Hello, my friends!

For a long time, I lived inside a question I couldn't answer.

Will my cancer come back? Will the treatment work? Will I ever hold my own baby?

I woke up with it. I drove to work with it. I fell asleep next to it.

Some days it was quiet. Some days it was the loudest thing in the room.

I kept walking anyway. I kept eating. I kept showing up to my appointments and calling my sister and stretching in the living room at 6am.

Not because I had answers. But because I had a body that still needed taking care of, even when I didn't know what I was taking care of it for.

I want to name something that I think a lot of you are carrying.

There's a grief that comes from losing who you were.

An injury. A diagnosis. A season that changed your body or your capacity or your identity in a way you didn't choose. You had a before, and now you're in the after. The distance between the two feels like failure.

Then there's another kind. Quieter. Harder to explain.

The grief of who you might never get to be.

No concrete loss to point to. No before and after. Just an open question that follows you everywhere.

A version of yourself you've been working toward, hoping toward, praying toward. Without knowing if you'll ever arrive.

I lived in that second kind for years. During the cancer. During the years of waiting for my baby.

I wasn't mourning something I'd lost. I was mourning someone I hadn't met yet. The version of me who was healthy. Who was whole. Who was a mother.

Both kinds of grief are real. Both deserve to be named.

And if you're carrying your own version of this right now, whether it looks like infertility, or miscarriage, depression, or a diagnosis that changed everything, or an injury that took away something central to who you are, I want you to know: this letter is for you.

I see you. I've been where you're standing.

Many years ago, my doctor came in the exam room after a round of bad blood work. He told me, the numbers weren't what we wanted.

I sat there doing the thing I'd done a hundred times: bracing. Calculating how far backward this would set me.

And then he said something I wasn't expecting.

I waited for the rest. The plan. The protocol. The list of things I should do differently. But that was it. That was the whole instruction.

I know that line might land differently for you. For some people, it could feel dismissive. Like your pain is being brushed aside.

But for me, it was permission. Not to perform. Not to push through. Just permission to keep being a person while the question stayed open.

No expectation attached. No timeline.

Just: your life is still your life. Keep living it.

One of my patients was a former athlete. Active his whole life. Then a major fracture took him out, and suddenly he didn't know who he was without that identity.

He'd say things like "I used to be able to..." and "Before this, I could..." Every sentence started with a comparison to someone he wasn't anymore.

So I asked him a simple question. "What's your priority right now? Not before the injury. Right now."

He thought about it. Then he said his family was planning a reunion in Canada. Lots of walking. He wanted to be ready.

That was enough.

We didn't talk about getting back to where he was. We worked toward Canada. One specific thing worth moving toward. And it changed everything about how he showed up to our sessions.

I've used this with other patients since.

When someone can't find their "Canada," I dig.

"What else did you like to do?"

"Who do you want to show up for?"

Keep asking until something surfaces. Sometimes it takes a while. But there's almost always something.

Another patient taught me something harder.

He had Parkinson's. It’s a progressive neurological disease. No cure.

When he understood what that meant, he lost motivation completely. Why work at something that's only going to get worse?

He was grieving the version of himself he thought he'd always be. On top of that, he felt like a burden to his wife.

I worked with him for months. It was frustrating at first. For both of us.

But slowly, over time, we became friends. I pointed out every small improvement, even the ones he dismissed. I showed him what his body could still do.

Then something shifted.

He stopped looking backward. He accepted where he was. And then he became determined to make the most of what he had.

He went from a walker to a cane. Then from a cane to nothing.

I'll never forget watching that happen. Not because it was a miracle. But because it was a decision.

He decided the person he was now was still worth showing up for.

Neither of those patients went back to who they were before.

The athlete didn't return to his old sport. The Parkinson's patient didn't become the man he was ten years ago. They both moved forward as someone different.

So did I.

I wrote this in my journal back in January:

That's the thing nobody told me about grief and hard seasons. They don't just take from you. They change you into someone new.

And that person deserves care too.

So what does caring for yourself actually look like when you're inside the question? When you don't know how the story ends and you're not sure what you're working toward?

James Clear once asked:

I think about that a lot.

Because when you're grieving or exhausted or just trying to survive a hard season, the last thing you need is an ambitious health plan.

You need a floor.

In Flexible Consistency, I call this Level 1 on the Dial.

The minimum. Not the goal. Just the ground beneath your feet.

For me, during my hardest seasons, Level 1 looked like this:

That was it. That was the whole plan.

It was enough to keep me in the game long enough for the next spark of hope to find me.

The basics during hard seasons aren't a vending machine. You don't insert sleep and meals and get energy back immediately. Sometimes you do everything right and still feel off.

That's not failure. That's what the long middle actually looks like from the inside.

Your Level 1 will look different from mine. It depends on your body, your access, your season, what you have around you.

But the principle is the same: pick the smallest version of caring for yourself that you can sustain, even on your worst day.

That's your floor. You don't go below it.

You're not optimizing. You're not performing. You're just staying connected to yourself until you find your Canada. Or until your Canada finds you.

I'm putting together a downloadable guide with a full menu of Level 1 options across movement, nutrition, connection, rest, and stress.

Different options depending on your preferences, your access, your capacity. So you can build your own Level 1, your own way. These are just examples. But I hope it will spark some ideas for you.

I didn't know I'd go into remission.

I didn't know I'd become a mother.

I didn't know, during those years of lacing up my shoes and calling my sister and stretching at 6am, that the story would turn out the way it did.

I was just trying to stay in the game long enough to find out.

And I think that's the part that matters most. Not the outcome. The staying.

You don't have to know how your story ends to keep taking care of yourself inside of it.

You don't have to be okay. You don't have to be hopeful every day.

You just have to keep your body in the conversation.

Walk. Eat. Call someone. Stretch. Rest.

That's enough for now.

And if you're carrying something right now, you don't have to name it. But if you want to, hit reply. I'm here.

With hope, and shoes by the door,

Grazelle 🌱

PS: If you're wondering how my Dial is set these days: Level 1.

My little one is still deep in sleep regression, and I am deep in survival mode. Her pediatrician says it will eventually resolve. I am choosing to believe her. In the meantime, I'm stretching at 6am (or 5am, or 4am, depending on who's awake) and calling it a win. 😅

Whenever you’re ready, here are some other (free) resources you can check out: