Lovebeams,

I am about to tell you a Very Dumb Story.

It’s how this t-shirt made me dislocate both hips & herniate a lumbar disc which has been a four month recovery process (and counting).

Yep… a t-shirt.

Let me explain.

So! It was in quarantine. I was bored. And I saw some random Facebook ad where I could… walk the Camino (the famous pilgrimage through Spain) but do it… VIRTUALLY. Yep… VIRTUALLY. I’d use an app or Apple Watch to track my steps, and start going for walks in my own neighbourhood to walk 770km.

AND… I’d get a goddamn MEDAL and a t-shirt. Now, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself, it’s that I’m ridiculously motivated by external validation. Gimme a $2 piece of junky award, and I will chase that carrot like it is EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER WANTED AND NEEDED.

And so, that first weekend, I walked & rode over 20km. I was giddy with enthusiasm, and ridonkulously proud that I was WALKING THE CAMINO (albeit virtually). The next day, however, I couldn’t walk. Nor the day after that, or the day after that. Two weeks later, when I limped into my osteopath’s office, she examined me and said: “Leonie… this is like… really bad.”

You see, in all my enthusiasm & excitement, in all my rampant clutching for external validation, I’d forgotten one simple fact: I’m hypermobile. My bones dislocate a little too easily. My mind may be willing, but my body is not.

It’s been a long, hard recovery process. Every day, it gets a little bit better. Every day, I have to prioritise my body over my ambition or (hilarious) ideas.

When I got this t-shirt in the mail, my husband laughed.

“You didn’t conquer that challenge, Leonie. It conquered YOU.”

And that’s how a t-shirt wrecccccccked me. HA!

Big love,
Leonie