Gratitude Letter #1
Thank You to My Gym Class Instructor, Who Helped Me Through So Much Pain Without Ever Knowing
Dear Holly,
Thank you for giving me an outlet to work my mind and body every day. Thank you for helping me to strengthen myself, from the inside out. Thank you for saving my life, and for not even knowing it.
When I first met you, first started taking your classes, I was at perhaps the lowest point I’d ever been in my life. I was beyond desperate, because desperation implies wanting something, a resolution, an answer. When I first met you, I was beyond wanting anything except a way out. A way out of feeling the pain, loss, guilt, sadness and anger that filled my every waking moment. I wanted to no longer feel anything, to no longer experience anything. I wanted to no longer live. And then I found you.
It may sound silly, or maybe even dramatic, that your classes saved my life, but in a real way, they did. I remember how I felt after taking your first BodyVive class. It was probably the first time I’d felt happy in weeks. Doing something active, something for me, something positive for my body, it felt somewhere in the range of good. (I wasn’t quite ready to feel good yet.)
So I came back. And I started taking more of your classes, and then I was in your classes three days a week. (Once I accidentally showed up to two in a day and felt like a total stalker.) Most days, those were the only things I looked forward to. Some days still, those are the only things I look forward to, the only things that anchor my otherwise endlessly open schedule. The one thing I can count on in a life that has become so different from the one I planned for, imagined, was living.
When I first started in your classes, I have to admit, some of them were torture. The songs you played struck a chord — one which I didn’t want to hear. I remember, especially, suffering through the weeks where the cool down in BodyVive was “Saving All My Love For You.” While you sang along, obliviously, I lay, back down on the mat, trying to squeeze my tears back. Lots of classes in the beginning ended with me, crying in my car. I cried a lot, during the first few months I was taking your classes, ravaged by a horrible break up, the loss of what felt like my life and suffering through a crippling depression. But your classes offered me an hour free from tears.
And each hour I didn’t cry in your classes, I got stronger. The strength was evident in my new muscles, muscles I didn’t know I had — thighs, arms, back — rippling under my skin. I probably stare at myself more than I should in your classes, because I am so amazed by the person I see staring back at me now. I almost don’t recognize her: strength radiating from her soul, her heart, her body. Strength you helped me build — find — but probably have no idea about, still.
When I added BodyFlow to my class schedule, I fell in love with the way you guided us through the moves and the serenity I found, early Thursday mornings, alone with my thoughts, feeling energy flow through me. The first class I took, I swore I could feel the negative energy being released and myself harnessing positive energy to carry with me. I walked out a little taller that day.
And nearly every day now, I feel taller, stronger, better, when I leave one of your classes. I am proud of the number of push ups I can do now, the way I’ve memorized the cardio dance routines, the pride that comes with being a “regular” in your class.
So thank you, Holly, for being the kind of teacher that gently corrects and guides your students, rather than yells and commands. Thanks for working through new routines along side us but also for making some things look really easy, even when they’re not. Thanks for introducing me to songs like “Inner Ninja” that make me feel strong and invincible and for giving me something I could count on with regularity when everything else seemed to be going to shit.
Thank you, in your own way, for helping to save my life.
