Today is a strange day. Honestly, it’s been a strange week. TODAY… Sunday September 3rd 2023 was my due date. Due to give birth to a miracle. A beautiful baby. I’m supposed to be huge, ready to pop, and life should be on the verge of changing forever. I didn’t think I’d ever get the privilege of being a mom to my own child. I almost was. And then I wasn’t. In the 9 months that have passed since finding out I was pregnant so much has happened. It’s been a year I will always remember yet in so many ways wish I could forget. This last week a friend and a colleague went through exactly what I did. Found out she was pregnant, miscarried and ended up going through surgery. You think you’re past the emotions. Dealt with the grief, the disappointment, and the pain. And then out of nowhere it’s back and it’s raw. You’ve ripped the scab off the wound and it’s bleeding all over again.
Instead of finishing up the baby room I’m out training. Today’s early session is a bike, run, bike, run. It’s less than 3 weeks until my triathlon. This session is intense. My legs are burning, heart is racing and the sweat dripping in my eyes is making it hard to see. I feel sad. The void of what should have been echoes loudly each time my feet hit the ground. Why does it always have to be so hard? Nothing has ever been simple. And it’s been far from easy.
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I’ve transitioned back to my bike for round two. Holding an 18mph the wind races past me and I’m thankful for the perfect training temperature right now. It’s been a tough summer of training with the heat and humidity. It didn’t seem to matter if it was 6am or 3pm, the heat has been suffocating and the humidity has made running and biking ridiculously tough! I shift in my saddle. Hamstrings are burning. I smile… my physical therapists would be proud right now. A year ago I couldn’t even get my hamstrings on.
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I look straight ahead, the perfect blue sky hangs lightly above, trees tower up on either side and the water glistens through. All I can hear is the wind and the birds. I want the sadness to lift. The heaviness to drop off. It’s been weighing me down all week. It’s just a date. Today doesn’t have to be a representation of what should have been. It can represent “what is” instead. What can today portray? I’m distracted by my burning hamstrings. They’re really on fire right now! I think back to when I started physical therapy. 16 months ago I walked into Thrive oblivious to how one place and the people within it would change my life forever. I was so broken. Physically and mentally. Injured, hurting, desperately hopeless and on the verge of giving up on life completely, I walked in and was met by an overwhelming sense of love, understanding, patience and care. Who knew back then that those very people would become some of my absolute closest friends.
They started working on my body and some things finally started to make sense. All the years of trying for a baby, the treatments I’d gone through, exploratory surgery, the endless procedures… The list goes on. My physical therapist told me I could never have fallen pregnant because my pelvis was rotated the wrong way and half my body wasn’t functioning as it should! Years of abuse takes its toll on a body and I had a long road to recovery but I was finally in a place where healing could start to take place. The mental healing which started happening alongside the physical healing was something I could never have imagined. Turns out, when they started working on my body, a lot of the trauma started releasing too. I started being able to sleep again, the headaches lifted, the nightmares stopped, the deep fog I had been living in for months started lifting and I felt my old self slowly re-emerge.
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I continue biking. Sweat dripping from my face. Right, left, right, left. Suddenly the burning hamstrings are no longer an inconvience. They are a momentous reminder of the bad that turned into good. Exercise and sport is what has kept me going for most of my life. It’s my therapy, the way I deal and process everything I’ve gone through and continue to walk through. When the constant injuries started I didn’t know how to exist and keep all the emotions and restlessness at bay. I smile at the realization that it was those very injuries that led me to Thrive which not only opened the door to a whole new community of family and friendships, but it would be the very place that would start healing a lot of my body both physically and mentally.
Yes, today represents what should have been. What could have been if pain and hardships didn’t exist. Today there have been tears. Tears for the loss, the grief, the dreams that shattered and the yearnings fractured. And yet, in so many ways today also represents hope and thankfulness.
If I’d never gone through all those injuries, I would never have found Thrive. If I’d never walked through the doors of Thrive, I would never have found a new level of healing for my body and find the physical therapist who would actually understand my body in a way not many others ever could and no one else ever has. I also met one of my best friends Brittany through Thrive. She happened to be training for a triathlon. The day she was supposed to do her triathlon, a storm came through and despite months of training she wasn’t able to do her triathlon. Crying on the phone to me that day, my heart broke for her, and I said we would train together and I would do the next triathlon with her. The insane training for an Olympic distance triathlon and building up cardio levels to a whole new extreme is what ended up saving my life in hospital 8 months later. The miscarriage? Yes, it was horrendous and unbelievably painful. It was also what caused me be in hospital for 6 weeks fighting for my life. And yet, I actually fell pregnant. Something that had once been impossible had actually happened.
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I lift my bike back onto the bike rack and start running. The final leg of my training session. The right side of my body is cramping. My legs feel like they can’t move anymore. Right, left, right, left. Just keep running. “You’ve got this”, I tell myself. Less than five months ago I was lying in a hospital bed, had lost 18 lbs of muscle and couldn’t walk more than a few feet without my oxygen bottoming out. Today, I’m back training 10+ times a week and achieving what the doctors had told me would be impossible.
I think back to every moment that has gotten me to this very place. Every tear shed, every pain endured, the lowest moments, the anguish, the desperation, the not seeing a way out, the voices inside telling me to give up, not feeling like I could take another step. Man, there have been more moments than I could ever attempt to say out loud or write down. And yet every single moment has had its purpose. And every single bit of darkness has pushed me into a light so bright I have to squint to take it in or see it for what it really is. God has used everything. Not just some things. Everything. Even other people’s darkness.
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Today is going to represent hope. Hope that the impossible happened. Hope that I’m alive and breathing and here to continue experiencing this life. Hope that my life will continue to be a miracle. And hope that I will be able to help many others along the way.
As I finish out my run, the sweat burning in my eyes, I’m thankful for all the dark times that have catapulted me into this very moment. The pain is real and the darkness can be dark. The tears today will come and go. But that’s ok. Because ultimately I have gained more than I have ever lost and I have found a depth to this life I otherwise could have never possessed. Today. Today I choose to represent hope.
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