When adaptation becomes survival
- Leanne
- Apr 15
- 5 min read
There are times in life when adaptation feels empowering.
It can feel creative, wise, and freeing to find a different way of doing things. A way that works with your body instead of against it. A way that helps you keep going, keep moving, keep living.
And then there are times when adaptation does not feel inspiring at all.
It feels like survival.
That is where I am at the moment.
I often joke that I’m the queen of adaptation! In many ways, I am. I have had to become incredibly good at finding workarounds, changing plans, listening to my body, and doing things differently. It is a skill that has helped me build a life and a business around long term health issues. It is part of what inspired me to create Mobilates and why it means so much to me.
But right now, adaptation feels less like a strength and more like the only way I am getting through.
Everything hurts.
I am in one of those periods where my body feels unreliable and sore, my nervous system feels overloaded, and the smallest thing can tip me over the edge. The fear that comes with that is huge. Not just fear about pain, but fear about what it means. Fear about whether I will recover this time. Fear about whether my mobility will get even worse. Fear about whether I have the strength to keep building myself back up, again.
That is the exhausting part people don't always see.
When you live with long term health issues, a setback is rarely just a setback. It stirs up the memory of all the other times your body has let you down. All the times you have had to start over. All the times you have dragged yourself back from physical and emotional burnout, trying to piece together some sense of stability again.
And life does not pause while you do it.
That is what feels so hard at the moment.
Teaching, which is something I care so deeply about, feels hard. Really hard. I am having to majorly adapt in my job. I am relying on my team more, leaning on them to teach the classes I can't teach myself, and I am so grateful for that support. Mobilates teachers have been incredible. Our members have been incredible too. So understanding, so kind, so supportive. They all just get it.
I don't take it for granted.
But even when you are surrounded by good people, it can still feel painful to need so much help.
There is a grief in not being able to do what you want to do in the way you want to do it.
There is a grief in having to constantly calculate your energy. In knowing that an appointment, something that might seem small to someone else, can be enough to send you over the edge. In looking around the house and seeing the cleaning that needs doing. In knowing you still need to make food. In knowing people still need things from you. In knowing that you still want to show up and support others, even when you are only just functioning yourself.
Sometimes that is the reality of chronic illness, pain, fatigue, and disability. Not dramatic collapse. Not some obvious crisis moment, other than a couple of recent falls down the stairs! Just the relentless weight of everyday life becoming too much for a body and mind that are already carrying so much.
Just functioning can take everything.
I think sometimes people imagine adaptation as a neat, positive thing. A tidy solution. A cheerful reframe.
But adaptation can also look like cancelling what you had planned.
It can look like handing over work you wish you could do yourself.
It can look like teaching differently.
It can look like lowering the bar to the floor. If you've been in class with me you will know it is all about finding your threshold and sticking underneath it.
It can look like eating toast because that is all you can manage to make.
It can look like leaving the cleaning.
It can look like getting through one hour at a time.
It can look like accepting support, even when every part of you wishes you didn't need it.
And I think there is something important in saying that out loud, because so many people are quietly doing exactly that. Quietly surviving. Quietly adapting. Quietly carrying far more than anyone realises.
There is also something I keep coming back to.
Adaptation is not failure.
Needing support is not failure.
Doing less is not failure.
Finding a different way through is not failure.
Sometimes adaptation is not the shiny, empowering version we like to talk about. Sometimes it is messy. Sometimes it comes with grief. Sometimes it feels unfair and frightening. Sometimes it looks nothing like resilience from the outside.
But it is still resilience.
Maybe not the polished kind. Maybe not the kind with inspirational quotes and a triumphant ending. But the real kind. The kind that says, this is unbelievably hard, and I am still here.
I do not have a neat ending for this blog, because I am still in it.
I am still navigating the pain, the anxiety, the uncertainty, and the practical reality of needing to adapt almost every part of daily life at the moment.
But I also know this. There is strength in honesty. There is strength in asking for help. There is strength in allowing things to be different to how you want them to be, without pretending that does not hurt.
And there is strength in community.
Right now, I am being held up by mine. By my team. By our members. By my family and friends, and my partner. By the people who remind me that I do not have to carry it all alone.
So this is just a little reminder, for me and for anyone else who needs it.
If you are only just functioning, that is enough.
If you are adapting in ways nobody else sees, you are amazing.
If you are grieving what your body cannot do today, while still trying to get through the day, that matters.
And if all you can do right now is survive, that counts too.
Because sometimes adaptation is not about thriving.
Sometimes it is simply about getting through.
And that is enough.
Mobilates CIC provides inclusive, adapted exercise for people living with long term health conditions, chronic pain, fatigue and disability.
We create safe, welcoming spaces to move, connect and build confidence in what your body CAN do, whether you join a class in person, online, or from your bed. We’re led by lived experience and powered by community. Together, we’re redefining what movement can look like.
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