My Healing Journey

Editor’s Note: This article speaks about domestic violence and may be triggering for some folks.

I was never an athlete in high school. Children who suffer abuse in their early years don’t exactly flourish in the self-esteem department. Team sports terrified me because I wasn’t a popular kid, I was bullied horrendously, and somewhere around the 7^th grade I started believing what they said. And after school, playing sports, when parents turned a blind eye, and teachers weren’t around, that was when the worst of it happened. And the self-talk I cultivated from my school days experiences was a malformed variation of what those awful girls would call me.

I developed a strong aversion to people and running called to me because of its individual nature. You compete with others but out there running you are on your own. I used to try out for track and field every year. I’d make it through the track and on that last hill, my lungs would burn, my heart would thump into my throat, and I would walk away wordlessly from the coach and never return. Inside I’d tell myself, you’re useless, worthless, see? You can’t do it. It wasn’t even that I feared failing, my self-loathing was so deep at that point I had hit the bottom.

Depression almost took my life as a teenager. And it took a lot of work on myself before I had the capacity to do things outside of my comfort zone; my healing journey was forged in desperation. I was in university, and I wasn’t really functioning anymore. It’s hard to explain the physicality of depression; my body was just breaking down. And with a litany of mystery illnesses that had accumulated I started doing (of all things) like hot yoga. And something crazy happened that I still don’t understand I shrugged off several medications in a mere 90 days of starting and I started healing. 

Naturally, 10 months in at the ripe age of 25 I became an instructor. And on a whim, after class, I quite literally walked across the street to a functional gym and started group classes to learn how to lift. Group classes weren’t my strong suit. I would get angry. Like see red angry. So mad at myself for not doing it perfect on the first try! But I got there, I did it. I kept pushing.

I was 28 years old when I first heard the whisperings of positive self-talk. And I remember the moment it happened. I was swinging an 18kg kettle bell during a grueling set (3min skipping with a .75lb weighted rope, 1 min swings to max, 2 Turkish getups and repeat). It was the heaviest weight I had ever swung, and I was starting to fail. I heard myself think you got this, you can do this, and I instantly collapsed into tears. Something shifted for me in that moment. I felt indestructible. The spontaneous combustion of a flame inside of me that I never knew existed popped and hissed. And I realized: I was the only person holding myself back.

May 2015, 4 years later and 15 years since my last track and field try-out I ran my first km of life. In those first couple 5 km runs I heard myself saying crazy things like yes! You got this. Keep going. And when my lungs burned, I ignored it, when my heart beat out of my chest, I felt alive. I just kept going.

The following February I did a half marathon. Running around the river valley in Saskatoon at 8 pm at night, the steam swirled around me from the banks of the river. It was at least -25 and I couldn’t feel my quads anymore. No music, just the crunch of snow, and my heart thudding. The euphoric runners high felt transformative. I never truly stepped back into that version of my previous self. I let her in the mist of the winter river that night, and she is long gone now.

I am telling my story because I lost a friend to domestic violence in 2021. We shared the same path in our early life. I was able to move forward from the abuse we both endured in high school. But those unkind thoughts never left her. They took hold of her and never let go. Be kind to yourselves dear sisters, practice self-compassion so we may feel compassion for others. This world is so much better with all of us in it.