Do Nothing
I used to move. A lot. That photo there? It's the 2018 Kansas City Half Marathon. I was 18 months postpartum with my first, one year post Albuquerque Half Marathon, and many months of training strong. I felt at the top of my game (I also was ignoring frequent bladder pain and jaw tension, but that's a whole other post).
I completed the race running an average 7:54 mile. That was a PR for me.
I ran those miles upon miles. I trained daily. I worked a job that kept me on my feet, helping others stand, lift, move. Movement was woven into my daily life, into my identity. I carried my child, chased after her, folded my body into play, into care. Movement was strength. It was release. It was freedom.
Then came my second pregnancy. High-risk and high stress. A toddler who refused to sit still. Third-trimester bleeding, placental issues, salmonella poisoning I thought would put me into early labor, eventual induction at 39 weeks and 39 years old. Happily, I had a healthy baby in March of 2020.
That March. That 2020.
I felt myself closing in as the world fell away. My body, once open and fluid, became protective. I was in fightlightfreezefallapart. Movement became tension, not release, pain, not pleasure. It became small. Movement became something to endure, not rejoice, a tightening of the body that no longer felt familiar. Movement stopped being freedom. Stopped being mine.
My body, once my trusted accomplice, turned into a vault. Everything clenched. I contracted. I shrank. My movement stopped feeling like movement and started feeling like a liability.
I watched myself retreat from larger movements to smaller ones - from running to a walk, from lifting to barely managing to stretch. Even sleep, the ever-elusive relief in newborn life, became a bigger battlefield I avoided. I stayed up many late hours knowing my baby would wake every 30 minutes anyway, and I taught myself to bake at 2:00 in the morning, because that was fine motor, and I could do fine motor. I squandered the coercion of rest, and with it, a body that could heal.
I moved to survive, not to thrive.
It wasn’t that I stopped trying, it’s just that every step felt like an awkward conversation in a language I no longer spoke. Every time I tried to get back to it, my body laughed at my mispronunciations.
The pattern was predictable:
Make a plan. Whoohoo!
Get back into running. This is great!
Immediately injure myself. F*ck!
Swear I’ll just focus on strength training. More just a lot of swearing.
Immediately tweak something. Cue: crying. Anger. Frustration.
Lick my wounds. I couldn't do nothing.
Repeat. Lesson not learned.
Every time, I’d get caught up in this cycle of frustration, grief, and just straight-up rage. I have cried many tears, of pain, sadness, resignation. Because what do you do when your body, the thing that carried you so far, for so long, just refuses to cooperate? When the things that used to be second nature suddenly feel foreign? When every movement feels like a bad translation, like when you see really bad subtitles on a movie and you think, Well that’s not accurate at all? The movement I once spoke fluently had become a language I no longer understood. I needed a new literacy, a new dialect – hell, I needed an interpreter.
I spent years trying to return to the way things were. I fought for it. I strategized. I took notes. I made schedules. I wanted it back. I even specialized in pelvic health therapy to better understand and help the postpartum body! I spent 2022 running every single day, rain, shine, 11pm or 5 am, with my dog, without her, at least one mile, without fail...until I in fact "failed." After six months of an unforgiving co-dependency, I pulled my back while doing some mundane task, and was out of running for a week, physically...and then two, and then three, and more, emotionally. At first, I thought I just needed more discipline. That I wasn’t trying hard enough. Because that’s the story we are sold, right? Push through, get stronger, just keep going. But no amount of mental grit could change the fact that my body had moved on from the one I used to know. I was speaking to it in a language it no longer understood, and every injury, every setback, was its way of telling me: you can’t just go back.
And that realization gutted me.
Because I didn’t just lose running as I had known it. I lost the certainty that came with it. I lost trust, the quiet interpretation that my body could carry me the way it always had. I had spent years in a mind-body codependency, forcing, overriding, demanding, and yes, even enjoying. And that’s what I had to mourn. Not just my pace, my mileage, my strength, but the version of me that moved without hesitation and with joy. But what I needed wasn’t control. It was connection.
For five years, I have been reckoning with this change. I have fought it, resisted it. Even today. But now, I am also learning something different. I realize this is no longer a relationship I need to salvage. This is a relationship I need to redefine.
This is not about doing nothing. It is about doing nothing the same way.
Strength training, cardiovascular health, movement - they matter to me. They matter for my longevity, my wellbeing, my future, my children. The world reminds me constantly that as I stand on the threshold of perimenopause, these things are even more important. And I want them. I want to live a long time. I want to move well for a long time.
But I am no longer fighting for the survival of my old movement.
Instead, I am listening. Learning. Rewriting.
Now, I move differently. Not always with ease, but with a kind of quiet re-negotiation that I never had to make before. I still run, but I don’t chase what I used to. I still lift, but strength feels like something I am relearning rather than reclaiming. I still try, because stopping entirely is not an option. But I no longer lie to myself about what “getting back to it” means. And that is a beautiful reconciliation with myself.
Because this isn’t about willpower I lack. It’s not about motivation I can’t pep talk myself into. It’s about fluency, about realizing that my body no longer speaks the same language of movement that it once did. And instead of punishing it for changing, I am no longer demanding my body return to what it once was. I am no longer speaking to it in a tongue it no longer knows. I am poetry in motion.
Do nothing? No. But do nothing the same? Yes. Because this is not about going back. It isn’t about giving up. It’s about shifting the dialogue. Not just the pep talks, the self-talk, but the deeper conversation between me and my body. This is about no longer fighting for the survival of a relationship that has already ended, and instead, beginning the slow work of building a new one.
Movement will continue to come as I build that new relationship with it. Understanding that this moment, this new body, requires new conversation, new rhythm. As I let it teach me a new way to move, a new way to be in my body.
And maybe the real win is finally learning how to move with my body instead of demanding that it move for me. This is not an ending. It’s a translation in progress.
Do you want to return to running, but don't know where to start? We've been through it all, and then some! We can support you in your journey, help you build endurance, reduce symptoms, and learn a new fluency and body literacy.
