Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting

I am so excited to share this piece with you!

One year ago — literally exactly one year ago on January 24, 2023 — I got an email from Dr.

Roxane Gay

with the subject line ‘A Writing Invitation.’

Roxane explained that she was curating an essay series that would include pieces from a few authors and she was wondering if I might be interested in being one of them.

…of course I said yes.

Roxane suggested maybe something about my relationship to food, my body, and my community.

Here is what I said in reply:

Re: topic...your invitation also comes at a really interesting time as I've been accumulating notes for something I'd like to write but wasn't sure where these notes would land and I think this might be the place?! Nearly a year ago I started powerlifting (a specific type of weightlifting sport that involves just three movements with a barbell — squat, bench, deadlift). I am actually getting ready to compete in my first ever meet at the end of February, the annual 'Rookie Ruckus' (can't make this stuff up). I just purchased a singlet. That I am excited to wear in front of tons of people. Who am I?! I have so much other gear. I wear a different shoe for each lift. I had to get a bigger gym bag to accommodate it all. I am not this high maintenance in any other part of my life! It's really all kind-of hysterical, but it's also been profound and has completely transformed my relationship to my body and also my relationship to how I eat. I feel confident that this could include everything you mentioned — my relationship to food, my body, my community. It's also something I've never written about before, which feels fun + exciting. 

And so today, a year later, I am so pleased to be able to share the final product: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting.

You can read or listen to it here (this link will automatically apply a promo code that gives you a 60 day free trial to Everand so you can also explore other books, audiobooks, etc.). If you already have an Everand/Scribd account, you can read the essay here or listen to it here.

I got to write not only about how and why I got into powerlifting, but also about how it makes me feel in my body and how it’s helped me get to a place I never quite knew I could be. That place is calm and empowered. It’s confident, but not loud. It’s increasingly divorced from diet culture. These days I am so much less afraid to take up space. And I don’t just mean physically. I also mean with my feelings, my relationships, my writing. I have learned to live without constantly trying to shrink myself. Both my body and my life feel more expansive than ever.

Being edited by Roxane was a lesson in excavation. When I handed in my first draft I thought, as I do every time I complete a first draft, that I was done. At various points in the draft, she asked me to slow down and show rather than tell. Thanks to her thoughtful and thorough edits, I found out I had so much more to give than I realized. I went back to the piece and dug so deep. I wrote and deleted things and rewrote some more. I closed my eyes and imagined how I felt in the various moments I shared. Then I did my best to describe those sensations with words. When I turned in the revision, I thanked Roxane for asking me how I felt. “It was hard but rewarding to find the words to tell you,” I told her.

This essay isn’t just about powerlifting. It’s about disordered eating and anti-fatness and family and friendship and food and embodiment and farming and queerness and what it feels like to try something different. I am so happy to have written it and am excited to share it.

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Here’s the beginning of the essay. To read or listen to the whole thing (there’s so much!), just head here.

MY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD NIECE, REMY, FELL ASLEEP ON THE COUCH. It was past her bedtime. My brother was trying to convince her to sleep in her own bed. It wasn’t working. I asked if I could try something. “Do you trust me to carry you up to bed?” I whispered to her. She nodded yes. I tucked the blanket around her as if she were a burrito and lifted her, blanket and all, into my arms and carried her up the staircase, straight to her bed. Of the various roles I occupy, being a strong aunt is one I really love.

How did I come to be able to easily carry a seven-year-old up a winding flight of stairs? Sure, genetics has something to do with my tree-like build, but I have also been powerlifing for a year now. Powerlifting is a weightlifting sport consisting of three specific movements — squat, bench press, deadlift— each performed with a weighted barbell. I started because I wanted to find a way to see how strong I am, and how strong I could be, that wasn’t tied to losing weight, as every other form of exercise I’ve ever tried has been. I used to walk into a room and wonder if I was the biggest person in it. Now I walk into a room and wonder how many things I can lift.

The goal of powerlifting is to perfect your form and increase the amount of weight you move in each lift. I have kept doing it because I look forward to it. Powerlifting is repetitive and predictable, which frees my anxious mind from wondering what will happen when I show up to the gym. I know not only what I am going to do, but I also know I can do it. I pick things up and put them back where I found them.

Powerlifting allows me to go through life knowing how strong I am. It is a quiet knowing. I don’t have to announce it. Lifting heavy things regularly helps me feel less dependent on everyone else for the types of validation I’ve long sought. It has allowed me to feel that acceptance and reassurance from myself.

I don’t have this living-in-a-human-body thing all figured out. Far from it. But lifting has been one of the most helpful tools for improving my relationship with my body. To be clear, I’m not here to tell you to powerlift. What I want to tell you is that it’s worth the trial and error to find something that shows you what you’re capable of, no matter what it is.

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Thanks for being here friends. It means a lot to share this deeply personal piece with a community I’ve come to feel so supported by. Thanks for helping me feel comfortable to put this kind-of work out there and know there are a lot of kind people who have my back. To read or listen to the whole thing, just head here.

xooxox your strong-yet-slightly nervous pal, Julia