New Beginnings.

It’s been over eight years since I’ve had my first blog post. I’ve had different blogs over the years, I’ve had different careers over the years and it’s at this time in my life that I feel like I’m really focused and ready to move up to the next level. My son is turning eight next year and I thought that it would be time to just get my thoughts out. I don’t really know where to begin so I think maybe I’ll just start where I’m at now as opposed to where I’ve been all these years. I’m addicted to being empowered. I am a fitness nut and every morning at 3:45 AM, I wake up and I hit the shower and then I go to the gym, might seems backwards for some people, but it works well for me because I’ve tried it different ways and that’s what is the best.

I work out at the gym with weights and also some cardio for my heart and lungs. Having MS, a chronic illness, I can’t tell you how much fitness has improved my life a thousand fold. I feel empowered and stretch the limits to what is possible or what people think is possible. I think that people have doubts about what they’re capable of especially when I tell people I wake up at the time that I do and then I come to the gym. It’s amazing to me that people don’t think that they could find a way. Maybe they’re just not in my shoes, but everybody can find the time to empower themselves, whether that’s with fitness or just sitting and thinking and imagining what is possible and how to be better tomorrow than you are today. That’s what I’m addicted to. I’m really addicted to that feeling of empowerment and feeling that you are overcoming something big, bigger than yourself.

I was diagnosed with MS at 36, 15 years ago, and I thought that was the end of my life. It’s just the beginning. This has been a journey and I would not change it. Of course, everybody wishes there was a cure for their illness, but what I actually want is a fix for the myelin or nerve coating that was damaged by my autoimmune disease. If there was a way to repair myelin, then not just my own chronic illness would have a better way of healing, but people with not just chronic illnesses, but with spinal cord or nerve damage could fix themselves.

It’s amazing to me how you can get a cut and your skin heals itself, but why not nerves? That’s the thing I kick myself over because I really wish that all of my training would just be a little easier on the parts that are so difficult for me. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t make my right side equal to my left. It’s frustrating to me, but I still work through it every day. I am seeing huge strides, especially when I can stand without holding on and record the data that came from my last workout. I’m very regimented and I use an app called MyFitnessPal to record the reps and sets for each weight training exercise, so I know where to start and I know where I last ended.

I always try to exceed my last limits. I never want to stay the same, so I have to visualize it in front of me and see what I’m trying to conquer from the last workout. Considering that I work out my legs three days a week, the weights are increasing like crazy. I just can’t believe what is possible. I never imagined that being a personal trainer in the late ’80s would come back to me in my late 40s, in the mid 2020s. I think that MS can never take my mind away from me. It might take some memory from me, but there’s always ways that I can work towards remembering things, especially people’s names like word association games. There’s just always a way to try to be a little better than yesterday. That’s really what I feel my calling is.

I don’t think it is to be the next personal trainer to people who have chronic illnesses. I think that it’s just helping people find a way to be empowered while they feel that they’re wrapped in this shroud of illness, which is really something that’s in your mind. It’s definitely there. Some people have symptoms every day/. I can say that my symptoms, including fatigue, have really dissipated since I’ve been exercising on a regular basis. All I want to do is just help people stay empowered, not get people fit.

I think that it’s a holistic view of what life should be. I think if fitness is the way for you to get it, then I think that you should strive to include fitness in your life, but I think that everybody should include empowerment in their lives, especially for people like me with chronic illness and being a mom, I have even more of a reason to do this because I don’t want my son to think that you just have to sit down and wait for the worst thing down the road that’s going to happen inevitably. You can take charge of your life and you can kick its ass if you just believe and do what you have to do to learn how to stay empowered.

I will try to give you some hacks and life tips and books that I read and whatever I can find, forgive me for rambling in my first post, but it’s been quite a while and I’m sitting here in my car in front of the gym and I’m actually using my voice memos app to do this.

Hopefully, someone can help me transcribe it like I did when I wrote my first book. I say first, because I don’t think it’s the last. I’m just putting that there for a marker. I think that’s a wrap for now and I’ll talk to you soon.