Heavy Healing: Inner Strength is a PR

In CrossFit, we track our personal records—our PR’s—and strive to break them. Sometimes it’s a lift, sometimes it’s a time or amount of reps. My latest one was a 205-pound deadlift for four reps. Admittedly, I’m not the same athlete I once was, but I’m slowly trying to tell myself that that athlete still exists, just underneath what I am right now. I felt her tonight during my workout. She’s still in there. In the last year or so, I’ve gone on a journey.

Being called an athlete, especially now, feels like a misnomer. I am not the same shape, size, or person. Even when I find that shape and size again, I will still be different from when I was a wide-eyed girl who walked into her first CrossFit Gym. That person was married, had their dream job at the time, and lived a very different life than I am now.

Before I started on the CrossFit journey, I used to think that strength required muscle. We grow up with images of physically fit people, like Superman or Wonder Woman. These people are the perfect image of strength. They are confident, young, and beautiful. Now, I won’t stand on a soap box here, but indulge me for one moment; it sends a message.

As a child growing up in the 90s, being strong meant being able to pick up very heavy things, like cars. To save the damsel in distress and fight the bad guy. That was childhood strength, which lays a foundation hard to break down as an adult. We live in an exciting time. I’m an elder millennial, so I am the last generation to grow up as the Internet developed into what it is today. I am continuously amazed at how the Internet has grown and how easy it has become to navigate. The creation of this newsletter alone went from concept to rough draft in a few hours simply because of a Google search. But we also had outside things like, playing Power Rangers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I was always Raph) in the backyard, climbing trees, having imaginary friends to talk to, and parties with our stuffed animals because the news occupied the one TV in the house. It feels sort of innocent and nostalgic.

It's not like it is now. Children growing up are both freer and more guarded than I was. They grow up where it’s impossible to disappear or to turn it off. Social media is everywhere. So, there’s no leaving school to get away from your bullies for a few hours. No, now the bullies can follow you home. And you can’t trust the adults anymore either, not when the ones that should be protecting you are actively harming you, while they say they’re trying to protect you.

I’ve been thinking about what my childhood was like a lot recently. The days seemed longer and more golden. It was long before life started to become real. As life became more real, the vison of being strong enough to lift a car grew dimmer and dimmer, until it winked out. There’s a time when we all stop playing for a while, and it’s different for all of us. There’s a period of life that, to put it bluntly, will lose its magic.

For me, the distinct moment that childhood ended was March 8, 1998. That’s the day that Kyra died. I was thirteen. Nothing that came before and nothing that came after was shared by the same person. It’s as if a switch in me flipped and suddenly all the magic was gone, and having to live the rest of my life knowing Kyra had no more days left. There would be no more choir, no more homeroom, no more lunch or recess, no more notes in the hall—no more laughing. It all ended abruptly.

There are three significant deaths that mark the different phases of my life. Kyra, Abbi, and Jackie. In Wicca there are three iterations of the Mother Goddess: the Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone. Before Kyra’s death, I was the Maiden. From 1998 – 2016, I was the Mother. Abbi died on December 10. Then, there’s a distinct calm before the storm. From 2016 – 2022, it was a seven-year build-up to something I didn’t expect: The Crone. In this definition, I don’t mean an old woman, but as a very tired and broken down version of the person I once was. The winter version of myself. It feels like I’ve been in winter since 2022.

It took me twenty-five years to change my definition of strength. Its first iteration came in a Facebook post. I tried to find the original one, but I can’t find it anymore. I mentioned, though, that sometimes my mental lifts are just as heavy as my barbell, and sometimes they’re heavier. Which grew into a poem. Which grew into a book. Which has grown into my definition of strength. Maybe it’s deeper than that—maybe it’s my philosophy.

It’s not about what you can do in the blink of an eye that counts. It’s what you do over long periods of time that counts. One life is not made up of small pieces, nor how it began or ended. It’s not the best of times, omitting the mistakes and the downfalls, ignoring the dark times and the sad parts, and focusing only on the highs when you were the hero. It’s a narrative that must include everything.

It means I have to acknowledge the person I am now, and thank myself for going through this cocoon phase. There has been deep and significant loss. And rather than put my delicate, open wounded heart out there to be trampled on, I wrapped myself up in blankets and hid there. I hibernated. I isolated. Because that was so much safer than letting anyone else get too close. If I got too close to them, I would ultimately lose them too. And I couldn’t lose someone else. What I didn’t realize is, in my attempt to save myself from loss, I ended up losing myself.

Through the last five years of therapy, I’ve learned that my heart is the most precious and wonderful part of me. It’s the part of me that makes me a hero. It’s the part of me that has magic. That’s the part of me that’s a superpower. It’s where my real strength is.

It’s not that I can’t flip a car (but a tire would be rad); I’m strong because of my capacity to see someone else as a precious life that should be protected. I can see that about everyone else on this planet, but I couldn’t see that about myself. Sometimes, I still can’t. I’m on the upswing of an incredibly difficult struggle. I regressed hard.

People keep telling me I need to get back to who I used to be. But that’s not possible. Sure, two years ago, I was much thinner and fitter and felt more confident in myself, but that was before I was the Crone. I don’t want to be a Crone anymore. One of the things I love so much about Norse Mythology is that it’s cyclical. Ragnarök will happen, and it will end the cycle, allowing for a reset and then a new era to begin. I want to be in my next era. I want the last two years to have been my Ragnarök.

I want to start over as something new—a new Maiden. I want to believe in a world where magic is real, and I can be anything I want to be, that I can reach the sky and touch the stars. I want to sing in my car again. I want to take night drives just for the fun of it. I want to laugh again. I want my eyes to light up again. I want to play again. I want to fall in love with myself again.

And that is a PR.