Home   >   Feature   >   On Lifting, Grief, and Letting go….

On Lifting, Grief, and Letting go….

By on May 29, 2019
k

By Karen McCoy

I love muscle.

I love watching it move.

For me, muscle represents life and vitality. It’s graceful and sensual. It oozes health and confidence.

As a competitive bodybuilder, I spent years teaching women how to build strong, shapely muscle, yet I gave birth to a child with a muscle-wasting disease.

The irony has not been lost on me.

Our son, Tristan, was born in 1995. By the age of 5, we noticed his gait had changed. After numerous doctor’s appointments, we learned the terrible news: our boy was born with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a rare, degenerative and terminal disease that slowly robs the body of its muscles.

The news sent me into a tailspin, and I found myself thrown into that most mysterious of places, the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’. And there I stayed for 8 long, painful years.

My body, which had once been my pillar of health, was deceiving me now. I lived in constant pain. I grappled with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, depression and anxiety. I couldn’t train. I couldn’t work. My body had become a holding place for all my fear, anger and grief.

That was 15 years ago, and today, I live a very different life indeed.

Tristan is now 23 years old. He lives life from a wheelchair and requires 24-hour care, but he is happy, alive, and coping with it all with amazing tenacity and strength.

And I am here too, whole, healthy, healed, no longer broken.

I am no longer broken.

Living through our son’s journey has been our greatest hardship and our greatest blessing. I am even thankful for those dark nights, because it created a new definition of life’s meaning to bubble up, and to take the place of what my old self thought was important in this life. And what’s important has little to do with perfect biceps or toned glutes.

But suffering is, unfortunately, part of the journey into wholeness. We all must go through our own dark night of the soul if we are to move into the Light. But the journey is profoundly unsettling, and the desire to jump the cue is strong, because here, we are calling upon a spiritual response, not a therapeutic one. Yet too many times, we are urged to take anti depressants, or we check out with our own devices, including food, alcohol, excessive work, shopping or other diversional tactics to dull the pain.

But through it all, it is important to remember that one spiritual creed to lead us through the dark nights: The only way out is through.

Going into the heart of our suffering and allowing it to rise up, moves the process from merely tolerating the situation to truly transcending it. Tolerating will keep it on the backburner, stuck there. Transcending will create a fresh perspective and new understandings. To transcend is to truly be free.

For me, my body had become a feeling barometer. Those years of ill health was simply my body’s only way of expressing the pain and grief, and only stopped when I learned to grieve and let go of the dreams and expectations I had for my boy’s life. I learned to see his journey from a higher perspective, and this opened me up to greater understanding and new offerings that in time, I learned to accept and embrace. I had transcended. But it takes time, patience and a ton of a trust.

I have also learned through my son’s journey the wisdom of the human body, and how it speaks to us every day. It knows our secrets and our fears. It is always talking to us. Ignore, and you hold. Listen, and you release.

For me, my sport of choice has always been lifting weights. The skills required to build a strong, shapely body are the same skills needed to overcome intense challenges – strength, tenacity, focus, dedication, commitment and faith. The simple act of grabbing a weight and lifting it up is life-affirming. It’s simple, clean and succinct. There’s a start and an end. It doesn’t get any more basic than that. One step at a time. One rep at a time.

Life is hard. Few of us get through life unscathed, but surviving your own dark night means opening up to what is. It’s about the intimate dance between holding on and letting go, and embracing the lessons. You learn to live fearlessly and with an open heart, and you learn to muscle into every moment like it was your last, because it just may be. This, my son’s journey, has taught me.

Life isn’t always lived in giant leaps and bounds. It’s often lived in the small steps in between, the good and the bad ones, the glad and the sad ones, and the ones we often take for granted.

People ask me why, after 30 years, I continue to train. I used to list off any number of reasons: to stay strong, to stay lean, to look good and to function well. I lifted because I wanted great arms, or shapely legs.

But today I lift for very different reasons.

I lift out of respect for the human body.
I lift because it connects me to my Power. It feeds my soul. It nourishes spirit.

I lift out of a deep reverence for life.
I lift out of gratitude.

I lift for my son.
I lift because I can.

 

********

 

Teleseminar photoKaren McCoy has been a Trainer and Nutritionist for 35 years. She has competed in Bodybuilding for 3 decades, winning numerous titles. Karen is also an Empowerment Coach, helping women to live an Authentic life.

Her online Warrior Woman programs offer women all over the world affordable, accessible and unique programs that support the 40+ woman physically, nutritionally and spiritually.

We are ‘Change Agents’, and we are re-defining ageing at every turn.

www.warriorwomanliving.com
www.warriorwomanfitness.com
www.facebook.com/McCoy.Fitness
https://www.facebook.com/groups/warriorwomanliving/
https://twitter.com/KarenMcCoy
https://soundcloud.com/karenmccoy

About simply...woman!

We encourage spreading the message of knowledge and wisdom. We appreciate and thank our featured partners for their articles. All information provided on Simply…Woman online magazine is for reference only; the content is based on the authors’ experiences and therefore is not intended as a substitute to the services of a fully qualified professional. Although every reasonable effort is made to present current and accurate information, Simply…Woman makes no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the information.