day goes by that I don't document some piece of my time with him. Maybe I take a photograph. Maybe I write something down. Maybe I invite a family member or friend into our day and create another person who gets to carry a memory of us.

In one way or another, I'm always finding ways for him to feel and know my love.

I've become more intentional about the love I want remembered.

And maybe because of that, I've become more willing to let go of the things that aren't worth remembering.

The milk spilled across the floor.

The toys scattered throughout the house.

The frustration that creeps in during the no stage.

The overwhelm of it all.

I'm human, so of course those things still get to me.

I just don't sit with them for as long as I think I once would have.

Because when life has taught you how fragile it can be, you start becoming very particular about what deserves your time.

And I think, little by little, that is how the oldest version of me died.

Not all at once.

Piece by piece.

Not because she was weak, but because the life I was living required someone different.

Someone who understood that strength wasn't always fixing the problem.

Sometimes it was sitting beside a hospital bed and admitting I was terrified.

Sometimes it was letting someone else hold the hope when I couldn't.

Sometimes it was writing a letter I hoped my son would never need to read.

And sometimes it was looking at an ordinary, messy day and realizing:

This is the life I fought so hard to stay for.