Monthly Archives: December 2010

I want to live

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I want to live

A dear young friend of Girlboxing has been diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer.  Barely 30 she is facing the kinds of challenges and life or death decisions that no one should ever have to face, never mind a person as vital and full of life as she.

It reminds me that all of us face deeply troubling and difficult problems that can be as debilitating emotionally as they are physically or quite frankly, the other way around, wherein feeling crippled by loss or depression can lead to a physical manifestation of suffering.

Cure alls for these sorts of troubles are near-on impossible, but there are ways of coping that can help find a place for laughter and smiles along side the hugely daunting task of getting through a difficult time.

So of course you know where I’m going with this in the sense of “working it out on the bag,” but more so, finding the “daily something,” the space that’s yours and yours alone can be a source of inspiration and hope to keep you going.

My Aunt was just such a person.  She had every serious and debilitating disease one can have including four different cancers (one breast each and two lung cancers), two heart attacks, three strokes and kidneys that managed to function despite no registry on her blood tests, oh and the diabetes she managed to “cure” through changes to her diet.

Her philosophy for coping was simple.  She’d wake up everyday and tell herself “I want to live.”   This became her mantra:  “I want to live.”  She said this often and always, and most particularly to her doctors who got to thinking that she must have inherited the spirit of several cat colonies because she kept using up lives and coming back.

With each new diagnosis, she’d yell it louder:  “I want to live.”   And the same with each day after radiation treatments, chemo treatments, blood transfusions, midnight schleps to the hospital, or day-long waits in the ER.  “I want to live,” she’d call me and say as we worked through the choices she had to face – all the while never missing a hair appointment or her weekly manicure.  And taking care of those details, walking into her doctor’s as decked out as she could muster gave her something to twinkle about – and that made it infectious.  Her doctors took on her mantra saying, “She wants to live,” thus rallying around her and giving it their best to ensure that she’d have that chance.

When she did finally pass I felt a deep and abiding sadness, but knowing that she had pushed herself to the limit of what her body could take and then some gave me a peaceful sense that she was ready to be where she needed to be.  I also understood that her “daily something” was her effort to stay alive; to give herself the energy and pluck to fight each and every round to its fullest.

As well, I know that we all have that in us.  It’s just a matter of finding that one space that helps us work things through no matter if it’s a potter’s wheel a double-ended bag or a simple one line statement.  So whatever it is: writing a journal entry, walking a mile, learning something new or throwing nothing but lefts at a punching bag getting ready for the Golden Gloves; while your daily something won’t cure you, it sure will help to see you through.

 

Working it out on the bag

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Working it out on the bag


What with Thanksgiving last week, Hanukkah celebrations this week and Christmas looming it’s the time of year when many of us can get hugely over-anxious and stressed out!  Sure some of us manage to get through it all with great joy in our hearts and nary a hurt feeling to consider, but many of us experience other emotions and have moments when we’d like nothing better than to chuck it all for a week in some other part of the world, preferably one without phones or email!

I’ve found that making the commitment to work out is a particularly helpful way to cope.  Whether it’s boxing, dancing, aikido, kickboxing, swimming, running or spinning for that matter — pursuing an active, physically engaging activity can provide a terrific way of getting rid of all the toxins that inevitably build during the countdown to the “holidays” and not just from all that overeating.

I like to think of it as working it out on the bag.  I take the plethora of “stuff” that inevitably gets kicked-up and give it a place to go.

Working it out on the bag means that you have a chance to chuck those things out of your body as a means of ridding yourself of the emotions that may otherwise be difficult to cope with.   And while I’ve found that the physical sensation of extending my body and hitting things gives me the chance to release a lot of “stuff,” any active physical experience of pounding something gives the sensation of pushing your body to its limit, such as the feel of the pavement when you’re running or a gym floor when you’re jumping rope.

The point is, these next few weeks are fraught with the pitfalls of a lot of heightened expectations including your own.  Perhaps the best present you can give yourself is the chance to work it all out on the bag long before you get to the point where you want to scream, cancel Christmas or take to your bed for days and days in the hopes that it’ll all end soon.

You might also like: it’s good to hit things

 

Boxing women

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Boxing Women

I get annoyed at the notion that women’s boxing is some sort of  “novelty.”  Boxing is tough both mentally and physically and anyone with the temerity to get in the ring deserves our support.  My “beef” is in trying to find boxing results for women’s bouts the morning after! They are hard to find, WFAN excepted, though they may not have them on an “up-to-the-minute” basis.  What really steams me is when the results from the card are posted “absent” the women’s bouts.

Okay, I’ll get off the soapbox and show you a short from one of the thousands shot by the Thomas Edison Company in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s).  This “novelty” film of the boxing Gordon Sisters was shot on May 6, 1901.  The women were advertised as “Champion Lady Boxer’s” and had a boxing vaudeville act for several years.  If you are interested in more information you can find it here.

PS.  Girlboxing offers a shout out to heavyweight pro Sonya “The Scholar” Lamonakis for her win last night as part of Broadway Boxing’s fight night card at B. B. King’s.   With this win Sonya improves her record to 3-0.

Update:  Nice piece about Sonya from Boxing 24 News.com here.

Champions

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Champions

“You know what a champion is? A champion is someone who’s ready when the gong rings – not just before, not just after – but when it rings.”  – Jack Dempsey

The Times of India is covering a story on the 11th Women’s Boxing Championship that will be held in Thrissur, India.  Participants have started at their training camp in preparation for the first round of bouts on December 4th.  This championship shall set the stage for selecting the Indian national team that will go on to fight in the 2012 Olympics.

Many young Indian women are finding their way into boxing as a means of elevating their status — and getting themselves and their families out of poverty.  This is not so different from the reasons many young men and women have found their way into sport in the United States.  And let’s face it, while we think of it as a sport, in my opinion boxing is much more than that.  It is about heart and facing the kind of fear that can otherwise cripple a person.

A champion in the ring is a person who understands that and overcomes it.  Win or lose the mere fact of getting in the ring counts for something.  So, if you are fighting today, think about what Jack Dempsey said and be ready when the bell rings.

The New York Times wrote about the phenomenon of women’s boxing in India here.  It is worth the read.