Gymnastics photo, age 14. Very much in the middle of my struggle with health.
Someone asked me today what my story is regarding becoming confident in my body, and when did I decide to do deeper inner work to strengthen my pathway to confidence.
The answer is a multi layered set of stories, and I’m excited by the challenge of putting it all into words. My confidence in my body is completely entwined with my spiritual, emotional, and mental development. I had a few growth spurts, and when I look back on my path, I can see how I was taking a few roads to growth all at once.
I’ll start at the beginning.
If I was anything as a kid, I was body confident. I was madly in love with ballet and gymnastics, despite the fact that I didn’t have the body or natural skill for either. They made my heart happy, and that translated to freedom in my body. I felt innate freedom to express myself through movement, and I learned to defy realities like gravity, and inflexibility. With hard work and dedication I could develop skills that were impossible to the majority of my peers. In my body, and with my body, I was fearless. My body was my favorite friend.
It was like a playground built into my existence. I felt limitless. I don’t know how else to describe it.
Fast forward to middle school, that’s when my health started to notably decline. I was checked by a doctor and my health was deemed “normal.” But it wasn’t normal. I felt like I was wearing ankle weights while tumbling. Everything physical was harder, not to mention I was exhausted all the time. I yawned all day, I was mentally sluggish, and I caught every cold and flu that went around. I felt betrayed by my body… but also like I knew I couldn’t accept this as my new normal.
I cried at practices a lot during this time… the only place outside of my home where I would have full on, ugly cry, breakdowns. I did all the conditioning. I didn’t cheat. I worked hard, and yet my body would not go over the vault, and some days my body refused to participate in tumbling drills.
I didn’t quite blame my body. I just thought something was inherently wrong with me. The gym was the one place in the world where I had felt like I fully belonged… and yet there I was, failing over and over.
In high school it got worse.
I had to drop out of track because I couldn’t run a single lap around the track without doubling over wheezing. Then during a swim meet, I did the unthinkable. My coach had signed me up for a race I simply couldn’t complete. I was struggling to breathe, and finally just got out of the pool. I walked to the showers while my competitors finished their race. I tried to wash the failure and shame off of me. I tried not to completely break down… but my illness wasn’t visible, and it wasn’t diagnosed. It didn’t make any sense that I couldn’t complete this swim. I just looked like a quitter - and I felt like one.
Far beneath my emotions about all that my body wasn’t doing for me, I still felt this small voice of truth letting me know that this burden on my body wasn’t normal and it wasn’t a long term reality. That was my intuition guiding me, giving me hope.
Can you relate to this? Maybe it’s not athletics for you - it could be that you developed acne, or your energy level tanked, or you put on weight in a way that doesn’t reflect your lifestyle. There are countless ways this kind of burden presents for each of us.
In my next post I’ll talk about how I found the answer I was looking for, and how it completely changed the course of my life for the better.
In another post I’ll dig into all the experiences I had during this early part of my iife where I had to create strong boundaries for myself. I had to stand up for myself when adults treated me unfairly, and as I created space for my healing.
My journey to good health was also a journey to my freedom in my voice. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!
