I saw a woman crying in her car yesterday.
I was heading to the CVS for a box of children’s Motrin, some shampoo and, perhaps, a family sized bag of Haribo gummy bears (I let you guess which of these items was for me).
She slumped over the steering wheel. Her shoulders shook the way shoulders do when someone is trying to keep it together but failing. I only caught a glimpse — I was on my way out, she was facing inward — but the image stayed with me all day. Kind of like a bad dream that you wake up remembering and can’t shake.
We don’t cry like that unless it’s layered. Unless it’s not just one thing, but all the things stacked on top of each other. Something finally tips the balance — a text, a missed appointment, a song on the radio — and suddenly you're sobbing in a drugstore parking lot with the engine still running and the AC fan on as high as it will go.
That kind of grief isn’t performative. It’s primal.
And I couldn’t help but think how many people I pass every day who are right on the edge of that same breakdown — or climbing out of the aftermath of one.
It is modern times after all. People seem very stressed. And I work in the middle of New York City. There is no shortage of said people.
We don’t talk about it much, because there’s no smooth way to slide that into a conversation between emails or school drop-off or deadlifts. But everyone’s holding something. Everyone’s been cracked open by something they didn’t ask for.
And for some of us, training is the only place where we can put that pain.
It sounds dramatic (cause it kind of is), but it's also true. The gym — or the run, or the bike, or the trail — becomes a kind of church (or, in an effort to be inclusionary, a synagogue or mosque or temple). Not because we’re chasing aesthetics, but because it's the one place where we’re allowed to feel something deeply and not apologize for it.
You pick up something heavy and set it down and maybe that thing is just a barbell — or maybe it’s the job you lost or the person you couldn’t save or the version of yourself you thought you'd be by now.
You struggle through the last rep and realize you’ve been carrying grief in your glutes and fear in your traps and that the ache in your knees might be the argument you never resolved.
And you come back again anyway. Not because it gets easier. But because you get stronger.
That’s the part no one tells you.
That healing rarely feels like healing when you’re in the middle of it. It feels like sweat and shaking and sometimes silence. It feels like effort with no immediate payoff. It feels like discipline instead of catharsis.
But then one day, your body feels different. Lighter maybe. Or more grounded. Like a place you can live in again.
And you realize you’ve been mending all along.
That’s why we train. Or at least, it’s a big part of why I do.
Because strength isn’t always about performance. Sometimes it’s about survival. About doing the hard thing — not for abs or PRs — but because it’s the only place you can go to feel real again.
And that’s the thing about making progress.
It’s the kind of thing that breaks you and heals you at the same time.