One Rep At A Time
Yesterday something unexpected happened.
I cried while lifting weights.
Not a few quiet tears. Real tears. The kind that stream down your face while you're trying to breathe and keep moving.
Grief is strange like that.
It doesn’t always arrive in quiet moments or sacred spaces. Sometimes it shows up in the middle of ordinary life - while you’re doing something completely normal.
It was the first morning I had been alone since Mike died about twelve days ago.
The kids had finally gone back to school. They were healthy again, and emotionally they seemed ready to return to their normal rhythm. For the first time since everything happened, the house was quiet.
I was actually looking forward to my workout.
My trainer had asked earlier how I was doing. I told him I felt fine. And in many ways I did. I felt ready to move my body, ready to sweat, ready to return to something that felt normal.
We had just started lifting (arms or chest, I can’t even remember which) and were in the middle of a short rest between sets when it happened.
A wave of sadness rushed in so suddenly it caught me off guard.
Before I could even filter it, I heard myself say out loud,
“Wow… I feel so much sadness right now.”
It surprised both of us.
My trainer responded gently at first, telling me I could take a break if I wanted. He even offered to switch the session and go for a walk instead.
But something in me didn’t want to stop.
My instinct was to keep moving.
So I went back to the bench, picked up the weights, and let the tears come.
They streamed down my face while I lifted.
At first they were quiet, but soon they became full sobs. Sadness, love, exhaustion - all of it at once.
I’ve always known that movement helps me process emotion. In my own life it often shows up through dance or long walks. As a somatic practitioner, I understand deeply that emotions live in the body and often need movement to move through.
But I never expected grief to show up like this during a weightlifting session with my boxing coach, in my own home.
Yet there it was.
And in some ways it made perfect sense.
For the past two and a half years there has been so much to hold.
Mike’s illness.
The slow unfolding of what it meant for my kids to watch their dad lose his brother.
The grief of two teenagers losing their uncle.
The extra emotional support they needed as they watched someone they loved slowly fade.
And beyond that…
The time I wanted to give Mike.
The time I wanted to give his parents and his family.
The quiet ways grief spreads through a family system long before death ever arrives.
And of course, my own sadness.
It’s not as though I hadn’t cried before this moment.
I had cried in therapy.
With friends.
With family.
With my kids.
Alone.
But this felt different.
This felt like grief that had been living deeper in my body (in my tissue) finally finding its way out.
Once I told my trainer that I wanted to keep going, he simply held the space.
He asked once, “Do you need a hug?”
I said no.
He asked if I wanted to walk instead.
Again, no.
So we kept lifting.
Weights up.
Weights down.
Tears falling.
At one point, while doing triceps through my tears, I said,
“I’ve never done this before… lifting weights and crying.”
Without missing a beat he replied,
“It’s impressive.”
We both laughed a little through the moment.
Clearly he hadn’t witnessed this before either.
Eventually I did stop lifting and moved over to stretch.
And then the stories started pouring out.
Now I was verbally processing with my boxing coach.
I found myself talking about Mike’s final days.
The conversations we had over the past two years.
The moments where I questioned whether I had done everything I could to support him.
I talked about his voice.
I told my trainer about the WhatsApp messages I still have saved from when Mike was living in Indonesia - back when he was healthy, before the tumor took his speech.
I can still hear him in those voice messages.
His sweet voice.
Clear. Strong. Alive.
Before everything changed.
And I remembered something he said to me many times.
“Out of sight is not out of mind, Lisa.”
His way of reminding me that even though he was far away in Indonesia, he was still thinking about us. Still loving us.
I didn’t know then how precious those voice messages would become.
How strange and beautiful it is to hear those words now.
How cliché it might sound, and yet how deeply true.
Out of sight is not out of mind.
Not in life.
And not in death.
Looking back, I can see how vulnerable that moment really was.
It would have been much easier (and probably more socially acceptable) to push the feelings down and finish the workout like nothing was happening.
To stay composed.
To keep the grief outside the session.
But something wiser in my body knew better.
My emotions needed to move.
And they did.
Sometimes grief doesn't arrive in quiet meditation or in carefully planned moments of reflection.
Sometimes it arrives while you're lifting weights in your living room.
Sometimes it asks to be witnessed by an unexpected person.
Sometimes it moves through muscle, breath, tears, and trembling.
As someone who spends much of my professional life helping others understand how emotions live in the body, this experience felt like a powerful reminder.
The body keeps the stories.
And when it finally feels safe enough…
Those stories move.
After the session ended and my trainer left, the house was quiet again.
The same quiet house that had greeted me that morning.
But my body felt different.
Lighter. Softer. A little more spacious inside.
Not because the grief was gone.
But because it had finally been allowed to move.
And that morning, grief moved through me one rep at a time.
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Grief moves through all of us differently.
If this piece stirred something in you, you're welcome to share your own experience in the comments or by replying to this post. I read every message, and it’s an honor to hold these stories.
Has grief ever shown up in your body in a way that surprised you?
If you’ve ever noticed emotions rising in your body in unexpected ways (during movement, exercise, or even ordinary moments in your day), you’re not alone.
I recorded a video called “Brainspotting Therapy Explained: How Your Brain & Body Release Stuck Emotions,” where I talk about how experiences and emotions can become stored in the body, and how the nervous system naturally works to release them when it feels safe enough.
Moments like the one I described in this story are a powerful reminder of that truth.
If this reflection resonated with you, you may find that video helpful in understanding why grief and emotion sometimes show up physically, and how the body moves toward healing.
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