"There's no going back, only moving forward."
Reflections from the first moments on the mats in almost a year. Grappling with the complicated reality of "being back."
Happy Saturday!
Settling into the weekend, I’m still making sense of what “being back” at jiu-jitsu and training in any capacity means to me, but here’s the best of what’s on my mind in this very moment.
Let me know what you think, and if you know someone who would enjoy reading this too, please pass it along!
—EZ
On my first night “back”, I’m sitting on the side of the mat watching rounds, having endured the extent of training of which I am now capable.
There’s no way I can spar yet, but I’ll take what I can get. Sitting in a sweaty gi on the mat beats sitting in street clothes on the bench, watching everything from afar.
This is as close as I’ve gotten to “normal” in almost a year.
I don’t overthink how precious that is.
My coach sits next to me and we both look at the room of people rolling around. The kids who were kids a year ago are now teenagers. The bull-headed white belts are now bull-headed blue belts.
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye and smiles. “You gotta be crazy to do this sport.”
I look back at him. Knowing that he’s spent his whole life getting to this particular moment—from competing professionally to coaching full-time to owning a gym with a full mat of students—I banter:
“You gotta be crazy to make a living from this sport.”
“Ahhhh!” He laughs. It’s a contagious, full-throated laugh.
His signature.
“It’s true!”
I watch the rest of the rounds, thinking about how crazy it really is—specifically, how crazy my relationship to this sport is:
That the arc of my identity as an adult has curved so drastically towards this weird sport.
That for seven consecutive years, the sport took up as much time as it did in my schedule, becoming a full-time job for a period of time.
That it lived in my head, rent-free, and—if anything—at tremendous cost for so many years.
That after living without jiu-jitsu for a year, that I still decided I didn’t want to “go back” to the way my life looked before the sport was in my life at all.
The sparring ends. I step back into the lineup and bow. I head to the locker room, pull off the gi, peel off the rash guard, and my husband drives us back home.
In the shower, I scrub off the sweat mingled with other’s people’s sweat. I comb the tangles out of my hair, mingled with other people’s hair. I’ve made it this far, to the first night after my first class, the first in eleven months.
I towel myself off in the mirror. Clean, bone tired, and looking at my reflection, I think about the craziest thing of all.
“You gotta be crazy to come back to this sport.”
On Monday, I hit the most heavily anticipated milestone in my recovery from knee surgery: going back to jiu-jitsu class.
It was strange to stand back up in a starting lineup of people and feel like I belonged in my specific place within it—very close to the top, next to the black belts, but not yet a black belt myself.
It was terrifying to trust others to treat my body with the appropriate level of force in the few drilling sequences we performed.
But I’d done it: without hurting myself and without being too much of an inconvenience to others given the accommodations I needed.
And I was proud of myself.
How did it feel?
Like riding a bike with training wheels bolted back on.
Like a jigsaw falling into place, completing a puzzle that had been missing a substantial piece.
Like opening a time capsule, reclaiming a piece of myself that I’d buried underground and was so relieved to see again, to not have to live without again.
Like finding a lost sock: being made whole again in some small but significant way.
I was stubborn about coming back, but not in how or when I came back. The mantras in my head:
Do it once and do it right.
Relieve yourself of the pressure of others’ and your own expectations.
Unshackle yourself of any sense of timeline, of any sense of urgency.
Once I did this, my operating mentality changed. I gave myself grace. I allowed myself to explore other interests to the extent that my physical capability and work schedule allowed.
I stopped imposing some arbitrary timeline on myself for a return to sport. I wanted to wait and see what I’d want to do with my body once I was able to move it with any smidge of confidence, with any semblance of strength and stability.
When I could hardly get down a flight of stairs with ease, the thought of rolling around on a mat was untenable.
So I let go of that thought entirely.
The most important thing I gave myself in the last six months of recovery was the full permission to move on from jiu-jitsu.
If I didn’t love it anymore, I didn’t have to go back.
If I did love it, but if returning to it would cause more pain than joy, I didn’t have to go back.
I figured that I’d know if I wanted to go back, but that it wouldn’t be until the moment I actually stepped back on a mat. Until then, I couldn’t be certain.
I made peace with the idea that if I wanted to go back, that I might not want to compete again, let alone be able to train hard again.
I made peace with the fact that by the time I might have recovered, that other demands of life, work, and family, might get in the way, making it impossible for me to give myself to the sport as much as I had able to in the past.
On my first night back, the biggest questions I had to answer were these:
Did I still want this sport in my life?
Is this still worth it to me?
At what cost?
When I stood in the closing lineup at the end of that first class, I got my answers:
Yes.
Yes.
Whatever cost you are willing to pay. Be willing to adapt and reevaluate.
As I bowed and shook everyone’s hands in the lineup, training partners who knew bits of what I’d been through congratulated me, whispering with palpable appreciation and respect.
“It’s good to see you back.”
“So glad to have you back.”
It moved me.
My knee was torn apart, cut open, and made new with someone else’s tissue. The reality is in blood and sinew, in screws and stitches.
The outer scars fade while the inner work continues. Of muscles learning to fire again. Of the brain trusting the body again.
What “back” currently looks like is struggling to jog in a warm up and requiring the utmost gentleness on a mat with myself and others—physically and mentally.
Back is charged, creating a pressure to be something or someone that I used to be, something I might not want to be anymore.
It’s good to be “back” from others’ perspectives, and for me, it’s good to be “back” on a mat and able to do something—anything. I’ll know when I’m really “back” in a more substantial way, or in however way I choose to define it, but until then, I prefer to not think of my return as “being back” at all.
I’d rather not be back. I’d rather be better, different, smarter, wiser.
The way I see things now, after what I’ve been through, there’s no coming back, only moving forward.
This morning, I think back to sitting with my coach on the mat, to staring at myself in the mirror after that first class in almost a year.
Yes, I’ve got to be crazy to come back.
But I’ve also come too fucking far to quit now.
You are living proof that you can do BJJ with other people's parts! Though it's still you, before, during and after. I love your writing and honoring yourself enough to do what you want. Get it!
Welcome back 👊🏻
Beautiful reflection.
Forced absence can make the heart grow stronger and/or wiser. Looks like you experienced both.
Looking forward to reading out how you continue to level up mentally and physically this year.