Growth Edges
Respecting, meeting, listening, accepting and testing our limits.
It feels wrong to write about myself when the world is on fire. It feels wrong to be frolicking in the snow when the world is on fire. And I also know that the work and vision of a world I believe in takes commitment to the ways I can show up: that be, at times, writing, and finding joy. And there is still more.
Obviously, there are plenty…plenty.. of resources to donate/share regarding the LA Fires right now, here are two that are on my heart: 1. a GoFundMe for my dear friend Brianna, a friendship that sparked at Footprints Running-Climate camp this fall, who lost her home and community last week. I admire the heck out of Brianna and am devasted to witness her pain, along with the constant reminders of suffering and displacement caused by this climate catastrophe. 2. The incredible powers of community-based Mutual Aid LA - this is an ongoing list of resources for those impacted by the LA-area fires and where folks can support/donate/volunteer.
That’s all ❤️ take care of each other.
Growth Edges
“When you hit your edge—hold there.” my physical therapist coached me through my first rehab exercises during the last week of the year.
“Growth edges.” This phrase keeps finding me, piercing my heart every time. My mentor named something I couldn’t quite articulate when she gave me these words during a December reflection.
And there it was again, during a highly frustrating (yet momentous?) wrist therapy session.
That point where the stretch and tug meet your limit. That edge. And the invitation: Can you go just a little bit further?
I want to expand my capacity—to give, to love, to live. Like stacking miles on a long run or building strength through progressively heavier weights, I want to stretch what I can hold.
But ha, in life, the discomfort of uncertainty and rapid redirection often feels like an unwelcome detour from the challenges we choose. Hey, but I suppose there’s no menu where we get to hand-pick.
If there were, I’d have ordered differently1:
“I’ll take the 100-mile run but leave the autoimmune reaction and chronic hives.”
“Can I have a pro racing schedule balanced seamlessly with work? I’ll pass on the arm surgery and six months of hip pain, thanks.”
Oh, but these edges don’t let us decide. They aren’t options on a buffet where we can pick only what we want and leave the rest behind.
Now, I’m not here to spew gratitude for all the ways I’ve “grown,” and I can’t deny the ways I overextended last year. I’ve torn, broken, and scarred—but like any injury, we also heal. We repair. We callous, too.
The surgical cut along my wrist. The puncture wounds on my thigh. The six incisions across both hips. The photos documenting the evolution of my hives. Each one is a marker of being stretched, torn, and healed.
They remind me that on the other side of every edge is increased flexibility, strength, and capacity and that I can emerge with improved knowledge of my limits—if I learn. If I rest. If I integrate. If I listen.
Three times a day, I roll my hand 10x through various ranges of motion on my mother-in-law’s Pilates ball, practicing extension and flexion, pronation and supination (etc. etc.), in my wrist. And every day, I meet my limit. The physical pain is manageable, but it stirs something deeper—those raw emotional edges mirroring the physical pain. All these limits often feel the same, whether in body or soul. That rocky, razor-thin crawl when creeping along the spine of a windy ridgeline, so vulnerable to one moment of wrong footing, wrong movement, and you crack.
Yet, I hold. I often find that I shut my eyes here. I take a deep breath into it. And when I first started, it would trigger a tearful release for the limits I met this year—the ones I didn’t choose, yet showed up for myself (and others).
Each roll of the ball became a practice: meeting, respecting, feeling, and listening to the limit. And asking myself: Can I go just a little bit further?
I hold there. And then I hang a little longer.
In the discomfort and stretch and ache, I lean further.
Remembering that the capacity on the other side is one with increased vitality, life-ness. All the more we can love. Can live. Can run. Can feel. Can experience. Can hope (and hurt). Fuller.
And so we measure the progress—in degrees of motion range, in the reservoirs of our soul.
We don’t rush. We don’t push before we’re ready.
Slowly, steadily, I see improvement. I feel it build—capacity, strength, and the reservoirs to hold it all.
Three-months ago me, would have ;)
I love that idea of "growth edges"--and everything that it takes to sit with them, push into them, and move beyond them. I can't say that I'm there... but I'm inspired to perhaps be a little more thoughtful (and a little less grumpy) about my own journey with these injury-created edges. Thank you. <3