The tiger, to me, represents internal strength. Not a superficial kind of power. A deep, ancestral, genetically woven ability that feels almost superhuman.
When I look at my mother, even though that relationship was not all that I needed, I see a woman of immense strength. She was widowed young. She raised six children alone in a foreign country. She did not speak the language. She had no family. Only a few friends. Yet she found a way to survive and now she thrives.
My father was an orphan who could not read or write. Before he passed young, he had raised his village out of poverty. My grandparents carry the same story of strength. My grandmother, a homemaker, quietly moved worlds for her children. My grandfather, who worked steadily, day after day, held everyone together.
When you look at your own lineage, you will see it too. People who carried immense power within them. And if we pull further back into the long sweep of our blood, we find warriors. Those who fought and won wars. Those who survived famine, pandemics, and challenges unimaginable.
I believe our veins course with the blood of those who came before us. We are made of power. We are made of strength. We are made of endurance.
When I came to this full-body acceptance, my life changed. It takes courage to see oneself as this powerful. Too often, we only recognize strength when we are tested. But it lives within us from birth.
Now, I live with this knowing. I pace myself with power unimaginable. I meet the hard things with calm conviction. I dream more and know I am more, too. I believe this applies to every person, and I ask, when you wear the Ashaki's Tiger, to remember this truth.
~
You were unnamed
But the wild always knew.
power lives deep inside of you.
Each step a return to truth.
You are finding yourself now.
A tiger remembering her name.
~