I checked this book out of the library.

In it esteemed dancer choreographer Tharp refers to how in her fifties she started to work out at the gym.

Not before she turned fifty mind you. She wrote that she could dead lift 225 pounds after starting to go to the gym.

What each of us earns through our own effort no one can take away from us.

In 2011 when I was 46 years old I decided that I must start lifting weights.

Before then I hadn’t lifted one 5-pound dumbbell.

In January 2014 three years later I could dead lift 205 pounds with the trap bar.

I’m 5’0″ tall and weighed only 115 pounds then.

Of everything I’ve ever done in my life I’m the proudest of having been able to dead lift 205 pounds.

This is not to spook readers. Not all of us will be able to do this or likely would want to do this.

The moral of this story is that it’s not ever too late in life to try to achieve a goal.

My intent when I started lifting weights was to to become able to power through a hard time.

I doubt when most people are facing a trial their first response is to tell themselves: “I’m going to lift weights.”

Only this points to the fact that the enormity or severity of a challenge doesn’t determine our fate.

It’s how we respond to the obstacle that makes the difference.

Unlike other disability rights Advocates who frown on using the words “suffers from” to talk about a person’s condition I’m acutely aware that life is not a bed of roses for anyone–whether we live with a disability or are what’s called “able-bodied.”

No–I don’t like tossing around the word “able-bodied”: to describe people.

It’s because everyone struggles. Like the REM song title of the 1990s: “Everybody Hurts.”

The question is are you going to wallow in self-pity or be jealous of others who seem to have it better than you.

Are you going to give up the fight because the odds are against you?

Are you going to turn fifty and think your glory days are behind you? That becoming frail and infirm is the natural and only trajectory of aging?

I hope in my humble words I can empower readers to risk doing new things. For the joy of doing them as well as being a method to cope with a hard time.

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