Writing a Chapter in my Book (Parts 1-4)

Why is going 3 miles (not even running them consecutively) a momentous occasion? And why wouldn't you at least filter your picture to mark the occasion?

Because the story matters so much more than the picture, or the miles for that matter.
After training for 18 months what most people train or 16 WEEKS, I competed in my first and last fitness competition. I loved every single painful, steady, disciplined, joyful, erratic, extreme, costly, time consuming, inconvenient second and dollar spent. When it was over, I felt the need to recover and but thought I'd rev back up and do it again. I'd hit my competition date 2 weeks early so I wasn't lean enough but I was in the shape of my life. Every waking second was pretty much enjoyable in that kind of shape.

Deep down I knew tho, that I definitely had to do more than most, rise above way higher and commit way longer to get in the same shape others achieved in weeks. Otherwise it would not have taken me months to do what should have taken me weeks, including two highly capable and seasoned coaches. But the no quit in me kept going.

I dieted and trained for nearly 2 years straight. I have since had a genetic test and learned that I am genetically not geared to burn fat or have strong cardio vascular system and that I am very sensitive to carbohydrates deficient in vitamins causing lethargy, so I seek carbs for energy and then store them because I don't metabolize them. Exercise is not that effective either according to the test, I am the least able to burn fat on the range of abilities offered. Add to that I am not very affected by caffeine so trying to supplement with caffeine for energy leads to over-caffeinating and bad for my adrenal system.

The test proved that I am genetically predisposed to be tired and resist low body fat.
Leave it to me to elect to work against all of that and refuse to quit! I have to laugh at the stubbornness. It never occurred to me - or maybe it did- that it would damage my metabolism from forcing the low body fat and dieting and training for so long would and would hurl me into an uncontrollable sadness and lethargy that my physiology demanded. I would not have stopped because I dont believe that just because something is hard doesn't mean you should not do it.

Alas ...Your body's physiological needs cannot be denied. I am proof if you need it! I forced a miracle, but I paid for it.

Add to that unintended consequence of chasing that dream of competing, that very same year... I sold my gym... my life's passion (aside from my family) that I sketched everything from the signs on the wall to the content of the newsletters and mission on a commuter bus to my "real job" as an economist for the federal government. It came to life and was a dream come true. I gained so much I never expected and learned more than I ever bargained for. But, I sold it the same year I competed and it was the right thing to do. I'd grown weary and let burnout steal my passion and therefore it wasn't being done how I would want so I needed to step away and yet, I missed it dearly.

I missed the people. I loved the people big.

I stayed awake nights thinking of better ways to serve them.

It was like a fairly tale to me in many ways. I loved the drive of the mission to help people in a new way. With truth, with accountability, and with discipline. It was like a self-leadership factory. I would pinch myself at times wondering if it was real life. I love to encourage like I love to breathe after being underwater.
Owning that gym showed me that people just want the truth and they will work hard for their goals if you just expect the best from them and refuse to lie to them to make a dollar. I am proud of how I lead, the message and culture we built. and the lives that are forever changed as a result. Despite my mistakes and learning along the way, I am so proud of the decade of good work there.

It was a dream in every way except as a wife and mom who wanted to be present with my family, a total dream come true. So I made the tough call. And stepped away.
It freed up a huge section of mental worry, some time, and was a good financial move for us. I had also just accomplished a lifelong dream of competing and was pretty proud of the effort that took. Should have been good times right? So, what could have possibly gone wrong?

The perfect storm of post - competition weight gain and depression could not be stopped. I had no idea that adding to that storm, the loss of something so dear, frequently experienced by retirees who do not quickly find something else to do, would only compound the problem and start a cascading spiral down.
So what did I do? I did what I would have coached any other person (and have coached many who have come to me over the years) to do.

Over the next year I committed to reading, personal development, movement, and everything I could think of to find myself again. It was like pushing a boulder up the mountain.

I made progress, but no momentum.
In fact, I spiraled so hard, my consistent efforts felt futile. Since I never quit, they probably kept me from going all the way off the deep end. But, the spiral still continued. And a few "up" blips were no match for the monster of "retiring" and the often written about shambles that competing can make your life. I had been hit by the old 1-2 punch.
But you know what they say...

"Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face"

To be Continued .....

I'd been punched twice. Only problem is it was a sucker punch by a ghost. I could not see the enemy and I did not know I was hit. I was just there, with all these new problems, desperately looking for a way out.


The third punch was this weird onset of an old back pain injury that now was pain in my feet, my neck and generally all over that made it hard to do things like grocery shop, stand in line, really daily life became a physical challenge. And let me tell you, I had no idea why. Again, I was just there, trying to fight through it. There was no information to help me unravel the why of it all, I just wanted to change it.


I can only write this by understanding what happened looking back. Never while I was in this "storm" did I have any clarity.


The reason I think the first 2 punches really caused the third is this. Can you guess what chronic pain causes? Depression and Anxiety. Did you know depression manifests itself in pain?? They were reinforcing and strengthening each other. The extra weight on my frame wasn't helping the pain, the lethargy or the mental state. And those 3 all contribute to unwanted weight. And don’t forget my genetics.

Deep down I kept thinking, "if I could just get in shape"...see, I have this deep belief that no matter who you are, many of your problems, even many you don't even acknowledge or think are related to your fitness, can be solved through the process of getting in shape. And this fact nagged me to death. Hope of getting in shape was slowly dying. And when hope dies, as it does with problems you and no one you know, knows how to solve, you really are stuck.


So here I am not understanding why or what and yet, this is where I began the journey of what people in chronic pain face. I can tell you that it is actually consuming. And I can tell you I thought it was NEVER happen to me. I mean, my whole world revolves around being fit!!!! Are you kidding me???


By the way, I consulted doctors for the depression I had enough wherewithal to identify, and for the physical problem I felt they had to be able to solve. Sadly, my therapy experience was comical, the medication tho was helpful and I am glad I did that for a time I will say! More on that but I will save that for another day.
And for the pain and what I learned was degenerative disc disease and “several herniated disks throughout the spine” according to the report, the medical community wanted to operate or medicate. Not my jam.

So, you are in pain just being awake (and asleep) but you don't want to complain but you are in awe most of the time that this is now your life! My whole life felt like one big HUH?

I was in a daze.


Like many reading this, I am not a fan of asking for help and remember, no one had any answers anyway. I felt like everyone I knew was just as tired of me not being me as I was. I was so disappointed that I couldn’t be my old self for them, and I missed being me. I was just so ashamed and felt hopeless. Yet I pushed myself. I did not know how to overcome or what to do, I just pushed. And while in many ways things got better… the real challenge had not even happened yet. There was unthinkable challenge ahead.
To be continued …

Looking back, I know now that I simply DID NOT UNDERSTAND what was happening. That is called being confused I have now learned


Sidenote #12,567: See, my Mama raised me. We were best of friends and I adored her. We spent all our time together, us against the world.

Right after I was married, we found her alone in her home, unresponsive, having had a seizure and with a brain tumor, and upon getting her to the hospital, we were told she had given 6 months to live. In those 6 months, she became less and less of herself. Meanwhile, I moved in with her, I became her caretaker, handled her affairs, ran her household and was with her with she died. I was 27.

It was when walking that path I realized that who you THINK you are is nowhere near what you are capable of. Something amazing rises up in you when life throws you a life changing challenge and it is an eye opening experience. Even in my massive grief, I was fascinated by that.


Therefore, I stepped away from that lucrative and promising career and set out to open my old gym I told you about and change the world on my own. My world changed so much and I learned that there is a huge wake up call in the gift of a loss that teaches you how short and rare life is.

I learned in that time that I can do ANYTHING, and overcome ANYTHING. And I believe I also decided you can too…EVERYONE can do what they desire. I set out to share the gift I had been given. To share the courage I found in (what I thought was) the biggest loss of my life.

So back to the story. Now you know the fall out from selling the gym and how Mom was the whole reason I opened it. She was even in the logo. She was in every story I told people about opening the gym and she was the drive to stay up all night each week just to catch up on paperwork. I found incredible strength in knowing tomorrow is not guaranteed and what I was doing was giving other people THEIR lives as well.

This fueled my passion to….

To be continued...

That great loss fueled my passion to learn how to be my best and teach that to others.

I became a student with the intention of mastering all things self-development, fitness, leadership and mindset. I believed in the richness of life and in the ability of one to enrich their own life beyond their wildest dreams. Those are the things I loved teaching and writing about to benefit our clients, and team…and anyone I could touch in the fitness community.

I also felt strongly about doing my dead level best to hold myself to the standards I learned about and, right or wrong, expected the same from others.
In that season, I was completely unaccustomed to feeling confused, out of control, in a daze, or unable to overcome a challenge.

Naturally, I never thought I’d lead a direct sales team and grow a business, but turns out leading volunteers who want to influence others to better their health is the perfect place for someone with my set of passions for leadership, personal development, encouragement and fitness. So after a decade of gym ownership, I found I was able to use those skills to impact exponentially more people for their good. It also allowed me to have a very balanced family life and a big impact on our family financially.
But, here is the big BUT. This is where things turn and I lose all the fire and passion I just shared and built up to writing this.

There I was with the 1-2-3 punch and loving the freedom I had, and diving into my relationship with my dad and loving our mutual support that we had never enjoyed. Turns out my Dad and I are alot alike. While it was circumstances that lead me to embrace a love for being one’s best, it was Dad who had modeled it in his fitness and professional life every day for me since i was born. It was crazy how much two people who spent years being polarizing forces, fighting each other and this unexplainable reason we could not find common ground… found out how much we really respected and liked each other.
I am hard headed. He is hard headed. That was oil and water for decades. We showed up for each other, and that was evidence of the deep love that was there, but there was a pea in the mattress of the relationship until Mom died and we began to build a new one piece by piece, year by year.

And honestly you give 2 hard headed people something to fight against together…(his health and my 1-2-3 punch) and you get a bond that is unexplainable! Fighting TOGETHER against a common enemy rather than with each other. Who would have ever guessed.

Despite that boulder I was pushing, enjoying Dad was my saving grace. It was the one time in the day that I did not feel so defeated. He was my brightest spot. I so loved being able to share a struggle and to have him show up for me and be able to do the same. I was in the mindset of thinking that if I never got my professional or fitness mojo back, I was really looking forward to spending the next 20 years with my Dad. And that was where my little flickers of hope were coming from.

Remember I said there was significant loss of hope? Knowing I could just ride out the next few decades with Dad were a bright spot of hope for me. I could see that as a future I wanted since the one I worked so hard to create was slipping away.
It is what inspired me to volunteer and keep pushing myself to be around others, even if I was in debilitating pain, or feeling super apathetic (or both). Watching him pursue answers for his health issues was exactly how he had always taken care of the priorities in his life. It was honorable and inspiring and just really what we all aspire to be like. I found so much strength in that.

This was providing the strength and hope that I was beginning to see as my new normal. And, thanks to him, I was no longer hopeless.
Luckily, Dad was able to help take care of me. Really for the first time in our relationship, he was able to tend to me. I only saw him on holidays and summers, so things like my car accidents and surgeries were on my Mom to care for. It was great to lean on him finally and he loved getting to do it as well.

Yoga was too "extreme"... even getting in the floor would activate a new spasm and cost me days on the couch or in the bed.

I gingerly made my way though my days praying nothing would make the chronic pain worse or yet make it spasm and land me back on the couch.

I started with 7 minute workouts, that I had to modify.

I'll never forget getting through one without any threat of spasm. I may have a numb leg for a whole day but I was overjoyed with every workout.

I started walking our dogs about a mile each day.

I had lost stamina for a real day's activities. Once able to workout an hour or 2, work on my feet for 9 hours straight and still have energy left, I was in a whole new world. Around this time I joined my local Rotary Club and the only thing I did was go to those each week and it would exhaust me. The stamina for daily living had left me. And in those meetings my back would be screaming and I would be trying to chat and get to know people. I was so overweight and uncomfortable in my own skin, but I forged ahead.
The only saving grace besides my husband, daughter and Dad, was that I had build a business that paid for our lifestyle and was able to manage it with about 10-15 hours week and that was a blessing.

As I slowly began my recovery and the spasms were farther and farther between, my stamina was building, I was able to walk more, actually get in the floor to do yoga, and even a few squats, my mental state was holding at fair to partly cloudy with some sunny days. Not bad as you can imagine but I still desperately missed the state of joy and drive I used to live in.

What happened next is where the tools I had used in my life and the hope and strength I was drawing, were about to be rendered useless.

To be continued .....