Begin to Arrive

I’m sitting down to write about podcasting (hello, podcast producer here…), but I find that instead, I really need to talk about this shirt (pictured below).

What’s funny for me is that I love writing. I used to feel that I almost couldn’t exist without it. But when writing for myself turned into writing for someone else, it seems that I lost my way a bit. I’m here to find my way back.

So the shirt.

I started going to a hot yoga class on Friday mornings. I started in the dead of winter, shortly after a panic attack knocked me on my ass and changed the way I saw “me time” and whether it could be considered a luxury. In the weeks following the panic attack and its aftermath, it became readily apparent to me that my body no longer was letting my brain choose what was most important. So I humbled myself and decided to listen.

Enter hot yoga.

Several strong tugs (and pressure from good friends) led me to that Friday morning yoga class in January, and it felt like nothing short of a miracle. The class itself. My body in the space. The fact that I survived and did not pass out or puke. (Those classes are INTENSE.)

Afterwards, I felt like a new person. A quiet mind, an energetic flow, an ease I hadn’t felt since maybe 2009.

I immediately blocked those mornings off on my calendar. I’ve only missed one class since, and it was all I could do that day not to lie on the floor and weep because I could not wrangle my kids’ schedules so that I could go.

It’s been a LONG time since I had something of my own I truly felt like fighting for.

Something that was just for me. Something that I’d move mountains to be there for.

I see I still haven’t gotten to the shirt. Apparently, I’ve got some things to work out here.

After a breast cancer diagnosis, I had a bilateral mastectomy in April of 2022 and chose an aesthetic flat closure. That means I now have scars across my otherwise completely flat chest.

While I am still able to wear many of my former clothes, far more than I expected (but that’s a story for another day…), most exercise clothing went immediately into donations (though I recognize now I might have been able to use some of it). Shortly after my surgery, in an attempt at reclamation, I bought this shirt and several other items. Time passed.

It is two months shy of my four year surgery anniversary, and that yoga class is the very first time I wore that shirt out of the house.

And it felt great.

So I guess that’s it, friends. It’s never too late. We can always begin to arrive.

Take the class. Wear the shirt. Our day is coming. Maybe it is already here. ✨

(And maybe, just maybe, next week I’ll write about podcasting.)

[This post was originally published on Substack. Feel free to subscribe there.]