The Five Kinds of Strength That Have Carried Me Through Life
When I look back now, I realise something I did not understand when I was younger—strength was never one single thing I could define or hold on to.
At different stages of my life, I thought it meant different things. At one point it was courage. At another, independence. At another, simply the ability to get through a difficult day without falling apart.
Only much later did I begin to see that strength has many faces.
There is emotional strength, physical strength, mental strength, spiritual strength, and financial strength.
I have known all five, though never in equal measure, and never at the same time. Some I built slowly, almost unknowingly. Others life forced on me when I had no choice but to grow into them.
And perhaps that is the truth of it.
We do not become strong because we decide to.
We become strong because life does not always give us another option.
Emotional Strength — The Strength to Feel and Still Carry On
I don’t think I was born emotionally strong.
If anything, I have always been someone who feels deeply. Words stay with me. Affection matters to me. The absence of affection matters too. Perhaps that is why disappointments have sometimes hurt me more than I would have liked them to.
As a young girl in boarding school, in the snowy hills, I experienced a kind of loneliness that I did not have the words to explain then. We grow up in different circumstances and assume that whatever we are experiencing is simply what life is supposed to be.
Then came college.
I was young and hopeful. Like many young women, I had an idea in my mind about what love was supposed to feel like. Looking back, I realise that perhaps I fell in love more with the idea of love than with the reality of knowing and understanding another human being.
That distinction took me a very long time to understand.
I rebelled against my family and chose to marry because I believed I had found the love I was looking for.
And then came the shock of discovering that the dream and the reality were not the same.
The disillusionment did not last for a few months or a few years.
It became part of the landscape of my life.
Fifty years is a very long time to live with the consequences of one decision.
There were days when I wondered how much disappointment a person could absorb before something inside them finally broke.
Apparently, a person can absorb an enormous amount.
But surviving something does not mean it doesn’t hurt.
Over the years, I developed what I call a thick skin.
People sometimes think a thick skin means you don’t care.
That is not true.
Sometimes a thick skin simply means you have cared so much for so long that you finally learn that reacting to every word, every accusation, every provocation and every disappointment will consume whatever peace you have left.
So you learn to step back.
You learn silence.
You learn that not every statement needs an answer.
You learn that not every misunderstanding needs to be corrected.
And perhaps most importantly, you learn that another person’s inability to see your worth does not make you worthless.
That is emotional strength.
It isn’t the absence of tears.
It is being able to cry and still get up.
It is being hurt and still remain capable of loving.
It is being disappointed and still allowing yourself to enjoy something beautiful.
It is knowing that you may not have received all the affection you needed, but that does not mean you were undeserving of it.
I think that has been one of the hardest lessons of my life.
We sometimes spend years wondering why someone didn’t love us in the way we needed.
And eventually, perhaps, we have to stop asking that question.
Some people simply don’t know how to give what we need.
That is about their limitations.
It is not a measurement of our worth.
Physical Strength — The Body That Has Carried Me
When we are young, we rarely think about physical strength.
We simply assume our bodies will cooperate.
We walk without thinking about walking. We climb stairs without thinking about our knees. We travel, work, cook, clean, carry things and stay awake late at night without wondering whether our bodies will allow us to do these things tomorrow.
Then age arrives.
Not dramatically.
It creeps in.
One day you notice that something which was effortless now requires thought.
You sit down and getting up takes a little longer.
A staircase looks different.
A long journey requires more planning.
Your body begins reminding you that it has been with you for decades and it has its own limits.
That is when we understand that physical strength is not about looking young or being athletic.
It is about independence.
It is about being able to move through your day without constantly needing somebody else to do everything for you.
It is about having enough energy to meet a friend, go somewhere you want to go, cook something you enjoy, travel, shop, walk, sit in a garden, play with a child or simply get through an ordinary day comfortably.
We often don’t appreciate these simple freedoms until they become difficult.
Growing older has taught me that the body deserves kindness.
Not punishment.
Not endless comparison with the person we were twenty or thirty years ago.
The body I have today is not the body I had when I was young.
But it is the body that has carried me through every year of my life.
It has carried my joys, my pregnancies, my work, my responsibilities, my sleepless nights, my worries and my tears.
It has carried me this far.
That deserves gratitude.
Physical strength may change with age, but our relationship with our body can become wiser.
We can stop asking, “Why am I not the way I used to be?”
And begin asking,
“How can I take better care of the person I am today?”
That is a different kind of strength.
Mental Strength — Learning to Think When Life Is Difficult
Mental strength is something I learnt through necessity.
Life doesn’t always give us the choices we would have preferred.
Sometimes we have to choose from the choices available to us.
Sometimes there is no perfect answer.
Sometimes there is only the least painful answer.
I learnt to work.
I learnt responsibility.
I learnt to deal with people.
I learnt to solve problems.
I learnt that if something goes wrong, sitting and asking “Why me?” may be understandable, but eventually somebody has to ask, “What do I do now?”
That second question has probably saved me many times.
Work also taught me something about myself.
I wanted to earn my own money.
Not because I wanted a luxurious life.
I wanted independence.
I wanted to know that I could contribute, make decisions and stand on my own feet.
Financial independence gave me confidence, but the process of earning it also strengthened my mind.
It taught me discipline.
It taught me patience.
It taught me that I could learn new things even when I was no longer young.
And that is something I have carried with me.
Mental strength does not mean always being confident.
It does not mean never being confused.
It does not mean always making the right decision.
It means being able to look at a difficult situation and say:
“This is where I am. What can I do from here?”
It means learning from your mistakes without allowing your mistakes to become your identity.
It means understanding that one bad chapter does not necessarily define the entire book.
It also means protecting your mind.
As we grow older, we realise how much mental energy we waste trying to convince people of things they have already decided not to understand.
There comes a point when you have to say:
“I know what I know. I know what I lived. I don’t have to prove my entire life to everybody.”
That, too, is mental strength.
Spiritual Strength — The Part of Us That Keeps Looking for Meaning
Spiritual strength is difficult to explain because it is deeply personal.
For some people it comes from religion.
For others, from prayer, meditation, nature, philosophy or simply a belief that life has some meaning beyond what we can immediately see.
For me, spiritual strength has often been less about having answers and more about continuing despite not having them.
There have been many things in my life I have not understood.
There have been disappointments for which I have never found a satisfying explanation.
There have been moments when I have asked myself why some people receive easily what others spend a lifetime longing for.
Why some relationships bring comfort while others bring pain.
Why people who should understand us sometimes become the very people who hurt us.
I don’t have answers to all these questions.
Perhaps nobody does.
But I have slowly learnt that faith does not always mean believing that everything will turn out exactly as we want.
Sometimes faith is simply saying:
“I don’t understand this, but I will keep going.”
And sometimes spirituality is gratitude.
Not the loud kind.
The quiet kind.
Being grateful for a beautiful morning.
For a favourite song.
For a good book.
For a movie that takes you somewhere else for a few hours.
For the people who have brought genuine happiness into your life.
For children who have given your life meaning.
For a memory that still makes you smile.
For the ability to laugh even after having cried.
As we grow older, gratitude becomes more complicated.
We can be grateful for the good things we received while still acknowledging the things we didn’t receive.
We can love our children and still acknowledge our own loneliness.
We can appreciate the good moments without pretending the difficult ones never happened.
I think that is a mature form of spirituality.
It does not demand that we call everything beautiful.
It simply asks us to notice the beauty that exists alongside the pain.
Financial Strength — The Strength of Independence
Of all the strengths I have developed, financial strength has perhaps had the most practical impact on my life.
I have always believed that a person should, as far as possible, have the ability to earn and manage money.
Because money is not everything.
But the absence of money can affect almost everything.
Money cannot buy love.
It cannot buy genuine affection.
It cannot guarantee health.
It cannot make an unhappy relationship happy.
But financial security can give us something extremely valuable:
choice.
It can mean being able to pay for something important without having to beg.
It can mean being able to make a decision without the fear of becoming completely dependent on somebody else.
It can mean having some security when circumstances change.
It can mean being able to help your children when they need you.
It can mean having the dignity of knowing that you have contributed to your own life.
For me, earning money was never simply about possessions.
It represented independence.
It represented the knowledge that I was not merely somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother or somebody’s responsibility.
I was a person in my own right.
I had skills.
I had experience.
I could work.
I could contribute.
And I could earn.
That mattered to me.
But financial strength also has a lesson on the other side.
We should never spend our entire lives accumulating money and forget to live.
Money is a tool.
It should give us security, not become another source of anxiety.
The real goal is not to have endless money.
It is to have enough control over money that money does not control every decision we make.
These Five Strengths Are Connected
The older I become, the more I realise that these five forms of strength are not separate boxes.
They constantly affect one another.
When money is uncertain, the mind worries.
When the body hurts, emotions become fragile.
When emotions are exhausted, clear thinking becomes difficult.
When the mind feels overwhelmed, spirituality can give us perspective.
When we have some financial independence, we may have greater freedom to look after our health and protect our peace.
Everything is connected.
Take a simple example.
Imagine a woman who has spent years taking care of everyone around her.
She may have neglected her physical health because there was always something more important to do.
She may have become emotionally exhausted because she was constantly giving to others.
She may have had very little financial independence because her family came first.
And yet, perhaps she developed enormous mental strength simply by solving one problem after another.
Later in life, she may finally realise that she cannot continue giving from an empty cup.
She begins taking care of her body.
She begins protecting her emotional space.
She learns to manage her money.
She starts saying no.
She finds something that gives her spiritual peace.
And gradually, she becomes a different person.
Not younger.
Not perfect.
But stronger in a more complete way.
That is what balance can do.
What Happens When One of These Strengths Is Missing?
We can see the imbalance in many people’s lives.
A person may have enormous financial wealth but be desperately lonely.
Another may be highly intelligent but unable to manage emotions.
Someone may be physically fit but mentally exhausted.
Someone may have deep faith but no financial planning.
Another may be emotionally generous but have no boundaries and therefore keep getting hurt.
This is why I no longer believe that success can be measured by one thing.
A large bank balance cannot tell me whether someone is happy.
A successful career cannot tell me whether someone sleeps peacefully at night.
A beautiful home cannot tell me whether the people inside it feel loved.
And a person who has struggled financially cannot automatically be called unsuccessful.
There are invisible achievements too.
Getting through a difficult marriage.
Raising children.
Supporting a family.
Starting again after disappointment.
Working when you were tired.
Keeping your dignity when you felt humiliated.
Forgiving yourself for choices you made when you were younger and didn’t know what you know today.
These are achievements too.
They simply don’t come with certificates.
Age Changes the Meaning of Strength
When we are young, physical strength seems almost unlimited.
We run.
We travel.
We work long hours.
We believe we have plenty of time.
In middle age, mental and financial strength often become more important.
We build careers.
We raise families.
We make financial decisions.
We take responsibility for other people.
Then, gradually, life changes again.
As we grow older, emotional and spiritual strength may become more important.
We begin to understand that peace is more valuable than winning every argument.
That time is more precious than possessions.
That genuine relationships matter more than the number of people who know us.
That we cannot change the past, no matter how many times we replay it.
And perhaps most painfully, we learn that some things we wanted from life may never come.
That realisation can either embitter us or deepen us.
I don’t think acceptance means saying that everything that happened was right.
It simply means saying:
“It happened. I cannot rewrite it. But I can decide how much of the rest of my life I will allow it to occupy.”
That is a difficult lesson.
But perhaps one of the most liberating ones.
The Strength We Don’t Recognise in Ourselves
There are strengths other people may never see.
The person who smiles may be carrying enormous sadness.
The person who appears calm may have spent years learning not to react.
The person who seems independent may have once desperately wished somebody would take care of them.
The person who says “I’m fine” may simply have become very good at surviving.
I think many women especially learn this kind of invisible strength.
We become mothers.
We become wives.
We become daughters.
We become caregivers.
We become workers.
We become problem-solvers.
And somewhere along the way, we sometimes forget that underneath all these roles is an individual who also has needs.
Someone who wants to be heard.
Someone who wants affection.
Someone who wants to feel important to somebody.
Someone who wants to be appreciated without having to earn it every day.
Someone who sometimes wants nothing more complicated than a hug.
There is no shame in wanting that.
Needing affection does not make us weak.
Wanting companionship does not make us needy.
Wanting respect does not make us demanding.
And wanting peace does not mean we have given up.
Sometimes it means we have finally understood its value.
What I Know Now
If I could speak to the younger woman I once was, I don’t know whether I would tell her not to make the choices she made.
It is easy to judge our younger selves from the safety of hindsight.
She did not know what I know now.
She had hopes.
She had dreams.
She believed.
She made choices with the knowledge and emotions she had at that time.
I would perhaps tell her something gentler.
I would tell her:
“Don’t confuse being loved with the idea of being loved.”
“Don’t lose yourself completely in another person.”
“Earn if you can. Keep something that belongs only to you.”
“Look after your body. You will need it for many years.”
“Protect your mind. Not every opinion deserves space inside it.”
“Keep something inside yourself that belongs only to you—your faith, your dreams, your music, your books, your thoughts.”
“And when life disappoints you, don’t conclude that you are a disappointment.”
Most importantly, I would tell her that she will survive more than she thinks she can.
She will not always feel strong.
She will sometimes be frightened.
She will sometimes be lonely.
She will sometimes wonder whether all the effort was worth it.
But she will keep going.
And one day she will look back and realise that the woman she became was built, piece by piece, from every experience she once thought would break her.
Perhaps This Is What Strength Really Is
Today, I don’t measure strength in the way I once did.
Strength is not always fighting.
Sometimes strength is walking away.
Sometimes it is staying.
Sometimes it is speaking.
Sometimes it is remaining silent.
Sometimes it is forgiving.
Sometimes it is simply refusing to let somebody else’s behaviour turn you into someone you don’t want to be.
Strength is not 'never' needing anybody.
It is knowing that you can need love and still have dignity.
It is knowing that you can be vulnerable and still be strong.
It is knowing that you can be tired and still continue.
It is knowing that you can regret something without allowing regret to consume the rest of your life.
And perhaps the greatest strength is the ability to accept that life was not exactly what you thought it would be—and still find something worth appreciating in it.
A song.
A book.
A movie.
A cup of tea.
A child’s laughter.
A memory.
A beautiful evening.
A quiet morning.
A conversation.
A little bit of laughter after a difficult day.
These things may look insignificant from the outside.
But life is actually made of such moments.
We spend years waiting for the big happiness—the perfect relationship, the perfect family, the perfect home, the perfect financial security, the perfect future.
And then, somewhere along the way, we discover that happiness was often hiding in much smaller places.
A moment of peace.
A moment of connection.
A moment when nobody is demanding anything from us.
A moment when we can simply be ourselves.
The Wealth We Carry Inside
Perhaps, after everything, these five kinds of strength are really five kinds of wealth.
Emotional wealth is being able to love without losing yourself.
Physical wealth is having a body that allows you to participate in your own life.
Mental wealth is being able to think, learn, adapt and protect your peace.
Spiritual wealth is having something inside you that gives life meaning when circumstances become difficult.
Financial wealth is having enough independence to make choices without living in constant fear.
And none of them is permanent.
We may gain some and lose some.
We may be physically strong when we are young and spiritually stronger when we are old.
We may have financial security at one stage and uncertainty at another.
We may be emotionally fragile in our twenties and incredibly resilient in our seventies.
That is life.
We are constantly changing.
Perhaps the real wisdom is learning to recognise which part of ourselves needs attention at each stage.
If the body is tired, care for it.
If the mind is overwhelmed, give it rest.
If the heart is hurting, don’t shame it for feeling.
If finances are uncertain, plan carefully.
If the spirit feels empty, search for meaning.
We cannot control everything that happens to us.
But we can sometimes choose what we do with what happens to us.
And Looking Back…
When I look back at the girl in the snowy hills, the young woman who went to college with dreams in her eyes, the woman who believed she had found love, the wife who discovered that life was going to be very different from what she imagined, the mother who fiercely protected her three beautiful daughters, the working woman who wanted financial independence, and the older woman I am today—I see one common thread.
She kept going.
Sometimes happily.
Sometimes angrily.
Sometimes hopefully.
Sometimes with tears.
Sometimes simply out of stubbornness.
But she kept going.
I don’t think strength means that we emerge from life without scars.
Perhaps the scars are proof that we lived.
We loved.
We hoped.
We made mistakes.
We endured.
We lost.
We learnt.
We began again.
And perhaps the greatest achievement is not that we managed to create the life we once dreamed of.
Sometimes the greatest achievement is that despite everything life did not give us, we still managed to become someone.
Someone who can look back without pretending.
Someone who can acknowledge the pain without allowing it to erase the good.
Someone who can say, “Yes, there were things I wished had been different.”
And in the same breath say,
“But there were also things for which I am grateful.”
That, perhaps, is where emotional, physical, mental, spiritual and financial strength finally come together.
Not in perfection.
Not in having everything.
But in reaching a point where we can look at our complicated, imperfect, sometimes painful life and still say:
“This was my life. I lived it. I survived it. I learnt from it. And whatever time remains, I would like to live it as myself.”
Maybe that is the strongest thing any of us can finally give ourselves.
