Leah Brouwers: The Power of Failure
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By Jill Farr
35 year old mom of two Leah Brouwers has a history of starting things young, and sticking with them.
Now a managing partner in her dad’s investment financial services firm, Leah began working at the company during her first year of university, and went full time in her second, working during the day and attending classes at night to finish her degree.
“We help people retire,” Leah explains. “It’s a goal-oriented pursuit. You could say it’s similar to fitness, in a way.”
Leah’s fitness pursuit of choice--rock climbing--was also something that came into her life early, and made a lasting impact.
“The first chapter of my fitness life was just being active as a kid,” Leah says. “At about 16 I fell in love with rock climbing. My brother took me to a rock climbing gym and I absolutely loved it. I think it kept me out of a lot of the trouble that girls can get into as teenagers.”
“I met my husband rock climbing, we’ve traveled the world doing it...it’s something I loved and trained for, but it didn’t help me understand fitness in general.”
Leah’s love for rock climbing was temporarily sidelined by another big life event...motherhood.
“I thought I knew the meaning of perseverance and hard work prior to children,” Leah says. “I thought I understood what sacrifice was, what self-discipline was...I felt like I was always moving forward, life was good, and I had it on lock.”
“My husband and I were travelling the world rock climbing and enjoying time together – I wanted for nothing. We decided early on that we wanted to have children, and agreed to take the plunge.”
“We were fortunate to get pregnant quickly. I had this ignorant view that since I was really healthy and strong this was going to be a breeze. I miscarried.”
“I spun it in the most positive way I could, went on a climbing trip and tried to move on quickly. What a mistake. I played the ‘I’m okay’ card and didn’t sit in my emotions long enough to heal –I stapled up my wound and tried again. Within a couple of months, I was pregnant with my first son Elijah and announced it to my hubby on Christmas morning –an awesome memory.”
“I subscribed to an app that gave me several workouts for pregnant women and it was supposed to take me through my pregnancy. I had no idea; the next 8 months were about to be a marathon that I hadn’t trained for.”
“I have suffered from chronic migraines since I was 13, but they went to another level while pregnant. No intense movement allowed, a walk, anything; it all brought pain. I refused to medicate for fear of repercussions so I would spend 8 hours in a chair in a dark room waiting for it to be over. It was lonely, painful, and exhausting. Time in the office was choppy and my team was nothing short of incredible in supporting me through my pregnancies. I work with my father and he rescued me more times than I can count. (My mom, too.)”
“To me, regardless of actual reality, I felt that I had failed. Cue labour. We all have our experiences, they say the joys of meeting your baby essentially ‘wipe-out’ any traumas of childbirth, but I can bring myself right back to the delivery room and it wasn’t rainbows and unicorns. Meeting my son Elijah was incredible and amazing, let’s not confuse the two...but why we are expected to pretend and/or forget?”
“Now the pregnancy was over and I was excited for healing, going back to being active, and getting on with it. Fail #4! Nothing came naturally to me. I had done all the reading, the listening, the choosing of the best approach and nothing seemed to click. I was a complete zombie and unhappy mama. Time allowed me to heal quite a bit, but not without a ton of work. I thought I had brought myself through the fire when I started to feel like myself again. I hooked up with an online trainer 4 months post-partum and began to stitch my mind and body back together. And I did – I didn’t know at the time but it was just the warm up for round two.”
“At just over 1 year postpartum I became pregnant with my second son, Asher. I knew I was pregnant by the return of the horrible migraines and thought; here we go again.”
“If the first pregnancy felt like a marathon, the second one was the Ultimate Ironman.”
“3 days on, 4 days off on repeat for 9 months. Many women have their struggles, this was mine. I spent so much time in a dark room. My coping mechanism was to pray for others; to try and take the focus off my struggle and to apply this time to something better. It didn’t always work, I often cried, I sat there sad, but I’m convinced that it saved a whole lot of me that I needed for later. Major changes were occurring in our office – new location, new vision and growth were happening and to this day I do not know how we managed to make it all happen.”
“I am abundantly blessed; with the arrival of Asher we had two healthy boys. Done and done.”
“Unfortunately, my woes with feeding were repeated, personal and outer pressures of ‘breast-milk only’ were pushed even though my little guy proved to just not be a candidate; I was beginning to fall apart. No sleep. No rest. No healing. I was completely stuck.”
“I usually have an incredibly positive attitude, it’s something that I really like about myself; I do not sit in the negative too long, I just refuse. There is way too much good in the world. But at that point in time, I felt completely defeated. I had never felt like I was in a place of purgatory before; this was new.”
Leah credits an intervention by her perceptive doctor with turning this dark time around.
“After a regular check-up with little Asher, I got a call from my doctors office to book me in, just me. Just me? Okay. My doctor sat me down and we just chatted. She said “Leah, I’d like to chat a bit about postpartum depression, I’ve been watching you carefully and the Leah I have known since you were 14 is not the Leah that is sitting next to me. Let’s talk about how you are feeling, and what we are going to do about it.””
“I thought…”Huh? Me and postpartum depression do not belong in the same sentence, you’ve got the wrong mama, I’ll be fine.” Failure #5. We chatted about feeding and my incessant need to find the answers to my failing breastmilk and many other things. She then whispered something so wise, that so spoke deeply to me that I refer to it often… “Leah there is nothing natural about an unhappy mama, how can you possibly give Asher and Eli what they truly need from their mother if you do not heal yourself?” She was so right, on every level. It would take me a long time to unpack it all but this was my lowest moment and I needed to choose what to do.”
The savvy doc didn’t stop there, Leah relates.
“She wrote me a script for 3 nights’ sleep without Asher. I needed to press pause. My doctor’s intervention on behalf of my well-being was the mental game changer; the actual full nights’ rest was secondary.”
“Coming to grips with it was hard but I now know that it has served me well, and I can look back and revel in the personal growth, the new woman I am to my children, to my husband, in my office and most importantly to me. I often think about what made the difference in my journey back to feeling in control again.”
Leah’s gratitude is reflected in her attitude.
“So, this chapter of my fitness life is about having a much better appreciation of what it means to be fit. I was strong before, but now...I’m really damn strong. Training for climbing in the early 2000s looked a lot different--now people lift and cross train, but back then it wasn’t like that. There used to be negativity about lifting with climbers because of a (mistaken) idea that lifting will bulk you and make it harder to lift yourself. I mean, a bulked up lifter might struggle, but now we understand that strength is strength.”
Leah considers fitness imperative, not simply something that’s optional.
“Fitness for me is a lifestyle. Awareness of how you’re thinking, how you’re eating...not just fixing your muscles but your gut, and other areas. I suffer from migraines and a lot of my journey is just taking care of my body, my temple.”
“The job that I do, it’s focused on data, on numbers, and your mind just functions in a certain way, so I track lots of stuff. So, I know that as soon as I stop moving my body, my migraines flare up. It might be due to stress, which can cause me to stop being as active, but my physical body is saying, “Help”...everything goes off the rails when my activity level is low. When I exercise, everything works better. I sleep better...it’s like nutrition and sleep and activity are all holding hands.”
Armed with an understanding of the importance of good nutrition and exercise for her physical health, and a knowledge of how positively it also impacts her favorite pursuit, Leah chooses activity that enhances both.
“My workout schedule now includes HIIT style workouts or lifting, and doing climbing specific workouts, using a hangboard.”
If Sisters in Shape helped Leah develop a consciousness about fitness, Leah credits GORGO with assisting her in realizing the power of other women as her tribe. “Being in a male dominated industry--although we have lots of women in our office--you don’t realize how much you’re missing until you submerge yourself with a group of women from diverse backgrounds,” Leah says.
“It’s amazing to realize that these women are there to support you, in your pursuits. My attitude towards women in general was changed by attending the GORGO camps. I had past hurts that probably shouldn’t have defined my thinking about other women, but they had--the GORGO women changed my outlook. It’s sad to say that I had negative views about women, but I did.”
Leah believes that finding the company of good women is magical, and something she encourages.
“You get to be a better version of yourself because other women are like you, but different. Especially If you get to be with good, solid women who will call you out when you need it, it’s amazing. It’s been a blessing. I have my close girlfriends, but GORGO showed me a wider view.”
Leah has had rousing success in the business world, and was fortunate to find a fitness niche she loved relatively early, but something that caught her by surprise was her difficulty in dealing with another major life area...motherhood.
“My challenge was fitting into motherhood,” Leah admits. “I’ve done so many other things, I have so many accomplishments, but becoming a mom was the biggest struggle. It was tough on me. I thought I would kill it, but pregnancy is tough. Becoming a mom is tough. I have two awesome boys, 4 and 2. Elijah and Asher, and I’m so grateful for them, but it really did challenge me.”
As she’s adjusted to becoming a mom, Leah has realized that her GORGO girl power is a two-edged sword; positivity and endurance.
“What sets me apart is that I’m not a quitter and I love being positive,” Leah says. “That’s my emotional home--I look for the positive spin. So, motherhood has been a struggle, but I believe I’m better now because of it.”
“When you start working in a financial services company at the age of 21, you feel small. There have been a lot of times where clients have suggested I’m too young, too female...and instead of backing down, I thought, “Wow. Okay, I understand why you’re nervous, but I’m going to show you why you don’t need to be.”
Although Leah doesn’t give up, she doesn’t equate that with never accepting failure, in fact...she espouses the opposite. Using it.
Just as “failure” has a purpose in workout routines, Leah believes it also serves us in other areas of life.
“My piece of advice is that we all fail,” Leah says. “Get used to it, use it to fuel your flame, not extinguish it. Most of the time I’m good with failure and I think it of it as a stepping stone. Now I know what I’m made of--I’m okay with getting slapped around a little, with sweating, with searching out what I need to do to improve. It’s a painful process, but be okay with failure. Just get back up..”
“Everyone fails. The people you see on Instagram with the filtered lives...they’re failing too. All of the GORGO women you see, they’re inspiring, but they’ll tell you that they’ve had failures. But they’re failing and improving, failing and improving.”
“Your pursuits should be filled with so much growth that you’re renewing every year. There’s this negative connotation when someone said, “Wow, you’ve changed.” But when someone says that to me, I just say, “Thank you!”
“Be okay with failure. It can be a good thing.”
Lessons from Leah:
The right moment to make change in your life is now. I could have thought – things will get better once my children get older, I’ll figure it out then. Trade beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, and happiness for your heavy heart. It’s a choice, not a life sentence.
Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgiveness is not about them, it’s about you. Most importantly – forgive yourself, you are going to mess up, fail, make all the wrong choices. We all do. Promise to learn and do better, forgive and move forward.
Stop blaming others for your current state. You are the keeper of your own life.
Stop caring about what others think. This is your life, not theirs. Period. Be okay with others not understanding your choices. You have not chosen to have a mediocre life.
Make goals! Create a vision for your life (personal, professional, health, mamahood, relationships), and hold yourself accountable. I read an awesome concept once that a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence is directly related to dishonouring yourself; if your word doesn’t matter, you don’t matter. Honour yourself first and see what happens. There is no ending to the pursuit, the magic happens in the journey, and there are things being prepared for you in the distance, you won’t get there by standing still.
Be mindful of your inputs. Friends, family, social inputs, health, etc… you are who you surround yourself with.
Be willing to ask for help and show your struggle. I had to learn this the hard way. If it wasn’t for my safety net of support, I’d be dead in the water.
Sweating is good. Going through hard stuff is necessary for progression. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable (this is a great insight from Rachel Hollis).
Read! I have opened myself to a lot of personal growth books (a new approach for me), trying to gain perspective, to learn and grow.
BE grateful. BE kind. BE positive. You will have ebbs and flows, mountains and valleys – if you train yourself to see the good on the regular, you will have a better chance for survival when things get tough, you will have more tools to use in times of trouble. Give others the benefit of the doubt, stop judging, everyone has crosses to bear, we know so little about their story, be kind and pull only the good (leave the stuff you don’t understand).
“I am so grateful for my life and those in it; I am just getting started and I cannot wait for more.”
