The End of Shadow Boxing

Taking Off The Gloves

It started small. I put on old workout videos, Tae Bo, the kind with Billy Blanks yelling in the background. I just threw punches at the air. No bag. Nothing hitting back. Just me, moving, letting the music carry me. I didn't know it yet, but I wasn't just working out. I was training for something bigger.

Somewhere in there I thought about Susan Powter. You remember her, the fitness lady from the '90s? Stop The Insanity? She built something big, watched it fall apart, and disappeared for thirty years. Only now, decades later, does anyone ask her what she actually wants. I used to think her story was sad. Now I think she showed me something early, so I wouldn't have to wait thirty years to ask myself the same thing.

Yet here we are. So I asked it. What would my life look like if I stopped trying to get noticed? Stopped trying to be seen and approved of? And the answer scared me.

At first that felt like giving up instead of just being honest about what I've already spent, what I've got left, and what I'm done wasting it on.

Here's the thing I figured out. The person I was really fighting this whole time wasn't out there. She was in here. She was the version of me built out of every rule I never questioned, every "should" I dragged around without asking where it came from. I'd been throwing punches at her for years and calling it discipline.

I stopped swinging. I turned the light on. And you know what? Like fall is a season of surrender, I made friends with the part of me I always thought I had to hide.

She was never the enemy.

Nobody ever gave her permission to just exist, out loud, without apologizing. Once I stopped fighting her, she didn't need to hide anymore either.

Here's what else I let go of during sabbatical.v things I’m done with.

1. I'm done putting on a brave face just to show up somewhere. That's not courage, that's a costume.

2. I'm done thinking silence keeps me safe. It just keeps me quiet.

3. I'm done letting fear make my decisions when I say I trust God to make them instead.

4. I'm done with church, but not done with God. Those were never the same thing, even though I used to treat them like they were.

I also had a list of things I thought I "should" already be. Like, I should have mastered everything by now. (SHAME) But that's not fair. Nobody gets to be finished. Being unfinished isn't failing, it's just being alive.

Another one: be still, be quiet, and don't make waves. I finally saw that for what it was. That wasn't wisdom. That was just people wanting me small and easy to be around. But I'm allowed to share what I know, even if it stirs things up a little. That's not dangerous. That's real.

Dropping the “shoulds” and declaring the “dones” left room for clarity and energy for execution. Ha-ha. I like that play on words. Those old energy vampire tapes have left the body I’m building.

I don't like doing lives on Substack, so I'm not doing them.

I don't like chasing followers, so I've stopped.

I'm not disappearing from the internet, I'll still visit, but I don't live there anymore. My real home is right here, in my own body. That's the one place I never have to perform.

So that's the sabbatical. I stopped fighting my own shadow. I put my hands down. And now I'm just walking into whatever's next.

As proof, I’m not planning a “productive” re-entry either. I’m heading into nature for a couple of weeks to languish on the Cape, then spend quality family time with the ones who celebrate my presence, not just tolerate me. Just family being family, without trying to control how any of it lands.

Let the leaves fall where they may.

Turns out I wasn't fighting her at all. I was just finally ready to see her as me. And love her as-is. No more edits. No more apologies for taking up space. Just her, just me, standing here with my hands finally open instead of clenched.

I’m ready for the next wave. Are you?