Words from Caprice Carter- Power of YOU New Year NEW You Fitness Challenge Recipient

When it came time to pick who was deserving of the Power of YOU New Year NEW YOU Fitness Challenge, it was very hard.  Many women wrote with incredible stories that would inspire anyone. They were all deserving.  In the end, I picked two Challenge Winners.  One attending the 50+ Boot Camp and one attending the Women's Only Boot Camp.  The women have come to class, been pushing themselves and will be blogging about their journey.  Caprice Carter won the 50+ Boot Camp category, and over $1450 in services throughout the 3 month challenge.  Read on to hear about Caprice and how incredible she is....Coach Erin

Caprice's words....

March 1, 2011

Erin has asked me to write something for her blog about my experiences so far with the Power Fitness PDX Challenge… I’m not much of a writer but I will do my best.

First of all I would like to say that so far, it’s been ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!

I was one of the winners of the scholarships for the challenge which I am incredibly thankful for.  I had been thinking for a long time that what I needed was a personal trainer or something for me to get my butt in gear and do what I needed to do for myself.  For me. I could never find the time or the money or the organization to follow through on getting back in shape so when I saw the poster and read about the scholarship, I immediately went home and wrote up my story and sent it in. I was so, so surprised and thrilled to learn I had won! Whoo Hoo!

I felt that to honor this opportunity I would need to fully commit myself to the challenge and I have to say that I’m so inspired now, that I think this will be a life changing experience.

As for my story, well… I’ll try to be brief.

About six years ago my twin nieces ended up in foster care in Oregon. Since we were out of state, it took us a year to get them down here through a very lengthy and stressful, emotional and exhausting process. We had to become a licensed foster family, taking classes, having our personal lives exposed and turned inside out and then having to license our home by having to legalize part of our home that was added in the 1940’s (when people just didn’t pull permits for such things), etc… In the end it all worked out and they came to live with us but it took a toll on us. That’s when the real work began. It’s been an incredibly challenging journey and odyssey for us, and for them, for which I can happily say that we are now a family. After a year we were able to adopt them and through working with a family therapist have worked on adapting to our new family life.

That said, as the years were going by, I began to feel that I was giving everything I had out and there was nothing left fore me. No personal time to take care of myself, my body and my spirit. It had been about 13 years (since my daughter was born) that I had worked out consistently. I tried to get back into exercising with bicycle riding here and there, walking and hiking, yoga, etc. but found that it just isn’t the same as an actual work out and it seemed that every free moment I had went to the kids. 

Now my dream has come true. I am so inspired by Erin’s complete and total commitment to what she is doing and her enthusiasm is not only inspirational but contagious! She makes you feel like you can do anything by starting with tiny little steps and on to bigger and bigger steps. The support of all the other women who are also doing the challenge is not only FUN but very inspirational as well. Everyone has their story and they are all here to work on making their lives better together.

I’ll never forget the first morning, all nervous about going out in the early morning dark, and the surprising beauty of watching the sun rise over the still bay with the crystal clear crisp sky. Absolutely Amazing!

I look forward to every work out (and every sunrise) now… Caprice

 

Caprice on right working with Tammy on left. 1st Workout of the Challenge- 2.8.2011