lift

Back in the late fall, I think I shared a bit about the process leading up to the revelation of sheep- which, in case you are wondering, is still very much in escrow in terms of vision moving toward form. No worries there. There will be wooly sheep grazing on the hillside. Much to our future chagrin and delight, I am sure. But anyhow, the process that got me to that particular point of clarity was this surprisingly excellent exercise that Rachel Peters walked us through in the last Practice Wellness Community cohort. She asked us to take 10-15 minutes drawing a picture of ourselves into the future; an image of ourselves 5 minutes from now up until 6 months from now. Just go for it. No real rules other than that and no pressure- however artistic you think you are or are not. Irrelevant. And while the image that Sam made of her future witchy self perhaps clings to me the most, no doubt because she continues to send me all of her Witch Fiction (Witch Lit?) once she has read it, so, ya know, that is what I read now too. Witch lit. I’m here for it. Yaaaaaa. In my drawing, there were three salient bits of future Meg that are of note to me. First, and what I have already shared: sheep. Yes please. Hold this vision.

Second, I basically looked like a corpse. Unintentionally and simply by my complete lack of artistic skill when it comes to really any visual art. However. It seemed right on time in terms of my levels of fatigue, burnout, lack of inspiration, depression, and despair that I decided to go with it. Yep. I am a corpse. This is real and happening. And while that was most likely a 5-minute future self it certainly still holds true in terms of what I am experiencing my baseline to be. I am pretty sure I have made that clear in other posts in this space. Ack.

The third tidbit worth noting were all of the weights I scattered across the page. They were everywhere. Here a barbell. There a barbell. Everywhere a barbell. You get the idea. And there is a way, that has become more and more clear in the subsequent months as I have been reflecting upon this and upon my drawing (hello, future meg), that I can see how that image is all tied up with the image of me as a corpse. Because when I really stop to think about it, which I really have, the time that I can remember feeling most alive, most vital, most physically and mentally whole in recent years, was when I was regularly lifting the big, heavy-for-me, weights in the Trollway Gym in Wisconsin.

Um. That was a while back.

And the good news is that I took action on that insight straight away. Chris and I began that very week taking some of the “CraftFit” classes out at The Craftsbury Outdoor Center. There were only two a week and often we could only get to one and they have since tightened their schedule even more as weather pushed things in doors and Covid rates minimized availability as well as access. But it was great. There is something so mom and pop about heading to the gym as a middle-aged person. So many families. So many community relationships. Something so wholly unlike the vibe or demographic at the yoga studios. I have also, in recent weeks, picked up the smaller dumbbells in our basement and have been integrating more strength workouts into my movement menu. It has been great. And yet, I still very much long for the big weights and other folks in a gym setting, which continues to be hard to access in the rural life of a mom with active t(w)eens and a toddler and within the constantly changing climate of The Pandemic That Will Never End.

I wandered into the local CrossFit gym in Mount Horeb Wisconsin in the late summer of 2016. I landed there after many months of curiosity co-mingled with trepidation and also the recommendation of my doctor after a blood sugar screen that showed numbers right on the edge of not alright. Up to that point I had been a one activity kind of a gal. Other than walking and the occasional bike ride, I really just love to practice yoga. I mean, I think that much is clear… I had also been becoming increasingly intrigued by information becoming available from the natural movement community, including primal movement circles as well as weight lifting ones. And the more that I considered it, the more I could admit that while I thought of myself as making many shapes and weren’t those, after all, movement, I was still missing a great number of functional movement pieces, including pulling and, well, most anything with any dynamism in it. Plus, I was becoming increasingly concerned, as I sat on the advent of 40, of how well my body was set up to be aging if I was missing a lot of functional movement and if I continued to push into the territory of overuse in certain sectors.

So, I stepped into the shoes of the absolute neophyte beginner and walked into the relatively new-to-town CrossFit gym and asked them to teach me. (At around the same time I began going to a number of MoveNat trainings, but that is maybe a post for another day. Suffice it to say for now, that lifting weights is a universal language.) And I loved it. Like, almost immediately. I loved how hard it was. I loved how worked it made me feel. I loved that I had infinite room for improvement. I loved that I was a beginner. I loved the hodgepodge of other folks that came to classes- folks I would have never connected with otherwise. And I really loved when Chris started coming to classes too, both with me and on his own, so that it started to feel like we were really weaving our family into the fabric of the local community centered around the hub of the gym. There were even classes for kids that were a super fun mix of play and cross-training which immediately began to inform how they were performing in their sports. Same for me really. I began to feel not only stronger in my asana practice but also safer. More stable and secure than I had ever felt. And yes, I did most certainly lose some depth in my backbends but I also wasn’t really developing them consistently at that point to begin with, so who knows how it would have been otherwise.

I had every intention of continuing on this course indefinitely. I liked the rhythm of 2-4 classes a week balanced with a regular yoga teaching schedule and my personal practice. We even visited a fun gym in Morrisville the summer we came out to visit Vermont and another in Waterbury that fall during a subsequent scouting trip. And then, of course, I got pregnant. I continued to go to classes once the pukes had passed and did what I could as I could. From about 18 weeks on, I very diligently worked through the weight lifting program in the Expecting and Empowered trimester manuals. All the way up until Wilfred was born. I even followed the postpartum guide for quite some time, maybe a much as 4 or 5 months. But then something shifted. The workouts took longer than I could manage, I missed lifting with other people, and my windows of time were so short. I want to stretch and make shapes.

And then, of course, The Pandemic began. And I lost the gumption for a lot of things but also suddenly had online yoga access with my teachers in a way that I never had before. Things shifted. And so did I. I think I got really excited and ended up taking a deep dive into asana study and practice, and was fed by the regularity and camaraderie of that, and honestly, it really carried me for a long time. Certainly through that first year and a half. But in the better part of the past decade, asana has not been a complete formula in terms of my particular movement wants and needs, and over time I have begun to feel the effect of that, in a variety of ways.

OK. So, here is where in this particular post I begin to talk about my vagina, and either you are thrilled to have made it this far or are thrilled to have not, and either way that seems like a readership win as far as I can tell. Or, you are in a different camp altogether and rather not share in this tmi that I am about to release regarding my vag, and well, now is your cue to go and I swear to god no hard feelings. Completely understandable. We may not even know each other at all and reading about my anatomy may truly be something that you have in no way signed up for. Great! I will meet you back here for a post about how fucking hard parenting is or to commiserate over the pros and cons of home education or to sing the praises of a backbend high. All good. Check you later.

For everyone else. Here is the deal as far as I am able to tell right now: while pregnancy and labor and delivery and mothering again in my early 40s was a truly magical and revelatory and healing experience on all kinds of levels, it also left my vagina in a state quite unlike my previous childbearing. Even though I did not tear with Wilfred at all really- I think I have a long labor and a warm tub to thank for that- my body was transformed in ways that have felt oddly progressive in the time following. With Maple, who required me to push her out quickly so that we could hightail it to the emergency room, I tore miserably and suffered a ridiculous mishap with the stitches and then a prolapse in the months following. That was horrible. Initially, healing was more complicated than it needed to be and then once I finally wanted to have sex again it was incredibly painful and therefore better off avoided much to the detriment of my young marriage and my own wellness. With Eider, there were no stitches, my midwife was determined that she would never have to stitch me again after the first time, and my healing, in general, was pretty straightforward. I had some gentle structural bodywork done early on to address any potential prolapse and really felt great physically. Other than the exhaustion of mothering a newborn and a three-year-old. In fact, I had to have a LEEP about 4 months postpartum with Eider and my recovery from that was far longer and much worse than his birth.

During my pregnancy with Wilfred, I stayed far more pro-active in terms of my pelvic floor health than I had when I was younger. I did develop a small inguinal hernia at about 30 weeks and saw a pt and did all of the things that she prescribed. The hernia resolved immediately after delivery. What didn’t resolve is something else. My perineum basically disappeared. Almost completely. No, it wasn’t just that it changed. I am familiar with that, especially after maple and the resulting hard little line of scar tissue, a reminder of the 3 big stitches that walked with me into motherhood. But this is different. And oddly nebulous. I have no physical pain. No discomfort. Not during sex or otherwise. But over time I have felt a growing sense of dis-ease associated with my pelvic floor, as though I am unprotected and physically vulnerable in a way that pushes back against the sort of woman I hope to be. I feel at risk. In my darker moments, I worry that there is only an open hole between my legs neither protecting what is inside nor shielding me from what is outside. Sometimes I fantasize that I can fashion some kind of hammock to close the gap and hold me together and safe. Or that, when I finally get into the local pelvic floor pt (soon! thank god, SOON!) she will be able to massage my perineum back into being and out of blackness. It is a lot. Maybe too much to share here, but probably not. I am not, in this moment at least, hopeless about the situation, especially now that professional guidance is on the horizon, but rather I am spending a portion of my energy in simply feeling what is, honoring the difficulty, and working toward staying steady with self-compassion around the whole difficult ordeal.

But why why why include this vaginal report with a post about singing the praises of weight lifting? I don’t know. They feel interwoven for me right now. How I feel versus how I want to feel. Remembering a time where I felt safe and strong and able in my physical form. And I do think that returning to some weights is in the better interest of my tissues, especially as age and gravity and circumstance continue to have their way with all of me. It is messy, you know. And embarrassing. Even a bit of a shame trigger for me in some strange way. But I am not without hope, or without a plan, and the return to the weight room is a part of that. As is more rest. And water. And meditation. And all of the other bits and parts of habits that make me feel myself. With love and wonder and worry and forgiveness and struggle and fear and renewed effort and all the rest. And truth-telling. Especially that. Oh yes, and dreams turning toward plans of sheep on the hill. Don’t forget!