This picture was taken after an instense medical scare. Luckily everything was fine. But at the time… it all felt very heavy.
Dear You (the one carrying it all),
The world feels really heavy lately, doesn't it?
I woke up this morning and the first thing I did was scroll through news that made my chest tight. Then I looked at my to-do list and felt overwhelmed before my feet even hit the floor. I caught myself in the mirror and had a moment of "ugh, really?!" with my reflection.
Some days it feels like everything is just... a lot.
And I know you're feeling it too. Maybe it's the state of the world, maybe it's personal stuff, maybe it's the season of life you're in, or maybe it's hormones (eyeroll), or maybe… it's all of it at once. But everything feels harder than usual, and moving your body feels like one more thing you should be doing but can't quite manage.
I want to tell you something: it's okay to not be okay right now. It's okay for movement to feel hard when life feels hard. It's okay to lower the bar and redefine what "taking care of yourself" looks like during heavy seasons.
Sometimes taking care of yourself looks like a 45-minute Pilates session. Sometimes it looks like a 5-minute walk around the block. Sometimes it’s gentle stretching on your living room floor. And sometimes it’s just taking three BIG deep breaths.
All of it counts.
I've been thinking about this idea of movement as medicine. Not like, "exercise will fix everything" medicine, that's bullshit, but medicine in the way of needing something gentle and nourishing or something energizing. Maybe just rest.
The key is listening to what your particular system needs today, not what you think it should need or what worked last week or what everyone else is doing.
On heavy days, I find that gentle movement - the kind that feels more like self-care than exercise - can help me process whatever I'm carrying. Not escape from it, but move through it. Literally.
But if all you can manage today is to be gentle with yourself, that's movement too. Internal movement. The movement of self-compassion instead of self-criticism.
The world will keep being complicated and heavy. Your life will have seasons that feel harder than others. That's part of being human.
But you don't have to navigate any of it alone. And you don't have to be perfect while you're figuring it out.
Just be kind to yourself. Start there.
