Time Wounds All Heels*
*as seen on a cobbler's door
Dear Overripe Avocado,
Thank you for reminding me
there is such a thing as
waiting too long to be ready.
I’m a sucker for a good play on words. I’m not saying that other languages don’t have puns, but punnery is an exquisite American fare. I didn’t grow up with it and only truly began to feel American after I developed an appreciation for it.
My friend David got me really good once when, after arriving at a party that (for some inexplicable reason) had most of the guests dressed up in vests, I remarked to him: “I guess you didn’t get the memo either” and he responded: “Nah, I wasn’t invested.”
David and my partner, Nick, were in an a cappella group together for years called The Harmonious Hunks.
They were featured in many of my theatre company’s long running variety show called The Wild Party Variety Hour where you came for the show but stayed for the party. My theatre company is celebrating 20 years in 2025 and if you want to follow any of the crazy things that happened on and off stage, you can click on this here Substack.
Nick has a joke tattooed on his forearm that was told to him by David: “What do mermaids wear to math class? A: Algaebra” It was the last pun that David told because two days later, David was dead. He was diagnosed shortly after the ‘roll out and roll up’ and nine months later, he was gone. Correlation and causation and all that, but he was also one of numerous cancer losses in my life in the last five years. Some say that happens once you hit 40; people just start dying off. But I don’t remember my mum going to that many funerals in her 40s.
A year ago today, I was given my own cancer diagnosis. I went out to a family birthday lunch for my twins and a dark cloud hung over our table as I swallowed my sushi. My body, which after having a baby in its 40s, becoming stagnant during covid, and then hitting menopause was heavy and sans energy and felt weathered and worn. To give you context, here’s an embarrassing clip of a tipsy me on Christmas, ‘23 doing carol karaoke
(lol, my kids are NOT amused)
This is me today.
One year later, 80 lbs lighter, energy to go up and down the stairs uncountable times a day, and more importantly, cancer free.
Thursday is my usual gym day. Yes, I know, I know, I should be going to the gym more often. But I can only go when my dear friend Marv is working so he can get me in for free and our scheduling hardly lines up for any other times. You can also do things outside of gyms to get fit - walking your dog and daily planks, for example (when I started I could barely eek out 30 seconds, I am now up to 1 and a half minute and will be adding more as soon as I master this timeframe.)
Yesterday, on January 2nd, I went to do my usual sets and cardio and the stink of mimosa hangovers mingled miserably between the smell of weight lifting grease and disinfectant. I’ve never seen so many new faces at the gym. Unhappy faces. Faces that didn’t really want to be there. Faces that were going to fail their new year resolutions within the week. Not shaming here. I would have been one of those people.
When I first heard about the cancer and I set out on a three week water only fast because it felt like the only thing I could do right away without it costing anything and without knowledge on how exactly to proceed, I often heard, “Oh, I couldn’t have done that.” But I beg to differ. I bet anyone could do it. You could do it if your life depended on it.
My impetus for getting healthy wasn’t cosmetic. It was life or death. And it was easier to be fat because I didn’t feel the social stigma. My partner liked me better that way, people used words like “voluptuous” to describe me, and Chicago, and especially the theatre community, had been very “body positive.” Whereas before, where I would have looked upon getting in shape as something I should do because, sheesh, Tonika, you have to stop on the landing and catch your breath and it’s only one flight of stairs, and you no longer wear pants with buttons, dontcha know?, I was now staring at my own mortality in the mirror and it can hardly fit in the frame.
And mortality comes for the heavy set folk earlier. How many old fat people do you see walking around?
The thing is that you don’t become unhealthy over night. It happens so gradually that you get used to it the way you get used to seeing your face everyday without noticing how much you actually age. Would all the ailments of chronic unhealthiness actually befall you at once, you’d change course immediately because the discomfort would be too immense.
Which brings me to the end of this unplanned post. I was super inspired by my friend Gabe who took his health in his own hands and has started documenting the journey.
He is doing it because he is young and capable and intelligent and motivated. He isn’t waiting until it’s too late to be ready. And I truly hope we can all find ourselves ready before we turn into overripe avocados.
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As always, thank you for being a part of my journey.
You and Gabe share that quality of being brutally honest with yourselves and tenderly honest with everyone else. I'm deeply honored to know you both. What a journey. You've done things I didn't know were possible.
I remember saying at the beginning of this that somewhere in the pre-Tonika aether, I thought you'd raised your hand, and volunteered to demonstrate how to do cancer right. I didn't realize all the other things you'd show--that humor isn't optional but eating is. And that a shoestring is a big enough budget for international travel at fancy health resorts with lousy internet.
Looking forward to 2025 with you. This year do you plan to grow wings and teach us all that gravity is a choice too? Wouldn't surprise me.
Putting in my two cents here - losing weight was the hardest thing I ever did, and, at 53, so far the one and only thing I am proud of, my single accomplishment in life. It took me 18 months to go from 165 to 125 pounds, and although it wasn't physically a matter of life and death, it very much was psychologically a matter of life and death. Still is, in fact, as the mental health benefits of being super-healthy are what still keep me from falling into a more serious depression. There's a meme (or expression, or whatever), I like called Choose Your Hard: being poor is hard, earning money is hard; getting divorced is hard, staying married is hard; being healthy is hard, being sick is hard. Choose your hard. I train seriously 6 days/week and have a pristine diet, and I know some people think I'm nuts for all the effort I put into maintaining that lifestyle, but being healthy is the hard I choose. It's 100% worth the mega-effort. I'm so glad you made the choices you did and had the strength to do what you did, took your health into your own hands and came out the other side victorious. Huge kudos and much love to you.