Tall Trees Catch the Breeze

The merry-go-round is a formidable piece of 1980s playground equipment that has since been removed from most playgrounds for “insurance reasons.” Often nostalgically called “the murder-go-round” by members of my generation, it is a steel spinning circle on which we sat, trying not to turn ourselves into human projectiles. One needed only to look at the bars worn smooth by the death-grip of countless pre-adolescent hands to understand the popularity of the merry-go-round. You’d have a hard time finding a GenXer who doesn’t have at least one story of 2^nd degree hand burns, a scar, or a trip to the ER related to this piece of playground equipment. The faster you spun, the bigger the thrill, the greater the bragging rights.

A merry-go-round is what I immediately thought of when someone asked me how I felt about leaving K-12 education 5 years before I was entitled to retire.

 “Yes!”

“Remember that playground thing when we were kids that was metal and spun us around until we flailed off into the dirt?”

“I feel like I didn’t jump onto it this time. I’m still. I can see it spinning next to me, but I’m not spinning with it.”

It’s important to note here that stillness and I have a tenuous relationship. While my friends and husband relish a good yogic sound bath, I find them torturous. Shavasana is challenging. I fidget, my foot bounces, and I stretch my body in weird ways. Perhaps it’s part of my unofficially diagnosed ADHD, but I just generally default to movement over stillness, both in my body and my mind. Yet, here I was, feeling this sense of proximity to movement but not moving myself. And then I noticed the small yet significant difference: it wasn’t that I was still – it was that I wasn’t spinning.

Until 2025, I spun. First thing every morning, I checked my email to see if some multi-paragraphed parent missive had come in, accusing me or one of my staff of doing something wrong. I was relieved when there was nothing and anxious when there was, worry overtaking my body. Early morning runs would not quell the spin. Deep breathing wouldn’t either. The dizziness had a familiarity to it, and not once did I consider that I had any choice in the matter.  

Not only was work a constant spin, so was exercise. I ran, swam ,or biked almost every morning. I ran a sub-4 hour marathon, and I was the thinnest and fittest I had ever been in my life. I thought I felt amazing because by all external metrics, I did. But my sleep was erratic at best, I was constantly monitoring my food intake, and I was never, ever still. I thought not having any work drama on any given morning and the relief of a just-completed long run was the best I was going to get. I spun and spun, and even if the merry-go-round slowed, I continued to scan my surroundings for someone who was inevitably ready to spin it.   

When Chris and I decided to move permanently upstate, I noticed my body slowing down. Initially, I fought it and chastised myself for allowing the slowness to move into me, but then, quite possibly for the first time in my hypervigilant life, I listened. Instead of immediately putting running clothes on before walking the dogs, I walked them in my pajamas, looking at the stars and saying good morning to the wildlife who inhabit our neighborhood. I returned to our cabin and sat in front of the fire. I wrote in my journal, and I snuggled with our critters before making my breakfast and heading off to work.

During this time, I gained weight. Some of this was due to a thyroid issue, but that was only part of it; I was no longer compulsively moving my body. This was tricky, of course, because I’m a middle-aged woman living in a woman’s body in 2026, raised in a culture hallmarked by body shame. My brain still tried to control everything. You’re gaining weight! What are you doing sitting by the fire in the morning? MOVE.

Only now, my body was winning the argument. I still compared myself to others and to pictures of me 25 pounds lighter, and I got frustrated that clothing no longer fit, but I kept listening to my body over my mind. And for the first time in my adulthood, I slept. And I mean SAAAA-LEPT.

I don’t just sleep anymore, I ZONK. The longer I am away from my former job, my former pace, my former home, the deeper my zonking becomes. It is a profound rest that my body, finally experiencing it, relishes. Each time I wake up now, my body greets me with, “See? This is what I needed all along. Isn’t it AWESOME?”

It’s a daily choice/battle to allow rest to continue winning, but the more I sit with and within my changing body, the closer I get to a proximal, if precarious, zone of body acceptance. It remains a complicated place, and I surmise to a large extent, it always will. Yet, I’m willing to allow my body to have the voice I long suppressed out of fear, shame, and comparison. And in moments of true honestly, I am grateful that my body finally told my head to chill the fuck out.

The idea of gratitude is complicated, as “#blessed” is the quintessence of the system relying upon us to think of the problem is us rather than the system’s insane expectations and the dysfunctional, oppressive paradigms it creates. So, as I purchase a larger swimsuit and move my body more slowly, I hope am beginning to undo what decades of thinking that if I just do better – professionally, physically, and mentally – I will be content.

The spin continues to have aftershocks. I still catch myself worrying about changing the air filter on a house I no longer own, and my heart rate periodically spikes upon opening a Gmail account that no longer houses irate parent emails. But with each of these moments comes a reminder that I made choices, inadvertent or intentional, that allowed me to see that I have more control over the spin than I thought. The thing about the merry-go-round, the blessing and the curse, is that in the exhilaration of the spin, you can’t see another way of feeling exhilarated.

And this exhilaration is alluring. Successfully handling difficult work situations made me proud. Becoming a faster runner and triathlete felt amazing. Like most things, and particularly those that we do compulsively, there was always a reward. Yet now that I have stepped off the merry-go-round, I recognize there are other ways of moving through the world that are far less dizzying. I make considerably less money now, but each day, I feel like I’m building community. Only now, it’s without me worrying about whom I might piss off.  I’m not scanning the horizon for someone’s mood or ego or comfort. I engage with people whom I value and who never miss an opportunity to share that they value me too. We disagree. We deal with conflict compassionately with each other. We repair.

At some point, I may get back into racing. I have made incredible friends through running and cycling and swimming, and those countless hours of training together are among my fondest memories. But as long as my body keeps telling me to slow down, I will listen.

I guess why I’m sharing this is that it took me a really long time to understand that I had more choices than I thought were available to me. I was so caught up in what I “should” do according to the narratives most familiar to me that I couldn’t see any other path. They are well-worn paths themselves, and they often obscure everything else.

While I still carry anger about how I left the field, it’s now softer, and it is slowly being replaced by…dare I say? Gratitude. Had my entire professional life not been turned upside-down, I probably would have never left. I would still be spinning, stuck in its familiarity, not knowing how terrible it was for me, and believing that fleeting moments of respite and obsessive exercise were enough to keep me healthy.

And now, on the rare occasion I see a “murder-go-round” still inhabiting a playground, I get to jump on and go for a spin, knowing it’s just one of the many ways I can move in the world.

I can jump on, or I can watch, bragging rights be damned.