Showing Up: The Woman I Was Always Meant to Be

I was never one to be outgoing in my womanness. Shy is the word. Quiet in that particular way where you learn to take up just enough space and no more.

Then 2004 happened.

I stepped into a whole new version of myself that year — becoming a personal trainer, building something of my own, learning how to be personable in a way I never had been before. I was already becoming someone new. I just didn't know yet that the most important part of that becoming had nothing to do with fitness.

She Called About Losing Weight

The first client I ever had who didn't personally know me came through a chain of people — her hairdresser knew my niece, my niece mentioned my name, and one day the phone rang.

She was coming to check me out.

Her name was Martha.

Over the next seven months, something happened that I didn't have words for at the time. We developed a friendship — a real one. She took me to the city to listen to music. She showed me a whole new life. And with every month that passed, something between us kept growing stronger and stronger.

I didn't let myself look at it too closely. Not yet.

Burying Yourself Gets Heavy

Here's what I know now that I didn't fully know then: you can only carry something buried for so long before the weight becomes unbearable.

Martha couldn't hide her true self any longer. And I was burying mine.

I was scared. I grew up in a small community, a farming family, rooted in a place where everyone knew everyone and everything. I had just started a business. I was building something. What would this mean for all of it — my family, my community, the clients who were starting to trust me?

When I finally confessed my feelings to Martha — after first denying them out of fear — I felt something I wasn't expecting.

Relief.

Pure, overwhelming relief. Like I had been holding my breath for years and finally, finally let it go.

But now I had to tell my family.

Five Stops in One Night

The first person I went to was my oldest sister. She and her husband were amazing — calm, loving, exactly what I needed. We made a plan. The next day I would go to my parents. She would show up ten or fifteen minutes after me, ready to support wherever it was needed.

My parents were in their seventies at the time.

I drove to their house not sure how I would say what I had to say, stumbling I slowly was getting it out and before I could get it all out my Mom looked at me and said "You love Martha."

She already knew. She was just waiting for me to be ready.

My dad said he was so glad I had found someone. He told me it broke his heart when he would drive home from playing cards and pass by my house — seeing it dark, picturing me alone in there, just .7 miles down the road, a quarter mile off the road. He said he worried about me. He said he was so happy I had done what was right for me instead of settling for what the world told me was right.

I was overwhelmed.

When my sister pulled into the driveway, my mom looked out the window and said, "What's she doing here?" I explained our plan — that I wasn't sure how they'd react and I wanted backup. My mom looked at me and said, "Did you think we were going to throw you out?"

I said I didn't know.

She said that would never happen.

Then she walked straight to her computer and emailed Martha, who was at work sitting on pins and needles, to tell her how glad she was to have her in the family.

I will never forget that day. I felt the true love of my parents in a way I carry with me still.

From there, it didn't matter what anyone else thought. I had my parents. That was everything.

That same night I made five stops — each of my siblings, one after another. My two other sisters were amazing, accepting and loving. My three brothers accepted what they could, and that's all I could ask. I'm not going to pretend every reaction was identical. But I kept going, door to door, telling my truth over and over, and I didn't let fear talk me out of the next stop.

She Showed Up When It Was Hard

In 2013 Martha moved into my house.

We were tired of the back and forth. And my dad was passing away, and she wanted to be there for me.

That's when I knew — really knew — what kind of partner I had.

Not the city trips or the music or the growing friendship. This. Her choosing to show up when things were hard.

We've been through so much since then. Losing both sets of parents. Martha losing her sister — and now having no immediate family left on this earth. Two dogs. A cat. The kinds of losses that don't leave you the same.

And through all of it, Martha held on. She supported my business and me with an undying kind of love — enduring years and years of me being spread out, poured into other people, carrying the weight of a gym full of members who depended on me. She stood beside all of that quietly and completely.

In 2024 we moved into a space that was finally, fully ours — a condo in a beautiful country setting where we were welcomed with open arms. No judgment. Just us being us.

We came full circle.

What She Gave Me

It's hard to put into words what Martha brought to my life. It's so much.

She helped me work through so much. She loved me through so much. She opened my world to things I never would have found on my own.

But the biggest thing?

She taught me how to be soft.

Before the business, before Martha, I was a dairy farmer. I came into this relationship hardened by that life — calloused in the way that years of physical, solitary work can make you. Martha softened that farm girl too. She showed me that hard is not the same as tough. That being vulnerable — really, truly open — that is real toughness. The kind that takes more courage than anything I ever did in a field or a gym.

A woman who had spent decades being strong for everyone, holding it all together, carrying a community — and Martha taught me how to be soft. How to be loving. How to be true to myself.

We are opposites in so many ways, and I think that's exactly what makes us work. The saying opposites attract was made for us.. We help each other see life from each other's side. We look back now with so much gratitude that we found each other — through a hairdresser, through a niece, through a phone call about losing weight.

The universe was quietly setting it up the whole time.

For the Woman Still Hiding

If you're reading this and you're still in the middle of your own version of this story — still scared, still burying yourself, still not sure the people you love will love you back — I want to say something to you directly.

Trust yourself. You are stronger than you think.

I never did this in an in-your-face way. I just quietly loved who I loved. If someone didn't like it, that was on them, not me. I walked in dignity and let my life speak for itself.

Yes, it's scary. The thought that you might lose the people who mean the most to you is real and it is terrifying. But here is what I know after living it:

You cannot lose yourself to keep someone else. That never works — not for you, not really, not long term.

You are worth the brave moment. You are worth the five stops in one night. You are worth the relief of finally saying the true thing out loud.

I promise you — on the other side of that fear is a life that actually fits.

And it is so, so worth it.