I start every week with a good cry. I am no stranger to tears, I spent almost everyday of 2023 crying at some point of the day. The sorrow of losing my love, Chad, and overwhelm of moving forward without him was debilitating some days.
When I opened the door to 2024, I knew I wanted to actively move away from sorrow and move forward with grief by my side, instead of allowing it to block the road that lied ahead for me and my daughters.
For the past 38 days, I’ve been literally trying to move forward. I started 75 hard to help hold myself accountable to healing physically, mentally and emotionally. (For those that don’t know, 75 hard is a mental challenge created by Andy Frisella where you complete a to-do list everyday that consists of two 45 minute workouts, one has to be outdoors, follow a diet, read 10 pages of a book, and abstain from alcohol for 75 days.)
I acknowledged that the only way to pick myself up off the floor from my sorrow, was to force myself to reintroduce habits I lost when I was in the depths of my despair of grieving the loss of Chad and life we no longer would have together in the future.
Someone once said, “You don’t have to see the whole stair case, you just need to take the first step.”
I knew I needed to adjust my behaviors if I wanted to heal and be a better human for my daughters and myself, so starting 75 hard in January was taking the first step for me to help my mental and physical health. To help me see that mental toughness was still achievable after a year that crushed my spirit to its core.
The checklist of 75 hard helps hold me accountable to taking better care of myself everyday. I’m seeing physical results, but the best results are the mental and emotional. The tears still come and always will, but the excurtiating pain of my loss has began to subside and I feel creative once again.
I don’t know what the whole staircase of my future holds, but I know that by taking the first steps towards healing the past two months, I see the haze of sorrow starting to lift and I am able to move forward one step at a time.
Christina Noel Wyrick 