You don’t always remember that you are resilient. We all get distracted, stuck, and scattered sometimes. When you think about strength, what do you see in your mind’s eye? You might not think of softness and mutability right away, but your ability to change, to soften, to open, is one of your greatest gifts.

Our culture has taught us to think of strength in particular ways. Those ways can sometimes limit our perspective on what strength is, and how powerful we are.

We tend to associate strength with domination. We think of mastery, of sovereignty, of authority. Authority can easily become authoritarianism. It is often the villain in the story who manipulates power and becomes (almost) invincible. They have a lot of control over others, and very little control of themselves. They think they are immune, and this is often the cause of their downfall. 

There’s a Hindu story about a buffalo demon who gains too much control, and becomes so powerful that his force threatens to destroy the universe. The buffalo is a symbol of our stubborn tendencies, when we push too hard, and are unable to see our own mistakes, when we get stuck and think there is only one way, when we are blind to nuance, when we forget that the power needs to be in the hands of the many, not of the one. The gods and goddesses tremble with fear, as this demon begins to suffocate the world with his oppressive rule. 

It’s that fear, and their ability to admit their vulnerability that causes the gods to come together and do something. They realize that they need each other, that each of them alone cannot save them from this oppressive force. They need change. They need a new way of being. 

Strength is resilience, and resilience is the opposite of rigidity. Resilience is the ability to adapt, and the capacity to recover from difficulties, to bounce back, to withstand rough situations through plasticity. Flexibility is a feature of resilience. The capacity to find new ways, the ability to twist and turn and carve pathways through adversity. 

We are shaped by our experiences, and by how we move through them. We don’t have control over what happens, but how we collaborate with the forces around us, how we direct the energy within us, how we speak to ourselves, how we interact with others around us, is all part of what forms our reality. 

To be strong is not only to rise into your own, to project your voice, and to protect your heart, but it is also to know how to listen, how to adjust, to be pliable, to be able to change. 

So those gods in that Hindu story about Mahishasura, the buffalo demon, come together and in desperation and despair they try to figure out what to do. They argue a little. They don’t agree on everything. They are not united. They realize that the demon suffocates the universe by swallowing everything, by making the world stuck because it’s all him now; everything looks like, sounds like, smells like a buffalo. He is the tyranny of certainty. They realize that it’s their differences that will create the kind of power that can bring breath back into the world. Agreeing on everything isn’t the solution. Sameness is the demon. Diversity is their strength. So they pour all their differences, all their light and heat, into a central point in the middle of their circle. 

Strength isn’t meant to shield us from struggle, or keep us away from doubt. Strength allows us to be open, and openness increases our resilience. Being strong doesn’t stop you from saying things, or doing things that you regret, or looking back at and cringe, it’s that you are able to integrate the feelings. It’s that you’re able to take responsibility for your actions and words. It’s that you’re able to learn from your experiences. It’s that your vulnerability allows you to form deeper connections. 

A lot of things in our lives can make us feel distracted, fragmented, and depleted. From social media to driving, to all the tasks we need to accomplish, from parenting to politics, to financial worries, to social anxiety, from the news, to an overwhelming workload, to hormonal shifts, to an unregulated nervous system. We live in a time that doesn’t help us focus, and the tendency to be pulled in many directions at once is a feature of modern life. 

This is not about complaining and spinning into a doom and gloom narrative about this day and age, but rather an invitation to increase our awareness, to become more conscious of the things that pull us away from our center. When we are able to recognize what distracts us, we are able to call ourselves back, to collect our pieces, to redirect our energy, to recreate ourselves. 

We want to be careful of the tendency to let strength become dominance and control. We have plenty of buffalo examples around us, of how strength can lean into stubbornness, righteousness, and certainty. We can learn by looking at humanity how strength is sometimes conflated with force. But deep power allows us to breathe, to change, to question, and to be more durable through elasticity. 

We tend to think of our strengths in terms of what we’re good at. It is only natural to want to keep our talents and gifts close, nurtured, and on display, and what we perceive as our weaknesses hidden, starved, and tucked away. 

Sometimes we try to forget about our weaknesses, but it’s when we ignore, suppress, or think that we’re immune to our inadequacies that they end up running the show. 

In that buffalo demon story, the power of difference and diversity that pours out of the vulnerability of the gods, creates a mighty mama, a badass babe, a glorious goddesses, who emerges out of that ball of heat and light in the center of their circle. Her name is Durga, which translates from Sanskrit into; “tough going,” or “fortress.” Durga is the creative power of all the gods, and the mother of the universe, who lives in us as courage, new pathways, and resilience.

She has eight arms, she’s radiant, she’s irresistible, and she understands that in order to step into the collective task, she has to work on herself. So she retreats into a cave for a thousand years, and studies, practices, and cultivates some serious ninja skills and Yoda wisdom. She goes to talk therapy and somatic therapy and learns to work with the diversity and difference of perspective within her – the light and shadow that each of the gods poured into the center of their circle, which created her. When she emerges from her cave ready for battle, she rides a lion. Durga has partnered with her own wildness. 

We become stronger when we are able to work with the different energies, qualities, tendencies, and aspects of who we are. When instead of trying to slay the dangerous beast within us, we give it clear boundaries and room to express itself. When we learn to collaborate instead of an attempt to control. When we turn toward our shadow, learn more about what hides within it, and cultivate a relationship with our most undesired parts. We are stronger when we are grounded, and learning how to befriend and dance with our untamed currents can help us grow a healthy root system.  

Every struggle we have faced, within us and in the world, can teach us something, and can help us grow. Conflict can be exhausting, but when we learn to sit with the lessons, learn from the wounds, and develop plasticity through friction, we can weave new patterns, integrate more pieces, and keep going. There’s wisdom that comes through our willingness to be in life’s storms and not give up, and there’s great power in learning how to discern, when to hold the line, and how to create safety. 

Durga’s battle with the buffalo demon is a famous story in India. They battle for thousands of years. This demon of certainty and stuckness is also a shapeshifter, which makes the battle difficult, exhausting, and dangerous. Durga learns through the process how to shapeshift as well. She’s relentless. But so is Mahisasura. And it goes on and on and on. In the end it is Durga’s most delicate and tender part that plants the buffalo into the earth, where he becomes compost, and reabsorbed into the soil, back into the power of the great mother. 

In some versions of the story, it’s the soft part of Durga’s foot that she gently places on his forehead that does the trick. Other versions of the story say that when she places the soft of her foot on his head, her feminine parts are revealed to him, and he melts. It’s her receptive qualities, her generative power, and her tender vulnerability that relieves the world from the stuck, immovable, seemingly immune tyrant.

Deep strength requires dedication, discipline, hard work, showing up again and again, and a continuous process of exploration, expanding our vision, and breaking down walls of defensiveness in order to allow more cohesion as more parts are able to come together. To become stronger, we will need softness. We will need to break open and then gather the pieces and rebuild, make something new, create something of meaning. 

To gather your strength, you need an open, tender heart, and a mind that resists stuckness. You are an unfinished story, and whenever you find yourself asserting your power by becoming rigid, your next breath can begin your process of adjusting, shifting, reforming your relationship to strength, and reshaping who you are becoming. It’s the diversity within and around us, as well as our mutable, changeable nature, that allow us to keep becoming.