“No excuses, just results.” That’s what I heard my fitness instructor say tonight in her insane style cardio class that I take a couple of times a week. As a woman who could make a lot of legitimate excuses not to show up at the gym, her words resonated more deeply than usual tonight. Maybe it’s because I’m finally beginning to really see my results. And I can’t appreciate my results without reflecting on this past season of my life.
When I set out on my fitness journey last June, I was in a dark place. Standing in the mirror, I didn’t like what I saw. The weight I packed on, seemingly overnight, was just a physical manifestation of the heaviness I had been carrying in my mind, in my heart, and in my life. Although it was over long before our final day in court, my marriage had officially ended. I completed a long first year in a new phase of my career, facilitating organizational rehabilitation/restoration. I have two sets of children and my baby in the first set (who doubled as an evening nanny to her brothers) moved away to conquer her first year of college. As if I didn’t have enough to be devastated about, the only grandparent I ever knew left earth in the first month of my new job. Still, I was forced to put my game face on, and whether it was subconscious or not, I was eating my pain. Lost in my brokenness, I was packing on the pounds to numb the grief, stress, and fatigue.
Here I was failing at life, drowning in the depths of my tears yet again. I have many sources of pride and gratitude, but none of those things seem to matter when grappling with the defeat of unrequited love. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I get this right? These are the questions that repeatedly tormented my conscience. To accompany them was the resounding voice of self deprecation, “No one is ever going to love you.” “You are damaged goods.” “How many times are you going to change your last name?” “How could you be so stupid?”
Shame can haunt you. Even when you know in every rational sense that your circumstances are not entirely your fault or that you are worthy of love and belonging. Encouraging words that might offer hope seem to float away on a distant life boat that you just can’t seem to reach when your head is under water in humiliation and distress. A great career offers no comfort in the bed you’re trying to adjust to sleeping in alone. The accomplishments of your children don’t stop the endless supply of the warm salty tears that involuntarily fall from your eyes in every still moment. The overwhelming fear that you just may end up facing life alone is palpable and daunting.
Yet, my boys needed breakfast, clean clothes, homework done, emails to teachers, field trip money, rides to and from school, and dinner. Ensuring that I protect my little guy with special needs from adults who want to label him and throw away his future before age five has proven to be a job in and of itself. Sliced and spread so thin… Still, the kids need to go to the doctor for that one obscure immunization they added to the list of requirements this year. I can’t leave out the glasses, the tuition, the braces, and the bills, and on and on and on and even though I am no stranger to a single mom’s mother load of prodigious shyt that has to be done, it all seemed so much heavier than before.
I won’t bring up what it means to be a black woman and chief executive of an organization when your personal life is in shambles behind the veil. As far as anyone can see, the results are excellent and things are looking up. Some how I was finding the strength to not only hold it together, but to slay giants left and right like it was easy work. God forbid I let on that I was struggling daily to get out of bed and just show up. I don’t know if I am capturing this well or not because I can’t list all of the new and improved impossible shyt that I lived through from 2017 through 2018. It was a lot, and staring at my body growing in the wrong direction was compounding my suffering.
Something pushed me to focus forward. January would bring my 41st birthday and the start of a new year. I decided in June that I needed to do something to change what I was looking at by January. No way was I going to look up six months from now and feel sorry for myself when I had six months to do something about it. Would it fix the divorce? No. Would it repair damage from years of poor decision making and financial sacrifice? No. Would it change the loneliness I felt at the end of every day? No, but at least I was tackling something. I had to start somewhere, and they tell you on the air plane to put your mask on first right?!
Without any guarantees of support, I signed up for my first challenge at the Well . It promised to provide a community of support that journeyed together over five weeks, including group fitness workouts and accountability check points. When it was over, I wasn’t there yet, but I kept going and signed up for the next challenge which promised more of the same with added structure over a longer period of time. At the end, I certainly saw some progress, but I wasn’t where I wanted to be so I kept going. The Well had become my daily escape, a sanctuary of sorts. My time there is non-negotiable. When we started our challenges, we identified our why or our reason for pressing on and seeing our commitments through to the end.
I was my why.
So here I sit, exactly seven days from my 41st birthday. I didn’t let any of the things I’ve shared stop me. I haven’t allowed the daily balancing act and scramble for help with evening childcare to throw me off course. Some how, God makes a way and even though some days I’m feeling my way around in the dark with a blindfold on, I have resolved that I will show up for me. I almost never feel like it. I almost always have emails to check and work to do, but they have to wait. For this small block of time in my day, I’m pouring into Garland because she’s all I’ve got, and I won’t be able to be anything for the people who love and need me, personally or professionally, if I don’t take care of her…apologetically.
Top pics are the end of my second challenge. Bottom pics are from June 2017.
So next week, I’m celebrating Garland. Happy birthday to me! Still imperfect and finding my way back to myself, but I’m closer than I was before. I’ve proven to myself that I can apply the sacrifice, discipline, focus, and determination that set my health on the right track, to fix the other areas of my life.
“No excuses, just results.”
Keeping it real, true, and free,
Garland Darling
Today! (January 16, 2019)