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since coming back to Brisbane for my fourth year, I have been thinking a lot about strength and how it looks like for me right now. the truth is, this is a tried thing and I've had to go through it many times. but it doesn't build a muscle; I don't feel any stronger.

but in thinking of strength and how it has looked like for me in the past, I think that there is strength here somewhere and most often, it's only in retrospect that we realise it.

and so the only option is to see this through. and one day, In sha Allah God Willing, we can look back to this moment and realise this is what strength looked like after all.

How about you? What does strength look like in your life right now?

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the note in the picture (that is now creased with love and many rereads) came with the package I ordered from nzakrh's magic shop as part of The Strong Girls Club-related merch. it says, "Strength is when you smile, but also when you cry. Sometimes strength is standing on your two feet and sometimes it's letting yourself fall on your knees. Do what makes you shine the most after - we're all strong girls, I feel. Even with tears flowing down your cheeks, even with a huge smile dancing on your lips. You got this."

I got the package at the end of a day spent studying and whilst looking for some peace and quiet in the park and the note has really left a huge impact on me then onwards.

Are there are any flowers for the taking that you would like to share, too? Stories or videos or quotes that you feel are related to this piece? Share them with me in the comments; I'd love to hear from you!

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"I haven't seen you much lately," N had said.

This was true. We lived no more than a five minutes' walk away from each other and I had seen her less in those first few weeks of our sixth semester than I had in the weeks when we lived from each other a thirty minutes' walk away.

"I know," I had replied, and the words had landed with a thud, sounding heavy because they were. They had carried in them, after all, the weight of many things left unspoken. All of which, in the next moment, I had let out in a mad tumble.

"I'm trying to focus more on university work this semester. I have fixed schedules for each day, balancing work and rest. I don't have a lot of free time to see you guys often..." And on and on rolled the excuses, each with a nod of the head and a fiercely justified expression. N had taken them all in as they came out, and had given, as I finished, a space for silence.

And then, came her question: "And you're okay with that?"

At this, a rush of thoughts had greeted me: the time and energy I was spending on my studies were paying off - I was, as I'd intended, more focused on university work. I was getting all the rest I needed and all the space for myself that I craved. Things were going well. Of course I was okay, I thought. Everything else was.

Almost everything else.

The day before, in a fit of panic, I had reached out to N and the rest of the group to explain the situation I was in: trigger finger, x-rays, ultrasounds, and the like; my worries written in texts that built themselves up in great big stacks. It was only after having shouldered all of these for about a week that I had reached out to them. And I knew, very well, that I had not been okay then.

And it wasn't the breakdown I was starting to feel the beginnings of or the assignment with the deadline that was fast approaching. It wasn't these, nor was it the trigger finger agenda.

It was that I was alone through it all. It was that I carried the weight of all of these on my own, having not left, in my strict scheduling and fixed routines, time and space to be with the people I so strongly needed with me at the time. It was the homesickness that gnawed at me and would settle if I weren't filling up my time with the work. And the being away from the people I loved that made it very much not okay.

I might have told N this at the time, or might have pretended otherwise. But what I remember was that, at the end of the afternoon of a rather peculiar appointment, our walking down unknown streets and our heartfelt conversations, I spent that night having dinner with N and the rest of the group, soaking in their concerns and words of comfort.

I didn't notice that a realisation, following N's question, was already in the works then. Only now, belatedly, had it come to me.

And it is this: that things might have come together the way I had planned then and they had seemed and even felt to me, in the surface, perfectly okay. And maybe they were, at some level. But they weren't what truly mattered to me nor were they what I strongly valued.

Because what I value are the things I love, and the people I love. I value the feelings and emotions that come with the things I do with my time (whether or not those things were productive or regarded highly by others). I value quality bonds and heartfelt conversations; having the right questions asked and coming to the best of realisations. And it is in all this - in the things that I value and hold to myself dearest - that I've found that I am, finally, honestly, perfectly okay with.

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