Warts and all

This morning I walked into the home gym with almost nothing in the tank. My legs felt heavy before I touched a single weight, shoulders tight, the kind of low morning that used to make me push harder to compensate.

Lifting felt wrong for the day. I did some Pilates and walked a little extra on my walking pad at work, and my body felt nourished afterward.

I'm well accustomed to auditing my own physical performance, long before I started consulting.

I was a Division I softball pitcher, played four sports in high school, and practiced with my dad six or seven days a week. For 10 years I was a high-performance athlete. For most of my adult life I measured this body against that one: the peak version, conditioned with someone else's training program to play a game with rules I couldn't change or control. And although the Ivy League was challenging, it doesn't hold a candle to running a household and multiple businesses.

That physical comparison is a quiet thief. It shows up every time life gets full and the workouts get short, whispering that the body I have now, at 42, in the middle of LIFE, is an inferior version of my pre-kid body.

My body has changed with me through every season I have lived. It grew multiple humans and birthed one.

It rebuilt itself after months of sitting through other people's priorities, emergencies, schedules, and dysregulation. On the low days and the strong ones, it has performed the best it could.

The body you have right now is the one that carried you here. It is worthy of love in this season, exactly as it is.