Summer Snowball Fights
Every summer while growing up my sister and I would run around the acre of land that we grew up on in Lakewood, Colorado. We would play with the goats, pick berries off the branches, eat not-quite-ripe tomatoes, and climb through a forest of trees until our mama would walk out of the house and call us in for dinner.
On the side of our house we had what she and I referred to as the “snowball tree.” Honey scented trees that grew pink and green tinted flowers that looked exactly like snowballs each spring. My sister and I would watch the tree waiting until is branches were heavy with summer snowballs before we would climb through the branches and pick as many as we could reach to put them in a white plastic bag before dividing the flowers out into two separate piles. We would then stand across from each other in the backyard and throw the flowers at one another, a snowball fight in the summer. We had so much fun running back and forth to try and collect the remains of the quickly destroyed flowers or dodge incoming throws.
Of course, the awe of the summer snowballs couldn’t last forever. We moved homes, the trees and summer snowball fights became a memory of the past, and movement slowly became a different story.
I no longer ran around the backyard dodging summer snowballs or laughing with my sister. Now I ran along a track, or on a treadmill, or down the street checking my fitness apps or counting how many miles I had left to run before I could stop. I recounted sayings to myself in an attempt to motivate my feet to continue moving. Movement was no longer full of joy or excitement, it was a chore on my mental list that had to be checked off.
Moving my body soon moved from a chore to a compulsion and I would find myself pacing across the house when nobody was looking, going on long walks or runs in the cold in order to “earn” something, or finishing a 30 minute ab workout I found online in my room at 1am. I would find myself thinking back to when movement was my safe haven, an escape from reality, a comfort. I no longer found any of those things while moving, now all I found was pain, exhaustion, and sadness. Any control that I had over movement was gone, those sayings I would repeat to myself got meaner, and my feet had to cover longer distances in order to satisfy me.
While in my recovery I was speaking about this change in the meaning of movement. I had been an athlete my entire life, I competed in college, it was a part of who I was. My recovery coach, Sarah, gently pointed out to me that I was no longer showing my body love while moving her, I was punishing her. She asked me to find movement that I enjoyed again which I thought would be easy! The next day my boyfriend, his roommate, and I laced up our running shoes and ran through the streets of our town. I was expecting to love it, I hadn’t run in months and was looking forward to our jog, but there was no joy there. Long gone were the days of dodging summer snowballs my sister threw at me, now I felt no joy while running at all.
The next few months were marked with attempts and failures to find ways of moving my body that I enjoyed again, a way to show her love rather than punishment. Running still brought no joy, in fact when I ran I would go back to the harsh “motivation” that I was familiar with. One day I walked in to a small barre studio and felt at home. It was located in a small cottage behind a hair salon, it was painted yellow, and it felt like where I was supposed to be. When I first started these classes I felt a similar stirring of joy in my soul. The way I talked to myself became kinder, gentler, and more supportive while in those four walls. Rather than picking myself apart while staring at the full length mirrors I would remind myself that I was there for fun, I didn’t have to do anything that I didn’t want to do, and I could leave if it ever felt like too much. Permissions that I hadn’t ever given myself before. These classes were a staple of my days for quite a while, until something started to change. I no longer felt joy there and I left, off to find another form of movement that allowed me to experience the fun that can be had while moving my body.
I decided to do something that I hadn’t done in a long time, lace up my running shoes and go for a run. Now when I ran I stopped to pet dogs that I was passing by, smell flowers that looked inviting, and notice all of the beauty that was around me. This past summer, while I was out for a run, I noticed a familiar looking flower bush in a neighbors back yard. I stopped to take a closer look and realized that I had found a snowball bush. I was reminded of the joy that I felt on those summer days with my sister and all of the fun that movement use to bring me. Even though I was out for this run with my sister in a different state; I felt the same joy that I felt all of those years ago while dodging flowers during a summer snowball fight.
- Cambria
