Hi friends! Me again!

 

If you are new to reading this blog, welcome, if you are returning, welcome back and thank you for your patience. I want to be better and being consistent with my writing, yet I also want to avoid being redundant with what I say to you. Much of my day is the same in, same out every. single. day. I see redundancy and repetition in nearly everything I do, and I want to avoid that as much as possible in this blog.

The sentiment comes from wanting to convey progress. I do not like appearing mundane and boring. I do not like feeling like I do not have anything new or exciting to offer the world. I loathe being stuck in the ‘Same shit, different day’ mentality. I also crave structure and having everything planned out well in advance. Change terrifies me sometimes, but stagnation is the great nuisance in my life. Still working on finding that balance…

I recently went through 4 months of feeling stuck. From Halloween through Valentine’s Day nothing new happened. I stopped losing weight, work had become increasingly dull as I realized there was nothing more to really learn, and I was not meeting new people or going out really ever (if I met you during this time, do not discount our friendship, I love you and you are an exciting human being – I was just not particularly enthusiastic about life).

I felt like I was stuck in this rut. Sometimes I literally was because we have gotten plenty of snow this winter and I have been stuck many times in many places. Being stuck manifested in every part of my life, and I was just going through the motions to get through to the next day. Every just sucked!

This next bit may sound a little corny, but it is honestly how I pulled myself out of the snowbank in my brain.

I went to see the Greatest Showman at the movies. When I first saw it I left feeling happy and like I just saw a good movie. I downloaded the soundtrack just because I enjoyed the music, not necessarily because I thought I needed to have it. I began listening to it nearly every day. In the car I would ask the people in the cars next to me ‘So tell me do you wanna go?’ at the top of my lungs. I would smack my chest proclaiming that ‘This is Me’ in the rearview mirror of the cars ahead of me. I would let people on the sidewalk know that this world was ‘Never Enough’ without them. Every song resonated with me, and it was all really well done and mainly in my range! Watching the rehearsals online brought tears to my eyes, and I fell in love with the music and the ensemble.

This musical itself is not where the breakthrough happened. The breakthrough – the car out of the ditch moment – happened when I was looking through pictures of the Crossfit Open 18.1 photos.

18.1 for those of you who do not know for me was as follows:

Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:

8 hanging knee-raises

10 dumbbell hang clean and jerks

12-cal. Row

 

20. Minutes. Welcome back to face-melt Friday’s, ammirite?!

I went into the workout super excited because I am a giant who can row really well. I know that is only one aspect of the workout, but it was enough for me to get really excited. The workout overall was hard, but super rewarding. I was like, “Yeah! I did it! High fives, fam… once I get off the ground!”

The pictures for 18.1 came out later and I found one of me in the midst of a jerk, and there it was: the skin flap.

For those of you who do not know me, I have lost almost 100lbs over the past 16 months through Crossfit and eating well (most of the time, but as I said, I was in a rut). When you lose weight that quickly, especially after pregnancy, your body does not have time to adjust the amount of skin you have. Up to this point I had been carefully tucking my flap into my shorts or pants during my workout. Cellulite and stretch marks paired with a scar from my C-section has made my stomach rather terrifying to look at, mix it with the fact that it now hangs and gets sweaty and chaffed potentially risking infection… and you get a mess. A mess of skin that I have spent MONTHS hiding, and here it was right in my face online.

I was just about to email the gym owners to tell them to take it down, but then I sat back and said “this is me.” Those three words clicked in my brain. This stomach flap IS me. I put in so much work to lose the fat stored in this skin. I ate right, I counted my macros, I went to the gym regularly. This stomach flap is me, and I worked too damn hard to be ashamed of it. It is not the flawless belly you will see in magazines. It is a battlefield that I am working on every damn day. It is all of my mistakes, all of the worst parts of my life, all of my self-loathing. It is all of my perseverance, all that I have learned, all of my progress.

Now, I know I have made progress in other areas of my life, my massive quads and growing biceps are proof of that, as is my journal and the way I talk to myself when no one can see what I write or hear what I say. I am proud of myself in a lot of areas, but my breakthrough moment was staring down this picture that I initially cringed at that I now can share proudly.

 

If you don’t like the way I look then you can go fuck yourself.

 

Every bruise, every scar, every stretchmark, every part of my body is a story of how much I have overcome and proof that I am strong, resilient, and moving forward.

It took a musical and a year at the gym for me to get out of a rut, but I can now say, with all the confidence in the world, that I am glorious.

I was initially going to post this when I finally hit the 100lb lost mark, but I really wanted to share this sooner than later because I know how it feels to be in a rut – in a dark place in your mind and heart. I do not really have advice to give you for getting out of every rut in your life. I am not this overwhelming ball of optimism. I just got my car unstuck from the side of the road myself, but if there is anything I can offer to help people out of the ditch I certainly will do my part.

Sometimes you need a friend, sometimes you need a stranger, sometimes you need a damn tow truck, and sometimes you need a musical that you listen to for weeks before it actually sets in… for each of us the road is different, our potholes are different, the amount of snow that comes into our lives is different, but we all get stuck regardless of the road.

If any advice were to come out of this: You will get stuck. It will not be fun or the best time of your life, but you will also learn how to get out of the ditch whether it is through your own strength or the help of those who have turned down your road.

My method of getting out of the ditch may not work for you, but wave me down if you are stuck on the side of the road. I will either sing at you, or I will pull over and use my awesome new quads and biceps to help push you back onto the road.

 

I strongly recommend The Greatest Showman if you have not seen it yet. I strongly recommend Crossfit or other activities you can do with people who are just as passionate as you are about what you are doing together. Honestly, just find something that makes your weird heart happy, find other weirdos like you, and do the weird shit together!

 

For we are glorious!

❤ Courtney