Tommorow I Lift...

Cancer sucks.

Tomorrow I will be lifting in a fundraiser WOD called “Grace” (30 clean & jerks) in honor of all the people who have been changed by the effects cancer and loss. Tomorrow, 30 times as fast as I can, I will lift a 32 lb barbell with 10 lbs on each side from the ground to chest level then push the weight at a rapid pace up over my head and land in a very strong, victorious stance, all for the ones we loved and lost.

October gets a lot of attention as the official Breast Cancer Awareness month, but in many families everyday is a reminder of the pain and devastation cancer reeks on their life and hearts.

Cancer sucks. Cancer defies sense. It rearranges what we perceive as should be the natural order of things by ruthlessly robbing family and friends of their future time together. It randomly reduces years we will have here to dreams of what once might have been. It just plain isn’t fair. Cancer and disease suck.

Tomorrow I will be lifting in honor of one Aunt who just completed her last round of radiation treatment for breast cancer and is finally feeling better. She is cancer free and her hair is growing back. She is beautiful and as strong as ever.

My other Aunt is 7+ years going on cancer free after a rare, aggressive type of breast cancer resulted in the removal of both her breasts and a long, painful fight for life. You’d never know by seeing her attitude and spunk for like the battle she went through, or the fact she lost her husband just two years ago to brain cancer.

Bootcamp helped me deal with the pain of his loss, my Uncle Garry, who was diagnosed and gone in less than a year. I remember many sadder than words can describe incidents around the time of his passing where I’d leave his house or hear a heartbreaking story and cry all the way to Mt. Washington. Then I’d sweat my sorrow away for 45 minutes, kicking my own ass into shape at an outdoor summer Bootcamp. I remember cussing cancer many times in my head as I pounded a medicine ball into the ground, or lifted my knees higher, of pushed harder in honor of them, all the ones before me who didn’t make it to the next family vacation.

My best friend still cannot celebrate a birthday, holiday or special moment without becoming sad because her father died of bladder cancer when we were 23. Around the same time my grandmother was basically dying from Alzheimer’s. I dealt with that trauma in a less productive way, partying my way through the pain. At this point in my life I simply wasn’t eating and weight has a way of magically disappearing when you ingest more calories a day in alcohol than food. Partner that diet with a regimen of many hours night after night shaking your ass in the club and you’ve got a very sad, sick girl.

My first major cancer loss happened when I was 15 and my Papa died from prostate cancer. That era is still one of the most painful periods of my life, watching someone you couldn’t imagine living without, die a slow, painful death. My Grandfather never saw me wear a prom dress, get married, have children, be really happy or drive the Ford red Ranger I bought from him. He never lived to see me turn 16. I dealt with his loss by consuming lots of Oreo’s, fried food and young drug experimentation. In any combination of the a fore mentioned vices, anything to escape a reality too painful to face.

I miss my grandparents terribly to this day.

My own Dad discovered he had Stage II Melanoma when I was a senior in high school and he was fine after a surgery, so our worry over him was blessedly short lived but it was still once of the most scared I have ever been in my life.

My heart breaks still for my good friend who misses mother’s presence at her wedding dress fittings. She passed away from Breast Cancer way too young. My other good friend’s family has been battling their mother’s colon and liver cancer for two years, holding on to hope they can squeeze out a little more time. Our 1999 class Valedictorian and voted ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ left this world at 20 years old from a redcurrant kind of Leukemia that came back and took the life of a brilliant, beautiful young woman. My favorite teacher, mentor and friend fought and won her own battle with breast cancer.

So not fair. None of it. Cancer and death suck.

It makes me want to cry as I recount all these painful emotions, but I am proud now to funnel those feelings of sadness and loss into action. All the listed above instances and experiences fuel my passion for fitness and overall improved health. I am passionate about my Paleo recipes and excessive exercising because I believe I am improving mine and my family’s odds at survival!

I want to be around when my children grow up and have children. I want to be active and mobile. I want to be pain and disease FREE! I want to give my kids the best shot available at being healthy. I want to feed them and myself food that is natural and avoid as many man made mystery foods filled with fake nutrition and dyes and chemicals as possible.

Many times in my life I have not taken the best care of my body or listened to a thing it was trying to tell me. In most cases it was too late before I was forced address a health related problem and ended up suffering more because of it!

Often I have felt doomed by my genetic make-up. I thought maybe my mix of DNA meant inevitable destruction by disease. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, obesity, blood disorders, heart disease, you name it, we got it in my family, on either side.

Heart disease, that’s a good one. My Dad’s father died when I was 8 years old from a heart attack he suffered on the beach while we were on vacation in St. Petersburg, FL. I watched them perform CPR on his body lying on the beach in his Bermuda shorts. That shit sticks with you and I am so happy and overjoyed to come to this point in my life where I have not just given in to my fate, but realized I am the one largely responsible for maintaining control of it and influencing the final outcome!

We are all going to die. I know that is the inevitable part. But what I do with the time I have here is what matters most. Not wasting time fearing what may or may not unfold or succumbing to a blanket fear of the worst. There are things I can do right now, here today, to favor my own survival. Like eat cleaner and move my body more! How amazing to take that control!

I am not lulled into believing a fantasy that if I do _____, _______, and ______ I will live a long, healthy life free from pain or illness. Eat right, exercise, die anyways, right? You hear the stories all the time about the health nut that falls over dead from a heart attack. I know we are really not in charge and the randomness of death happens in an instant. The month after my grandfather died when I was a sophomore in high school I said goodbye to my good friend Angie and watched as she got in a car that drove away into her untimely death. I will never forget the fragility of life because of her.

She was a great athlete and often when I am totally sucking at a workout and I want to give up or God forbid quit, I think of her. She has been with me at every physically enduring event in my life from the tattoo of her name on my leg to the birth of my children. I embrace the suffering and suck it up, because whatever pain I am in means I am still alive. I sacrifice my pain, push harder, run faster, laugh harder, for her.

I do it for all who can’t because they are no longer on this earth. I do it for the ones who can’t because they are physically weak from fighting some disease, so they can stay around a little longer to be with the ones they love.

I fight because I can. Because I am still here and able to move, jump, pull up.

Tomorrow I lift.

Today, I live.