Hey There

I’ve never been the hard body. I’ve never been the skinny perfect figure girl, always had a little extra on me. Genetically speaking I was always meant to survive famine and make 12 babies and feed them all with my mountainous mammaries. While that’s all well and good, in a society where thin is in and beauty is measured in highlights and hip bones, I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong.

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Enter marriage and motherhood; I gained 70lbs with my first pregnancy and had PPD that played some major games with my mindset. Food didn’t comfort me anymore, I got lost in books and coffee cups and art and stayed uncomfortable in my skin. As with many women who enter motherhood unaware of who they are anymore or what to do with themselves, I turned to yoga and nutrition. I didn’t see any physical results externally, but I felt them, and began branching out into strength training and cardio. I got my first fitness app on my first smart phone and dove in, with a promise to never weigh myself during the program. By the time my first 8 weeks were up, I stepped on the scale with fear and trepidation in my heart, only to see that I had lost 30lbs already! I was hooked. I spent the next months teaching myself how to run, I ran trails, I ran tracks, I ran stairs, I cross trained with body weight moves. Nine months after I started I had lost 60lbs. I was strong. I was wearing size 8/10 jeans for the first time in my adult life. I was eating more food than I had ever eaten in my life and learned a new way to fuel my body. I was actually comfortable in my own skin, I felt beautiful, powerful, sexy, and like a new, better Mia. I set my sights higher and began training for a marathon. I was unstoppable.

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Fast forward a little. I had a successful handmade jewelry hobby that made us some extra cash, and it was Mothers Day weekend, and I was on my way to an event with a veritable ton of my creations in the back of my car. I was the only jeweler at the event and had high expectations for my sales. Except that I never made it there. En-route to the event, I was struck head on by an intoxicated driver at highway speeds. She hit me so hard that my tire folded into the engine and kicked the heater core into the floorboards of my seat, where my sandaled feet were. Seven broken metatarsals later, both of my feet in boots and I stuck in a wheelchair for months. I was told the nerve damage would last my lifetime, I was told that I would never go a day without pain, that running a marathon was just a daydream. I had to learn how to walk again. I was devastated. Entered a deep depression, gained all the weight back I had lost, and gave up.

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In the next few years I would become pregnant twice and give birth to two more beautiful, healthy babies, and remained in my extra squishy mom-bod, remained in my depression, feeling uncomfortable in my own skin once again. My husband and I left Alaska and moved to Michigan, started a business, bought a chunk of land, and had every intention of building a house, farming and supplying our farm to table restaurant off our own efforts, trying our best to turn our lives around after the cataclysmic accident that broke both of my feet and damaged his shoulder. But then, 2020 and the Covid Pandemic shut everything down, and we lost out on our restaurant, lost on livestock and on all our investments. Mine and my husbands mental health tanked further, and we were grasping at threads to hold ourselves together for the kids.

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It had admittedly been years since I'd fully steeped myself into a book, when I started seeing reviews for A Court of Thorns and Roses in early 2021 and people were gushing over the characters and plot. Motherhood had kept me busy, but in my Sad Girl Era I found myself wanting an escape from reality.  Being an avid reader since I read my first book, I downloaded Kindle on my phone and bought the first book in the series. Oh. Oh my. I instantly connected with the wish to escape my own hell and find better, the fighter in Feyre aligned with my own heart so strongly, I couldn’t get enough. I think I read that first book in 2 days… and then bought the next one, and the next, until I had read all of them and felt like these characters, these people I connected with so much, where had they gone? WHAT IS MY LIFE?! I had to have more.

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Nesta was a particularly hard character to read about, and yet I couldn't put ACOSF down. Why couldn't I put it down?! It wasn't just the steamy romance brewing, it was about her. Her viciousness. Her self-destruction. Her determination, and that beautiful redemption arc. Maybe I didn't have to spend my life hating myself. Maybe there was potential for me too. 

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Obsessed is an Understatement

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Social Media showed me countless images of fan art, fan fiction, dove into the storylines with me to explain or pull out details I had somehow missed during the first and second readings of the series. I read them again. And again. And each time I became more restless, because there I was sitting on my butt getting lost in story land with fictional characters who DID THINGS with their lives, and I was disassociating and letting my own pass me by.

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I remember messaging my friend in Texas and asking her if she thought it was crazy or weird if I tried to draw up my own workouts to become an Illyrian Warrior like Cassian and Azriel were hoping to train in Windhaven. "If it gets you out of bed, if it makes you feel good about yourself- who cares?! Do it!" So I did! I wrote up an 8 week long progressive workout plan for myself based on exercises I had done in the past. Day 1 I was so pumped, and I ended up kicking my own ass so thoroughly that I didn't try it again for a couple weeks. I fried myself on day one and I couldn't convince myself to keep going. I was so weak and so disappointed that what I had thought would be an easy day 1, was too hard. 

 

One day on TikTok I stumbled on The Micro Squad Gym, and found a creator who was making ACOTAR themed workouts, and workout gear. A spark in my chest smoldered. I searched for more women working out to become the incredible Illyrian-meets-Valkyrie warrior; climbing 10 thousand steps, learning to fight, to swing a sword, and carry a shield. Women who were less concerned with aesthetic perfection and more concerned with strength and power. Women rooting deep within themselves to still the mind, calm the fury in our hearts, and become something more. I wanted that, I needed it in my bones. I signed up with Valkyrie Squad, an all inclusive program to teach me to train and become powerful. I started accumulating workout gear, organizing my day, so I started before dawn, and tailored my diet to meet future me and my needs as Valkyrie in Training.

 

And here we are, at my beginning, and my end; to crawl out of the darkness of that Cauldron, and into Myself.