Look at her. She just worked out so her arm is shaking holding up the camera, blurring the top of the image as a result. Carpet that needs to be vacuumed. One of her familiars watching over her. She is radiant and smiling, strong and resilient. She is creative, bright, learning all the ways her power can be manifested.
She doesn’t know it yet, but she is about to have her whole nervous system rocked.
She’s been working out since 2020, mostly because the divorce being finalized a week before COVID shut the world down, isolated her in her home without the support of companionship, thrust into single motherhood, terrified that if the virus took her life her son would have to live with his alcoholic father. The alcoholic father who is the cause of the impending nervous system rocking the woman in the photo is about to receive. So she and her son took walks, which turned into running, which turned into enrolling in classes at the local YMCA.
Working out saved her life. Working out connected her with her body, helped her build mental resilience at exactly the time she needed it most. And now she posts little reels about it, urging her small group of followers to move their bodies, because there was a day when she didn’t want to face another moment alive, and she got up and went to a YMCA spin class anyway.
She invested in a Peloton when she moved to a rural area that had no spin classes to speak of. Paid the extra for the Peloton Bike+ so she could have access to their other fitness options, like strength, meditation, yoga, pilates. She had a little set of 5 lb dumbbells that felt like 500 lb dumbbells after her first class.
How do people deadlift hundreds of pounds when I can barely do 3 sets of 8 reps with these things?
As in all things she ever set her mind to, she kept going. Three years later she’s deadlifting 40 lb dumbbells, doing back and chest exercises with 25 lb dumbbells, and kneeling in this picture looking more toned than she has ever looked in her life. And she’s in her 40’s. And for the first time in her life, the little girl who packed on weight to buffer her shame from sexual abuse, who learned far too late she had an endocrine disorder that refused to let her body burn fat, who was teased and bullied, overlooked, forgotten as the “fat friend” so many times – for the first time she looks in the mirror and she is proud of her body. The first time her massage therapist referred to her as “one of my clients who lifts” her heart swelled with pride. She follows accounts of women like her, started watching power lifters, started posting about her journey. Started talking to her friends and family about it.
Because she knows it is never too late to begin. At 15, or 30, or 50, or 80, anyone can start over. Can start anew. Can begin, for the very first time. And that every woman who is posting post-workout selfies knows – you just have to start somewhere.
So she started therapy. Started writing. Started gardening. Started a blog, started posting about her thoughts on Instagram and Facebook.
And two days after that picture was taken her ex husband’s latest girlfriend reached out with words that pushed her right back into the nightmare she lived for 16 years – “He’s drunk and slamming things around and saying he’s going to leave with your son. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what to do.”
And three days later, our fearless heroin would sit in her therapist’s office shaking, cold, hunched into herself, sobbing, remembering all the nights her body lived through exactly that scenario. How many nights she slept on the floor in front of her son’s crib so her husband wouldn’t try to pick up the baby while he was drunk and could barely walk. The night they attended a friend’s wedding and he ruined the rehearsal dinner drinking whiskey, starting a fight with another groomsman, and then she spent the evening in their little hotel room paced and fell over with the baby in his arms while she begged him to let her take the baby. The nights he threatened to kill her, and then she had to sleep next to him and get up and go to work the next day. And how every man she met since then has taken that trauma and that pain and treated her like an option, discarding her as soon as he decided he wasn’t ready for a relationship with someone so intense and complex. And how she felt sometimes like she wanted to crawl out of her body and out of her life and was so, so tired of carrying it all alone.
“What you are describing is PTSD. We need to change our approach, if you’re ok with that.” Her therapist said gently. She described building support first then deciding how to process the trauma. Explained the path was all about keeping her safe first, and then the healing would come.
But what if I let it all out and it turns into an avalanche that crushes me?
“I know it’s scary to start to dive into this stuff, but we’re going to make sure you’re safe every step of the way.”
The next day she woke up and stared at the dappled early morning sunlight on her ceiling and felt how heavy it all was, pressing her down into her bed. The past. The men. The fear. The constant anxiety that had pinned her down for months. The feeling of being disconnected from herself all the time. And she was tired of being broken and dragging the trauma around with her with nowhere to set it down. The avalanche had already buried her. This is a rescue mission.
This is day 1 of taking care of me. This is day 1 of making sure I heal. This is day 1 of admitting this is too much and I can’t carry it anymore. This is day 1 of never again allowing another human to break my spirit. This is day 1 of walking away from anything and anyone who takes me for granted. Today, I take my life back. She thought.
She speaks to God through tarot. Meditates on the messages. Has found them to be eerily accurate and honest. She asked, “what is the universe trying to tell me that I am not hearing?” And she pulled the Queen of Wands.
Someone who is passionate, creative, who sets their minds to anything they deem worthy. Magnetic personal power.
When she was a child her grandma had an embroidered quote hanging on the wall of one of her bedrooms – “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Whether you start healing at 18 or 25 or 95, it is never too late to confront what came before so you can move ahead. Whether it is your body, your mind, your heart, or all of that, today really can be day 1.
None of us is broken, none of us is too far gone to begin again. To start over. To start at all. But you have to start somewhere. Why not now?
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