The Part You Don’t Always See

Mental health and wellbeing

Physical health and wellbeing

There is a version of me that people see and assume is who I am all of the time. Calm, sensible, honest and supportive, someone who understands the body, respects its limits and works with it rather than against it. The one who talks about slowing down, listening properly and paying attention to what the body is trying to say before it needs to say it louder.

And some of the time, that version of me is real.

But not all of the time, and this season has been one of those times where I have not quite lived up to my own advice.

I went into this canicross season carrying a niggle. Nothing that would have stopped me doing something I love, but enough to know that something was not quite right. It sat there in the background, reminding me of its existence in a way that is easy to acknowledge and just as easy to override.

That space is a familiar one for many people, where something feels off but not enough to justify stopping, so you carry on and tell yourself you will deal with it later

I did what I would encourage anyone else to do and went to my osteopath. We worked through it and put a plan in place that made sense and would have supported me if I had followed it consistently. The reality is that I didn’t. Not because I didn’t understand it or believe in it, but because life filled the space instead. Family, work, home, animals and everything else that needed to be held came first, and somewhere along the way I made a subtle decision to put myself further down the list.

That decision rarely feels like a decision at the time, it feels practical and necessary, but the body does not see it that way. It does not wait for things to calm down or for life to feel more convenient, it simply responds to what it is given and keeps a record of what is ignored.

What began as a niggle became an imbalance and then something more established. The discomfort in my hip began to move into my thigh and lower back, getting up became stiff, bending down became restricted and movement stopped feeling natural in the way it usually does. It was a gradual building of consequence that I continued to push through while telling myself I was managing it.

There is a difference between managing something and actually resolving it, and if I am honest, I stayed in that space and ignored things longer than I should have.

Mentally and emotionally, I still wanted this season to look like the ones before it, with the same distances, the same events and the same sense of capability that comes with them. 

I made some adjustments and chose fewer events and shorter distances, and on the surface that looked like a sensible compromise. Underneath that, I was still asking my body to carry something it had not yet had the chance to recover from.

Last weekend I ran another event knowing that my body was not where it needed to be and that there would be a cost to that decision. It was not the right choice if I look at it purely from a physical perspective, but I chose it anyway because I wanted to. There is a part of me that still wants to feel strong, capable and fully in my body, and that feeling matters to me.

I am also frustrated, more than I expected to be, because I knew better and still chose to push through, and now I am the one who has to slow down and accept that it may take longer than I would like to recover. There are moments where it makes me feel weak, not because I am, but because I cannot currently do the things I want to do in the way I want to do them.

At the same time, I can see the other side of it. There is a part of me that did not want to be beaten by it, that made what felt like informed choices in the moment and trusted that my body would heal. I held onto those few moments where everything felt right again, when I was running as part of a team with my dogs, fully present and exactly where I wanted to be. That matters to me as well.

Sometimes we choose the experience, even when we understand what it may cost us afterwards.

I am now feeling that decision in a very real way, with every step reminding me that the body will always have the final say.

And still, there is one event left. It is part of a series and the medals come together to form something complete. I want that final piece, and again I am making a conscious choice. I am aware of the risk and I understand the potential impact, and I am choosing to finish it while accepting that I will need to take responsibility for what comes next.

There are moments in life where we do this in different ways, not because we do not know better, but because we want something enough to accept the trade off that comes with it.

This is the part that is often left out of the conversation. There is an assumption that knowledge automatically leads to better choices, but real life is rarely that straightforward. Being an adult is not about getting everything right, it is about being honest enough to recognise the choices you are making and being willing to carry the outcome of those choices, even when they are not ideal.

When this final event is done, I will stop properly and return to the foundations. I will do the work I did not prioritise, rebuild strength and give my body the time it has been asking for. Not as a quick fix, but as a necessary reset, because this is not just about one season, it is about having a body that supports me in the long term.

That understanding sits at the heart of both my life and my work. Not perfection, but the reality that people are often stretched, holding more than is comfortable and making compromises along the way. Sometimes we push through when we would be better to pause, not because we are failing, but because we are human and we are trying to hold everything together.

What I offer through Revive All comes from that place. It is not about presenting a perfectly balanced life, it is about offering support when things feel out of balance, creating space to come back to yourself after you have pushed too far and allowing the body the chance to soften and be listened to again without judgement.

You do not have to have everything figured out and you will not always get it right, but there are moments where you are asked to look at what you are doing clearly, take responsibility for it and return to yourself with a little more awareness and care than before.

That is the work, and sometimes it begins with the simple acknowledgement that you knew better, you did it anyway and now you are ready to listen.