Strong Women Incest Survivor Cheryl Miller Las Vegas MBW Family

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I was formed in the womb of a strong woman. The voice of a woman softened the early days. I was taught by women. They helped to complete an unfinished self. A special woman is my life's companion. she has more strength than I can claim. An anonymous poem, by a woman, best describes my feelings.

	A strong woman is a woman who is straining
	A strong woman is a woman standing
	on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
	while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
	A strong woman is a woman at work
	cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
	and while she shovels, she talks about
	how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
	the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
	develops the stomach muscles, and
	she goes on shoveling with tears
	in her nose.

	A strong woman is a woman in whose head
	a voice is repeating, I told you so,
	ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
	aggressive, nobody will ever love you back,
	why aren't you feminine, why aren't
	you soft, why aren't you quiet, why
	aren't you dead?

	A strong woman is a woman determined
	to do something others are determined
	not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
	of a lead coffin lid. she is trying to raise
	a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
	to butt her way through a steel wall.
	Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
	to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.

	A strong woman is a woman bleeding
	inside. A strong woman is a woman making herself
	strong every morning while her teeth loosen and her back
	throbs. Every baby, a tooth, midwives used to say, and
	now every battle a scar. A strong woman is a mass of
	scar tissue that aches when it rains and wounds that
	bleed when you bump them and memories that get up in
	the night and pace in boots to and fro.

	A strong woman is a woman who craves love like
	oxygen or she turns blue choking.
	A strong woman is a woman who loves
	strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
	terrified and has strong needs.
	A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in
	connection, in feeling;
	she is not strong as a stone
	but as a wolf suckling her young. Strength is not
	in her,
	but she
	enacts it as the wind fills a sail.