Supporting Structures: How Exercise Helped Lift Me Up

One of the supporting structures that has helped me the most recently has been exercise, but not just exercise by itself. What has really made the difference is working with a trainer and having another person there to provide accountability, motivation, and energy when I did not have much of my own. I started training with a Marine, and I have always enjoyed working out with veterans because there is something different about the way they approach discipline and pushing through discomfort. They are built differently than most civilians, and I tend to respond well to that kind of energy.

For a long time, I knew that I wanted to start working out again, but I could not seem to get myself moving. I remember even when I was dating my ex, telling her that I wanted to work out and get back in shape, but for some reason I just could not get myself up to do it. I could not figure out what was wrong. I wondered if I had a vitamin deficiency. I wondered if my hormones were off. I wondered if there was some physical explanation for why I felt so drained and unmotivated. It was not until I began consistently working with this trainer that I realized the answer was much simpler than that. I was grieving.

The difficult thing about grief is that you do not always realize how deeply it is affecting you when you are living inside of it. It is hard to read the label from inside the jam jar. I knew that I had been through something incredibly difficult with my mother, but I do not think I fully understood how much of that experience had settled into my body. Grief was not just something happening in my thoughts or emotions. It was affecting my energy, my motivation, and my ability to get myself moving. I kept thinking I should be able to push through it, but the truth was that I simply did not feel like doing much of anything.

During the final couple of months of my mother’s life, walking became one of the things that helped me manage some of what I was carrying. I spent a lot of time at Lake Eola, where I would walk and sometimes jog around the park. I also found myself going to Turkey Lake Park and walking the nature trail around the property. Those walks were good for me. They gave me fresh air, movement, and enough space to clear my head for a little while. At a time when everything in my life felt emotionally heavy, simply putting one foot in front of the other gave me something steady to do.

Walking served my mental well-being, but working with a trainer has taken that support to another level. There is something powerful about having another person show up with energy when yours is low. There is accountability in knowing that someone is expecting you to be there, and there is motivation in having someone push you farther than you might push yourself. Over time, that structure has helped raise me back up to a level of self-respect and physical endurance that I had been missing for quite a while.

I do not think the answer is to tell someone who is grieving that they simply need to exercise. If you are in the thick of grief and you try to force yourself into a workout routine that you do not have the energy for, there is a good chance it is not going to last. You probably do not feel like doing it in the first place, and that lack of motivation may very well be part of the grief you are experiencing. There is a time for allowing yourself to be where you are, and there is also a time for beginning to introduce structures that help support you as you start finding your way back.

That structure does not have to begin with a personal trainer or an intense workout program. It may begin with a walk around the block. It may be a trail, a park, stretching, yoga, swimming, or simply finding some way to move your body consistently. Then, when the time is right and some of the heaviness has begun to settle, adding more structure can be incredibly helpful. For me, having a trainer and a consistent workout routine has become one of those structures.

Exercise has not taken away my grief, and I do not expect it to. What it has done is help me feel stronger while carrying it. It has helped me reconnect with my body, my discipline, and a part of myself that had been buried underneath exhaustion for a long time. Sometimes a supporting structure does not solve the problem. Sometimes it simply gives you something strong enough to lean on while you begin standing back up.