Inspired by her daughter, this Antigonish writer left her desk for the CrossFit gym

In the midst of the pandemic — where do you go to find joy? Maybe it's a physical spot or a memory. The CBC Creator Network's Happy Place series explores both.

Antigonish, N.S., writer Anne Simpson shares her happy place story in this First Person article. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

My happy place has always been the desk where I write every day, but during the pandemic I spent too much time there. With low coronavirus case counts in our region, my friend Dale and I decided to try a new gym, one that had been in existence for about two years. In January, I found myself inside CrossFit Actuate in Antigonish, N.S., where I was a beginner, and not a young beginner either.

"Try this one," said Chad, one of the coaches, as he offered me a lighter barbell.

"It's like using a bike with training wheels!"

He laughed. "Everyone starts somewhere."

This story doesn't start with me. It begins with a young woman who woke one spring morning with what seemed like a dark veil over one eye.

Near the end of one of her shifts as a banquet server she knew that a tray full of glasses was about to fall from her hands, although she made it to the kitchen before it crashed to the floor. In the grocery store, she got dizzy negotiating aisles, and on the way home she had to stop several times because she had problems with balance.

Something was wrong, but who could help her?

Her symptoms got worse, not better, and finally, with her brother and a family friend, she went to St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where an ophthalmologist decided she should be admitted.

Within days, she received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). For someone age 26, it was a devastating diagnosis.

If MS is left untreated, the myelin sheaths that protect nerve cells begin to deteriorate, causing havoc in the circuitry of the brain. Yet with treatment, the progress of MS can be subdued, even halted. This is my daughter's story, but there is so much more to it than disease.

Two years after her diagnosis, as Sarah was working on her master's degree at the University of Guelph, a friend urged her to go to a CrossFit gym. By then, she was getting infusions of Tysabri, a powerful medication. She decided to go, entering a world where she was a beginner. She went back to the gym often and thrived on it.

If she lifted a weight that was a personal best, the coach would ring a bell. No one else at that CrossFit gym could have known she suffered from MS since she looked perfectly healthy and strong.

Sarah gives me inspiration. And at the CrossFit Actuate gym, I have the inspiration of people around me who are trying as hard as they can. Some of them are about Sarah's age. I lift my "training wheels" over my head in a push press, imagining what it would be like to perfect this move. I feel a glimmer of what that might be like, though I'm still a long way from doing it smoothly. But everyone starts somewhere.

Anne Simpson's most recent books are Speechless, a novel, and Experiments in Distant Influence, a book of essays.

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