For my whole life, I have dealt with being overstimulated by seemingly normal human experiences. I’ll never forget my childhood best friend taking me aside one day – we must have been 11 or 12 – to tell me that I was “sensitive”. It landed me in this spot we all know, so familiar in the skin we’re trying to stretch at that age. This spot tells us that something is wrong with us, we either need to buck up or start faking it.

And, so I did both of those things. Whenever something that would be overstimulating showed up for me, instead of holding back or resisting, I would just leap headfirst into it. Rip the bandaid off. I earned the thing that felt like the biggest prize of them all, the label “Fearless”.

I loved that label mostly because is transcended the truth of me. It took a big eraser to the reality that I was terrified, that I was held together by spit and sawdust. My inner world just floating out in to space like the credits in Star Wars. And, you know, the older I get, the more I discover that most of us felt like this. Most of us just put on our fun, fearless space suits and acted like we were going on a big ol’ adventure, when deep down, we were like, um, can someone just tuck me into bed and attach a sturdy tether to something bigger than what you’re currently offering?

So, yeah. I will say that along with this normal experience, I dealt with a few extra bonus rounds of humanness, OCD and sensory processing disorder and what I know today is ADHD. And I know I am not alone in this. I know that so many of us, as we trudge along into middle age, begin to discover that along with terror, maybe our brains worked differently and maybe our family systems in which we were raised were not perfect. Shocker, I know.

But, within and around that, I come back to the terror that I felt with overstimulation. The way it ushered in other questions about death and health and all the things that I figured were at the end of those Star Wars credits. I so desperately wanted someone to define them, to reduce one prickly prickle from life so I could just … take a deep breath. Be playful. Giggle. Stay curious.

Instead, the arrangement I had with overstimulation was that I would take the hit and pick up the pieces later. And most importantly, I would pick up the pieces without anyone seeing, without any help, without any dents in my space suit. This led to a lifetime of secrecy when it came to my sensitivity, which led to an adult life of seeking all the ways I could dull the stings and pings of life through substances. What will drown this all out the fastest? Yes, that. Yes, please. And, yes, I’ll have some more.

Obviously, the cost of this arrangement is clear. We know what inevitably happens with substance use disorder: Hurt people harm their lives and the people in them. And outside of that, as much as I figured substances would loosen me up, over time, the reality of not dealing with my terror led me to being a secretly tightly wound person. Like that scene in When Harry Met Sally when Sally is ordering (not that scene, ha) and she’s explaining how low maintenance she is but then she is asking for everything on the side in a particular order. THAT. And as time marched on and I birthed kids and faced sobriety and grown up life and trauma and blah blah blahhhhh, the cost of it all was a lack of access to joy.

Joy.

I don’t even mean happiness or fulfillment. I mean that feeling we all know so clearly. When a moment is absolutely not perfect, but something about it – maybe the flicker of the sun behind the cloud, or your kid saying the stupidest joke known to humankind – dives in extra deep into your bones and warms you up from that place right behind your sternum and shoots out of your heart, your eyes, your touch, everything. Joy. Playful. Curious. Expansive. Imperfect. Impermanent.

I wonder, often, how and if my kids see me experience joy these days. These days after the pandemic, after the fallout of another marriage, after the moves to new places, after bills and bills and bills and bills, after friendships ending, after all the things we grown ups experience that just tighten our hearts down with screws. And then all the ways my sensitive spirit no longer finds a way to come to the surface for a breath. Does that show up in my kids not witnessing me experiencing joy?

I think it must.

So, as much as I want to talk about what I will do to truly “be with” the truth of overstimulation in my life, first I want to come to terms with it. Find the nugget beneath the behavior change and move from that golden spot. That’s where, in the end, motivation lives and that’s where our lives change. Maybe it’s where joy is too. And, deep down, I am a joyful person. An extremely joyful, silly, curious, playful person. Retrieving that feels like an important – and possible – thing right now, today. Before my kids head off into the world as their own people and look back at what they learned. I want them to know my joy, that there was joy even in the mess.

Lucky for you, we can do this adventure together this month in our new Hook, which we’ve aptly called March Meltdown: Coming to terms with overstimulation. And in case you don’t know what the heck a Hook is, all you do is 1) register, 2) listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, and 3) you comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and 4) you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month. 

The Hook starts on Monday, March 6th. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “Hook” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above.

I’ll see you there. Space suits not required.

Now that we’ve all made it through January, we can do what we do ever year and say to ourselves, harumph, nothing is going according to plan. As if the change of a single digit on our calendars ushers in some magical wand of control and newness. 

And as much as I am all for nixing any focus on resolutions, I am starting to become more and more tuned into what may be a human need to hit the refresh button and make positive changes. I want this, right now. Like, so badly that I I drove past the Container Store just yesterday and started salivating. All those containers to contain things that need containing. I just imagined taking my entire life, handing it over to the mad scientist in my head who then carefully systematizes the chaos in such a way that it then yields … something that works.

Something that works. Oh, something that works. In the end, this is what I want. I don’t want a new life or to be out of pain or to not experience discomfort or even to be extra healthy – certainly not to live my best life. I simply want something that works. I want dinners to get done before 9pm and dishes done before 1am and I want to not forget all the important things because I am so busy in all the unimportant-but-on-fire things. 

Maybe some people have this, but I don’t. Sometimes – ok, often – I feel like a little kid in a funny comedy show. They just keep putting shit in her hands and ask her to balance it all while on one foot, the audience laughing and gasping with each new thing. Oh isn’t she so cute, trying to do it all? Meanwhile, she’s up there, terrified and looking around for the actual grown up. 

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I show up and I do a lot and I do a lot of it well. I’m managing maybe? NO, I am not. I am juggling and putting out fires. And then, when I do have a moment where there is ease – a moment where it might be a great time to apply self-care or meditation or nourishing types of behavior – I instead dive head first into the quickest distraction from reality I can find. 

I thought at first that this was behavioral, in that finding a way to escape is actually a normal and even healthy part of being an adult and a parent. But, as I headed deeper into the guts of it, it became obvious that the roots are more layered for me and more, well, muddy. Underneath that normal human desire to distract myself is something else, a grubby grub that has yet to see the light. It’s not that I want to distract myself, it’s that I do not want to connect to anything right now. 

Ooooof. I don’t want to connect to myself. I don’t want to connect to people who need me. I don’t want to connect to my kids (ugh). I don’t want to connect to my feelings. I don’t want to connect to my work. I don’t want to connect even to stuff that brings me joy. 

I mean, who wants to admit this? It’s not graceful. Aren’t I supposed to be desperate to have alone time so I can hear myself think and can get grounded? And, I know, as a person in recovery from substance use disorder, that the opposite of addiction is connection. And a big part of healing is actually connecting, so yeah … time to raise a red flag for me. Time for me to say, hey there grubby grub, whatsa happenin? (I guess that’s how I talk to grubby grubs?)

And here is where a deep down deep deeeeeeeep feeling lives, one that just quietly lets me know that … yeah, um … well … I feel lonely. Not lonely like, I want to be loved and held and around other people, but lonely like I am struggling with what it is like to meet all the constant needs around me and not have another person (ahem adult) in the room to be like, whew, this shit is cray, you ok? Or maybe, to be more honest and raw, I’d like them to just simply say: I believe you. This is hard. 

I believe you. This is hard. 

Now that I’ve said it, I don’t think I need much more than saying it. It feels like the start of the refresh button I was looking for, or the resolution to what I labeled as a desire to distract and escape. Now I know it’s this other thing. I can work with that, in myself and probably also with professionals and definitely with people I keep near and dear. 

This February, in The Hook, we will be tackling this idea of a refresh button, something we are calling the desire to “Clear the Cache” to be technological and trendy. Also, it’s not pronounced “ca-shay”, a fact you’ll hear Jya and I grieve over if you listen to our weekly Hook podcasts. We also try to do what I’ve done here, which is find our way towards this desire for change in our life while also moving away from typical wellness dogma. It’s our experience that that dogma keeps us away from the grubby grubs and, well, you know we’re deep end divers here at MommaStrong. 

Ok, I think I feel tired now that I said all that. Maybe tender is a better word. But, I also feel like I’ve grabbed on to something that is not drenched in the speed of euphoric motivation, but instead just traveling at the speed of a seed.

OH YEAH, I forgot to tell you how The Hook works and how you can join us in it. It starts THIS MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6th. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “The Hook” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above. 

After you register, all we encourage you to do is to listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, then comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.

Whew. That’s it. Nap time. 🙂

I did a brave thing recently. I got a massage. I know for most people this is not a brave thing, but it is for me. It’s been over ten years, a fact that is directly tied to the tentacles of trauma. Anyone who has experienced sexual assault knows that it’s no small feat to say yes to an experience in which you give over your body to a person you probably don’t know at all … in the dark … all while you are supposed to “relax”. Yeah, um, no thanks.

BUT I did this brave thing anyway because it’s time and I’m on an adventure of healing, so here we are. And, in keeping with my tendency to just jump straight into the deep end, I decided that my first massage ought to be an intense deep tissue abdominal massage. I know. Let’s start with the tender part of the body that the human brain is basically like, do not press hard here, AND the part of my body that has been most affected by birthing and raising children.  

Anyways. Start here, I did. I’ll save the details about the actual technique of this massage, about the incredible women who provided it, and the amazing clinic in which they work for a later date. I have some content planned for it, because that’s what it deserves. BUT, what I am here to share today is something that feels ooey gooey underneath it all. Like when you flip over a rock in the Spring and see an entire world of life underneath. This was that, for me.

The ooey gooey is that I haven’t done anything to really heal my body after the birth of my third kiddo three years ago. I don’t know exactly why, but as I peel it apart, it’s clear that it’s a perfect storm. I do know I had assumed that because I had been doing MommaStrong for close to a decade, that I should have had the entire thing figured out perfectly – that my body wouldn’t be affected THIS time, THAT way. I also know that the postpartum period with Wyatt was one of the hardest, most traumatic experiences of my life. I just instantly jettisoned out of the newborn world and into survival-I-got-this-keep-things-ok-for-everyone mode. I also entirely distanced myself from my body and from its needs.

That last part feels the truest. Beyond distancing – if I’m rigorously honest – I feel like I’ve been moderately self-destructive. It’s hard to admit this, but if I want to get better, I must just go to the “ugly” and say it, love it, hold it, and then lead it. I have left my body with very little resources to survive birthing and raising Wyatt, while raising two other amazing kids through all the precarious milestones of growing up, and while also trying to keep this business alive. I don’t eat enough, sleep enough, or drink enough water. I don’t sit still enough, listen to myself enough, play enough, stretch and release enough, read enough, etc. I have relied on caffeine, chocolate, and Netflix to be my main versions of self-care.

So, when these two women were working on my body – on my belly – I felt this incredibly intense and overwhelming sensation of resistance. Please do not let me feel what has been, what this belly represents. As they worked on my c-section incision and the web of scar tissue all around the area, it was like I could feel the way my incision felt four weeks after she was born and all the things that were going on at that time. I could feel the way my incision felt when my older girls were newborn too – the pain, the heaviness, the fear, the harms.

This is how I know it to be true that our bodies hold our stories until we are ready, if we are ever ready. It was bewildering to me that I had been able to ignore it for this long, but also totally obvious. I know how I feel on a day-to-day basis. I know what my body asks for, how it finds a way to keep me going even if on fumes. 

It’s time. This post is here to say this. My body is not healed. My belly is a mess. My pelvic floor, affected. My spirit, waiting. And the most humbling discovery of all is that THIS is exactly why I started MommaStrong so long ago: To be the starting seed of self-discovery and body autonomy after birth, through the extension of curiosity into the landscape of daily movement. And, most importantly, to not be alone in the whole process.

In essence, MommaStrong was supposed to be the nest we all need after giving birth and while in the acute caretaking period that is postpartum – a nest that most of us in this society are pushed out of far too early. I would also suggest that acute caretaking is something that returns here, there, and everywhere throughout our lives as parents, whether we have a kid with special needs, or we are arriving at the steps of teenager-dom, or we’re in “The Sandwich” of taking care of kids and ailing parents. All these moments are moments when we need a nest, a place to come home and regroup and gather resources and rest.

Over the past few years, as I have distanced myself from my body, I have also distanced myself from this purpose of MommaStrong. I have allowed it to grow and scale, none of which is bad, but it certainly became something that was unmanageable for a small business to hold.

I can’t help but think of all the ways business owners are encouraged to “think big” and “move boldly” and how connected that is to our society’s pressure on new moms to “bounce back” after birth. I wonder what happens when we skip the nest and/or decide that the nest is too small.  I can’t ignore how this has shown up in measurable ways in my own body.

As for the business, there have also been measurable effects, most of which the team and I are working on healing now. It’s been arduous, but also grounding. It’s become clear to all of us that the spirit of MommaStrong is alive and well, but just waiting for the walls around it to be right-sized. In fact, if we don’t – much like our bodies – things will start to fall apart.

I’ll be sharing more of my own personal story of healing and nesting over the next few months, with short video content from experiences I am having. But, today, I’d like to share some of the ways that we will be addressing this in our business, and I hope you know that these changes are about being a healthy business with a healed “belly”. About staying sustainable. About being true to who we are. About coming home.

Before I share a list of the upcoming changes (arriving in January and February), I want you to know that I know how hard change is right now. I hold that while also holding my leadership position here, a position that if I ignore will mean that things don’t heal. And we must. And we can. And I promise to be here, connected to you and to the change, as we get through it.

Here we go!

1. Community: After a lot of conversation and thinking and problem solving, we have decided that in February we will be moving off our current community platform, Mighty Networks, and instead utilizing a community feature directly in your membership, whether you access through the web or an app. This is EXCITING because now you won’t have to visit another place to engage with other members, it is literally right there in the same place you get your workouts. It is also a vastly simpler platform, that will feel a lot like a Facebook feed. You will have access to the same support you had before, from Stephanie to other experts, and to each other. BUT YES, we will lose some fancy features that you get in Mighty Networks. We’ll be discussing these changes over the next month – you have plenty of time to prepare. This is essential for right-sizing and with that said, we know it’s change and with even positive change, there can be loss. We are here for you.

1. Challenges: We are walking away from the word “Challenges” and are returning to a program we had way back in the day, called “The Hook”. The Hook will function like a monthly challenge does now. You will register and attempt individual/group goals. There will be a theme, etc. Everything will be the same, EXCEPT a couple of things:
   1. Our weekly podcasts will be accessible where you get your workouts and programs, in their own category, for both our app and the website. The great news in this change is that you can listen to the podcasts and turn off your phone (we will show you how to address that setting), etc.
   2. Once we move our community away from Mighty Networks, there will no longer be dedicated groups for challenge content. Instead, you will access everything in The Hook category in MommaStrong programs, and the accompanying community feature. 
   3. The first week of The Hook will be focused on setting up your goals and building reasonable expectations for the month (what gets you “hooked” into showing up for yourself, beyond just being dutiful to health/wellness).

1. FUEL: In February, we are going to be taking a step back from our FUEL program, but just in terms of trying to develop, sell, and market it. We are aware that many folks purchased the content to own without expiration and we will be honoring that promise by continuing to host the content and community in the current community in Mighty Networks. SO, yes, the MommaStrong general community will be leaving Mighty Networks, but the FUEL course and FUEL group will stay put.

1. Squad Leader Workouts: We will be ending our “squad leader” live workouts in order to honor our attempts to right size our services. We also hope to take what we learned from this offering and build something more sustainable in the future with your incredible squad leaders. I’d also like to take a second to acknowledge each of them – Becca, Madeline, Theresa, Kelsey – and their commitments to showing up over the past many months. I am deeply inspired by them and can’t wait to direct their energy to other parts of the company.

1. Workout page reorganization: In February, you will see some changes to the workout page, just namely in how we label and name the different categories. We are aware that the current set-up can be confusing for newbies and we are attempting to help the “start process” by making things more clear from the get-go. You will still have access to all of your current content, it will simply be slightly reorganized (for the better).

1. Nest: To bring this back to the focus of this post, we will be working very very very hard on rebuilding the nest that MommaStrong’s mission is and how we can make sure you feel surrounded, supported, cared for during the acute caretaking period(s) of your life. My intention here is to provide a sense of “home” that we all need more than ever, so that you feel showing up has more to do with care than it does another task or to-do.

OK, whew, that is it! And now a quick blip about the upcoming January Hook: “Right Sizing Matching our promises with our capacity.” The January Hook will start on January 9th, which we know is a week later than we normally do – BUT HOLY WINTER BREAK BATMAN – life is hard right now and starting on January 2nd sounds noble and also no. So, you will have a whole week to get yourself organized. We will have tiny reminders and info about some of the changes over the next week. Basically, we are gonna nest the eff out of the start of 2023. 

OH! And in case you don’t know what the heck The Hook is (formerly known as  “Challenges”), basically- you register, , you listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, and you comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.

If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “Challenges” link in the teal navigation menu (we’re changing that title soon, yeah tech gremlins) and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above. 

See you next year ha omg.

I will begin by saying that I really feel that I was missing the following classes in high school:

• Interpersonal Skills: How to avoid assholes and also how to not be an asshole
• Non-delusional Budgeting: How numbers are numbers
• Self-regulation: How to not freak out
• The Dishes: A tale as old as time
• Wait Until You’re 30: Just basic truth

Instead I got a lot of calculus and advanced one-sided history. I won’t knock the English and the literature, that seems useful (says the writer using too many commas and run-on sentences). I do remember a class called Home Economics and basically no one took that unless you wanted an easy A and we were all too “ambitious” for that track. Joke is on us, though, that class probably was the most ambitious now that I see my failing grade right next to me, a la Laundry Mountain. 

The point here is that I had big plans and big dreams for my life. I was going to dance professionally until I was 35ish, travel the world, get an advanced education, and then probably become a writer. I definitely DID NOT want to get married or have kids. That was decided when I was 7 years old and I learned that babies come out of your peehole (they don’t). Not for me, thanks. 

Instead I retired from dance at age 20, dramatically and tragically, after only 4 years of being professional. And then I got married at 21. And then I dropped out of college at 24 and was pregnant with my first at 25. Since then, ooof, things just got messy. I don’t want to go into it all here, it will feel like a Post of Misery instead of what this will hopefully instead become: A salve for all of us humans in our very human lives. 

But, yes, my story involves hard stuff, like yours does too. Stuff that happened to me and stuff that I caused to happen to others. And because I didn’t go through childhood gathering tools for the realities of life and instead gathering them for the “follow your dreams” path, I didn’t really know how to handle any of that “stuff”. Some of it caused me immense harm and trauma, all sewn into my bones still now as I move from here to there. 

I really didn’t know life was all of this. And, as I write that right now, this little archetypal cheerleader in the committee of my head comes running into the metaphorical board room and is like, “NO REGRETS, IT’S ALL PART OF LEARNING!” Um, yes. True. But, also, isn’t there room to be content and to have regrets at the same time? Regret for me is grief and, if I let it, it ushers in meaning. And meaning births change. And change affords me a new legacy. 

So, I give my regrets a big hug and I tell them they belong here too. They feel close to the part of me that believed it could be prepared and in control of life, even the unpredictability of it. There’s a lot of hope in that part of me, but also a lot of ignorance that is begging for leadership. And maybe that’s where I am now, looking back: Leading myself to a new legacy that is more equipped simply by knowing that I do not always know how to do these life things. 

AND this brings me to the actual inspiration for the topic of this post (and our December Challenge): Y2K. Hahahaha, some of you are like what are you talking about? Well, Y2K (“The Year 2000”) was the panic that unfolded directly before 1999 was coming to a close, during which the entire world became convinced that all modern infrastructure and systems that we had built over the past 100 years would suddenly cease to function because the year “00” might very well be the year 1900. How would computers know? Would all of our records just vanish? 

In the end, this panic was a fascinating reflection of our society coming to terms with the frailty of our modernity. That we had supposedly developed all these advanced ways of being human, but no one thought about something as simple as using 4 digit date entries instead of 2. It was terrifying for the older generations, who were already facing the shaky validity and value of decades of hard work in the “system”. And for younger generations like mine at the time, we were mildly (or extremely) exhilarated at the thought of our anti-establishment ethos becoming reality in a single blink.

In the end, whether you were the person who had prepped in your basement properly for the end of the world or you – like me – opted in for a rager of a party complete with glitter sunglasses and other properly nihilistic items, ahem … in the end, exactly nothing happened. 2000 rolled in and there we were with ourselves, as we were in 1999. The fantasy of preparation and control all thrown into the dust of the panic, as life reminded us: Onward.

This month, in our December Y2K Challenge, we will be talking about this fantasy of preparation and control and how it has shown up in our lives, as parents and workers and spouses and dreamers and sometimes not behaving bodies. We will be working through our regrets and also even talking directly about some of the changes that have been happening here at MommaStrong, which is always connected to the fabric of the rest of my life. Finally, we will – together – talk about what we take from these fantasies and how we rebuild the next phases of our lives, holding hands with both grief and lovely lovely hope. 

Lovely lovely hope.

AND OH WOW, I forgot to mention that this challenge was also inspired by the amazing factoid that we will be celebrating my Daily 15 #2000!!! I mean, for real. What fitness company do you know has shown up for 10 years almost every day (highlight: almost) and through all the sh*tdiddle of life? I know. 2000!!!

AND, finally, in case you don’t know what the heck a challenge here is like, basically, you register, you join the challenge group in our community, you listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, and you comment or discuss as you like. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the challenge. 

The challenge starts on Monday, December 5th, which is soon!. Join me in this special adventure, before you start creating fantasies about 2023, hahaha. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “Challenges” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up for a membership ($5!) and follow those directions above. 

I’m writing this post at 8:47am from my dining room table, surrounded by post-its, each with to-dos and ideas and MUST DO NOWs scrawled on them. I had planned to get up early this morning before school drop-offs and get a start on the day, but – alas – I am tired. Late night decisions about early morning risings never seem to pan out, but for some reason I keep thinking they will. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the way my plans seem to get upended each day in unexpected ways, leaving me to feel like a ping pong ball in a blender. I didn’t know that this was grown-up life and maybe that’s because it wasn’t exactly like this for our parents or because I was a kid and thus was in my own bubble of things that felt more important than the grown-ups around me. 

I’m not sure. What I am sure about is that the ping-ping blender life isn’t working out so well for me. And I’m aware that there are some shifts happening inside of me that are causing me to pay attention, closely, to the ways in which I attempt to care and produce while being utterly depleted. 

The discovery here is that no one wins when this formula of adulting is in play. My work suffers. My creativity evaporates. My kids feel my stress. I am disorganized in every area. I am not present with the important stuff. My relationship with joy and meaning is squashed. And my health is at risk. Going 150% and only get 10% of anything done in any one area is most certainly hurting me and my life.

Now, the response to any woman or primary caregiver when the above paragraph is bravely, finally uttered is: You need to start saying No and you need to start taking care of yourself. Put your oxygen mask on first. Ooof, there’s truth here. And there’s also oppression. The denial of reality and the attempts to “choose” our way out of systemic, societal negligence for the lives of primary caretakers is, at best, not working. 

This advice always lands me in the abyss of not wanting to be a martyr or live in a victim mentality and also wanting to believe myself about the reality I am living. The space between these two extremes, the tension here, this is where I am opting to sit. It’s uncomfortable. It’s the abyss. My mother’s mother and her mother’s mother and the trauma handed down over and over lives here. My past and my own trauma lives here. The choices I made for my life before I knew better live here. My fears of the future and the world and my children’s lives live here. The impossible equation of money and security and survival mode live here. It’s all here.

So, this month, I am just sitting here in the tension, in the abyss. It brings me to a place where I begin to see and feel the rise of my wise self surface. The part of me that I have NOT been connecting with because she is not interested in chaos and the rat race. She doesn’t judge it, she just knows she’s not more powerful than it. So, she sits that dance out and makes quiet, personal decisions that all add up to a new formula: Worth.

I know that in choosing the path of Worth, that there will be loss here. If I am opting out of the depletion equation, then some things will not be possible for me to chase anymore. But, if the gain is health and joy and connection, even as things in the world remain as they are, then, ok, I’m in. I either learn this now or I learn it when my body/spirit have had to hit a bottom (again). I’d like to have the grace to meet this need before it has to get that bad (again).

I know we all need better tools than just the advice to “put our oxygen masks on first”. This is why this November in MommaStrong, our challenge is about Aging Out: The Things We Leave Behind as We Get Older. And in case you don’t know what the heck a challenge here is like, basically, you register, you join the challenge group in our community, you listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, and you comment or discuss as you like. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the challenge. 

The challenge starts on Monday, November 7th, which is soon!. Join me in this special adventure, before 2023 comes begging you for big change. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “Challenges” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up for a membership and follow those directions above. 

I’ll see you (and your abyss) there.

This blog is late because I have been putting it off. This is not surprising since the topic of this post is about an area of life in which I have been engaged via the fine art of utter denial and complete avoidance. 

This dance feels rather useful when I’m in it, that is until the music stops and the lights get flipped on. There I am with reality and … reality. And I can either hide or, well, face it.

And, so, I am opting in, with admitted resistance, to facing it. Here we go: I need to deal with some basic health stuff, which I have put off for quite some time. I’d like to say that the qualifier for “some time” is in months or weeks, maybe even a year. But, in my case, it’s many years. Many, many years of not dealing with stuff I know I need to deal with. This stuff involves mammograms, dental work, ultrasounds, colonoscopies, and skin checks. 

Barf. I hate writing all of that because most of this isn’t even routine health screenings, it’s stuff that has been flagged and tests have been ordered and appointments have been made and I just haven’t shown up. For many many many many years. This doesn’t exactly fit with who I am in the world or the congruency I seek with my own wellness, which I why I probably feel nauseous right now. 

Yet, maybe it does fit with who I am, as a person who has endured a ton of trauma in childhood and adulthood. The result of that is that I do not like to be touched, or exposed, or cared for by people whom I deem to be in positions of authority. It also means that I have been in survival mode for a variety of reasons, which doesn’t exactly leave a ton of room for agency in my own health. 

Also – the gooey middle of this – I just don’t want to know anything bad. I really really don’t. I just, within the last few months, have started to feel better in terms of my own personhood and my recovery around C-PTSD. I feel open, available, yet strong, boundaried. I am learning to trust myself again, a smidge closer to trusting others. I feel hunger and curiosity and space and possibility. Ugh. I’m terrified that if I go to one of these appointments, I’ll find out something that pulls me back like a rubberband out of feeling alive, of feeling my life. 

The problem with this thinking is that, when it comes to scary body stuff, delaying knowing is never ever worth it. In fact, delaying knowing is far more dangerous to my personhood in the end. Deep breath, I say to my sweet scared little kid me, let’s dive into this deep end and just know what we need to know. 

I don’t want to do this alone. In fact, I know I can’t. So, this month in MommaStrong, we will together be tackling Scary Body Stuff in our October Challenge. We will be talking about avoidant behavior, why it is hard to get help, HOW to get help, and what to do if you get bad news or good news or something in between. And in case you don’t know what the heck a challenge here is like, basically, you register, you join the challenge group in our community, you listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, and you comment or discuss as you like. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the challenge. 

The challenge starts on Monday, October 3rd, which I am aware is basically NOW, so sign up ASAP! I’ll also be doing a live 15-minute workout at 9:30am CST on Monday on our Instagram (@momma_strong) if you want to kick things off with me. Otherwise, if you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “Challenges” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above.

Ok, I feel better having gotten all that off my chest. Pun intended because I need to go schedule my mammogram now. Ok bye.