By Marie McGhee
Nine years ago our family went through a devastating miscarriage that rocked our world. It happened during my second trimester while I was alone and on the tail end of an extended business trip in Hong Kong preparing to fly home to Boston. The entire experience was such a profound and excruciating loss, it’s painful to think about it even now after all of these years. After being hospitalized for 3 days in Hong Kong where I literally had to rely on the kindness of strangers as my family sat completely helpless on the other side of the world, upon my return back to the U.S. to Frank and Madison (who was seven years old at the time) a very dear friend gave me a magnet with a quote from John Lennon that says “Everything will be ok in the end, if it’s not ok, it’s not the end.” The magnet still hangs on our refrigerator to this day. For me, the magnet has become a constant touchstone.
Fast forward to May 2019. I was at my doctor’s office in New Jersey for an annual checkup. After reading my bloodwork report, my doctor looked at me flatly and said, you have diabetes. Wait…what? I had always been relatively healthy with the exception of high blood pressure which runs in my family and for me started when I was pregnant with Madison. With medication, I had it under control and had been monitoring it for years, but the thought of having blood pressure AND diabetes was too much to bear. My main question: how did I get here?
As I reflected back on the last few years, the answer became crystal clear. We moved to New Jersey from Boston in 2013 after I had accepted a new job on the PR team at a major technology company. Despite the fact that in Boston my weekly routine involved working out 6 days a week which included running 10 miles every Saturday morning - once we moved to New Jersey everything changed. My new normal in New Jersey was immediately replaced with pouring most of my energy into my new job, making sure that Madison was feeling acclimated and thriving at her new school, volunteering in our new community of Maplewood and South Orange and discovering all that living in close proximity to the greatest city in the world had to offer.
I was so caught up with work, family and other responsibilities that I slept through the fact that by the time I got to that doctor’s visit in 2019 that my weight had ballooned to essentially the same weight as when I was nine months pregnant with Madison. I was in total denial about the fact that when I walked up a flight of stairs at work to an introductory meeting with one of our most senior and influential executives that he had to get me a bottle of water because I was so out of breath by the time I had arrived in his office that I could barely speak. I was in denial about the fact that trips to the city with my husband as we waited for Madison to finish rehearsals left me completely exhausted because I could barely keep up. I was in denial about the fact that when I woke up each morning my body was so stiff that it took me a few minutes to be able to walk across our bedroom and I was only in my forties. I was in denial about the fact that my definition of my own self-worth had become synonymous with how I was perceived at work and whether or not I was advancing in my career. I was even in denial about my own privilege to having access to the best healthcare and overall knowledge to make better lifestyle choices.
And despite the fierce person I once was – e.g. the super mom who used to run 10 miles every Saturday morning in Boston and the bad ass career woman who had led her company through the financial crisis so boldly and so fearlessly in 2008 only to leave that same company unapologetically in 2012 when it became clear that her team did not value her or other Black women – the person who I had become in 2019 was a mere shell of her former self. As a serial PR professional, I was so busy crafting other people’s stories and images that I completely lost sight of owning the pen to my story. To the outside world, I had it all, a thriving career at one of the most influential companies in the world, an amazing family and circle of friends, opportunity and access - but something was fundamentally broken.
As I sat with my doctor in May 2019 and she reviewed all of my numbers, I knew that I had to do something instantaneously, but I honestly didn’t know how or where to start – so I went back to the basics. I walked. I walked all over our beautiful community of Maplewood and South Orange. I walked until I couldn’t walk anymore. I walked with music and through laughter and tears. Occasionally, I walked with family and friends but mostly I walked alone. Those walks became so much more than just about exercise, or lowering my blood sugar. The walks were how I started to reclaim and protect my peace.
By the fall of 2019 I gained the confidence to try new things like BRWL which stands for “Be Relentless with Life.” It was a new boxing and yoga studio in Orange, New Jersey co-founded by Maplewood resident Michelle Swittenberg and martial artist, yogi and founding trainer Martesse Gilliam. The classes were so much fun, engaging, and community-oriented. They were also very challenging, but something that Martesse said repeatedly really resonated with me – “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.”
Shortly after discovering BRWL, my husband introduced me to Kevin Chandler and Max Gladstone, both Maplewood and South Orange residents respectively – and trainers at JD Fitness in Short Hills. They introduced me to the art of strength training and taught me that strength training is not just about lifting heavy weights in the literal sense, but more importantly about attitude and tapping into strength from within. As Kevin likes to say – “we can do hard things.” As soon as I heard him say it, I immediately adopted this mantra as my own. And Max showed me how to form a new mindset and apply it to super challenging tasks like doing a pull up, which was much harder than it sounds.
Simultaneously, I started to use our Peloton Bike which had been sitting in our basement for about a year more regularly. Like BRWL and JD Fitness, the Peloton workouts were challenging, but more than that it felt like each of the Peloton trainers was speaking directly to me – like when head Peloton trainer Robin Arzon looked straight to camera and said – “how do you build endurance? You endure.” Or when trainer Alex Toussaint said “validate your own greatness” as opposed to defining it by what others think or say. For me, this was a total game changer.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the brilliant Michelle Swittenberg’s other business the Triple Threat Challenge, an inspiring and highly accomplished group of women (and now men) between the ages of 40 and 60, who challenge each other to “out grind, out hustle and out last” themselves through their passion for intense fitness.
While it’s absolutely true that the combination of BRWL, JD Fitness, Peloton and Triple Threat were all instrumental to my weight loss which is 80 pounds since May 2019, what I’ve gained is worth so much more – which is a deeper understanding and perspective through the lessons learned along the way.
Reclaim and protect your peace
If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you
We can do hard things
How do you build endurance? You endure
Validate your own greatness
It doesn’t get any easier, but you do get stronger
Keep showing up for yourself and setting new standards
Movement is medicine
These lessons are the foundation for self-care that no trainer or fitness program or other symbol of access and privilege could have taught me if I didn’t dig deep enough and tap into them from within myself.
Like the John Lennon magnet that hangs on our refrigerator, these lessons are hiding in plain sight if only we have the courage to see them. Doing the hard work every single day to give them space to breathe and grow has completely transformed my entire paradigm in every aspect. These lessons represent the spiritual awakening that literally carried me through the COVID pandemic where we all endured unimaginable and unspeakable loss. These lessons have taught me that there’s no alternative route to pain and suffering – that the only sure way is to go through it – as daunting as that sounds. James Baldwin said “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” And the lessons are never done, they will continue to evolve in size, scale and scope as we evolve. As I get ready to turn 50 later this year, these are the teachable moments that I am now passing on not only to our daughter, but frankly to anyone who may find them helpful.
As we begin to emerge into our new normal post-pandemic life – whatever that ends up looking like – my hope for the future is that we will move forward with a shared vision and unwavering commitment to the need for even greater love, empathy, compassion and gratitude than when we started pre-Covid. And what I now know with complete certainty – whatever the future may hold and no matter how steep the obstacles –
“everything will be ok in the end, if it’s not ok, it’s not the end.”
