My Story

Born and raised in Austin, Texas. I come from two loving and devoted individuals.  Unfortunately, their love and devotion were not enough to save me from the various atrocities that occurred in the years to come. 

I began dissociating by age ten and fully mastered this maladaptive skill by sixteen. Never daring to ever exist in my physical form, I’d go on to eventually lose all sensation in the left side of my body. The adversities my young and ill-equipped self was forced to face were too much for my body to bear. 

I struggled heavily with self-destructive behaviors and daily suicidal ideation. My suffering had existed for so long that I was convinced it would only end if I did as well. Thankfully, this belief couldn’t have been further from the truth. By the grace of God and the endless devotion of two people, I eventually met a trauma therapist specializing in EMDR. Not having been consciously aware of the depth of my disconnect and separation from self, I began to panic. “Cool, I can feel,” I thought, “but I hate everything I am feeling”.

As a perpetually dissociated individual, I did not have a whole lot of coping tools in my coping mechanism tool box. It was at that point in the the journey back to myself that my therapist recommended weight lifting. Initially, I was overwhelmed with hesitation. Exercise felt too silly, simple, and cliche as a solution. I assumed someone as fundamentally fragmented as me would require much more than weightlifting to feel whole again. Fortunately, my belief in her was stronger than the belief in my assumption. 

Sometime shortly after, I remember lifting in my garage. I could feel blood and sensation flowing to areas previously unplugged from my nervous system. I felt my tears and sweat mix into a cocktail as fear, shame, and rage bubbled to the surface. With dumbbells in hand, I collapsed onto the concrete beneath me. Fragmented pieces of myself and suppressed feelings began to pour out of me. Parts of my body I had lost connection to began desperately trying to reconnect. I disengaged my hands from the dumbbells and screamed into them. For the first time in years, I allowed my eyes to flood from the accumulated stress that existed within me. 

As the hurricane of tears began to subside, I picked myself up from the hard surface and let out a giggle. The sensations of relief and the excitement of returning home to myself were astounding. I was shell-shocked by the notion that weightlifting held such holistic power. Moved to the core, I began weightlifting on a consistent basis. The inescapable pain that dwelt inside of me served as potent fuel for each rep executed. Achieving personal records while processing the unprocessed allowed me to become quietly submerged into a new way of life. My newly discovered lifestyle allowed me to find permanent safety and comfort to exist within myself. Within a physique that I finally recognize and am so proud to call my own. 

It is my aim to do my part in helping people in similar positions build physical strength and reclaim their inner strength they once felt.