I Uncovered Super-Hero-Strength While Beginning My Move Into To My New Maine House

If you've been following, my wife and I are new homeowners and have been working on renovating an 88 year old home in Lewiston, Maine. We are finally ready to start moving into our new home and we are pretty independent.

As woman, we've been told many times and programmed to believe that we are the weaker sex. We have been "mansplained" and thrown passive-aggressive behavior from others who assume we have air between our ears and noodles for muscles our entire life. Mix that with being gay and young, well you pretty much have a recipe for the highest, can-do-anything attitude you'll ever come across.

It's hard for us to ask for help because we are both admit ably stubborn and hard-headed due to the trials we've had to face.

Appliances are most definitely needed to live. Dishwasher, refrigerators, ovens, but today, we're going to be discussing the back breaking duty of how we got our washer and dryer into our house.

A close friend of ours, Robin was extremely generous and sold us her washer and dryer. We both thought to ourselves that we could borrow a truck and simply, "grab them" and bring them home.

Janelle and I and I am sure many of you reading this have been faced with much adversity because we're woman, which results in us only wanting to rely and count on ourselves to do it all, even physical duties, instead of calling upon a man to help.

We have to re-train our brains and bodies to know, for a fact that if a man can do it, any human with a brain and physical motivation can do it too.

We borrowed a truck and headed right on over to Robin's house to pick-up our appliances.

Neither one of us has ever lifted or transported a washer or dryer. With that being said, we have moved huge items before and Janelle especially is learned in the ways of strapping things to the top of vehicles.

When we arrived we saw the appliances were in a basement down a deep, narrow, storm-door-like staircase. We decided to bring these contraptions called, "shoulder dolly's". They help to reduce strain on your back by putting straps around your shoulders to counter the weight of very heavy items so that you can lift but it isn't without you're own strength as well.

We proceeded to the basement, put our shoulder straps on, tightened them around the dryer and began our journey up the stairs. The dryer wasn't bad and we were able to successfully get it upstairs and into the truck.

The washer was an entirely differently beast. Now, according to The Home Depot,

A large capacity washing machine can weigh almost 230 pounds and a Medium capacity washer is 150 pounds. 

We believe this particular washer is somewhere in the medium capacity range.

Once we bent down to lift the washer for the first time, I started to feel inadequate. For some reason, suddenly a rush of self-doubt covered my body and Janelle could tell.

She looked at me and said, "You got this babe, you're Elizabeth Snyder, you can be & do anything." Then she said, 1, 2, 3, and on 3, I stood up.

Janelle and I were standing there, eye to eye, holding a 150 plus pound washing machine, together. I know this story might sound silly because it's not like we were lifting a car to save someone's life, but in that moment I felt this rush of adrenaline, I felt unstoppable.

The journey up the stairs was tough. I was at the bottom and at points, Janelle was dead-lifting the machine up to the top. At one point the entire washing machine was leaning on my body, but we were able to slowly get that sucker up the stairs.

The last leg of the journey was to lift it up into the truck. So, we took a moment, she looked at me again, nodded, and counted to 3.

But, I was stuck on 3, not able to help her get it onto the truck and then again, she sparked a fire inside of me and said, "Who are you Elizabeth" and in that moment I "Hulked Out." I lifted my end so high that I felt I could've thrown the damn thing into the clouds.

This story is not about hero's or a rescue. It's not about anything surreal or magically entertaining on how we managed to do something impossible. It's about what we tell ourselves and how even a tiny bit of self-doubt can break our spirits.

Mental health is just as important as physical health and having people surround you that can be your "shoulder dollies" is vital. You can lean on others without relying on them.

Don't be afraid to do things you are scared of because without the risk, you won't be able to do your laundry.

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