Today is my birthday and for the last 8 months I have been thinking I would be turning 49. Thing is, I am only turning 48. Time has become an amorphous thing during this pandemic - or maybe I am at the age where you lose track. However, I feel older. During the last year my body has begun decomposing. Or at least that is how I am thinking about my diagnosis with osteoarthritis that has shown up in my left hip and my neck, and the onset of chronic pain in the last few months.

For me, someone who has relied on my body to do so much – hike mountains and backpack in the wilderness, run half marathons, practice and teach yoga, biked hundreds of miles and more - this feels like a betrayal and a tenderness. Perhaps most accurately what I feel is grief. I have loved my body but also taken it for granted. I have pushed myself to my limits. My body is literally screaming out for a new way of being. I am learning, resisting and slowly accepting. Moving from always doing more to accepting that what I can do is enough. That I am enough.