My identity is intrinsically linked to my health and fitness. I simply love the feeling that (within reason) my body can do pretty much anything I want it to, at any time I like. Fear of diminishing life opportunities due to poor health is one of the reasons I work so hard to maintain above average fitness levels. I know that maintaining my fitness helps me to most easily face life’s seemingly inevitable adversity.
So many people ask me why I get up early to go to the gym before work, or why I spend a good percentage of my weekend cycling, running, kayaking or in any number of other pursuits. The answer is very simple…because I can!
I love how being fit makes me feel. The knowledge that at any moment I can get up and move with relative ease – even if things are getting more ‘cranky’ as I get older.
For those of you who have been following my journey, you will know that after many weeks of feeling terrible and barely able to get through each day, at the end of March I was diagnosed with a life-threatening infection in my heart. A blue-light ambulance ride to Bristol, emergency open heart surgery and 7.5 weeks of hospital IV antibiotics, and I am finally on the road to recovery.
So how do I feel after three months of doing pretty much nothing?
To be honest, a very long way from my best! I recognise that some of the tiredness, fatigue, aches, pains and breathlessness are down to my heart and body recovering from the surgery. Yet an equal proportion must be down to my very low fitness levels. After 11 weeks of inactivity, too much of it spent in a bed or chair, I am effectively starting again.
I have high expectations of my body and its ability, and find it very difficult to be patient and forgiving when it lets me down. There is a part of me which is annoyed that yet again I have faced a big health challenge, and there were moments in the hospital where I struggled to maintain my normal positivity.
Yet, there is no benefit in dwelling on that ‘why me’ or ‘what if it hadn’t happened’, and focussing on something I can’t change will only serve to negatively affect my mental health. It is ok for me to acknowledge this adversity and experience those feelings occasionally, but then I must move on. I know that the way I deal with this will be a defining moment in my life, and I intend to grow from it and not be dragged down.
I chose to celebrate what I can still do, and use it as a starting point to build from.
I can tolerate my body being weak right now as I know I can do something about it. I am walking every day, doing regular strength workouts in the gym, eating great quality food and practicing good sleep habits – but in many ways, it is equally important that I keep control of my mindset so I get back my confidence and ability. I know there will be further challenges ahead, and progress will not be linear.
The wonderful thing is that when I am as unfit as I am now, I know that the improvements will come more quickly and the rewards will be easier to find. I am not an elite athlete looking for that 0.1% improvement, but a 44 year old woman who just wants to feel better, move with ease and be relatively pain free so I can live as full and active a life as possible.
For me, that means setting myself physical challenges and striving to reach them. Over the last 20-something years I have done everything from multi-day walks, to long-distance triathlons, marathons, endurance swims, century bike rides and a host of other activities. I am looking forward to resuming my previous life, and likely setting myself some big goals for the months ahead.
From experience, I know that I will need that forward focus to help me maintain my motivation when I encounter obstacles and have the potential to fall off track. I am very target driven, and having a goal helps me to achieve the necessary consistency to be successful. I often tell my clients that fitness is not a static thing – at any given time we are either getting fitter or sliding backwards. We are not fit one day and unfit the next, but always somewhere on that continuum.
My previous two heart surgeries had been planned, so I had plenty of time to mentally and physically prepare myself. This last episode was all so unexpected, and having been unwell for the month preceding this surgery I was not as fit as I would have liked. I had no time to do anything about it, although in many ways that was beneficial as I also didn’t have much time to dwell on the most worrying possibilities, namely that of dying!
We can’t always choose what happens to us in life, but we can decide how we react to adversity.
Positivity is an ingrained part of my personality, but at times also a trait which I have had to nurture and develop. I strongly believe that everything happens for a reason, and I always try to seek the benefits arising from any challenge. I will confess that at times that can be hard, and there have been moments of adversity over the last few months when I have wondered just who and what I would be at the end of this.
My confidence has taken a bit of a knock, maybe understandably so.
I suppose part of the reason I have always valued my fitness and pushed myself to achieve physical challenges, is that as a child with congenital heart problems I recognised that many of my peers, teachers, friend’s parents and other people in my life, treated me as ‘different’ and perhaps expected me to be physically inferior.
My parents were wonderful and never wrapped me in cotton wool (I am quite sure this was hard at times), but I well remember a friend’s mother who wouldn’t let me run around at her birthday party and how upset that made me feel. I also hated being forced to sit out of PE lessons in the months prior to my first surgery aged 9, a very fundamental point in a child’s life where we are building our own identity and seeking to fit in. As I went through adolescence and into adulthood, I sought to distance myself more and more from the heart patient part of my history, and instead built a new identity as Beth the athlete.
Don’t let other people’s expectations shape who you become.
Freed from the perceived shackles of other people’s expectations, I discovered that my body was way more capable than I thought. With consistent training, I became a reasonable triathlete, and competed extensively for many years with relative success. Perhaps it is my contrary side (my grandmother used to say that I should have been called Mary, as in Mary, Mary, quite contrary), but I truly believe that being born with congenital heart defects, and the adversity I have faced since, has spurred me on to achieve way more in a physical realm than I ever would have done otherwise.
I never chose to view my heart problems as an excuse, and honestly, I shied away from even mentioning it in case again people formed an incorrect judgement about my capabilities. I wanted to succeed despite my heart health, not be let of the hook because of it. As the scars of my childhood surgery faded, I was just left with an occasional nagging doubt at the back of my mind that I wasn’t completely ‘fixed’, and as I ran into problems in my early 30’s, this proved to be so.
Even as my ability significantly deteriorated prior to my 2005 surgery, I continued to work hard to maintain my fitness as much as possible. I was still working full-time, exercising daily, and even ran a sub-2-hour half-marathon a month before my op. In spite of people telling me to ‘take it easy’, I knew that I needed to maintain that normality to prepare my mind and body.
Post-surgery, I bounced back incredibly quickly, even competing in a small local triathlon 6-weeks after surgery, a time when many heart surgery patients are just starting to take their first short walks. I don’t tell you this to impress you, but to show you how much I believe our ability is based around our beliefs about ourselves and what we think we are capable of achieving.
I am always reminded of a quote credited to Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” I pushed myself and ‘expected’ to get back to my old self. More than anything, I wanted to prove to myself that I could!
I accepted that it was going to be painful at times, that I was going to feel tired, and that my body would be different than it was before. I particularly wanted to move away from the potential that yet again, people could see me as weaker than normal, vulnerable or damaged.
Overcoming adversity.
I was driven and passionate about rebuilding myself as an even better version of the person I had been before, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Perhaps a big thing which changed after 2005 was that I started to be less in denial about my history, and even started to recognise the power which my story had to influence other people facing their own physical challenges. I am grateful for my history, the people I have met because of it, and the life I have led.
That giving back firstly came within the congenital heart community, and many years of voluntary work for The Somerville Foundation, a charity supporting young people and adults born with a heart condition. Later I sat on an NHS working group looking at the commissioning of congenital heart services, helped to organise many patient events, and even shared my story within the medical community at several national conferences. I am grateful for the opportunities which have opened up.
Whereas I would not say I have ever been confident when talking to people about the adversity which I have had to overcome, I have started to accept the fact that showing my more vulnerable side makes me appear to be more human. I don’t need to prove that I am invincible for people to like me. Being prepared to admit my own weaknesses hopefully gives people the confidence to share their own challenges, as in doing so we all benefit.
Leaving a legacy.
My background gives me a great deal of empathy with those who face their own medical challenges, from heart disease, to cancer, to stroke and other physical limitations. Indeed, that desire to help others is very much why I originally opened my Merlin Fitness rehab studio, so I could bring people living with a wide variety of health conditions together so they could feed off each other’s strength and be inspired to move beyond their limitations. It has been more personally fulfilling than I ever imagined, and I am in absolute awe of the inspirational and supportive ‘family’ which has grown as a result.
I sense that my legacy is very much tied in with helping anyone facing adversity, particularly of a medical nature, to find that strength within themselves to grow in character because of the difficulties they have had to overcome. I have just had the most amazing ‘gift’ of many weeks spent in hospital without any normal day-to-day distractions, to decide how I can best share my message with the world. Yes, there is going to be a book and a public speaking tour, but my mind has been in overdrive and I know that there will ultimately be so much more.
I am fascinated why some people end up with ‘victim mentality’ when it comes to the hard knock school of life, and yet others survive, thrive and become even better versions of themselves. Are those life-skills within us, or can they be nurtured and learned? Is there a methodology which everyone can follow to be more resilient, to stay positive and overcome what life throws at them? I think that there is, and I want to help others move through that process.
We all have lives filled with ups and downs, and it is important to accept that this is just a natural part of our existence. We can all admire the heroes journey so often featured in movies and inspirational media stories, where the key figure has a good life, faces some form of adversity which takes them on a journey from which they ultimately benefit and are changed for the better. I think we all have a story to tell, and finding our voice and giving back is very much part of the healing process.
Do you have your own heroes journey to share?
Can you use your own story, be it one of triumphing over adversity in health, finances or relationships, to motivate and inspire others? Can you reach out to a friend who you know is going through a difficult time, and offer some words of encouragement? Can you volunteer with a support group or charity which means something to you, or maybe if it doesn’t exist locally then you have to start it yourself (Wendy, you are amazing 😉).
Whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to wallow or mourn for what you have lost. Take time to celebrate the things in life which you can still do. Find a starting point, set some goals, and begin your journey.
One step at a time!
So here I am again, taking my own advice and starting on that same rehab process I did in 2005. This time, unfortunately, I am coming from a much lower starting point; not only am I 13 years older, but I am more deconditioned than I have been in the last 23+ years.
I chose not to see that as a negative, but as a motivator to get on and prove to myself that I can triumph over this adversity. I have no idea how far I can go, whether I will ever feel the same vibrancy that I did before, but one thing is for sure…..I won’t know unless I try!
