Autumn:
I know exactly how you feel. I have been struggling with loss of hope that my life, my family's life, will ever get any better since August.
First, my 16 year old daughter decided to leave home and stay with my parents in the UK for a year, which has left a massive hole in my life and my heart. She needed to do this and I did not want to stop her: my job is to make things feasible for her and keep her life moving onwards, and although she is now realizing that the grass is not usually ever greener elsewhere and that we do indeed take our problems with us when we flee a situation, I miss my baby girl like crazy and can cry at the drop of a hat.
Then the job I had lined up teaching at the U of M fell away three days before I was due to begin teaching when I learned that an admin person in the department had screwed up my visa paperwork and I could not legally enter the classroom. This was my first job opportunity in 5 years. Flushed down the drain by someone else's incompetence.
Then we learned that my husband's university screwed up his green Card application paperwork and it was thrown out on a technicality. Again, our lives changed by someone else's incompetence while they go on just fine and hunky-dory. We have to begin the process all over again and we have no idea where we will be living next year, whether we will have to leave the US and begin again back home in the UK and if we will find jobs.
We have lived under the constraints of the US visa system for the lat 19 years, even though we have both helped educate your undergraduate and graduate students and pay our taxes, blah, blah. I have lived with uncertainty for 19 years, never knowing if our visa applications will be granted or revoked. I have had to live with the US gvt determining the course of my life and family's future for 19 years. I have little self-determination afforded to me. Can you even imagine? To say I am losing hope would be an understatement.
I also have the tendency to a suffer anxiety and depression and have had a running injury that is not finding a solution for itself, despite repeated physical therapy. So, it has been a real struggle to exercise since last January, a whole year now, and when my achilles started hurting in December, I just gave up and stopped.
I took three weeks off and sat around feeling crappy and getting crappier by the day. I know that exercise is the best answer to depression but was too unmotivated to even start again, and really, what was the point? It seems like everything I set out to achieve gets thwarted by some other person, circumstance or injury, so why even bother?
Except that, that is not living and I cannot spend my life that way. I am 45, each day I do not live is a day wasted. I am the mother, I am the heart and emotional centre of this family and I have to get it together. If not, how can I make sure my daughters don't succumb to the depression and anxiety, which they both also have a tendency towards? Worrying about shit is my job, not theirs and I cannot dump that responsibility on them. I have to keep moving forwards and making something out of each day so that they can keep going and derive joy from their lives.
Also, I just plain deserve better.
So, yesterday, I broke the cycle and went to the gym and was there for 3 hours.
I did not reach for the sky, I did not do a ball busting HiiT routine followed by stacks of heavy lifting.
Instead, I was sensible. I knew I was de-conditioned, but I also know that I can get it back in just two weeks, because I always can. That, right there, gave me a smidgeon of something like hope, maybe best described as faith in myself, to pull myself back up out of the chasm.
I did 60 mins power walking on the treadmill, listening to my fave tunes and I just kept cracking a grin all the way through because I had fun. I also kept wiping away tears because it was just such a relief to finally be moving and because exercise really is the only thing that helps lift my depresssion and helps me believe that I am stronger than the fears I harbour. Then I did some core work and lower body work with the machines. Just the basics to start back with. I know that the "experts" would have frowned on my use of weight machines rather than a barbell and free weights routine, but the point was to get started and do something that was a step in the right direction, not to worry about whether my routine passed muster with any fitness pro. Starting back is the hardest, but it starts the momentum machine and it is therefore the most important step.
Here are my secrets:
1) only do what lifts your spirits and makes your heart sing. Who gives a s**t what the pros think, just do it. Kickbox 5 times this week? Go for it.
2) believe in yourself. Only you can make this happen, and baby, you ARE strong enough despite all the crap trying to pull you down.
3) you are SO worth it. Everybody else is getting healthy and fit: you DESERVE it even more than they do. Treat yourself.
4) think: compassion and self-love. No gut busting workouts, just self-pampering, both for the body, the mind and the emotional spirit.
Autumn: I am here for you, on this journey with you and ready to listen and support you. What do you need? Tell me. Big hugs form me to you,
Clare
