In many ways, I feel like I’m starting over.
It’s a familiar place, as I feel like I’ve started over from scratch a few times now.
New places, new phases of life.
The one that feels most familiar to me right now is the start-from-scratch feeling I had after becoming a mom.
I had left my career in news and stayed home with my boys when they were babies – mostly because my first one came six weeks early. Then after having two boys 19 months apart, I now had double baby body and it wasn’t until I saw a picture of myself holding my baby on the couch with a kajillion rolls (me -not him) that I freaked out and realized I was at my unhealthiest.
It’s not unlike the feeling I have now, in my late 40s and having to build back my body after a stage 4 cancer diagnosis – only this time with much much more grace than I gave myself the first time around and a lot less vanity.
The first time around I started slowly by getting myself to the gym.
I walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes five days a week then lifted some weights on three of them. I cleaned up my food and ate a combination of healthy protein and carbs.
I got bored and needed a goal so I trained for a 5k.
I ran the 5k. It wasn’t pretty but I did it.
I got bored and trained for a 10k.
I ran the 10k. Again, not pretty, but it felt amazing.
I got bored and trained for a half-marathon.
I ran the half-marathon.
All the while, my husband started to join me and run with me.
I was starting to feel like me again. Only a new me, a better me that reached some physical goals I hadn’t ever done before.
My secret to weightloss at that time became having a parallel goal – like a race to do – and just get healthier. It stopped being about the weight. More about feeling good. The weight was just a bonus.
Because exercising just to “lose weight” wasn’t enough of a motivator to me.
And this – this was working.
Eventually – guess what? I got bored with running. So I decided to train for a sprint triathlon.
My husband said I was nuts cause I didn’t really swim. He said I couldn’t do it.
LOL – NEVER TELL ME I CAN’T DO ANYTHING.
So I did the triathlon. And guess what – he did too.
He started to fall in love with it just as I had.
And we found a community full of people who loved it as much as we did.
Then we did an olympic distance triathlon and it tested everything in me.
Then we did a half-iron distance triathlon and it tested me even more than that.
I was now in the best shape of my life, but it didn’t matter. What mattered now was the endurance I had built and the absolute euphoric feeling I got from training and crossing the finish line. Doing things that absolutely terrified me. The friendships we were making. The healthy examples we were becoming for our kids.
And by the way, throughout this whole time, mind you – I was not a front-of-the-pack competitor. I was a mid-to-back of the pack finisher. My only competition was me vs. me. Me vs. my brain. Me vs. my inner monologue. The goal was never to win. It was just to finish.
I had to invent ways to keep moving forward like running from lamp post to lamp post, singing songs in my head with every swim stroke and every pedal of my bike.
Figuring out how to NOT PANIC in cold or rough water or while wearing a wet suit. How to breathe.
How to keep swimming, biking, and running through pain. And my fear of water animals. And sometimes lightning.
Quick feet in the blistering heat (while vultures flew over head waiting for me to drop).
Walk – run – walk – run…
Just pass that one person.
Lessons through endurance that I would eventually use – you guessed it – through cancer treatments, surgeries, and difficult recoveries after both.
And in the darkest of moments when I want nothing more than to give up.
But we don’t DNF HERE. (It’s a race term for DID NOT FINISH.)
I have never DNFed then (even with flat tires, cramps, and the poops). And I don’t DNF now either. Even still with cramps and the poops lol.
So, short story long, here I am again, the girl on the couch in the picture only this time with a puppy because my kids are grown, but I don’t recognize my perimenopausal body anymore. My clothes are tight.
And since treatment affected my thyroid, my body has settled itself into some weird places, fatigue and energy come and go in big waves that last for minutes or days and it’s all very unpredictable.
Some days I’m laid out flat.
Some days I can sit outside and watch the birds.
Some days I can walk the dog.
Some days I can hike.
Some days I can get in 10k steps.
I’ve had to do what I can when I can, as my friend Carla coined – WYCWYC – “what you can when you can” (PS. she has a whole book on it you should read it, she’s incredible.)
When my last treatment stopped working and I had to start a new one, I won’t lie, I thought maybe time was running out for me. I started planning trip after trip to make sure my eyes got to see all the things they wanted to before time was up.
When I was flattened by the new treatment, the only thing that made me feel better was being in a fun place. When I got home, I noticed that the only time I felt better was when I made “home” a more fun place. So when I couldn’t travel, I started taking advantage of the things people do when they travel here: hiking, sunsets, sunrises, pools, the beach, long long walks in gorgeous places, kayaking, fishing…
Keeping my mind busy and trying – TRYING – to keep my body busy is what’s working for me right now. My body’s not changing back yet, and I’m not actually sure if it ever will. I’m ok with that. (mostly).
For now, I’m seizing the time that I feel like I can move. Taking advantage of wherever I am with whoever will come along with me.
Yep, I’m about to hit the beach on our beach vacation without a beach body.
But it’s a body and it will be on a beach nonetheless. Technically, that’s a beach body.
And as I keep moving forward step by step, I am hoping my steps will again become a jog and everything that I’ve endured up to this point will take me across a new finish line, one where I will be a better me than I was before.
One that loves who I am and the body I’ve been given for however long I get to be in it.
Because in the end, it’s only me vs. me, right? Whatever it takes to get across the finish.