I Will Get Through This

Friends,

For those of you who do not know me IRL, here’s a bit of context: I love fitness, exercise, working out. I plan my entire week around what classes I am going to and what days I need to recover.

At the beginning of the year I changed up my exercise routine by joining Class Pass - a company that allows you to go to multiple boutique fitness studios under one membership. In a span of three weeks I was doing HIIT, pilates, barre, strength training, and…. BOXING.

With boxing, it was high on my list of exercise regimes to try, but I had to wait until my hand doctor gave me the medical aye-okay to punch something once again post my getting-hit-by-a-car-while-walking-my-dog injuries.

I signed up for my first boxing class just three days after this clearance.

And this was only three weeks ago.

I went to the class and LOVED it. Punching the shit out of a weighted bag is exhilarating!

Because of the sheer number of classes I was testing out, I didn’t put boxing back on my schedule until a class that took place at 8:30 am today.

Last night I got an email from the boxing studio saying they were closing their doors for good this coming Sunday.

What? That’s so weird. Why? So many questions. Not enough answers.

Yet, this news made me look forward to the class I was signed up for all the more.

Here’s what happened when I arrived…

1️⃣ I

2️⃣ Will

3️⃣ Get

4️⃣ Through

5️⃣ This

The instructor was sobbing before class even began. Through tears she led us through a warm-up and, in the middle of some jump squats, asked us all to yell out the statement: “I will get through this.”

She wasn’t just talking about getting through a life without that fitness studio. For her, it probably had a bit more to do with it. It was her job. She got 12 hours notice that she wouldn’t have a job past the weekend.

But it was so much more. For her. For us.

I know this kind of audience participation can make people cringe, especially in a wellness way. But I was all in with this instructor. The space she set up for us, the energy she wanted us to bring, the release she wanted us to have.

So I yelled.

I WILL GET THROUGH THIS

And then I started to cry.

Through tears of my own, I got to punch the shit out of a weighted bag, jump around, and lift heavy weights over my head

It was a collective coming together of physical strength and emotional strength.

And, up until that yell, the emotional strength was the missing piece for me.

I know that there is a chance it is the missing piece for you — “In this century, this moment, of mania.”*

These are my five words for this week’s newsletter: I will get through this.

I offer them to you if you need them. Yell them out loud. Punch something (but please get medical clearance from your hand doctor before doing so). Or write them on a post-it.

You will get through this.

Whatever the “this” may be.

So will I.

*this is a line pulled from the poem Tell Me A Story by Robert Penn Warren

Cheers,

Hillary