Grief, Mental Health and Exercise

I wanted to write about a personal experience that may resonate with some of you.

I have experienced an extremely sad loss recently, my very poorly godson passed away after 9years of fighting PMD. He almost doubled his short life expectancy, he was the epitome of strength and determination and met everyday with a big, beautiful smile. An admirable lesson that he taught everyone who was lucky enough to meet him.

My initial reaction to my loss was to stay in bed full of sadness and grief. We are all different and we have to acknowledge and accept our feelings but personally the days I have stopped and done nothing have been the worst days for me. I have been going through an internal battle of guilt, is it ok to 'carry on', I feel awful for having moments of normality, a chat about something unrelated and god forbid a smile. However, having these moments does not mean that my godson and his family aren't always in my thoughts. I have found it beneficial to see friends, family and work, to try to keep a level of normality in my life and continuing exercising.

The week I received the news, I woke up to my alarm at 5:15am with the rain hammering on my window and the wind howling, pretty accurate to how I was feeling. All I wanted to do was to roll over, put my head under the covers and continue feeling sad and upset. After several minutes, I fought this urge and got up to go to my booked training session and it really was the best decision. For that hour I escaped to a place of hard work, endurance and exertion. It was the perfect distraction for me and just what I needed.

I feel this is so relevant for loss, grief, mental health issues, anxiety, stress and low self esteem.

So I suppose my point is that exercise always has been my saviour. I feel a dip in my mood, energy levels and mental health when I have previously had periods of time not exercising and have learnt it's beneficial for me to push through.

Whatever it is you are personally going though, I would really encourage that you go for that walk, run, swim, gym session or bootcamp. I promise you that during that time it will bring you a degree of peace, leaving you feeling more uplifted, positive and in a better position to tackle the issues that are currently causing you the most pain, stress or upset, making life a little more bearable.

On that note, I really hope you are all ok and if you are having doubts about exercising, then go for it, you won't regret it!

Love Helena xxx