How strength saved my life

Strength saved my life.

I’ve said this over and over again, to the point where sometimes these words have lost their meaning. But it’s true.

Being strong has saved my life, in multiple ways.

See, I’m not a person who is naturally strong, physically, but I am a person who is naturally resilient.

As a kid, I was shy and smart and kept to myself. Making friends was always hard for me because I always felt a little different. I always felt that my natural self, my true self, was too much.

I was too creative, too in my head. I was too fat. I was too shy. I loved too hard. 

As a result, I shrunk myself down until I was palatable. Just big enough to fill the void, but not big enough to take up space.

I wasn’t encouraged to play it small - in fact, I come from a long line of very strong women who take up space unapologetically. But instead, I was conditioned through my interactions with others. 

I was simultaneously too much and never enough.

I was never smart enough, pretty enough, good enough, worthy enough.

If I’m honest, living this way was a dizzying experience. I would ping pong around between these feelings for most of my life.

My parents divorced when I was in high school and I learned that my dad was an alcoholic and an addict. All of this was a total shock to me since I’d never seen my dad drunk or inebriated. I had no idea.

After that, I had so much anger. 

Anger at the situation for changing my life. 

Anger at myself for feeling like I wasn’t handling the situation “right”.

Anger that I wasn’t enough to make my dad better. 

That anger looked mostly like teenage rebellion.

Parties, drinking, sex, seeking validation every single place I could.

I was a rebellious teenager, but I wasn’t stupid.

I went to an all girls catholic high school.

I got good grades, because being the smart one was how I knew how to navigate life. 

I learned to be perpetually “fine” and to never have needs because there was more than enough happening around me.

Even when I was drugged and sexually assaulted (a fact I have never put on paper until this very moment), I was “fine”. 

I lost friends who I thought were my forever people, but it was “okay”. 

I was resilient in the face of so many truly fucked up, shitty situations.

And yet, I was always “fine”.

Once I got to college, I perfected the art of performing my fineness.

I excelled in school.

I held down multiple jobs to make ends meet. 

I had a social life. 

I had relationships with men, who if I’m honest, only viewed me as a “good enough” or second choice option. 

But damn, did I get good at performing my fineness. 

My performances were damn near Oscar worthy. 

I got terribly sick when I was in college. No one could figure out what was wrong with me. 

I was struggling to function at the most basic level. 

I had gained more weight and was so deeply uncomfortable in my body.

I saw doctor after doctor and specialist after specialist who told me that essentially, nothing was wrong and that I should just try harder.

Eventually, I got diagnosed with Celiac disease after I fractured my foot during a stint of running and semi-starving myself in the pursuit of smallness.

That’s when everything changed.

See, up until this point, I had only been strong mentally. 

I was, and still am, one resilient and hard to kill motherfucker.

My foot fracture had also revealed that I had had severe osteopenia and my bones were basically trash.

My doctor told me that I needed to start resistance training, and I needed to do it immediately.

So I did.

Me and my crutches and boot started lifting.

I printed off some random routine from bodybuilding.com and did what I could. 

I would go every morning at 6am to my university gym and follow those sheets of paper.

Soon, I was hooked.

Eventually, I moved from dumbbells to the barbell and fell deeper in love with this transformative form of physical meditation.

I even started doing Crossfit and damn, did I get hooked. 

Being strong, physically, was intoxicating. 

It gave me purpose. It gave me a community.  It gave me a new identity.

Now I was the “fitness” friend. And it felt amazing.

Learning how to get strong prepared me for all that was to come in the next few years.

For a bit, my life seemed to be going exceedingly well.

I had a good job.

I got married. 

I lost some weight. 

And then, as these things tend to do, it all came crashing down in truly spectacular fashion.

I got divorced and in the midst of that, my Crossfit coach’s wife decided that I was having an affair with her husband/my coach.

None of this was true but that didn’t seem to matter.

I was publically humiliated and degraded.

I’ll never forget that my former coach and his wife berated me in a cafe until I was sobbing - deep, heaving, ugly cries - at the table. They called me a psychopath and a bitch. 

They told me to go to therapy because I was “crazy”. 

They told me no one liked me and that I was a fraud and an awful person.

Suffice it to say, I left that community. 

My friends from that community, the ones who were my closest of close people, all left me.

I had never felt so completely and utterly alone as I did in those few months. 

But I knew how to be strong, and I knew I’d be okay. 

I found a new gym and kept training.

Lifting was my solace, my retreat, and I just needed to feel physically capable of handling what my life was throwing at me. 

I trained for hours and hours each day just to show myself that I wasn’t broken.

That’s the first time that I realized that strength saved my life.  

Through the very darkest of days where I was abandoned, alone, and disheartened, strength kept me going. 

Fast forward a few years and things are going decent.

Relationships have come and gone.

Friendships have come and gone, but I’ve found a group whom I love dearly.

I’d been competing in strength sports and getting physically stronger.

I leave my profession to start coaching full time. 

I start a business. 

My strength and resilience served me well during these times because truthfully, changing your whole life is not for the faint of heart.

Then March 2020 happens. 

COVID happens and I’m a little scared.

I feel grateful to be safe and to have a business that I can run from home.

I honestly also feel grateful for the break.

Then summer comes. 

I feel called to physically protest, loudly.

My strength, especially physically, becomes a tool to use to bring attention to injustice.

I am out in the streets nearly every day.

Tear gassing is a nearly weekly occurrence for me, and let me tell you, I’ve thrown out more clothes covered in chemical weapons than I care to admit.

Then fall comes.

I am attending a protest at a jail to bring attention to the inhumane and atrocious COVID conditions in the jail.

I was pretty sure it was going to be a very low key action. Hell, I even wore eyeliner and mascara because I figured nothing would really happen.

I was very wrong.

The next thing I know, I’m being grabbed and thrown to the ground. One cop is pinning my head and neck down while another digs his knees into my back as I’m being handcuffed.

My head hurts, badly. It’s tender to the touch. Lights are too bright, sounds are too loud, but I’m not bloodied or bruised (yet), so I think nothing of it.

I spend the night in jail. My head gets worse and worse.

My strength saved my life that night because my injuries should have been much worse. 

Eventually, I am released and a few days later it’s confirmed that I have a concussion.

I spend the next few months trying to heal and regain a sense of normalcy in my life.

I lift as I can. 

I return to work. 

I am still active in the activist community.

Then winter comes.

I had become a street medic and was asked to attend an action in Washington DC to help out the local medic collective.

They were expecting a significant amount of violence from far-right and fascist groups and needed all the help they could get.

I go up with a small group of medics and allies. 

We are prepared - we have helmets and arm shields. We are packed full of water and bandages and chest seals. We have all brushed up on our knife wound treatment skills. 

As we are approaching the area to congregate, a group of Proud Boys spots us. And by a group, I really mean the entire 100+ group of them that were marching through the street. 

They stop and yell at us.
A few get closer and closer until they’re in our faces.

Several of them proceed to throw us into the bushes and beat us. Badly.

I am the only one still on my feet.

I am crouched down with my arms over my helmet as several grown men try to kick my legs out from under me.

I am taking punch after punch to the head while others are trying to rip my helmet off of me. 

My strength saved my life that day, because they were truly trying to beat me to death.

I am beaten, bruised, and concussed, again. 

The cycle of healing starts over. 

And now, nearly a year later, here I am. 

A person writing this story in the little Air BnB I’m staying in while attending a conference centered on business, fitness, and resilience.

And as I’m writing this, I can’t help but weep. 

I weep not for the hard situations that I’ve been through, but for the person who went through those situations. 

So often she was without hope,.

So often she felt alone and abandoned.

So often she felt like things would never get better.

I weep for her, because she had to be strong and so resilient. 

And I also celebrate. 

I celebrate being alive. 

I celebrate not only surviving but thriving.
I celebrate being here, being present, and being held by people who truly care. 

Strength saved my life. And I have no doubt it will do so again and again.