Today is Monday.
Today is my first official day in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition Health Coach Training
And if I’m being honest, today feels awful.
My nervous system feels loud and fragile. My digestion feels heavy, stuck, and uncooperative..like I’m moving in wet cement. I feel droopy (heavy lids/burning eyes (and not from lack of sleep), foggy, burning legs/shoulders, and extremely uncomfortable, with that familiar sensation of being trapped in my own body, especially through my transverse colon. It’s not subtle, and it makes sitting still hard and focusing even harder.
YET here I am.
I’m sitting at my computer, watching the first modules as my body screams at me. Part of me wonders how I can possibly commit to something new when I feel this depleted. BUT I SHALL CONTINUE MOVING FORWARD.
This program is more than coursework for me. It is an ANCHOR. A place to plant my feet when my body feels unreliable. I HAVE to convince myself that things are getting better, and this will help me do just that.
I have spent years in a vicious cycle: underfeeding myself (thinking I wasn’t), then overcorrecting my gut in the name of healing. Too little. Too much. Restriction. Intervention. Hope. Disappointment. Rinse and Repeat; AND somewhere along the way, my nervous system learned to stay on high alert, and my digestion learned to freeze. WHAT THE HECK? This is not “Googleable,” so I feel crazy. Like, what is WRONG WITH ME!
But today, I’m choosing a different posture.
STEADFASTNESS
I don’t feel good today. I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel clear. What I feel is tired and uncomfortable and unsure. But I have to have: HOPE. HOPE is that education will help me understand my body with more compassion instead of judgment. Hope that learning how to coach others will continue to teach me how to listen (gotta learn to myself first!….hard.) Hope that this very suffering will one day be the GENESIS from which I help others heal.
Because if there’s one thing I know already, it’s this:
NOBODY who hasn’t sat in this kind of discomfort can truly understand it. And one day, when I sit across from someone who feels stuck, afraid, bloated, exhausted, and hopeless, I will not rush them. I will not minimize them. I will not try to fix them too fast. I’ll just LISTEN. I’ll AFFIRM them. I will bring compassion, drive, and an overcoming attitude not because I read about it, but because I lived it.
And I am choosing to believe that this is part of turning the corner. That this commitment will matter. That healing doesn’t always start when you feel better… sometimes it starts when you decide not to give up.
Today, I BEGAN, and I plant a seed, and someday, I pray, I will pay it forward.