Write with TLC

I love the people in my life who help me feel my own strength. I'm not talking about those who make me fight them to demonstrate my own strength though they do serve a purpose as well. For the purposes of this post though we're going to focus on those whose mere presence in your life make you feel, understand, and embrace your inner strength without a moment of shame or the need to downplay it. In the song  What It Feels Like for a Girl , Madonna sings "Strong inside but you don't know it. Good little girls they never show it. When you open up your mouth to speak could you be a little weak." and later "Hurt that's not supposed to show and tears that fall when no one knows. When you're trying hard to be your best, could you be a little less." I love this song. I'll concede that the video is weird, and the decision to leave out the lyrics wasn't one of her smartest because the lyrics to this song are awesome! They do such an incredible ...

An analysis of my life has shown me time and again how interwoven strength and vulnerability are. I can see times in my life when I struggled to be strong and when I hid my vulnerability. I have often put up a tough exterior to hide my incredibly fragile vulnerability as well as my incredibly fragile inner strength. It seemed like my inner strength intimidated people and my vulnerability offered them ammunition against me, so I learned to hide both behind a tough exterior. I feared having my vulnerability used against me and my strength scaring people  away . Hiding both my strength and my vulnerability became yet another mask I wore to  protect myself from the people in my life. I didn't quite understand how to be both strong and vulnerable with others without putting myself at risk.  Other times I'd overshare with people as a test to see who would stay and who would leave. I get to choose who sees different aspects of my life. I didn't understand the idea that some peop...

Sometimes self-destructive behavior masquerades as strength. I've always considered myself strong and independent though recently life forced me to rethink my personal definitions of both strength and independence. My focus turned to how sometimes we see self-destructive behavior as strength. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that often other people's view of me as a strong woman came during times when I was at my most self-destructive. Lately, I've spent some time trying to reconcile inner strength with my tendency toward self-destructive behavior when I'm faced with things I'd rather avoid acknowledging let alone resolving. We have a tendency to look at women who appear to make all their own decisions as strong regardless of how bad those decisions are. Numbing one's pain and drowning out the past with sex, drugs, alcohol, or other vices are not traits of a strong woman. Erecting a barrier around one's emotions to keep from feeling vuln...

As I look through my poetry, I'm amazed at how often the theme of strength threads through my poems. I'm constantly reminded that I am, in fact, stronger than I realize. In the course of my life, I've faced my weaknesses and hid from my weaknesses. I've faced my strengths and hid from my strengths . I've been blind to both my strengths and my weaknesses. I've allowed others to commandeer my strength and take advantage of my weaknesses. I've willingly given up my strength because I thought it better for others. I've hidden my strength in the depths of my mind and the recesses of my heart. I've been conquered and I've conquered. I've been victim and victor. I've been weak and strong. As I read my poems, I often discover things I've forgotten or denied about myself. It wasn't until I decided to embrace my own strength and stop looking for strength from outside sources that I discovered true strength. I don't need to be s...

When I started reading  Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead  by Sheryl Sandberg, I was preparing my book, Strength in Silhouette: Poems , for publication. As I read my poems juxtaposed to Lean In, my heart ached and my soul cried out for the women who have struggled as I have to embrace being in relationships without sacrificing themselves and their goals. I felt a new sense of purpose for my work to share the idea that women don't have to give up femininity to be strong or sacrifice marriage to be successful or deny our place in the world because it makes someone else uncomfortable. Lean In begged me to examine my life. I took quite a long time to read the book, probably twice as long as it normally would have. I read a few pages, took some time to think about what I read, read some more, and sometimes went back and re-read passages. As I read through the poems under consideration for Strength in Silhouette, my thoughts repeatedly drifted back to Sandberg's words....

I thought 2012 was going to be my year focused on  laughter ... Turns out, my inner strength has decided it's her turn to shine. I thought I let her out last year, but she informed me last night our work isn't finished... Just like my vulnerability popped up the other day when I found myself trying to express something to a friend that I just can't express yet and reminded me that our work isn't quite finished either... The past few weeks I've been having some revelations that I'm not quite sure what to do with. What I do know about them is they are screaming that if I start denying my strength again, I'm going to regret it! See I've been tempted to deny my strength again for many of the same reasons I pushed into into a dark corner years ago. I can keep the peace. I can maintain the status quo. Certain people like me better when I'm not so strong. Certain people really don't like it when I live in my strength. Sometimes being strong costs yo...

As a writer, I often feel a sense of isolation that is only relieved through sharing my work. As a human being, I sometimes feel a sense of vulnerability that is only relieved when I risk connecting with others. Being a writer gives me an excuse to avoid risking vulnerability. When I was compiling the poems for my book, Strength in Silhouette: Poems , I couldn't help but notice how often strength and vulnerability played on the same playground, and they played together well. I reflected over several years when I spent concerted efforts to risk vulnerability in order to grow closer to those I loved and to be more authentic. Each foray I made into vulnerability made me feel stronger. It wasn't that I couldn't be hurt. It wasn't that I didn't hurt. I was hurt. I felt pain deeply, but I felt a strength coming through the vulnerability that reminded me I could do better than survive, I could thrive. So, as I sorted through the poems to focus on strength I watched my...

When I started tapping into my inner strength to deal with some challenges in my life, it reawakened a need in me to not only be strong but to empower others to embrace their inner strength. I blogged about strength quite often during this time period, but I found my struggle with inner strength pouring into my poems. Poems filled page after page. Pretty soon I realized I had written enough about inner strength, empowerment, and women's innate struggle to be strong without losing their femininity to fill a book. That book is not now complete and available for purchase in both trade paperback and Kindle! Enjoy!  

Recently, as I stood in the middle of Sweet Creek with one foot on one rock and the other foot on another rock in order to take a picture of one of the many waterfalls we saw while hiking the Sweet Creek Trail, I thought about a blog post I'd been struggling to finish. I felt perfectly comfortable standing in that slightly unsteady stance to capture the image I wanted. My mind wandered back to the words I'd been struggling to find to express my latest thoughts on vulnerability. I looked down into the water I straddled and felt the fleetingness of words written and discarded as not perfect enough. So much of my life I've felt the need to protect myself - physically, mentally, emotionally. There have been times when I've been paralyzed by my fear of vulnerability. Vulnerability and I have always had a very tumultuous relationship. After I snapped the photo, I secured both feet on one rock, stepped onto a larger rock and sat down. I took a deep cleansing breath and ...

Last night I listened to Brene Brown on TEDTalks. She discussed vulnerability. I listened as she explained several things I discovered in 2010 when I did an experiment in making myself more vulnerable. Her discoveries about herself so mirrored what I discovered about myself, it scared me. After it was over, I fought back the tear that slid down my cheek. I read a blog post I wrote in early 2011 about my experiment in being more vulnerable, Vulnerability, I Once Considered You a Curse Word this morning, and realized three things. 1) I haven't come quite as far as I'd planned in the past few years, 2) I sure do like me more today than I did when I started my experiment, and 3) I find much more strength than weakness in allowing myself to be vulnerable. I still struggle with allowing myself to be vulnerable. I fall back into old patterns of protecting myself and lose sight of the benefits of opening my truth to other people. I still have moments of intense fear that people wi...

Shame... Shame on you... Shame on me... You have no shame... Shame... Sighs! I am not ashamed of who I am or my life experiences. I am not ashamed... And, yet, there have been far too many moments of my life lived in shame, lived in the shame of someone else's perception of my existence and my experiences. We all have. We wear shame like a prism of everything we've done wrong shrinking us into our smallest selves and projecting reasons to not be loved into the world. I recently read I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't): Making the Journey from "What Will People Think?" to "I Am Enough" by Brené Brown (read my review ). When I started it, I had no intention of doing the exercises; however, I quickly changed my mind. As I read I realized that to have the full experience, to truly understand the book, I needed to do the exercises. Still, to be honest, I didn't expect to get much out of it...  After all, I'd already done this work... I...

Vulnerability in Silhouette: Poems, my second poetry book exploring the relationship between vulnerability and strength, celebrates its first birthday in September. To celebrate I'm offering a giveaway over on Goodreads. Enter to win 1 of 10 signed copies! Reviews are always appreciated, particularly if you enjoy the read! < Goodreads Book Giveaway Vulnerability in Silhouette by T.L. Cooper Giveaway ends October 01, 2016. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway /> And, if you're wondering, the first book of poetry that explored the relationship between vulnerability and strength was Strength in Silhouette: Poems . And, if you just don't want to wait, you can purchase an unsigned copy or the Kindle version of Vulnerability in Silhouette: Poems now.

So you think when you call me a bitch, I'm going to curl up and cry for forgiveness? Yeah, right. Think again! As far back as I can remember I've been proud to be called a bitch. I realized early on that most of the time, this "insult" is hurled to make a woman back down when she stands up for herself or otherwise exhibits her strength and/or independence. I felt this way well before someone sent me one of those email chain jokes in the 1990s that defined bitch as a Babe In Total Control of Herself though I did love that email because it fit so well with what I already believed. There is something to that if you think about it. Women who are considered bitches are usually strong, independent, and outspoken. They are often successful or at the very least confident in their achievements. So I've never been one to shrink away from the label though that probably lead to me hearing it that much more often. I'm not encouraging people to lob the word at others by m...

My relationship with trust is... well, complicated, chaotic, and ever-changing! It is also affirming, inspiring, and reassuring! I suppose that takes us back to complicated. I've spent my life vacillating between being too trusting and not trusting at all. Errors in judgment and taking the blame for other people's actions led me to having less than zero trust in my own judgment. I walked around terrified that if I trusted someone that by definition made them untrustworthy, but if I couldn't trust them then maybe I should trust them but if I trusted them.... Oh, what a tangled circle we twirl in when we practice illogical logic. Dizzy yet? Anyway, at some point I convinced myself I trusted no one, not my friends, not my husband, not my family, not myself. I spiraled deep into that dizzying circle of mistrust, distrust, total lack of trust. Oh, I could put on the proper face at the proper time for the proper reason, but underneath every expression of trust was a loathin...

Start from where you are... Such a simple phrase. Such a simple concept. Such a simple action. Or so it sounds. Yet putting it into practice is nearly impossible; however, when we start from where we are, it is so easy to accomplish our goals. I recently have been bombarded with lessons in the concept of starting from where I am. My life is in major transition mode leaving me with a lot of unknowns. In the past, unknowns would have left me feeling very insecure and even a bit unsafe yet I feel rather excited right now. I have moments of insecurity, but they are fleeting. I know that wherever I'm headed, I will end up in the right place for me. After all, I'll be there... Everything I hold dear is currently transitioning to a new phase in my life, and there are moments when I cling to yesterday and other moments when I'm trapped in the outcome that hasn't happened yet. In those moments, I forget to be where I'm at in this journey. The problem with starting eit...

Last week was No More Week, sponsored by the No More organization. No More's mission is to end domestic violence and sexual assault. I've participated in No More weeks and other awareness activities sponsored by No More several times over the past few years. This year the theme was Change Happens Here - #changehappenshere. I chose the following as my statement "No More valuing the assailant's future more than the victim's." I hated writing the word victim. I wanted to write survivor so badly. Because... Words matter. They really do. The words we choose convey a message. A subtle shift happens when we read one word over the other. I am both a victim and a survivor, but I hate to think of myself as a victim. I hate it. I fight it. I even hide from it. But, there are times when acknowledging that to be a survivor one has to have been a victim at some point is essential to growth and forward movement. This idea that being a victim is bad is a continuati...