Three hundred classes.
Three hundred times showing up for myself.
Three hundred workouts squeezed into seasons of grief, motherhood, exhaustion, identity shifts, postpartum recovery, stress, healing, and life.

But my very first thought wasn’t pride. No. My first thought was: Took you long enough.

Followed quickly by: How long ago was your first class?
You had so many gaps, so many pauses.
You stopped and started so many times.
You don’t look like someone who works out that much.

Instead of allowing myself to celebrate something meaningful, my brain immediately started qualifying it.
Diminishing it.
Explaining why it somehow “doesn’t count enough.”

(And if I’m being really honest, this is NOT the only place that this shows up in my life.)

Not because anyone else told me it didn’t count.
Not because anyone at OrangeTheory is tracking my timeline.
Not because I’m secretly competing with anyone else.

No, but because somewhere along the way, many of us learn to measure ourselves not just by what we do, but by how efficiently, consistently, flawlessly, and uninterruptedly we do it. I know I’ve heard that message over and over.

For some reason, stopping and starting gets framed as failure.

But in actuality, starting after stopping is incredibly brave.

It takes courage to begin.
It takes even more courage to begin again.
And again.
And again.
To never fully give up on yourself, no matter how many times you have to start over.

Motherhood especially has an uncanny way of intensifying that inner voice.

We break down. We breakthrough.
We transform. Again and again.

We stop and start.
We rebuild.
We lose momentum.
We begin again.

Our bodies change.
Our energy changes.
Life changes us.
Motherhood changes us.

And somewhere in all of that, we start believing the pauses erase the progress. I know I sure did.

But what if the pauses are part of the story? Part of the growth? Part of our non-linear journey?

What if the real achievement isn’t that I reached 300 classes, but that I keep coming back?

I stopped during the pandemic.
I tried to come back after my first daughter, but my body wasn’t ready.
After my second daughter, I slowly started returning. Slowly.

And yes, there were gaps. Many.
A month here.
A couple of months there.
Injuries from thinking my postpartum body could simply do what my pre-baby body could. (Spoiler, it couldn’t.)

But I came back.
I came back tired.
I came back strong.
I came back discouraged.
I came back motivated.
I came back energized.
I came back depleted.
I came back nursing back pain from not building up my core enough.

I came back emotionally heavier.
I came back physically heavier.

I came back - because every time I walk into that room under the orange lights, my body remembers:

I feel good when I take care of myself.
I feel good when I show up for myself.
I feel good when I move my body with my favorite coaches cheering me on.

And, maybe even more importantly, I want my daughters to know that it’s okay to fall down and get back up, over and over again, as many times as it takes.

I want them to grow up knowing that hard things can be faced with courage, softness, and resilience. I want them to never give up on what matters to them.

I hope that by seeing me start and stop over and over, they learn that they can pursue their inner desires, no matter how hard or how long it takes.
I hope they remember resilience, not perfection.

And somewhere along the way, I acknowledged something that I could no longer ignore:

I need to start actively working on breaking the negative thought patterns in my own mind.

Or more specifically…

I need to start challenging the voice I named Cruella.

Not just for myself, but for my daughters too. Because I do not ever want them talking to themselves the way I have talked to myself for so long.

Cruella is my inner critic.
The voice that minimizes everything.
The voice that moves the goalpost, just as I’m reaching it.
The voice that turns accomplishments into evidence of inadequacy.

“300 classes? Yeah, but it took years.”
“You came back? Yeah, but you stopped before.”
“You’re doing well? Yeah, but not well enough.”

Cruella isn’t inherently evil. She’s trying to protect me.

Somewhere along the way, she learned that criticism felt safer than disappointment. That if I judged myself first, maybe nobody could hurt me.

She’s actually done a decent job getting me this far.

But now? She’s exhausted. I’m exhausted.

It’s hard when the cruelest voice you hear is the one living inside your own mind.

At some point, I’ve become my own worst enemy.

The goal isn’t to completely silence Cruella. The goal is to give another voice a seat at the table, too.

A kinder voice.
A gentler voice.
A more grounded voice.
A voice that doesn’t erase reality, but reframes it.

A voice that says:

“Look how many times you came back.”
“Look how persistent you are.”
“Look how hard you fought for yourself.”
“Look at the strength it took to begin again.”
“Look at the life your body has lived.”
“Look at everything you carried and still kept going.”

So here I am. Allowing myself to celebrate.

Tomorrow is my 300th Orangetheory class.

And instead of asking how long it took me to get there, I’m practicing a different response:

Hell yes, you did it! Keep going.

Full stop.