Silent Warriors

After my daughter was born, friends and family that I interacted with have called me a warrior on occasion. Their reasoning being of how I “bounced back” so quickly, or how I have been traversing the different obstacles I’ve been handed. I don’t actually feel like a warrior though. Every day, I have lessons that I am learning, silent battles that I try to overcome. Motherhood isn’t easy, it’s fun in most aspects, but it isn’t easy. When people call me a warrior, I don’t see it at all. To me a warrior is someone fierce that struggles with tasks every single day but pushes through no matter how much life tries to push them back down. Someone who takes the good and the bad in full swing with their head up high, and that doesn’t feel like what I have been doing. I didn’t “bounce back”, I’m just living, taking it one day at a time and hoping for the best.

You know who I see as a warrior? My mom. When I was a teenager she had an accident that caused her to have nerve damage in her entire left arm. She went through physical therapy, did what she could to get her maneuverability back, but still ran into issues. She has no feeling from the side of her neck all the way to her fingertips, and there was no way to fix it. When the accident happened, my younger sibling was an infant. She couldn’t hold him for long periods of time, and could only do so with one side. She had difficulty doing simple tasks that a mother needs to with a small child. I did what I could to help, babysitting, changing diapers, helping with chores that were two hand jobs. But I could still see the wear and tear weighing on her. It took years to get any sense of control with grip on her left side, and to ensure she keeps it, she works on it daily. Did she complain? Not really, if at all. She rolled with the punches and kept pushing forward.

Despite some setbacks she has always kept pushing, and there have been a few. Trying to get disability in a time when people were suspicious of fakers was a major battle. She had to go through doctor after doctor, and different tests to prove that she was actually hurt and how. Trying to raise a child as hands on as possible, when she only has one good hand to give. Pulling into handicapped parking spaces to have people ridicule her and call her a fake because no one can physically see her disability. All these events and more she shouldered and persevered, holding her head as high as she could, determined to push right back at life and do whatever she put her mind to.

She has accomplished a lot of things over the years despite life trying to pummel her. Raising a teenager, maintaining a garden, doing daily tasks of cooking, laundry and dishes. My dad helps her out whenever he can, but he can’t be with her every second of the day, so she figured out little tricks and ways to go about her tasks with or without her left arm. She is a real warrior, one that continues on without much of a whisper, one that fights every day with battles that no one else sees or could understand. You may look at her and see a 59-year-old woman that is fully capable of anything, never even knowing about the silent wars that she is having with the smallest tasks. Some days I think she would prefer having a visible disability, not because of the disability itself, but because people aren’t always kind. They assume and pass judgement without caring about the details, without caring about the person they are throwing their insults at.

When I see my mom holding my daughter, her first grandchild, I am proud of everything that she has accomplished, everything that she has done to get to this point. She isn’t the only one that struggles. People every day wake up with their own inner battles, their own unseen disabilities. They have to fight every day for the things they need to do, constantly going at war with their own bodies let alone the outside world. These people are true fighters, never giving up despite what society tells them, despite what their own brains may tell them. They push and try every day, not only for themselves but their families. When you see people out shopping, pulling into a handicap spot, or even struggling to get something into their cart. Be patient, be kind, offer help. Not everyone’s battle or disability is visible, The world is harsh enough, if we were all a little nicer, we’d be able to see how many silent warriors there actually are.