A shrink once told me that I needed to integrate the different parts of me. The small child who lived in terror, shame and panic did not know the adult who wrote books and took pictures. They needed to meet. They did, in fact, meet and the adult told the boy that it was going to be okay, things worked out, he was safe, he got the girl.

But I have always had a fractured self. One of the separations involved the body and the mind, I have always lived a life of the mind and ignored my body, Anna Freud writes that this is a classic formula for anxiety and trauma. My father was an athlete, he wanted me to be an athlete, he thought I was a sissy and often told me so.

I responded by rejecting any kind of athletics or structured exercise. I lived out of my head, active and healthy. Things changed. My grandfather passed along his diabetes, that caught up with me, and I had open heart surgery in July. My relationship with my body changed. I knew I needed a different view of my body, I could not ignore it any longer.

And I have not, I have been walking, exercising, reconnecting my mind, body and soul. I have enjoyed it. I did not quite know that this integration is a spiritual thing, it is not only healthy, it is important for balance and well-being. Today, a big step further, I found and joined a small gym in my town, it is different from any other gyms I have known.

It is privately owned, it is a co-op, the people who go own and maintain it. It is still, right near the center of town. It has good equipment that was sold by the previous owners, who could not make a commercial gym work. It is quiet, members are given a key and a code for the front door, we can use the equipment 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Red is permitted, even welcomed. He walked in with me, lay down and waited until I was done. Red is a remarkable creature, a partner in my life. I went this morning, it was snowing, I opened the door and switched shoes, found a treadmill, set it high and fast and worked out there for 40 minutes, and then on the bicycle machine, this is not a day I could have walked outside.

I brought my Iphone, and my earbuds and I had good company besides Red – Amy Winehouse, Sam Smith,  Yusef Islam (Cat Stevens), Vance Morrison, Tove Lo, Taylor Swift, Itzhak Perlman, Spoon, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, Nina Del Rey. It was dark and windy, the snow was blowing outside.

Finally, after so many years, my mind and my body were meeting, I was integrating my disjointed self. The gym was quiet, no TV’s, not music, it was a good place to think. I see that a healthy body can be a spiritual thing, a grounding thing, a beautiful thing. I am getting to know it, we are finally friends.

I love my new gym, I signed up, it is just a few minutes from our farm,  I will be there nearly every day, Red also. I love the quiet of it, the comfort of it. Amazing to find it in my small town. The man who watches over the gym is the son of Marion, one of the most beautiful and wonderful hospice patients that Izzy and I saw before they both died. Life is really a circle, it comes around and around.

And this is the story of men, yes? Most of them sail through life in oblivion, you literally have to sometimes nearly kill them to get their attention. Perhaps this is what my father was trying to tell me all those years ago when he shouted at me and call me names. You hear things when you are ready, and when the right people are telling them to you.