Essay: Lifting Heavy Shit

It's My Birthdday! On Turning 58

Photo: Robert E. Rutledge

The first time I lifted my body weight, I burst into tears.

“Those are the arms they broke, Jeana!” I told my trainer, Jeana Fanelli.

I had started training with her exactly six months earlier because I wanted to heal. My bones had long ago healed; it was my heart that needed help. And lifting the equivalent of my body weight in the form of a barbell and weight plates on either end of it had made real something I had long puzzled over, something that I had to reckon with if I wanted that heart to heal too.

How had I survived? Why did I survive?

Ever since Egyptian riot police had beaten me, breaking my left arm in such a way that I needed surgery, and my right hand in two places, and sexually assaulted me during a protest in November 2011, in which police and soldiers had killed at least 40 people, I had chosen intoxication over introspection on what I came to call my grief anniversary–the day they attacked me.

Besides, I died that night almost 14 years ago, anyway. After the three or four riot policemen (I sometimes remember three, other times four) broke my arm and hand, they began sexually assaulting me–groping my breasts, my genitals, calling me a “daughter of a whore,” shoving me back and forth between them as I tried to defend myself, pulling their hands out of my trousers, I fell to the ground, eye level with their boots.

“Get up or you will die,” I heard a voice tell me.

There was no one there but the men and me. They had dragged me to a no-man’s land in between the front line of the protest and the front line of where the police and soldiers stood ready to rush into us.

“Get up or you will die.”

Who told me to get up? My guardian angel? Mona in an alternate universe a la Michelle Yeoh’s character in Everything Everywhere All At Once? Mona of the future returned to the here and now a la Terminator to save me because the Feminist Revolution needed me? Sekhmet securing her future image tattooed onto my right forearm?

How had I survived? Why did I survive?

With a left arm broken in such a way that it needed surgery a week later and a right hand broken in two places, and before those boots at my eye level could kick me into oblivion, I somehow got up.

But the Mona who fell to the ground died that night anyway.

And intoxication on my grief anniversaries was easier than introspection; it meant I could talk and write about what happenedon that night as if I were reporting about someone else. It was my years of news reporting that I had spent reporting about other people, including the crimes of the Egyptian regime, that had led to the assault on me that night on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. That skill–news reporting–had brought this pain, and my ability to do that news reporting so well kept me from healing.

My skill–news reporting and exposing the regime’s crimes–had killed the Mona I was. I needed a new skill. I needed to be my own super hero. The Mona I used to be died so that I could save myself.

And here I am on the day that I was born, 58 years ago, marveling at the alchemical ability of lifting heavy shit to birth new versions of ourselves. You know that saying about carrying your own weight? Or the one about picking yourself up off the floor? There I was six months after I started training with Jeana literally doing that with the equivalent of my body weight.

Was that healing?

Fuck them.

I survived, you fuckers.

I survived you, fuckers.

Me lifting 210 lbs (95.5 kg), today on my birthday. Video by Jeana Fanelli

That arm that was once broken and that hand that was once broken in two places, lifted my body weight. I told Jeana about the voice that told me “Get up or you will die,” and I cried, and Jeana and I hugged.

I was 155lbs. I was 55 years old. And the song that was on at the gym as I lifted my first set of body weight lifts was Groove is in the Heart. Was my heart healing?

“Get up or you will die.”

Have I told you that the kind of lift I am talking about is called a deadlift? Was I carrying the Mona who had died, finally?

“I want to heal,” I told Jeana the first time we met. My grief anniversary of 2022 was a month away and I did not want to intoxicate it away. Introspection lay on the other side of a mind-body split that for the better part of 55 years had favoured my mind. My body was always an afterthought.

And then menopause barged into my life. I have so often thought of what happened to me as if it had happened to someone else—someone I was reporting on, as if I were both subject and object but in a way that was more disassociation and not owner of the narrative. And knowing that my death/rebirth anniversary in November 2022 would coincide with crossing from perimenopause to postmenopause, the voice that had told me to “Get up or you will die,” started saying “I want to heal.”

Menopause came with its anxiety that was immune to intoxication, and it brought along with it something called NFLM–Not Feeling Like Myself. Symptom or gift of the menopause?

In a study published in May 2024 by The Journal of the Menopause Society, researchers say a google search of “I don't feel like myself” and “perimenopause” yielded 5.3 million results. They quote patients telling physicians “I don't feel like myself — when do I get my life back”? And “I don't feel like myself. I don't know who I am. It's like an out of body experience.”

And 63.3% of participants in the study reported NFLM 50% of the time or more over the previous 3 months. NFLM was associated with anxiety/vigilance, fatigue/pain, brain fog, sexual symptoms, and volatile mood symptoms.

My menopause transition included all of the above and had the researchers asked me, I would’ve been among the 16.7% who said that they did not feel like themselves all of the time in the past three months.

I would also have described NFLM (Now Feeling Like Mona) as one of the greatest gifts of my menopause. The Mona I used to be died that night in November 2011 on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and there was no resurrecting her.

Menopause kicked my fucking ass AND (because it’s not a but) it has also set me free.

When I lift, I feel the tectonic plates within me moving, realigning.

When both my arms were in casts soon after they assaulted me, I used to stay awake most of the night, holding vigil over myself, ever vigilant, standing guard over what was left of me, keeping her safe.

Menopause took what happened to me on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and challenged me to walk down that street again but to feel what happened to me, to see what happened to me, to know that it happened to this body and not someone I was reporting on. Menopause offered the introspection that I needed and which discomfort pins you to–there is no turning back, once you enter this street you must walk to its end.

Menopause was the instigator and lifting heavy shit its facilitator.

Did I need to be able to lift my body weight to heal? Was a prerequisite to healing that I could put my body weight on my shoulders and squat? Because I can also now back squat more than the equivalent of my body weight. I can now lift dead Mona up off the floor.

“Get up now or you will die.”

I can now pick her up, put her on my shoulders, and walk away.

What does healing look like? What does strength look like? How do we become subject and object in a way that signals we own the narrative of our story? I am the author and the owner of my story.

The heavier the weights I carry, the more I let go.

When I lift, I feel the tectonic plates within me moving, realigning.

I am surrounded by medical doctors who I love: the majority of my family near and wide, are medical doctors. So I know the healing that we talk about when we take medicine. I know the healing from surgery which helped fix my broken left arm.

But what fixes a broken heart?

When I take the subway to go to my training sessions with Jeana Fanelli, I feel the same as I did when I used to drive to my therapy sessions 24 years ago in Seattle with Georgine: I know I am going to a place where I can heal.

Me lifting 205 lbs (93.2 kg). Video by Jeana Fanelli

What does lifting mean to a strong and many-times-over broken heart? What are the scars that we can trace like a line on the map of our being? We emerge. Scathed. How can we not?

I am starting to think of my lifting, the therapeutic massage and the acupuncture that I began soon after, as ways to exfoliate the emotional dead skin and blockages I carry. In Chinese medicine, trauma is stored in the hips and wow did my hips need help.

This “exfoliation” of trauma and blockages is messy. Since I started my training with weights, the heavier I lift, the more I let go. Slough away, exfoliate away, make a mess.

Perimenopause forced me to talk to my body, forced a conversation I refused to begin when I was younger. My body and I have not always been friends, let alone beloved companions, and we have not always known how to communicate, let alone commune.

When I first got my period at 11.5 years old, my body became unrecognizable to me. Same with the menopause transition too. Now I have the words and the wherewithal to look and see and recognize.

I stand naked in front of the mirror every day to become acquainted with my body and to work on the words for our conversation; here we are, my body and I, in conversation as we collude and collaborate for the year ahead. I have taken ownership of words like collude and collaborate, incite and instigate and inspire, to own their power for my body as radical companions.

So much that has happened to my body I’ve spoken or written about as if I were reporting on someone else. And I wonder if it’s because for too long there were too many things I could not say about my body; what it wanted, what it didn’t.

And this conversation with my body that the menopause transition has facilitated, has forced us to talk, has dissolved that dissociation. Lifting makes me feel it. The therapeutic massage makes me feel it. The acupuncture makes me feel it.

There goes my body telling me again what I had only faintly heard, and now I am listening to, intentionally.

There is a difference between hearing and listening.

When I approach that barbell, loaded with weight plates that used to sound astronomical and which still discombobulate my central nervous system, I tell them “I come to you with reverence and humility.” My mind is recognizing where my body needs to go. And to get there, I am learning awe for my body’s growing strength and awe for these inanimate objects that help me get there.

I am impatient and easily frustrated when Jeana teaches me new things.

“I don’t think you’re impatient. I think you’re excitable and vivacious,” Jeana tells me. She is too. Our energies together are fire and I know that learning new things in my 50s is good for my brain too. Brain plasticity, heart plasticity.

I am not lifting to “lose weight.” I want to “lose” trauma, or the pockets of it that my body has collected over the years, like the heavy bags that Erykah Badu exhorts Bag Lady to “let it go, let it go, let it go.”

And letting go sounds like the barbell’s boom as I put it back on the ground after lifting more than my body weight. When the barbell is astronomically heavy, I am often scared. I know when I’m scared of something, it is often an indicator that I must delve into it more; it is often what I need to do.

When I first discovered feminism I was terrified. I knew it would unravel everything and I knew I needed it.

So here I am. Unravelling, Reborn. One weight at a time. One lift at a time.

What am I scared of? What am I scared to let go? Why?

Becoming braver is similar to becoming stronger: you exercise the courage muscles so that you can lift more. The stronger I become, the more the internal heavy lifting I can do. And just as rest days are the days when muscles recover, I know that after the internal heavy lifting, my heart—that muscle—will recover.

And be stronger.

I am 58 years old today and I am the strongest I have ever been. I survived because my heart contains fight, fear, courage, and a fierce love for this world, this fucking world, in all its fractures and deaths and opportunities for rebirth.

Exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist Dr. Stacy Sims’ advice for those of us going through the menopause transition is LIFT HEAVY SHIT! I was thinking of her when I first booked a session with Jeana. My muscle mass needs the challenge of all that heavy lifting.

My heart did too.

I was born 58 years ago today and I survived what they did to me on Mohamed Mahmoud to become reborn, over and over, every time I stand over those weights and lift them, and every time I put those weights on my shoulders and squat them.

I am 58 years old today and I am the strongest I have ever been. I survived because my heart contains fight, fear, courage, and a fierce love for this world, this fucking world, in all its fractures and deaths and opportunities for rebirth.

For now, I have no plans to compete but my heart has been the biggest winner. The more I lift, the more I walk through the world with a power and the rootedness that comes from knowing I could pick up authoritarians and fascists, riot police and soldiers, and throw them across the room or the street or a subway car, and that is more intoxicating than confidence.

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A year after I started training with Jeana, at the end of October 2024, she asked me “What do you want to do about next month?”

“Why, what’s happening next month?” I replied.

To train with Jeana Fanelli: jeanafanelli@gmail.com

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her new book, an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World, will be published March 5, 2025. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.

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