Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
Author: Christine Hennebury
I'm a writer/storyteller/director/creativity & lifestory coach with a black belt in ITF Taekwon-do. I read voraciously and I write like my fingers are on fire.
I'm the founder and Chair of the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl and I'm a former president of the St. John's Storytelling Festival.
I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.
Khalee and I have been working on a walking challenge – The Great Sniffari 2026 – and I chose for us to walk 21km over the first 10 days of May.
Often when I try to take photo of Khalee, she steps out of the way. This time she kind of photobombed my photo of this fallen tree with the roots exposed and a ‘witch broom’ tangle of branches on it. Image description: a photo of Khalee, my medium-sized dog with short, light-brown hair on most of her body and white paws, tail, and face, wearing a jaunty green bandana with cartoon bugs on it. She is looking to the right in the photo and her neck is foreshortened because of the angle so she looks a little squished. Behind her is a fallen tree with the roots exposed.
The challenge seemed like it would be fairly easy at the outset – a small extra effort on top of our usual walks – but things went a bit awry and I realized last Thursday that I was going to have to do a bit of a push to finish on time.
So on Thursday we walked 2.78km, on Friday we did 2.81, Saturday was 3km which technically brought us to the end of our challenge.* (In fact, we only needed .29km on Saturday to finish.)
I say technically because I didn’t realize the settings in the app wouldn’t carry over from my other, year-long, challenge and the Sniffari was pulling Apple Health step data.
I didn’t actually want to include steps from things like walking around the house or the grocery store but because they automatically uploaded at the end of each day, I didn’t realize they were being rolled into my total and I was surprised to find out that I was finished.
Once I figured out why I had finished a day early, I calculated my actual distances and then added extra amounts to my daily walks for the next few days to match the way I wanted things to play out.
No matter the details of the challenge, on Saturday I realized something important.
These longer walks were making me feel great.
I mean, I generally enjoy going for a walk – even when I have to drag myself out for them – but this was a different kind of enjoyment.
I was starting to feel those kind of intangible benefits I get when I exercise regularly – a looser feeling in my hips, a certain ease of movement, an overall feeling of wellbeing – after only 3 days of extra effort.
That seemed kind of quick but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in its proverbial mouth here. Instead, I decided to keep building momentum.
So, on Sunday, we walked 4.42km and, on Monday, we walked 4.08km, and it felt purposeful, straightforward, and kind of tiring – but in a good way.
And, on top of that, all of this extra movement seems to have flipped a mental switch for me and I have found myself doing a bit more yoga, a few more strength training exercises, taking a few extra trips up the stairs, and adding mobility exercises while I am doing things around the house.
So, it seems that, like the title says, moving more makes me want to move more.
And I like it!
Of course, I know that this has happened to me before – I’ve gotten into an exercise routine, started to feel the effects, been enjoying myself, and then something has gone sideways and I lost momentum or had to change gears.
So, I have told myself to keep an eye out for when that happens and in the meantime I am developing some backup plans.
I’ll let you know how it all goes, obviously. 🙂
a photo of Khalee, my medium-sized dog with short, light-brown hair on most of her body and white paws, tail, and face, standing next to a river on a bright, sunny day. She is sort of side on and she’s facing the left side of the photo. She has a harness and leash on. She’s standing on dried grass and mud, the river next to her is filled with brownish red rocks and there are trees and more dried grass and mud on the other side of the river.
I’m a few days late for the new Action for Happiness monthly calendar but I really love the idea of Meaningful May.
I’m not one of those people who insists that every single moment must be saturated with meaning but I am one of those people who thinks that any given ordinary moment could be meaningful – and I firmly believe that meaning is worth seeking/creating.
So, obviously, I’m a fan of the tiny daily ideas that this month’s Action for Happiness calendar provides for seeking meaning in the ordinary.
I like all of the suggestions but I find the idea of making ‘a list of the things that matter to me and why’ especially appealing.
Which Meaningful May tip appeals to you the most?
A daily calendar for May 2026 from Action for Happiness. The individual blocks are pink, red, light blue, or darker blue and there is a tip for seeking meaning typed into each one. The edge of the calendar is decorated with simple cartoon images of things like a cup of tea, a paper airplane, a person on a bike, or a few planets. At the bottom of the calendar the words ‘Happier. Kinder. Together’ appear in green.
PS – If you want to hear a bit more about Meaningful May, check out the Action for Happiness video below “How to find meaning in the past, present and future. Meaningful May with Vanessa King.
A video from Action for Happiness featuring Vanessa King, a white woman with shoulder length hair and a bright expression on her face looking directly at the camera with a few plants and an old black and white photo of a couple on their wedding day. on the right ide of the image is text reading “Finding Meaning: 3 top tips with Vanessa King.”
Do I owe you a thinky post about World Creativity Day? Yes, yes, I do. Alas, last week was made of chaos, headaches, and migraines and it did not get done. I have safely emerged from that maelstrom but I am writing this on Monday and my solo storytelling show is tonight and my focus keeps wandering from my thinky post. Since I would prefer that my brain stay in one piece, I am writing about something else today and I will get back to the creativity one soon.
On Sunday evening, I made a list of things I wanted to have done by the end of this week. There were a few work tasks, a couple of household things, and, oddly enough, one rather vague item – become stronger.
I don’t even really know where that last one came from but I found myself intrigued.
I mean, becoming stronger is an ongoing goal for me so this isn’t completely new but something felt different about having it on my list in that format.
Become stronger.
Become stronger.
When I phrase it like that it’s not a list of exercises or a bunch of tasks or a potential goal, it’s an open loop.
And my brain, the same one that fights with me about exercising or completing tasks*, is ALWAYS intrigued by an open loop and it starts in with the questions…
What does ‘become stronger’ mean?
How can I become stronger in a week?
What would that involve?
How will I know if I become stronger?
Why do I even want to become stronger?
Who do I want to consult on this?**
When can I get started?
See how quickly my brain dug in on this? It is totally invested in solving the mystery of how to become stronger this week.
And I’m going to let it figure it out as we go.
After all, I know that I can’t get a lot stronger in one week but that’s where the vagueness of ‘become stronger’ works out well. I don’t have to get a lot stronger, I just have to move the needle.
And, in fact, when I got up Monday morning my brain was already reminding me that we had to work towards getting stronger today.
So things are off to an interesting start!
This is what I got when I searched for ‘vague’ in the image library. I guess it’s accurate? The connection is value at least. Image description: a black and white photo of a dark-coloured horse (I think) on light-coloured ground that could be a field or snow or a beach. The horse is in the distance in the centre so it is very small relative to the size of the image overall. It is maybe 1/8 of the height of the image and 1/12 or the width.
Well, I won’t be able to get a lot stronger in one week but I will be able to
*Yes, I do often refer to my brain as separate from me, apparently it’s an ADHD thing.
**In this case the ‘who’ will be a combo of fitness people on YouTube and Instagram but I really wanted to get a who question in there so I phrased it as who instead of saying ‘What videos will I watch?’
Today, as you may have guessed, is World Creativity & Innovation Day and I have a kind of thinky post underway for later today but for starters, I have a few questions for you.
My answers will be in my later post along with ideas and resources about the intersection between fitness and creativity.
1) What kind of creative practices do you use in your day to day life? (Creative problem solving counts!)
2) Have you used creative scheduling approaches to make it easier to fit fitness activities, movement, or wellness activities in your life?
3) Do you stick to the same fitness routine or do you get creative with your movements, exercises, and activities?
4) Have you ever used exercise to boost your creativity?
5) Have you ever found a creative solution to a fitness-related problem? (like figuring out a way to accomplish a difficult exercise or finding a way to a piece of equipment in a useful but unexpected way)
No pressure, of course, but it would be cool if you could put your answers to at least one of these questions in the comments.
I’ll see you later with my thinky post.
PS – Did you notice that I creatively repurposed one of my December number images for today’s image? 😉
It was sunny here last Friday so my husband spend a bit of time shoveling snow off of our patio – mostly to have something to do outside.
When it was sunny and spring-ish on Saturday, we wanted to have the patio door open so I dug the screen door out of the shed and had the brilliant idea (if I do say so myself) to drag a few patio chairs out at the same time.
Now it was sunny and relatively warm and we had chairs on the patio so it suddenly felt like our outdoor space was available to us again.
Obviously, my next step was to drag out a mat and do some yoga outdoors.
Did it feel strange to be doing yoga outside with snowshovels in the background? I’ll let you interpret that for yourself.
Image description: a selfie of me (a middle-aged white woman with a round face and light brown hair that is pulled back by a cloth band that happens to contain earphones) in a dark pink hoodie with the sun shining on my face, smirking at the fact that I am doing yoga outdoors while there are still necessary snow shovels propped against my house.
Was it weird to be lying on my mat in the sunshine while the grass in my backyard was still mostly covered in snow?
Well, it felt weird enough to take a photo of it at least…
Image description: a photo of my legs with the backyard full of snow visible in the background while propping myself up a little as I was lying on my mat on the patio. In the photo, I am lying on the ground with my right leg bent so the knee is toward the sky and the foot is on the ground. My left leg is bent so the outside of my foot is resting on the top of my right knee and my left knee is pointing to the left. You can see my blue yoga mat and part of the patio through the triangle formed by my legs. On my right is our patio mats, and more patio slats and beyond them you can see the railings, a whole bunch of snow, some leafless trees, the blue sky and our faded wooden fence.
But even though it felt kinda weird, it also felt great to be doing that slow, steady, focused movement in the bright sunlight and the fresh air.
Despite the snow, it felt like warm weather and more outdoor fun might be just around the (very long!) corner.
And if you saw this when you opened your eyes after Savasana, you might have believed it, too.
A photo of my view upwards from my yoga mat. Image description: a photo of bare tree branches with just a hint of growth on them with the bright blue sky in the background.
PS – Thanks to Steve for shoveling off the patio and setting this whole thing in motion.
I don’t know about how things are going for you but my brain has been rather uncooperative for the past few weeks.
It differs from day-to-day – sometimes I can do what I planned, sometimes it feels like my ADHD meds aren’t working at all, and sometimes I feel like I get up in the morning, get spun around for a few hours, and then I’m dumped into 9:30 at night without any sense of what kept me feeling busy all day.
Needless to say, this has not been a fun experience at all.
And I think I could just wait out the tiredness, the frustration, and the brain fog if my capacity wasn’t all over the place. The fact that I can do some things with ease (and speed) and other things (that are normally straightforward) feel so difficult and convoluted that I either can’t get started or I end up moving so slowly that I get on my own nerves.
The worst thing is that I know the things I need to do to feel better, I am just having such a hard time making myself do them.
Now this is the part where some people would be saying “You just gotta push yourself. Try harder! This is just resistance.”
I’m voting no on that.
Sure, maybe there is some resistance in the mix of my challenges right now but pushing myself or telling myself to “just” try harder* is not going to be the solution.
Instead, when things are tough like this, what I always need to do is to figure out a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to do what I can when I can, and to rest when I need to – all while being very kind to myself about the process.
I don’t need to push myself or to try harder, I need to pare things down as much as I can.
And if you are struggling in any way right now, I invite you to do the same.
If you aren’t up to a full yoga practice, spend a few minutes in Savasana on your mat.
If you can’t write in your journal, do a little voice dictation into your phone or do some drawing in your notebook.
If you can’t tackle that big project, is there a smaller section that feels doable right now? Is there someone who can help you with it? Can you do anything to adjust your own or other people’s expectations around this project at the moment?
If you have been waiting to respond to an email until you have composed the perfect message, can you send a ‘Here’s a quick answer but I’ll get back to you in a few days with the details.’ type of message?
If you are having trouble eating the way you would like to, is there a quicker solution that keeps you fed and isn’t taxing on your brain? (Someideas )
If you can’t stir yourself to go for a walk outside, can you walk in your living room?
If your strength training routine is beyond you at the moment, can you do some mobility exercises or leg lifts or some calisthenics instead?
You can see where I am going here, right?
When things are challenging but you know you will feel better if you take action, you don’t have to summon the energy to do the big version of something – you can do a smaller version. You can pare things down until that activity feels doable.
You can be kind to today-you and tomorrow-you at the same time by scaling your actions to match your current capacity.
And this applies at all times, not just when you are struggling. It’s ok – it’s ENCOURAGED – to meet yourself where you are rather than being annoyed with yourself for not being somewhere else.
So, Team, however today finds you, I wish you ease and I invite you to consider whether you need to reduce the pressure in any area of your life by paring things down.
And I’m offering you this gold star in celebration of your efforts to take good care of yourself.
Go Team Us!
Isn’t this a cheery star? I’m going to prop her up next to my computer. Image description: A small painting of a happy-faced gold star with lines in the bottom left that kind of make it look like she jumped into the middle of the white card she is drawn on. The card is propped up between the keys on my black computer keyboard.
*Christine shudders in neurodivergence. Never EVER tell someone with ADHD that they aren’t trying hard enough – you can’t see the effort they have to put in to focus their attention, corral their working memory, and try to get their executive functions to, you know, function. It’s exhausting and takes A LOT of effort – and that’s BEFORE they actually start the task.
So, apparently we’re starting April tomorrow which is bizarre because I am pretty sure we just started March.
Time is a mystery.
But seeing as the calendar is insisting that a new month is imminent, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the fitness and wellness related days that have been assigned to April.
April is…
Move More Month – that seems pretty promising and it could be pretty easy, if the weather cooperates even a little. And for many of our bloggers and readers, it ties in nicely with the fact that April is also Active Dog Month -it’s like a 2 for 1 special, really.
Stress Awareness Month – I think we are all pretty aware of stress (ha!) but this could be a good time to pay attention to your stress levels and see if you can find some relief.
For me, though, the best awareness day this month is April 5 – which is My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day.
Denise is a fun, creative, outdoorsy person and I highly recommend that you celebrate My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day by finding some nonsense to participate in, by taking yourself outside for some fun, or by doing something creative.
In fact, if you *do* celebrate My Sister Denise’s Birthday Awareness Day on Sunday, let me know and I will draw you your very own gold star as a reward.
I think I have found a workaround for one of my most annoying fitness challenges and, oddly enough, it involves one of my favourite offices supplies – INDEX CARDS!
If you have been reading my posts for a while then you know that I find it difficult to set big picture fitness goals because I’m not sure what I want my endpoint to be.
I mean, I want to be stronger or have more ease in my movements (especially after the challenges of the last few years) but I don’t really have a way to measure that except for ‘feeling stronger’ or ‘feeling more ease.’
Both of those things sound good in principle but I know that my ADHD brain will send me into endless loops of ‘Was that enough?’ ‘Do I feel better or worse than yesterday?’ ‘Am I putting in the right effort here?’ and I won’t find much fun or much satisfaction in that whole process.
Meanwhile, though, I also don’t have a lot invested in more measurable things like being able to reach a particular speed when walking or lift a certain weight or do a specific number of reps. Those things don’t really resonate for me and I know that I will just get kind of meh about them over time.
And even though I understand intellectually that additional consistent exercise will be helpful, some part of my brain is not really buying into the idea and keeps insisting that effort today is not really going to add up to anything and I will just be wasting time that I could spend reading or writing or doing something fun.
But, at the same time, I know that I am wrong about that and I keep trying different ways to jumpstart a fitness plan.
Last week, I did some thinking about how I could encourage myself to take on a longer term exercise project that would let me see my efforts all along without having to choose some sort of specific result to work towards.
I want the process of exercising to be so routine that any results will just be a sort of by-product of the activity rather than being the point.
Eventually, I figured out that I could choose to commit to 100 workouts.
I wouldn’t have to pick a specific type of workout or a specific length of workout and I wouldn’t have to accomplish anything specific, I would just have to pick something and do it.
And even my somewhat-belligerent-on-this-topic brain has to admit that I will definitely see and feel some differences after 100 workouts.
Once I had decided on that number, I wanted to find a way to track it and maybe make some notes about the various workouts I tried.
And that’s when I came up with the index card solution.
I love index cards for notetaking, for planning, and for art so they are a very friendly material for me – which is a good start.
One of the reasons I enjoy using index cards for those things is the fact that they are relatively small so I can’t take on too much. That seems like a good approach for these workouts too.
Friendly and will prevent me from taking on too much? So far, so good!
The other benefit of index cards in this context is that if I write one index card per workout, I will be able to see those workouts adding up over time as I move toward my 100 card target.
So, here’s the plan I started late last week:
Open a brand new package of index cards and put them in a container that will hold the blank cards and the completed ones side-by-side.
Workout 100 times in the next six months.
Write about each individual workout on a separate card and keep it in the same case.
Watch my progress and feel good about the whole thing.
And it truly has been ‘so far so good’ – I have done four workouts* and filled out four cards and it feels manageable and useful.
In fact, I feel exactly like I hoped I would – that the index cards are the point of the whole thing and any results are just a bonus – and I think that’s a good sort of feeling for me to have about this project because it keeps my brain from looping about the specifics.
Let’s see how this goes, shall we?
*Next week’s post will be about how I chose what will count as a workout. 🙂
I like snow. I like cosy evenings. I like the way the air smells. I like bundling up to go outside. I’m a big fan of sweaters. I like seeing light on the snow. I even like shovelling snow (up to a certain point!)
And even on the most basic level, I just like the variation from other seasons of the year.
But by the time February comes, it is wearing on me.
It really starts at the end of January when time seems to both stretch and contract so I have really long days but really short weeks and then I somehow get unceremoniously dumped into February.
February takes forever and it is always a big struggle for me. I have extra trouble figuring out my time, my projects, and my capacity. It’s almost like my ADHD meds don’t fully work that month and everything is especially difficult and frustrating.
For example, this year I had a plan to do two small things in February. I was going to do a wall set for one minute a day and I was going to add more vegetables to my lunch
I did pretty well with the lunch vegetables but the wall sit? That just went wrong.
The wall set was somehow both too big a task and two smaller task at once. It felt like I could fit it in anywhere in my day., That sounds like an upside but if I can fit it in anywhere in my day then I’ll end arguing with myself all day about when to do it.
I realized that it’s hard to do a wall sit when I have socks on because I end up, slipping on both the flooring and the carpet while trying to hold the position.
But I could never convince myself to put on my sneakers to do a one minute exercise.
In fact, February fills up my brain so much that the sneaker idea didn’t occur to me until more than halfway through the month.
And I never did convince myself to put the sneakers on.
I noticed this February pattern a few years ago, and I have tried a variety of solutions to cope with this annual bewilderment. Things have improved, but there is still a ways to go and I am hampered by the fact that I often can’t see things are going sideways until they have reached an annoying level of sideways-ness.
Anyway, as you can, imagine, I was really glad to see March.
I’m not saying that March 1 is magic but I’m not NOT saying that.
Once we switch to March, it feels like my brain takes a deep breath and suddenly there’s a bit more space to figure things out.
You can’t tell now, of course, but this is where a single spring flower grows and blooms each year. I love watching for it as spring goes on. Image description, a photo of the back of someone’s fence with snow on the ground and a few evergreen trees about halfway between the viewer and the fence.
And once the clocks change, I see even more of an improvement in my perspective, my overall mood, and in my capacity to make useful plans and to follow through on them.
So, I was thinking about all of those things last week and then I overheard a conversation some friends of mine were having at TKD.
(This had nothing to do with martial arts, it had to do with spring.)
One of my friends is a farmer (she also runs a farm-tech company) and she said that there had been signs of spring for weeks
She said that we probably hadn’t even noticed, but the signs are there – more birds are singing, there are probably more bugs showing up in our houses, and that there are lots of things going on underground that we won’t see for ages.
And when she said that I realized that not only had I heard more birds and seen more bugs, but the sun was feeling a bit warmer and the ground felt somehow different than it had two weeks before.
Recognizing all those things felt so great that I started looking for more signs.
And I noticed that the tips of the branches of the trees were looking a little thicker, like growth has started.
Doesn’t that kind of look like buds at the tip of those branches? I’m not sure at what point a bud can be officially called a bud but something is going on right there.. Image description: A photo of a couple of the branches of the lilac tree in my front yard. At the tips of the branches are the suggestion of buds, even if they’re not buds yet. The branches are in the very foreground and in the background, you can See snow on lawns a few people’s driveways and some of my neighbours houses in the background.
And something about how the snow is sitting on the ground has changed. Even though we had more snow over the weekend, there’s something different and somewhat spring-y about it.
See:
It felt so good and so cheering to take a stroll today. A photo of my dog Khalee on our street on a sunny somewhat springlike day. The sun is behind us and she is standing where she can be seen in the photo. You can only see me as a shadow, and you can see the shadow of the leash that I’m holding that she is on the other end of. Her shadow was visible too, of course. There’s a small snowbank nearby and she’s standing on some greyish asphalt. She is a light brown, medium size dog. She’s mostly facing away from the camera, but she’s turned back a bit probably wondering why I stopped walking.
Even the colour of the sky seems deeper recently. it’s not quite a spring or summer sky, but it’s getting there.
I love seeing that blue get stronger. A photo of several leafless trees and a couple of evergreens next to a fence with snow on the ground. The sky behind the trees is an almost spring colour of blue with a few long white clouds
So with things getting ready to shift outside, it’s no wonder that things are also shifting in my brain.
In the last week or so, I’ve noticed myself thinking a bit more long-term about exercise plans again.
And it feels far easier to get myself to go for a walk, to do some yoga, or to just move around in general.
I was on a writing retreat this past weekend and instead of sitting at a table to work I was motivated to sit on my yoga mat on the floor instead, working on my lap, on a low table, or on the floor itself. That felt like a huge improvement because I know how much more likely I am to move and stretch and take good care of myself while I’m working if I’m seated on the floor.
No, I’m not saying that I couldn’t do any of these things three weeks ago, but now that first step, the initiation of that task, is decidedly easier.
I didn’t realize it had been so long since I wrote a Go Team post.
Sure, it has only been since January but I always find February to be such a slog that it feels like it has been aaaaaaages since I offered up some encouragement for us all.
So, Team, today I am inviting you to find ways to be even kinder to yourself.
Maybe that means giving yourself a break.
Maybe it means taking an extra rest day.
Maybe it means giving yourself a pep talk – or seeking someone else to give you one.
Maybe it means giving yourself as much time as possible to work out.
Maybe it means speeding things up a little today.
Perhaps it means using the punching bag instead of going to Zumba… or vice versa.
Perhaps it looks like more time meditating or journaling or listening to calming music.
Perhaps it looks like exercising on your own or maybe it looks like finding company.
Maybe it looks like packing your gym bag in the evening or rolling out your yoga mat before you go to bed.
Perhaps it means going to bed early or staying in bed a little longer in the morning and maybe it looks like the opposite of that.
Look, I know that there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world and that you are probably also facing a lot of challenges in your own life. In the face of all of that, it can seem pretty insignificant to bother trying to be kinder to yourself.
After all, what difference does it make if you journal or go to Zumba or take a bit of extra time with your tea?
It makes a BIG difference.
Sure, it’s not going to address all of the challenges you are facing and it’s not going to fix all of the problems in the world but it sure as hell is going to make it a little easier for you to do what you can to face those challenges and to help out in the world.
(And you can be damn sure that being less kind to yourself won’t make anything better.)
Choosing to be kind to yourself, to give your body and brain the things that you need, will not only be helpful to you in the moment but it will also leave you with more energy and more capacity to engage with others, to seek solutions, to be who you want to be in the world.
And sure, my examples above are all related to fitness and well-being but that’s because this is a fitness blog.
I hope you will apply the same ideas in every facet of your life.
Self-kindness is not self-indulgence, it is self-support.
It is not wasteful. It is not harmful. It is not pointless.
You matter.
Your efforts matter.
Being kind to yourself matters.
Please give it a whirl at your next possible opportunity.
And, as always, here is your gold star for your efforts.
Wishing you ease, my friends.
Be kind to yourselves out there. Pretty please.
A star I made during a ‘Relaxing Creativity’ workshop I was leading on Monday night. Image description: a gold star drawn in shiny gold ‘art crayon’ against a pink background that is decorated with black lines that follow the same curves as the edges of the star. The drawing and the star are trimmed in black.
Bonus:
This video cheers me up every time I encounter it on Instagram. I thought it might do the same for you.
An Instagram post from addytok2022 with a closeup view of a little girl’s face. She has blonde hair in a topknot, and she is wearing pink glasses, and she is looking intently at the nail polish bottle she is trying to open. Her nails are painted bright pink and she is wearing a black sweatshirt with the Grinch on it.
