Total Rip-off Tuesday

Wherein I "rip-off" another writer on the web. Not taking credit, just passing on good stuff. Today's choice is from the premiere issue of "Verily" magazine, a new magazine for women, and author Sophie Caldecott, on her father's illness:

Suffering alongside each other doesn’t mean that we are negative all the time. When he had an ultrasound on his tumours, dad joked about asking the doctor whether it was a boy or a girl. We laughed about how he wanted to be discharged from the hospital so that he could come home in time to watch his favorite Sunday night television program. It just means that we don’t have to hide our tears from one another when we’ve had a bad day, that we can curl up on each other’s beds and just lie there without needing to give a reason. 

The deepest kind of strength, after all, is empathy, but strength seems like an inadequate word to describe it. It implies a stoicism, a hardness, when in reality what we need most of all when things are most difficult is a softness, a flexibility, an openness to roll with the punches, to bend and not break.

(By the way, if you are a lady who likes a good magazine, please check out Verily - it is worth your time!)