To my inner circle,
I’ve been sitting with a phrase from The Honey Pop’s feature on Soul-Happy: “reclaims her inner Viking strength.” I come by the Viking part honestly. But writing my memoir meant looking closely at what that strength had carried, and what it could no longer carry for me.
In the book, I return to the paper route I had as a child in Frederikshavn:
“The Viking stamina is a genetic code, carried to Frederikshavn by the likes of Lars and Anna Emilia, who had to toil and endure as bottom-rung immigrants to survive and give life to more Nilssons, and this part of me jumped to my rescue. I got to know its character. I got to fight my way up a merciless hill, over and over, when that was the last thing I ever wanted to do. Something in me grew wide and deep and indomitable, and it wasn’t loathing alone.”
I knew how to keep going. Years later, inside a marriage and a life I could no longer recognize as my own, I was still trying to endure. In another passage, I wrote:
“My strong, tall frame and Viking blood can no longer fend off the physical toll of being soul-unhappy.”
That is a difficult sentence to return to. The stamina was real. So were the limits of what I could survive by simply trying harder.
My recovery was long, physical, and full of setbacks. Much later in the book, during rehabilitation, the hill has become a hospital doorway:
“THE NEXT DAY, the nimble PT is back, and once again, I direct my feet past the chair. The door opening is like another hilltop, and I have plans to make it through today.”
“Of course, I’ll do one more,” I answer the young uniform. The Viking stamina isn’t lost. It’ll be the last thing ever to go.
One more step. A doorway I wanted to reach. That was strength too.
So if you are in the thick of something hard right now, I am not going to hand you a bow. What does showing up for yourself ask of you today?
With love and gratitude,
Anette
More from my blog: The Power Of Healing = Evolution.
Read Soul-Happy: A Viking Woman’s Long Road Home
If you’d like to read the full story:
